Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/01/lies-reveal-truth.html
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That’s a fascinating topic. I feel the same way about spam – it reveals all the anxieties and fears roiling around in the zeitgeist.
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Indeed, Sci Fi is an oracle.
I found myself mulling this over watching episodes of the 90’s reboot of “The Outer Limits”.
Robot Chicken nails it, the underlying theme of a fair number of episodes:
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So AGI will come to pass with boinkable robots… sigh
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In fairness there was a lot of episodes about banging Aliens too.
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I feel like this is part and parcel of the rise of fascism as well where magical thinking overtakes any kind of reasoning so long as it can achieve a certain level of consensus among its participants (willing or otherwise). It’s like a collective hallucination but with actual consequences beyond a bad trip. I’m not versed in any of the social sciences but this is where my intuition leads me, any thoughts from you or others?
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I don’t know why, but I feel the analogy between the Oxy scandal and the current anti-vaxx movement is flawed. I guess because for the Oxy case, you had a single proponent who said it was safe, while for vaccines, you have decades of research? If you dig in the slightest, those two conspiracies don’t hold the same water, is what I’m saying. The article is interesting, not that I think the idea that conspiracies reflect the anxieties of society is particularly surprising. That seems pretty intuitive to me, given how conspiracies have evolved with the advent and continued development of technology.
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On the other hand, you have Andrew Wakefield, a “trusted” member of the medical establishment whose actions are responsible for the vast majority of anti-vaxx sentiment today. Even though skepticism predates him, he was undoubtedly the prime mover in the anti-vaxx hysteria and current outbreaks. Likewise, there was opioid addiction before the Sacklers produced Oxycontin and there were other precipitating factors like the war in Afghanistan, but they are directly responsible for the historical uptick in addictions and death. I think that’s what he was trying to say.
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There are conspiracies that are real (organized crime) and there are conspiracies that are obviously fake (reptilians), so this stuff has to be put on a spectrum of likely to unlikely.
When someone starts talking about “the deep state” I just say “well, which is more likely, that there’s a secret cabal within the government, encompassing both Democrats and Republicans, congress and law enforcement, out to destroy Donald Trump, or that Donald Trump, a guy known for failed businesses and sexual assault, really is corrupt and amoral?” It’s like the moon-landing hoaxers: the vastness and complexity of how they think the Apollo missions were faked would be a lot more difficult to pull off than just landing men on the moon.
I try to reserve judgement now on some news stories when there is something too perfectly political about them, like a “snopes effect”: I am expecting fake news and don’t want to buy in until there is confirmation.
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Tomorrow? Presaged? Surely the Trump phenomenon proves beyond a doubt we’re already there.
Same goes for chumbox articles. It’s all a roiling brew of vanity-driven insecurities over money, sex, and aging. Just looking at the headlines makes me sad and embarrassed for American society in a way few other things can.
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I knew an anti-vaxxer in as a kid (I think it they were eight and I was ten) who thought the government was using health charities to chemically sterilize people in Africa through vaccines. Snopes has an article about that same idea from 2014. But the thing that always struck me about that was, while the particular theory is wrong, the basic idea behind it - that western government carry out genocide against darker-skinned people - is built out of reality.
It’s true that with he opioid crisis we see that the only the thing that makes anti-vaxx implausible is that vaccines aren’t good as money-makers. Pharma companies would rather we don’t get vaccinated so they can sell us maintenance drugs when we get sick. But, yeah, they’d kill us for a buck, and everyone would play along for a while. I’m sure some anti-vaxxers feel like we are the suckers because we don’t see this.
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