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Freedomain Radio -- #0891 Frustration as Hypocrisy (MP3)

'The madness of hoping for sanity' -- "We can’t have higher standards for others than we have for ourselves."

irrationality doublethink hypocrisy philosophy StefanMolyneux
february 2012 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: Mensa Statists and the Aneurysm of Truth!

"If you get rid of the government, then the costs of violence are imposed directly upon the person who wants to use the violence." - "Intellectualism is a defence against inflicted falsehoods as a child." - "People get that morality has been used to control them as children, and as soon as they try to treat morality as morality and make it universal to their society as a whole, they're attacked as immoral, as uncaring, as brutish and wrong... It's crazy. People's brains are fried... they have been crippled, mentally." -- How many fingers, Winston?

morality 2+2=5 doublethink defencemechanisms intellectualism relativism statism illiberalism slavespeak denial violence government StefanMolyneux
january 2012 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: A Theory of Mental Health

"The individual is pathologized so that society can be termed healthy." - '...a way forward for society that does not require the drugging of helpless children and badly informed adults.' - "What we call mental illness is injury to the brain that results from its repetitively incorrect usage."

psychology psychitary soma irrationality relativism exceptionalism doublethink hypocrisy performativecontradiction 2+2=5 2+2=4 StefanMolyneux
november 2011 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- Drunken Ben Bernanke Tells Everyone At Neighborhood Bar How Screwed U.S. Economy Really Is

'"He stumbled up to the urinal and started mumbling on about the depressed housing sector or something," said Kampman, who claimed Bernanke had to use both hands on the wall to steady himself. "Then after a while he just sort of stopped and I couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying." "Then he puked all over the sink and the mirror," Kampman added. Customers at the bar told reporters the "shitfaced" and disruptive Bernanke refused to pay for his drinks with U.S. currency, claiming it was "worthless." Witnesses also confirmed that near the end of the evening, Bernanke put money into the jukebox and selected Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" to play five times in a row. "This is what it's all about," said Bernanke, who reportedly danced alone in the middle of the dark tavern. "Fucking love this song."'

TheOnion doublethink tragedy irony vanity narcissisticinjury feignedhumility sarcasticapology hypocrisy usefulidiot BenBernanke satire * from delicious
august 2011 by adamcrowe

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Be Slightly Evil -- Organzing the World's Delusions

'To be a professional organizer of delusions, you need to focus on delusions that it would actually benefit you to believe, at least temporarily, and then figure out how to adopt them for just as long as they can serve you. Your overall goal is to create plausible deniability, even within your own mind, to defend against the accusation that you don’t believe something that you are pitching to others. Your lifeline back to reality is your capacity for doubt, which prevents plausible deniability from turning into a pattern of [persistent] denial... It is much easier to do this if you discipline yourself to only work with delusions that are a sufficiently complex mix of metaphysics, morality arguments, metaphor, narrative and facts. This is why you get the most fundamental axiom in delusion organization theory: the bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell, and the biggest ones, bigger than even the civilization-scale ones, are the ones you deliberately sell to yourself.'

emotionalintelligence sophistry delusion doublethink plausibledeniability *
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- The Global Awakening: Alex Jones speech from Santa Cruz, CA

"Because we cannot recognize evil; because we have been trained from birth to ... engage in crimestop – we cannot face reality." -- "You know you're a good person."

reality pathocracy denial crimestop doublethink 2+2=5 AlexJones irrationality from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Psychogenic Theory of History - The Emotional Life of Nations

'Nations, the most important group-fantasy constructions of our social alters, act out what seems to be a non-personal history because social events appear to exist in a separate reality and not to be a result of the intentions of individuals. Even when we find a leader to blame events on, we are helpless to explain why anyone followed him, imagining that the leader has the power to "hypnotize" his people. Since the emotional connections between society and self are cut off – nations are often said to behave sui generis – individuals can deny responsibility for what they do and social events can appear to be wholly without motivation. Soldiers who kill in wars are not personally called murderers and politicians who vote to withhold food from children are not personally termed child killers because these actions are imagined to be part of a different reality system, a dream-world that is somehow not really "us."'

psychohistory psychology dissociation subjectivism doublethink groups groupthink collectivism from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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Freedomain Radio -- Against the Gods? by Stefan Molyneux (PDF)

