MichaelShermer

Michael Shermer

I will also read other Shermer books and make notes here.

Conspiracy

2022 Tigard 001.98 SHE

• p003 Bilderberg Group ?Bilderberger?

  • since 1954, annual meeting of 150 invitees discussing free market capitalism
• p010 OJ murder evidence clear, but acquitted because LAPD have often been racist and planted false evidence
• p014 Type 1 error assuming real when not (false positive), Type 2 error assuming not real (false negative)
• p014 in distant past: assume predator, safe, assume no predator, get eaten

• p015 ultimate (deep) causes embellished with proximate (immediate) psychological&sociological forces

• p016 overlaid with motivated reasoning,

  • cognitive dissonance,

  • teleological thinking,

  • transcendental thinking,

  • locus of control,

  • anxiety reduction,

  • confirmation bias,

  • attribution bias,

  • hindsight bias,

  • myside bias,

  • rsimplification/

  • patternicity,

  • agenticity

• p025 The United States of Paranoia Jesse Walker

• p026 A Culture of Conspiracy Michael Barkun at Syracuse University event, systemic, and super conspiracy theories

• p027 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36373879-conspiracies-declassified Brian Dunning

• p027 The 50 60 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time Jonathan Vankin John Whalen

  • similar on Amazon

• p028 None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham

• p028 Manichean Machiavellian

• p028 Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories Rob Brotherton

• p029 Richard Hofstadter 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics

• p033 Christopher Bader list of government coverup beliefs from 9/11 54% to the moon landing 24%

• p033 list includes made-up event "the North Dakota crash" with 33%, indicating foundational distrust in US government

• p035 Defense of Muslim the Lands by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam intellectual founder of al-Qaeda

• p041 Great Replacement ... by 15 million Jews?

  • Jewish birthrates "lowest in the world" 1.9 compared to 2.3 average in the US

• p043 traduce to expose to shame or blame by means of falsehood and misrepresentation

• p048 education vs conspiracism: 42% no high school diploma, 22% with postgraduate degrees

• p048 Hart and Graether Something's Going on Here: Psychological Predictors of Belief in Conspiracy Theories

  • conspiracy believers "are relatively untrusting, ideologically eccentric, concerned about personal safety, and prone to perceiving agency in actions."

• p048 Hanlon's Razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

  • cite Murphy's Law and other reasons why things go wrong by Arthur Block 1980

• p051 closer to Fukushima disaster, more tweets about it

• p052 Whitson and galinsky 2008 Whitson and galinsky "Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception"

• p053 Trump's false or misleading claims total 30573 over 4 years paywall

• p063 we defend our beliefs like lawyers, not test them like scientists

• p063 Leon Festinger When Prophecy Fails 1956 p065 cognitive dissonance

• p067 Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories 2012

• p070 telos purpose of life, teleology

• p070 Pascal Wagner-Egger +3, 2018 Creationism and conspiracism share a common teleological bias

• p071 Transcendentalist (intuitive) vs. Empiricist

• p071 NASA Fakes the Moon Landing - therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax Psychological science (at OHSU)

• p071 Immanuel Kant 1784 “From such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made.”

• p072 Deanna Kuhn et. al. How Well Do Jurors Reason? Competence Dimensions of Individual Variation in a Juror Reasoning Task

• p073 Arthur Goldwag Cults, conspiracies, and secret societies

• p074 LIHOP: Let It Happen On Purpose / MIHOP: MAKE it ...

• p074 Judgement under uncertainty : heuristics and biases

• p075 5/1941 to 12/1941, 58+21+7+7 intercepted Japanese attack messages; Philippines, Panama, SE Asia, west coast US

• p075 Roberta Wohlstetter Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision 1962

• p076 9-11 Commission Report

  • ... As the CIA supervisor "John" told us, no one looked at the bigger picture; no analytic work foresaw the lightning that could connect the thundercloud to the ground

• p076 locus of control internal ... vs external (helpless, tend to believe conspiracy theories

• p077 Alan Moore: Nobody is in control, the world is rudderless

• p079 Rob Brotherton: typical conspiracy theory is an unanswered question

• p080 R.B.: watching JFK Movie eroded viewer's civic engagement

• p080 R.B.: HIV-conspiracy-believing African Americans protect less against STDs

• p080 Keith StanovichThe Bias That Divides Us

• p090 losses hurt twice as much as gains feel good Why smart people make big money mistakes-- and how to correct them Gary Belsky 2009

• p91 Bad is stronger than good Baumeister Finkenauer Vohs 2001

• p92 Tolstoy in Anna Karenina 1875 "Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way."
• p92 Russian proverb: "A spoonful of tar can spoil a barrel of honey, but a spoonful of honey does nothing for a barrel of tar"
• p93 Steven Pinker asymmetry of payoffs, risk aversion less costly than gambling

• p94 Michael Shermer Giving the Devil His Due 2020

• p104 "... sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield" George Orwell, "In Front of Your Nose",1946

