“Oh, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until you see what Joe on Twitter has to say about the connection between dehumidifiers and Irritable Bowel Syndrome! Truly scary!”
You’re not supposed to hook them up internally!
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My ex-partner, who is a doctor, once asked me if computer viruses are the same sort of thing as viruses which infect humans and animals.
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No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t help to be “respectful of the views” of those who believe vaccinations cause autism. We don’t have to “look at things from the perspective” of flat-earthers, and we don’t have to “be accurate as to the claims” of 5G conspiracy theorists.
Giving air to these consipiracy theories is spreading misinformation. misinformation that is now leading to the torching of cellphone towers, which may lead to disruption of critical networks for people who need them to perform essential functions, let alone those who relay on wireless capability in their homes or personal setups, who could otherwise be cutoff.
5G uses far less power than many of the OTHER things in the 3.5G spectrum, full stop. The lunacy of connecting these two things is dangerous, distracting, and deserves no compassionate response from anyone, any more than any other conspiracy theory ever has.
This “both sides have their merits” bullshit is complete bullshit here.
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Not yet, but knock on wood, when we have cyborg bodies…
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I can kind of explain this 'cos I had to debunk it for a friend of mine about 6 or 8 weeks back.
At the time, Coronavirus was mostly just in China, Italy and on the Diamond Princess. It was also also in Iran but that didn’t fit with the theory so it wasn’t mentioned.
I was sent a link to a YouTube video that has subsequently been deleted.
The video is presented by an attractive american lady, late 20s, long auburn hair, slight and very endearing slur in her speech, hanging out on the porch of a log cabin.
The lady in the video predicted that the video would be taken down and explained that was why she was going to speak in code. So the WHO became who, the Chinese Communist Party became something else. Bill Gates was involved as were the Bilderberg Group and the Mainstream Media.
Attractive lady states that 5G operates at 60 GHz but doesn’t explain what GHz means and throughout the video randomly changes between wavelength and frequency without outlining what either of those mean either. So it’s a bit hard to follow but it sounds technical and like she knows what she’s talking about and it’s basically true. So far so good.
Then she very quickly mentions a medical experiment where scientists are using millimetre waves to deliver medicine into the human body. Some pages from this report are shown in the video and it seems pretty legit. Still so far so good.
Next, 60 GHz is the frequency absorbed by oxygen. Okay. Still good.
This is where the magic happens and it happens very fast. 60 GHz radiation is absorbed by oxygen in a way that prevents it from bonding with haemoglobin. Wait what now?
Some stuff about electrons changing their spin but really, no time to explain, it’s on to some stuff about blood and lungs and partial pressures and again she knows what she’s talking about and it sounds technical.
So now to put all that stuff together. The virus is a cover-up by Bill Gates and the MSM. There is no actual virus, just a Chinese Communist Party bio-weapon controlled by 5G using the technology referenced in the medical report, which prevents haemoglobin from bonding with oxygen in the, where? That’s right, the lungs.
Then there was some footage about the brand new Chinese 5G system recently installed on the Diamond Princess. And there was some documents shown about the controversial installation of the 5G systems throughout Northern Italy.
And then she started talking about the Bilderberg Group and other conspiracy stuff and I couldn’t watch it any more.
But up until the conspiracy stuff, it was all pretty compelling except the crux of the thing, the bit about 60 GHz preventing oxygen molecules from bonding with haemoglobin.
It was fast and slick and technical and I think for someone not very technical it could be pretty convincing.
Was it just conspiracy stuff, or was it propaganda? I have to say that I think it was very deliberate propaganda.
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60GHz is in one of the bands which 5G can use but looking around i am not even sure if that frequency is used at all right now.
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I would disagree. Misinformation can act like a virus that infects thoughts. The best way to combat misinformation is to understand why so many people find it plausible. In doing this we can better explain why these ideas are nonsensical. The best way to remove shadows of doubt is by shining light on them.
All most of us will hear of this nutball rumor is “5G causes Covid-19” and, as demonstrated above, we will attempt to stomp that shit out without question. However, regardless of how good it feels to be correct, telling someone how wrong they are isn’t very persuasive.
I don’t give enough fucks to trolley around 4cahn or random Qpages to know what these wackados are telling each other. So I appreciate some insight into how susceptible minds might be infected with these dangerous ideas.
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Well a local councilor said that “we all have our concerns about 5G” and appeared to question the need for additional broadband infrastructure in one of the most remote and neglected areas of the country, so… surprisingly well received?
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I rather thought that post was more of a “know your enemy” than a “this is more plausible” comment.
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I agree with this.
It’s very easy to take the intellectual high ground and dismiss all conspiracy theorists as nutters and their believers as gullible idiots. But it’s not especially helpful and in any case, it’s much more interesting to explore them than to simply dismiss them.
The world is awash with information now. Exponentially more than even 20 years ago. How are people to make sense of it all?