'When a religious person is told that there is no God, what he hears is, “My parents lied to me.” A thinker cannot logically differentiate the nonexistence of a deity from the nonexistence of any other thing which does not exist. All con artists operate by affirming a general rule, and then creating an exception for themselves. A thief wants everyone to respect property rights except him; a counterfeiter wants everyone to accept the value of money except him—and a philosophical con man wants everyone to reject truth except for his own propositions. Don't fall for it, not for a minute! The moment an agnostic says, "Gods may exist in another dimension,” immediately identify the principle behind his statement, which is that no truth can be stated, and apply it to his own statement, thus rendering it invalid. To create a singular exception to a universal rule for that which makes you uncomfortable, rather than just admitting your discomfort, is dishonest and cowardly.'

grifting god religion mysticism 2+2=5 subjectivism exceptionalism agnosticism cowardice doublethink paradox contradiction performativecontradiction philosophy StefanMolyneux irrationality from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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zero hedge -- Guest Post: The Fuzzy Logic Of Useful Idiots

'It hurts to be wrong. Not just emotionally, but physically, especially when it’s public... The horror of it is almost cinematic. The more artificially pumped your ego, or the more brainwashed with academic pretension, the more terrifying that moment of realization is, that moment when all your assumptions are dashed aside like a three-year-old’s alphabet blocks. To a certain point, it is understandable why so many people live in such violent denial, however, this does not detract from the perils of that denial… Useful idiots talk, they don’t listen. They ask lots of questions, but never wait to hear your answers. For them, questions are not a search for information, but rather a method of antagonism. It is a way to keep everyone else on guard while making themselves feel superior. In this game, the useful idiot never has to expose his ignorance because he never has to enter into a meaningful dialogue with anyone who has an opposing view. All he has to do is attack, attack, attack.'

* YOU usefulidiot intellectualism falseconsciousness truebelieversyndrome herd consensus denial doublethink delusion relativism cowardice wrong from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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Freedomain Radio -- #1338 Depression Part 2: Castration (MP3) (3)

Gisted -- There *is* a war between good and evil; like it or not, you *are* a participant in this war. You can't change the world with politics or sky-ghosts or arguments. If you want to change the world, be as happy as you can and you will become a source of wisdom for those who are seeking happiness. But if bad society can get you to be bitter and cynical and to turn against truth – then you become an effective advertisement of how truth is bad – as compared to the conformity to culture that makes bad society appear good. Reason = Virtue = Happiness. Bad society needs you to be unhappy, it needs you to follow a cultural script called, 'The truth-tellers are miserable and that's how we know they are not truth-tellers because a truth-teller is, by their own definition, happy.' Depression is to keep you despairing, doubting, depleted, inert, weakened, little, resentful, hostile, hopeless, joyless, mute, empty, and blind to the power that you actually posses: the power of the truth.

emotionalintelligence psychology depression selfattack falseself subjectivism relativism cynicism doublethink crimestop happiness philosophy StefanMolyneux masochism irrationality from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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Freedomain Radio -- #1338 Depression Part 2: Castration (MP3) (2)

Gisted -- The first thing bad society will try is to get you to give up your love of the truth, to get you to become superior to, and cynical of, the truth. Then you inevitably become a relativist who is a cancer to anyone with certainty. If they can't kill your love of truth, they will kill your love of people because if you love the truth but hate people, you are no longer any danger, nobody will want to hear any truth you have to speak. Bad society will have successfully inoculated and alienated you with bitterness and hostility and cynicism. (But you can't hate people for their hatred of truth, because *you* are a person and you love the truth.) The basic equation of the value of philosophy is Reason = Virtue = Happiness. And so if bad society wishes to discredit you, all they have to do is make you unhappy and any truth you have, nobody will want – because nobody wants to be unhappy. If bad society can make you unhappy then bad society is happy. And that is why you are depressed.

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Freedomain Radio -- #1338 Depression Part 2: Castration (MP3) (1)

Gisted -- We live in world of savage moral insanity – and nobody wants to talk about it. Everyone seems to want to just sail along spouting off 'moral' rules to bully and control children – but when those children come back with legitimate basic questions about the universality of those rules – parents, teachers, politicians and priests get all 'morally' offended because they really don't have any answers for basic questions and they get really angry because it the questioning reminds them of their own humiliation when they were punished or saw others being punished for asking questions. To challenge the ethics of society is to challenge most people's fundamental and foundational reality. And so bad society has developed a defense mechanism against people who ask questions called, STFU! – because if enough people ask basic questions, the whole fragile edifice of society will fall down. Depression is inflicted by bad society as a way to inoculate itself against truth-tellers.

