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Paper On Conspiratorial Thinking Invokes Conspiratorial Thinking
Layzej writes "Last summer a paper investigating the link between conspiratorial thinking and the rejection of climate science provoked a response on blogs skeptical of the scientific consensus that appeared to illustrate the very cognitive processes at the center of the research. This generated data for a new paper titled 'Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation (PDF).' The researchers reviewed the reactions for evidence of conspiratorial thinking, including the presumption of nefarious intent, perception of persecution, the tendency to detect meaning in random events, and the ability to interpret contrary evidence as evidence that the conspiracy is even greater in scope that was originally believed. Some of the hypotheses promoted to dismiss the findings of the original paper ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. It is not clear whether the response to this paper will itself provide data for further research, or how far down this recursion could progress. I fear the answer may be 'all the way.'"
The Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates tend to periodically go into a 'panic mode' where they predict that imminent disaster justifies the suspension of a normal process of evaluation and consensus-building in favor of immediate 'action.' Someone needs to undertake a study of these people to find out the frequency and cause of their beliefs in sudden drastic actions to remedy difficult problems. Perhaps they are routinely pulling power plugs in server rooms, manually activating fire sprinklers in commercial establishments, and throwing their bag of golf clubs into fairway ponds. Hopefully, Boeing doesn't have this type of person working on the 787 battery problem or the outcome might be to have every passenger provide a personal battery pack that they plug in to get the plane into the air.
Most of the environmentalists I've known were just interesting in their own smug sense of self-righteousness. They told others (and themselves) that they were all about helping the environment, of course. but I suspect that was actually way down on the list far below "Feeling like I'm a hero", "Getting to look down on everyone else", "Impressing other environmentalists (and getting laid by the female ones)", "Having something to do besides get a boring job", etc.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
While you're ad hominem stereotyping is no doubt amusing to you and your fellow neo Nazis, it says nothing about the actual issues involved.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it