• p105 http://www.riseofthemoors.org

• p106 Shermer testifies in Portland 2013

• p107 Sovereign citizens

• p110 Posse Comitatus

• p111 The Believing Brain Shermer 2011

• p111 Ten components of belief
  • 1 The brain is a belief engine
  • 2 Beliefs are reinforced by authority
  • 3 Beliefs are reinforced by peers

    • Robert B. Cialdini 2001 averages of large group guesses

  • 4 Beliefs are reinforced by liking and similarity of other beliefs
  • 5 Beliefs are reinforced by payoffs, success, and happiness
  • 6 Beliefs are reinforced by confirmation bias

  • 7 Beliefs are reinforced by optimism and over-optimism Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman 2011 p113

    • CFOs overconfident market predictions, correlation less than zero

    • also overconfident about own firms, take more risks
  • 8 Beliefs are reinforced by self-justification bias

    • Philip E. Tetlock Expert political judgment : how good is it? How can we know? PSUlib JA74.5.T38 2005

  • 9 Beliefs are reinforced by sunk-cost bias

  • 10 Beliefs are reinforced by an endowment effect

• p123 G. Gordon Liddy most conspiracies false because of competency and leakage

  • bumblers who can't keep a secret
  • echoing Franklin: "three can keep a secret if two are dead"

• p126 Paul Sabin The Bet: Paul Ehrlich , Julian Simon ... Ehrlich lost bet about future of Earth's resources

• p128 Milton Rokeach The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (1964) Multco book Multco DVD

  • Rokeach only cured his godlike delusion that he could manipulate them out of their beliefs

• p137 Conspiracy ANTI detection kit: Patternicity, Agenticity, Complexity, # of People, Grandiosity, Scale, Significance, Accuracy, Paranoia, Falsifiability

• p139 ALSO open or closed society

• p141 John Crowley fantasy tetralogy Ægypt:

  • secret societies have not had power in history, but the notion of them has

• p141 David Aaronovitch Voodoo History: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

• p142 Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan

• p144 Mark Fenster website 1999 book Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture

• p145 Why did the World Trade Center collapse? Science, engineering, and speculation

  • No designer anticipated a 90,000 liter Molotov cocktail

  • 8.25 Mcal/liter -> 7.4e11 cal -> 3.1e12J -> 740 tons of explosive

  • Many Skeptic Society links point to a facebook/meta/scam site??? difficult to access or cite.

• p146 http://www.implosionworld.com dead link Brent Blanchard

• p146-9 nine debunked claims, #8 Steel Frame buildings '''DO''' collapse due to fire

• p150 conspiracists WTC7 Chris Mohr

• p150 conspiracists show north side of WTC7, not nearly as damaged as the other side
• p150 conspiracists claim hole in Pentagon too small for airliner with wings ... but those sheared off

• p151 Skeptic article

• p151 Myths About the 9/11 Pentagon Plane Crash: Debunked

• p153 You Can't Handle the Truther

• p153 George W. Bush 2002 "Fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . you can't get fooled again."

• p153 The airplanes ... only 14 fighters on alert in US. NORAD looks outwards, not inward.

• p154 hijackers disabled transponders, plane difficult to track, 4500 blips to search
• p154 "Unusual" UAL and AA trades on 9/10 because of Sunday 9/9 newsletter recommending them
• p155 Inflight calls "couldn't happen?" Seat-back phones, and at 35000 feet, some cellphones would still get signal according to Qualcomm engineering VP

• p157 Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Vincent Bugliosi 2007

  • "the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained Louis Nizer

• p157 Among the Truthers 2011 Jonathan Kay

• p158 List of 10 other al-Qaeda and ISIS operations and fatwas

• p159 List of 11 Obama "crimes", including a 142% stock market increase to conceal his socialism.
• p160 Birther BS, in spite of 1961/8/4 7:24pm Honolulu birth certificate (same hospital as my niece Ellery around 1985 )

• p161 John McCain and Republican Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle agree

• p164 House Select Committee on Assassinations 1979 report

  • Case Closed by Gerald Posner 2002

  • Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi 2007,

  • Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination by Michel Jacques Gagné 2022

• p167 On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald 5 hours 1986

• p168 Cold Case JFK PBS video

• p168 Truth is the only client vidoe

• p168 40% to 75% believe there was a government conspiracy

• p170 Oliver Stone's 1991 JFK

• p170 Skeptic How the Skeptics Got It Wrong and Why It Matters by David Reitzes

• p170 Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? PBS Frontline Documentary Cran&Loeterman producers

• p171 The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy 2002 Paulus and Williams

• p171 Oswald attempts to kill Edwin A. Walker April 1963 using same Mannlicher-Carcano rifle

• p172 Fair Play for Cuba Committee

• p172 October 16 job at Texas Schoolbook Depository, weeks before Kennedy motorcade route chosen

• p173 sixth floor sniper's nest ... fingerprints, 3 shell casings (81% of spectators heard three shots)
• p173 ballistic markings on bullet recovered from Connally matched Oswald's rifle

• p173 Oswald goes home, picks up .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, shoots patrolman J.D. Tippet, 10 witnesses

• p174 Oswald shot by "very emotional" Jack Ruby

• p174 Fair Play for Oswald Committee

• p175 Elizabeth Loftus false memory experiments

• p176 Different witnesses claim many different locations for shots, some claim agents shot back
• p176 Wife of one "witness" said "You didn't see that! We were back in the parking lot when it happened!"