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Freedomain Radio -- #270: Perfection is the Enemy of Virtue (MP3)

"The problem is that people believe the wrong things. We claim to be moralists but our enemies understand the principle of universality and ethical theories so much better than we do... The enemies of freedom and rationality know that human beings are run by ethics – that's why they take them when they're children and put them in state schools and churches. They take those children and they mold them into slaves based on 'ethical' commandments that they cannot escape. And we who believe in ethics, don't believe that humans are ethical?? Isn't that astounding! We believe in ethics and we doubt the desires of people to be ethical?? Statists and collectivists claim *not* to believe in ethics but control the entire planet by accepting that human beings want to be good – and corrupting that desire to be good which is innate to our natures."

* 2+2=5 predation slavery statism evil ethics morality philosophy doublethink analysisparalysis perfectionism criticism 2+2=4 freedom StefanMolyneux from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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Freedomain Radio -- How (Not) to Achieve Freedom (PDF)

'If we lose the ability to project our negative traits onto some other person or entity, we actually experience the anxiety, fear and rage within ourselves. The growth of psychological and emotional maturity is the slow and often painful process of withdrawing your projections from the world so that you can see what the world actually is. Most people wander around the world with highly reflective sunglasses on – but pointing the wrong way – so that they are only seeing a distorted reflection of themselves, rather than the world itself. When a man hears that taxation is force, his unconscious hears all of the implications contained in that statement immediately, at light speed, and leaps into action to protect him from being tortured and killed. The hostility that he feels will arise in him as if out of nowhere. You have also provoked a feeling of humiliation in him, by creating fear and anxiety within him that he has to avoid.'

criticism statism intellectualism elitism vanity entitlement libertarianism doublethink goodthink consensusreality conformity hypocrisy delusion projection psychology philosophy freedom StefanMolyneux pdf from delicious
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- Global Organized Crime Becoming New Superpower: U.N.

'Governments must smash markets supplied by the global "superpower" of organized criminals trafficking drugs, people, arms and counterfeit goods, the U.N. crime chief said on Thursday. "The threat is not just economic," Costa said. "It is strategic, as criminals today can influence elections, politicians and the military. In one word, they can gain power."' -- Competition is a sin!

government doublethink from delicious
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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Freedomain Radio -- #87 Cultural Blindness (MP3)

'Chomsky and state violence.' -- "There's just no way that you can give the government the power to create social programs by using force against its own citizens without simultaneously giving it the power to wage wars overseas - it's one and the same. You can't give someone a gun and tell them to only use it for good. This superhero mythology that you can have great power of violence and not be corrupted by it should be relegated to comic books and [shouldn't feature as part of] intelligent people's analysis of current events. ...this corruption is caused by this lie called culture which puts this weird, foggy, exclusive yet universal 'morality' at its center which blinds people to the coercive nature of the State in dealing with its own citizens because people can't see the coercive nature of their own culture as it dealt with themselves when they were growing up."

philosophy culture doublethink statism StefanMolyneux irrationality
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Freedomain Radio -- On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion

'The opposite of tyranny is curiosity. The opposite of ignorance is curiosity. The opposite of manipulation is curiosity. The opposite of immaturity is curiosity, because to be curious is to be wise. The reason that we are not curious is that we already know the answers, and we do not like them. We can choose not to eat, but we cannot erase our body’s need for food. We can choose to jump off a cliff, but we cannot choose to defy gravity. We can pretend that lies are true, and that vices are virtues, but we cannot turn lies into truth, or vices into virtues. We cannot erase the truth within ourselves; we can only suppress and distort it. Fundamentally, philosophy is not invention, but excavation; not exploration, but archaeology. The lies we believe today are the lives we will live tomorrow.'

curiosity morality honesty integrity philosophy illusion delusion doublethink hypocrisy StefanMolyneux books pdf
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- Greenspan In Elite Plot?

'There's a good deal of information on the Internet, and some of it is sincere and credible and some is in a sense "planted" to discredit those who would make use of it. -- Greenspan's denials are disappointing in the sense that they further muddy the waters. In a better world, Greenspan might have used the "bully pulpit" of these hearings to explain what's really going and how the current mercantilist central banking system really works. (Why would he, one asks, when he has gained so much from it?) One hears that Greenspan was never a fan of the regime he supervised. In fact, there has always been undercurrent of speculation that Greenspan in a sense pursued the policies he did not just for professional gain but to actually destabilize the regime he evidently disapproved of as a young man. (It is the amount of damage he did that makes people suspect he had an agenda.)' -- Trojan Horse? This would be the more comfortable 'truth'. How else could the life of Greenspan make any sense?

economics federalreserve AlanGreenspan doublethink conspiracy
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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openDemocracy -- Kafka’s Castle is collapsing