Who can you trust? The Government? Maybe if you live in Sweden. I live in Ireland and I feel it’s prudent to mistrust everything my government says and in the scheme of things, it isn’t an especially bad or corrupt organisation.
The US Government? Fuck that! The thought of the US Government being trustworthy at this point is ludicrous. And that’s not a sudden thing that happened with the arrival of T****. There has been an erosion of trust going on for at least 50 years.
The Media? Which ones? How do you tell good from bad? And who owns that media and what is their agenda?
And what about satire? Not everyone gets it. Ever see right-wing satire? Did you get it?
So where do you start? What’s your datum point? Which way is up?
Okay. So you have peer reviewed scientific journals which is nice. And Snopes. And I find Physics is pretty useful. But it’s hard to navigate the cultural landscape if you expect truth to be an absolute rather than merely a spectrum.
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed conspiracy theories. They’re not all the same. Some are nuanced and well constructed and some are just patently very poor quality. Flat Earth is pretty dull. 9/11 is pretty rich. Area 51 is somewhere in between.
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Piggybacking off your comment, you touched on the thing that drives me insane about this, “Why it isn’t true” should not be a thing unless you actually have a reason to believe it might be true in the first place, trying to prove a negative is at best an excercise in futility, and at worst legitimizes the conspiracy nuts crazy ideas by engaging them in the minutae of the reasons they give for believing in this but that they don’t understand so how could they possibly understand the rebuttal anyway?
I read an explanation of why they believe this and I just couldn’t get through it, it boggles the mind how someone could possibly believe that there’s anything to it.
/rant
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Yeah that doesn’t make it any more intelligible, nice to know though.
That’s the only thing I would disagree with you, maybe this is the sort of thing where debating is the worst possible thing to do, especially since it’s clearly such a deliberate attempt at sowing discord that getting into a debate is probably the whole point of the conspiracy.
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But there are flat earth era all around the globe!
… I’ll see myself out now.
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Vodafone chief speaks out after 5G conspiracy nuts torch phone mast serving Nightingale Hospital in Brum
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Bruce Sterling predicted this behaviour in his 1994 novel Heavy Weather.
He called it ‘Structure Hitting’.
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Tachin said: getting into a debate is probably the whole point of the conspiracy
Yes. It’s about taking a fact and turning it into an opinion. Dovetails nicely with the attack on science.
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Ken, in all fairness I didn’t read that post by @bluecat argueing “respect for all views”. I read it as "if you want to trash them, don’t give them the opportunity to weasel out ".
In my experience, it does help to debunk the actual claim. It they argue “electric fields are bad because it weakens cells” then we have a massive amount of science and experience debunking that. Before @bluecat posted the info, I didn’t actually knew that would be one of the “arguments”.
While having this info does not help to convince those who already fell down the rabbit hole of self-delusion, it does help to convince people that are still reachable.
And yes, you are absolutely right on all you wrote. Noone wants equal airtime for bullshit, and there is no fucking way I will respect all views.
I have very personal experience with quackery, anthroposophical bullshit and borderline conspiracy “theories”. Fuck this shit. I will shout those people down if necessary to stop them from endangering others. But I will explain, e.g., to my mother why the nonsense the oh-so-clever “pedagogical revolutionary” Rudolf Steiner put in the world is actually killing people while contradicting a massive amount of science which keeps us alive and is part of our everyday life.
And for this, I need at least to have an idea what kind of bullshit “argument” those arseholes are building. Fuck them.
ETA: sorry, this hit home and it’s late. I couldn’t fit this in the “I want to talk to the poster directly” box.
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I understand that position. I do, and believe me in meatspace (well, virtual meatspace right now) I take the time to educate those around me / my family on tech topics, because everyone outside that space gets that stuff wrong.
In this case though, I suppose I was talking more about the BBS as a medium for communication. Web crawlers (like google’s) take into account where something is posted when they decide to elevate pages in search results. And that means someone posting bullshit here will actually appear in search results for that bullshit. That’s a serious problem from our perspective, because it means the BBS can actually amplify the message.
That’s why we’ve taken to a zero-tolerance policy on this sort of stuff. I applaud people who take the time to (repeatedly!) debunk and correct misinformation, or try to set people straight. It’s a thankless, tireless, neverending task. But the conditions change when you go from being one person to being responsible for the information on a site that the interwebs happen to think is a big enough deal to return for search results on said bullshit.
I apologize for not defining my context more narrowly in my rant.
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No apologies needed. And point very much understood and taken.
I wonder if the hidden text feature or the hide details feature can alleviate the page rank problem?
If the post in question itself is showing up, in this particular case no harm is done, since it neither defended nor linked the actual bullshit.
Links to various terrible asshatteries might be a problem on @docosc’s >6k Coronavirus topic. But I am still glad they exists here, because I rather learn about this shit here where people give some contexts, sometimes.
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