• p177 "Umbrella Man" protester Louie Steve Witt

• p178 "I think if the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, I would be number one in that position, without even a close runner-up."

• p178 Zapruder film

• p179 Forward/Backward head movement

• p182 illustration showing 1800 fps bullet entering JFK's back, exiting throat 1600 fps tumbling, traverses Connally chest, exiting 900 fps, entering wrist, exiting 400 fps

• p183 John McAdams JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy 2011

• p185 Why conspiracy?
  • 1 Cognitive dissonance: proportionality mismatch between size of cause (one crazy) and event (death of world VIP)
  • 2 Fame and Personality: for ordinary murder evidence more than sufficient and convincing
  • 3 Camelot: fans elevated Kennedy to mythic status. If JFK served a second term, his image might suffer
  • 4 Politics: Kennedy was strongly committed to Vietnam War (said RFK), conspiracists claimed opposite
• p190 Real Political Assassinations

• p190 Anna Anderson claims to be Anastasia Romanov

• p190 actual remains found and genetically identified in 2007

• p191 John Wilkes Booth Co-conspirators

• p192 Charles Guiteau assassinates Garfield, hung 1882

• Candice Millard Destiny of the Republic 2011 I Am Going to the Lordy

• p192 William McKinley assassinated by Leon Czolgosz in 1901

• p193 led to formation of BOI in 1908, precursor of 1935-renamed FBI

• p193 Killing the President 2010 by William Oliver and Nancy Marion

• p193 1835 attempt against President Andrew Jackson, Representative Davy Crockett wrestles him to the ground

• p193 1912 Teddy Roosevelt shot by saloonkeeper John Shrank, bullet slowed by eyeglass case and folded speech. "Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose"

• p195 Castro "If surviving assassinations were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal"

• p195 Operation Northwoods

• p197 Johnson hoped Warren Commission would conclude Oswald acted alone, because he feared investigations of Kennedy plots to kill Castro, and escalation to war

• p199 1919 Justice Holmes "falsely shouting fire" "clear and present danger"

  • a response to 15,000 anti-draft "Assert Your Rights" fliers by Schenck and Baer

• p200 Later used against Victor Berger,Eugene Debs,Emma Goldman,Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Daniel Ellsberg,Chelsea Manning,Edward Snowden

• p201 1966 State of Union, Johnson said "...no doubt of american commitment..."

• p201 Private memo to Defense Secretary McNamara "The present U.S. objective in Vietnam is to avoid humilation. The reasons why we went to Vietnam ... are now largely academic"

• p202 Errol Morris 2004 documentary The Fog of War

• p202 McNamara: " ...learn from your mistakes. And we all do. Maybe we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five."

• p203 WikiLeaks documents include

  • 92,000 Afghanistan documents 2004-2009, 109,000 deaths including 3,700 civilian "friendly fire"

• p207 emperor Franz Ferdinand vs irredentist Bosnian Serbs

• p214 led to the most atrocious (and arguably pointless) war in history, and World War II that followed

• p216 The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Hathaway and Shapiro

• p218 Correlates of War project

  • Hathaway and Shapiro find
  • Between 1816 and 1928, 1.21 conquests per year, 295486 km² (11 Crimeas) per year
  • After WW2, 0.26 conquests per year, 14950 km² per year. The chance of conquest for average state was 0.17%/y
• p220 Acton 1887 "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men"

• p221 Kathryn S. Olmstead Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11

• p224 Kathleen Taylor Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control Ox U Pr 1004

• p225 Shermer Understanding the Unidentified 2021

• p225 Office of the Director of National Intelligence Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

• pxxx A Roswell Requiem

• pxxx Donald R. Prothero and Timothy D. Callahan (?) UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says

• pxxx Karl T. Pflock Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will To Believe

  • also Shockingly Close to the Truth: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist 2002

  • Early 1970s, UCB classmate B. Maritano described a teen prank: vaguely describing his "UFO sighting" to the San Diego Union newspaper, which embellished the "story" into a two page spread, with photos.

• p227 1947 June 24 Kenneth Arnold Kenneth Arnold 1947 UFO sighting

  • "crescent shaped" "moved like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water" "flew in saucer-like fashion"

• p227 1947 July 8 Roswell Daily Record RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region RAAF = Roswell Army Air Force base

  • p227 1947 July 9 "Gen.RameyEmptiesRoswellSaucer" "When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick. In all [Brazel] estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds"

• p228 The military described ... remains of a weather balloon.

  • Not on 1967 Ted Bloecher list of 853 UFO reports for 1947 . . 75th anniversary

• p229 2013 Freedom of Information Act request revealed Area 51 missions

  • 1955 test flights of the U-2 Spy plane

  • 1962 Project Oxcart development of the SR-71 Blackbird

• p230 2850 OXCART A-12 test flights

• p230 Leslie Kean UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record

• Donald Prothero Area 51: What is Really Going On There? UFOs and U-2s, Aliens, and Q-12s

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