'When the absurd transmogrified into the lunatic, the system activated the command to self-destruct. The Castle, impregnable from outside, starts collapsing from inside. Fear and apathy have been replaced by rage. Before people only went to demonstrations when the bulldozer was getting near their house. Now it's become quite fashionable to express one's protest and people have started intervening on each other's behalf. That a people gets the government it deserves is an odious lie. At times of great difficulty simple people, who are not damaged by the habit of giving orders don't react in a dog eats dog way, they extend a helping hand. The further a person is away from power, the better he is. What is most interesting is that people working in the public sector are also anti-state in their hearts. If you talk to any policeman or civil servant off the record, you will find levels of resentment, disillusionment and Jacobinism that the classical anarchists could only have dreamed of.'

russia statism cronyism corruption doublethink kafkaesque insanity lulz irrationality
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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Mises Institute -- Reactionary Liberals by Towner Phelan

'"Liberalism" in the historic sense regards government as a necessary evil. It looks upon all governments, including our own, with suspicion. It believes that the only way to safeguard liberty and protect the individual from the tyranny of government is to limit the functions of government. It fears government and seeks to impose restraints upon the power of government. -- "Liberalism," as the term is used today, looks upon the citizen with suspicion and upon government with approval. It seeks to build a strong government to control and regiment the individual for the good of society, to prevent the strong from taking advantage of the weak, to offset inequalities in wealth and incomes, and to play the historic role of Robin Hood, who robbed the rich and distributed some of the proceeds to the poor. -- Modern liberals are faced with an inescapable moral and intellectual dilemma. They want government to be powerful to do good without being powerful to do harm.'

philosophy statism liberalism doublethink 2+2=5
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Warren Pollock: Pseudologia Fantastica - Obama & State of the Union

"A delusional blur between the reality and his rhetorical perceptions."

doublethink doublespeak delusion
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Problem of Denial by William R. Catton, Jr.

'Denial resembles anosognosia (the inability of stroke patients to recognize their paralysis) ...a defense against intolerable anomalous information. ...their paralysis is an incompatible, identity-threatening anomaly that contradicts their prior experience of themselves and their milieu. -- A person will attempt to reduce or eliminate such [cognitive] dissonance between two or more cognitions. The person will act to avoid events or stimuli that would increase it. The severity or intensity of cognitive dissonance depends on the importance to the individual (and to his peers; to his reference group?) of the cognitions involved. New cognitions that will add weight to one side of the aversive contradiction can reduce the intolerable dissonance — either by diminishing the contradiction or by reducing its perceived importance...'

psychology denial anosognosia cognitivedissonance sunkcosts doublethink
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Warren Pollock: Inside and Outside the Box

Steady-State Stasis --> Ultimate Statist Solution (06:12)

america exceptionalism populism consensusreality cognitivedissonance denial doublethink history predictions irrationality
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Russia Today launches first UK ad blitz

'They are appearing in newspapers and on posters alongside major roads in Britain. There is Barack Obama's head, on it superimposed the image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's leader. The slogan reads: "Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?" For many people the answer is clear – after all, Obama hasn't so far called for Israel to "vanish from the page of time". But for the Kremlin the Obama image is the latest step in an ambitious attempt to create a new post-Soviet global propaganda empire. Two decades after the demise of Pravda, the Kremlin's 24-hour English language TV channel, Russia Today (RT), is launching its first major advertising blitz across the UK. Dubbed North Korean TV by its detractors, the channel, available on satellite and cable TV, gives an unashamedly pro-Vladimir Putin view of the world, and says it seeks to correct the "biased" western view offered by the BBC and CNN. -- But is anyone actually going to watch it?' -- Yup. I'll even read the Guardian occasionally.

advertising journalism uk RussiaToday BBC propaganda doublethink hypocrisy
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Authors@Google: Slavjo Zizek

On ideology: completes Rumsfield's epistomological genus with the idea that ideology manifests itself in those unknown knowns that contrive to create new known knowns to disguise the knowability of unknowability; that in our increasingly cynical culture, ideology provides for us each an other onto which we can project heldfast beliefs that make an alibi our own lack of belief but in the naive belief that the other doesn't also believe in a likewise projection; and that in a politically-correct, self-censorious culture, ideology has become the inventor of ever new forms of prohibition whose public acknowledgement of such is more strictly prohibited than that which was subject to the prohibition. -- Ends on a nice thought about google's motto of doing no evil being a forewarned apology for certain evil yet to be done.

philosophy ideology selfdeception doublethink censorship etiquette SlavojŽižek
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Bloomberg.com -- Gold Rally Signals Move Away From Currencies, Greenspan Says

'Gold prices that jumped above $1,000 an ounce this week are signaling that investors are buying metals to hedge against declines in currencies, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. The gains are “strictly a monetary phenomenon,” Greenspan said today at an investment conference in New York. Rising prices of precious metals and other commodities are “an indication of a very early stage of an endeavor to move away from paper currencies,” he said. “What is fascinating is the extent to which gold still holds reign over the financial system as the ultimate source of payment,” Greenspan said.' -- "Fascinating". Would that have anything to do with 'Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan, 1967', by any chance, Mr Greenspan?

economics gold doublethink AlanGreenspan
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Renegade Economist: How Gordon Brown Broke Britain...

Thorough mauling of Brown's psychopathic doublethink -- "This film explains how British Prime Minster Gordon Brown ruined the British economy. His mis-management as Chancellor and Prime Minster has left British people exposed to economic meltdown all of which could have been avoided."

economics uk doublethink delusion denial hubris narcissism psychopathy GordonBrown FredHarrison geoism
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Fall Of The Republic 1/14: The Presidency Of Barack H Obama

Here it is. 'Fall Of The Republic documents how an offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the US economy by design. Leaders are now declaring that world government has arrived and that the dollar will be replaced by a new global currency.' ### "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." — Voltaire ### “No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” — François de la Rochefoucauld ### "A time will come when the whole world will go mad. And to anyone who is not mad they will say: 'You are mad, for you are not like us.'" — St. Anthony the Great

* economics politics geopolitics climate tax fraud scams corporatism cronyism corruption rhetoric happytalk doublespeak doublethink propaganda celebrity cults mindcontrol realityprogamming socialengineering eugenics pathocracy oligarchy tyranny totalitarianism documentaries AlexJones mercantilism fame
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Bloomberg -- Greenspan Says U.S. Should Consider Breaking Up Large Banks

Hands down the most comedic straight-man that's ever lived. This guy has two brains jammed in his head and they are fighting an EPIC war for control of his mouth. Today it seems the brain that didn't decide to keep interests rates permanently low for decades has won a chance to speak. The sheer depth and duration of doublethink from this guy is UNFATHOMABLE. It is literally beyond my comprehension how an intellect can deny itself a connection with any or every possible or probable 'real world' in which the rest of us seem to exist. To evolve, I simply MUST KNOW what I have to do to stretch my imagination to accomodate such GARGANTUAN quantities of denied truth and bellyfeeled bullshit. Tell me, Mr Greenspan. What happened to you? What did you see? What did YOU do to you?

economics doublethink doublespeak bellyfeel insanity AlanGreenspan
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- 2 + 2 = 5

'The phrase "two plus two equals five" ("2 + 2 = 5") is a slogan used in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as an example of an obviously false dogma one must believe, similar to other obviously false slogans by the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is contrasted with the phrase "two plus two makes four", the obvious – but politically inexpedient – truth. Orwell's protagonist, Winston Smith, uses the phrase to wonder if the State might declare "two plus two equals five" as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes in it, does that make it true? Smith writes, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." Later in the novel, Smith attempts to use doublethink to teach himself that the statement "2 + 2 = 5" is true, or at least as true as any other answer one could come up with.' -- So many things.

2+2=5 doublethink bellyfeel dogma propaganda newspeak 1984
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Democracy Now! -- Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism, Healthcare, Latin American "Populism" and the "Farcical" Financial Crisis

Video interview: On the obscenity of transparent doublethink and negative liberty. (Beware the toe-deep economic theorizing.)

philosophy ideology doublethink negativeliberty SlavojŽižek
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Cracked.com -- 5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed

In nutshell... People conform to the consenus. People are hypocrits who confuse words for deeds. People shirk personal responsibility and initiative when amongst a group of strangers. People will seek positions of power when available or of victimhood when not. People will blindly follow orders issued by authority figures believing they are absolved of all personal responsibility for their subsequent actions.

psychology doublethink bellyfeel consensus conformity responsibility hypocrisy authority upsub power victimhood people
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Scientific American -- Birth Control Pills Affect Women's Taste in Men

'Although no one knows why the pill affects attraction, some scientists believe that pregnancy—or in this case, the hormonal changes that mimic pregnancy—draws women toward nurturing relatives. -- Women who start or stop taking the pill, then, may be in for some relationship problems. A study published last year in Psychological Science found that women paired with MHC-similar men are less sexually satisfied and more likely to cheat on their partners than women paired with MHC-dissimilar men. So a woman on the pill, for example, might be more likely to start dating a MHC-similar man, but he could ultimately leave her less sexually satisfied. Then if she goes off the pill during the relationship, the accompanying hormonal changes will draw her even more strongly toward more MHC-dissimilar men. These immune genes may have a “powerful effect in terms of how well relationships are cemented,” says University of Liverpool psychologist Craig Roberts.' -- Cir-cum-invention

psychology relationships women sex selfsimilar immunesystem drugs doublethink circumscription
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Peter Schiff: G20 Hypocrisy

SPENDING IS SAVING

economics doublethink G20 PeterSchiff
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Mises Institute -- A Clear Conclusion: End the Fed by David Gordon

'Greenspan thought that he could conduct the financial system in the same way as the gold standard would operate. "I [Greenspan] think that you will find … that the most effective central banks in this fiat money period tend to be successful largely because we tend to replicate that which would have probably have occurred under a commodity standard in general." -- In other words, we need to remove government from the money supply, unless, of course, I and people like me are in control. Greenspan's position brings to mind a Jewish tradition about King Solomon; he thought that the restrictions imposed in Deuteronomy (17: 16–17) on kings about wives and horses did not apply to him. As the wisest of men, Solomon believed he knew the reasons for these restrictions, so he could avoid the temptations that the rules guarded against and take more wives and horses than allowed. His overweening arrogance led to disaster, and Greenspan fell victim to the same syndrome.' -- Disgrace by doublethink

economics gold fiat money AlanGreenspan hubris doublethink insanity
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Paul Graham -- What You Can't Say

'The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed. -- It's not just the mob you need to learn to watch from a distance. You need to be able to watch your own thoughts from a distance. You have to take that extra step if you want to think clearly. But it's harder, because now you're working against social customs instead of with them. Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society's bad moods.'

* philosophy ideology criticaldistance doublethink thinking PaulGraham
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Wall Street Examiner -- Forbes Polls the Wackosphere and Gets An Earful

'The media is fond of saying that no one in the mainstream saw this coming except Roubini. How stupid is this? The media is the sole decision maker about who we get to pay attention to. If they feature only liars and fools, then of course it will seem that no one saw this coming. And they feature almost entirely liars, fools, and criminal manipulators. Let’s consider who got this right in addition to Roubini. [A long list of truthers] Why did we almost never see these guys on the tube or in print. And why, when we did see them, was the usual purpose to ridicule and harass them? Because the media was and is a co-conspirator, witting or unwitting, with the Wall Street criminal distribution machine. The media is populated by conformist morons, too fat and lazy, too coddled by their Wall Street sponsors to be bothered by anything so mundane as to search for the truth. Only the mainstream infomercial media didn’t get it, because they are, after all, on the payroll of the Wall Street Mob.'

economics america fraud ponzi financialization hype misinformation deception con greaterfool propaganda retcon realityprogramming news journalism herd groupthink conformity cults cronyism usefulidiot doublethink doublespeak ignorance
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Human Nature, Anarchy, and Capitalism by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

'When government is entrusted with the "redistribution" of wealth, no one should be surprised that the wealth straightaway is used to buy votes, to reward interest groups, and to pay off friends... The situation is even worse when the money is borrowed or printed rather than taxed... the printed money is simply stolen, by creating an artificial price inflation, from those who hold monetary assets (less likely to be the rich, whose assets are varied, than the poor and middle classes). Some people accept this corruption because they are deceived by the moralistic rhetoric that accompanies it (that the "self-interest" of the rich is replaced by the "public spirit" of the politicians); but it is more likely that the rhetoric is waved through more because people are satisfied with their share of the loot. Or, if "programs" exist to end or alleviate poverty, then we can congratulate ourselves on our own benevolence and compassion, as expressed through the "collective" action of government.'

* economics government statism socialism doublethink doublespeak fraud propaganda rhetoric corruption hypocrisy usefulidiot cowardice theft greed exploitation predation poverty liberty commonsense "capitalism"
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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OBAMA IS LITERALLY HITLER

HAHA

satire doublethink lulz
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Onion -- White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase

'White House officials admit Obama's extreme confidence and total euphoria over "hope" and "change" were symptoms of a prolonged manic episode.' -- CHANGE!!!

TheOnion delusion doublethink doublespeak phony fraud satire lulz
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

(Playing this BS again in the hopes that pure rage will explode my head and put me out of this unbearable misery.) -- How the hell does he manage to convince the herd that he and his ilk are responsible for technological progress AND empathy???! -- Comment: ferretfudge: 'So he's had an apiffany: Shock Horror! Gordon Brown Realises Humans Have Feelings For Other Humans!'

GordonBrown rhetoric hypocrisy doublethink
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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TED.com -- Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

'We're at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today's interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic -- and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.' -- Talking up his global government. The useful idiots clap. *spits* Noting in disgust how easily internet people are seduced by stories of their own heroics (via twitter and facebook status updates FFS!). Of course we ALL want a better world, particularly for the sake of 'underdeveloped' nations. But do we seriously believe that puppet governments; multinational monopoly-controlled natural resources; carbon taxes; patented GM crops; and pop charity/sympathybenefit gigs are the way to help people thrive on their own over the long term? It's not global institutions we need, it's aggressive local enterprises freed from unnecessary "global" meddling we need—they need. And owned by them. Not by the corrupt corpocracies we force upon them.

GordonBrown rhetoric hypocrisy doublethink
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Little Atoms -- Adam Curtis Interview (cont.)

'Most journalists have run out of knowing what's going on in the world. And they have embraced this idea of media democracy as a way to disguise that fact. I'm deeply suspicious of it. The whole reason why journalism was invented in the first place is that we have the time, the money, and the power of the organisation to go places, push through doors, find things out, bring it back, and tell you it and allow you to make up your mind about it. ...those who are the promoters of the internet, the boosters, the people who put forward the utopian dream of the internet, and those who basically run silicon valley, are arch individualists, they portray the internet as a playground where every individual can invent their own identity, and it's a new form of democracy without hierarchies of power.' -- On the paradox of the booster dependence on datamining: -- 'it's a completely contradictory view of what human beings are, how they behave, to what these boosters actually portray the internet as.'

internet technoutopianism utopia individualism hype temes collectiveintelligence algorithms datamining homogeneity theadvertisedlife doublethink metanarratives ideology conspiracy discourse recuperation rhetoric reality journalism AdamCurtis
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- The Onion: New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time

Happy talk

* realtime opinion polling popularity hype numbers feedback reflexivity circumscription doublethink
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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OUPblog -- American War Propaganda Top Ten

'Propaganda sells wars. Emotionally powerful and instantly recognizable, propaganda messages serve to simplify complex international crises for public consumption. A persuasive blend of fact and fiction, they resonate with what Americans want to believe about themselves. Here are the top ten messages used by the U.S. government over the past century to rally public support for war.' -- "RISPEKK MAH AUTHORITAAAH!!1" -- "America, FUCK YEAH! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day..." -- "The American Dream, You Have to Be Asleep to Believe It." etc, etc, etc

america empire power propaganda war denial delusion doublethink metanarratives
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Reason Magazine -- Baffled by the Economy: Why being a macroeconomist means never having to say you're sorry

"... macroeconomists [and politicians] can almost always claim to be right, no matter what happens. If they recommend Policy X and the economy weakens, they can say it prevented a complete disaster. If they say Policy X will hurt and things improve, they can say without it, we'd be even better off. Being a macroeconomist means never having to say you're sorry."

economics doublethink retcon postrationalisation bullshit
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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New Scientist -- Humans prefer cockiness to expertise

"...we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. ...scientific experts who stress uncertainties lose out to activists or lobbyists with a more emphatic message."

psychology confidence doublethink
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

Doublethink: "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind, and accepting both of them." ...a Party member who needs to "revise" his own memories to conform with the Party's latest revision of history will necessarily know that he is playing tricks with reality, "but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Using this technique, the Party can stay in power indefinitely—"for the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes... The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity." -- Unread.

socialism oligarchy feudalism serfdom ignorance manipulation power retcon history realityprogramming ideology doublethink 1984 GeorgeOrwell
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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A List Apart -- Burnout

'First defined by American psychoanalyst Herbert J. Freudenberger in 1972, burnout is “a demon born of the society and times we live in and our ongoing struggle to invest our lives with meaning.” He goes on to say that burnout “is not a condition that gets better by being ignored. Nor is it any kind of disgrace. On the contrary, it’s a problem born of good intentions.”'

career work life meaning values doublethink stress
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Robert Cialdini #Six “Weapons of Influence"

"#Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment. Even if the original incentive or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue to honor the agreement. For example, in car sales, suddenly raising the price at the last moment works because the buyer has already decided to buy."

psychology influence manipulation selling doublethink delusion
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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RarestBlog -- We’re zombies! Literally. (”Cinderellism”)

'In the 2008ies we need some new way to keep ourselves from thinking. I don’t know the right word for the new way, but maybe something like a “cinderellism“? Like, you know - that tale, where a simple girl suddenly gets everything? Yeah, the midnight is kind of a downer, but, none of these above stories seem to talk about that. Since there’s a lot of problems around, you need to: 1) be deterred from thinking about those problems; 2) vote for the right guys, just to make sure that YOU chose him. Which later, as Robert Cialdini teaches us, leaves you in defensive position even if you made a bad decision... So, you chose The President, now you must approve what he does - he’s your decision. This is really weird - every other day I hear another Cinderella story, but it stops right before midnight. It’s like some weird recurring dream. It seems like marketing/political plays, made to drive sales/elections. But what if ALL those guys were hired actors?…'

metanarratives narrative tropes cognition influence manipulation selling doublethink conformity groupthink herd cindererllism
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- The Case for Working With Your Hands

"The escalating demand for academic credentials in the job market gives the impression of an ever-more-knowledgeable society, whose members perform cognitive feats their unschooled parents could scarcely conceive of. On paper, my abstracting job, multiplied a millionfold, is precisely what puts the futurologist in a rapture: we are getting to be so smart! Yet my M.A. obscures a more real stupidification of the work I secured with that credential, and a wage to match. When I first got the degree, I felt as if I had been inducted to a certain order of society. But despite the beautiful ties I wore, it turned out to be a more proletarian existence than I had known as an electrician. A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this."

doublethink immateriallabour work life do
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Independent -- American excess: A Wall Street trader tells all

'One of my British friends from the training programme, who later became a currency trader, once told me “I mean Christ, mate, every time they close a factory in Wales the goddamn market goes up. The whole system’s a little fucked, don’t you think?” And of course it was. The question was how to deal with it. The easiest thing was buy into the system, convince ourselves that there was no other way to live. A few semesters worth of economics classes certainly helped; the in-house economics classes taught by the bank helped even more. The financial markets operate on the principle that, at our core, we’re all basically shit: selfish, self-interested creatures. There’s a whole branch of economics devoted to proving that if you help someone, say, run in front of a speeding train to push another person out of the way, you are actually acting out of self-interest, not altruism; that what most of us would consider humankind’s cardinal virtues - love, honor, compassion - do not actually exist.'

economics parasitism gluttony greed power ethics doublethink denial guilt
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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wowOwow -- Naomi Klein: 'The Wall Street Bailout Is the Greatest Heist in Monetary History'

'I don’t believe these guys are dumb. I think they’re corrupt. JOAN: Which guys? NAOMI: Summers. Geithner. It may be legal corruption but I still consider it corrupt. Wall Street funded Obama’s campaign. They funded his Inauguration. They paid huge speaking and consulting fees to some of his closest advisers. What I am calling corruption is better understood as “crony capitalism.” JOAN: Why is my perception that Obama was funded by the tiny donations? NAOMI: Because both are true. His campaign was historic in the number of small donations and the grassroots campaigning that brought him to office. But it was also historic in the levels of Wall Street financing. The grassroots movement that brought Obama to power needs to understand that the fight is on, that Wall Street is pushing Obama hard behind the scenes because they feel they have a claim to him. And the appointment of Summers and Geithner were all messages to Wall Street – “Don’t worry, things are not going to change too much.”'

economics america government corruption cronyism oligarchy precuperation denial doublethink ignorance propaganda rhetoric predation theft feudalism
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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The School of Life -- Maurice Glasman on why Orwell got it wrong

"There is indeed a culture of almost constant surveillance and most of it is carried out by family members and friends who record as many moments of one another’s lives as they can. The most effective forms of public manipulation and mobilisation are not to be found in the public sector, or politics at all, but in advertising campaigns and branding. The State is more than capable of losing personal data, but only the private sector will sell our most intimate financial details on to unscrupulous fraudsters for a profit. Totalitarianism is found far more forcefully in private sector team bonding sessions in which you either commit yourself publicly to obvious bullshit or risk losing your job. Orwell was right that society would become atomised and sedated, he was right that abstract forms of communication would feed a permanent sense of displacement and powerlessness... Where he was wrong was in his assumption that capitalism had been beaten."

totalitarianism datamining realitymining surveillance sousveillance doublethink theadvertisedlife 1984
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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BusinessWeek -- What Good Are Economists Anyway?

*The Classics* -- John Maynard Keynes on useful idiots: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." (Oh, the irony.) -- Ben Bernanke (Holder of a PhD in How To Create A Great Depression) on the Fed-created Great Depression of the 1930s: "You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." (NEVAR FORGET) -- Alan Greenspan on a career built of doublethink: "I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well." (Got Gold, Mr Greenspan? http://bit.ly/77ifu) -- Paul Krugman (useful idiot par excellence) on nobel-prized-prat keynesist fundamentalism: "This is really fairly shameful, that we should be wasting precious months as a profession retracing debates that were settled 70 years ago." (Meaning: 'The logic of spending your way out of debt is irrefutable!') -- Listen to these numbskulls at your peril

economics debt fraud criticism cronyism keynesianism ideology conformity groupthink doublethink government corruption AlanGreenspan BenBernanke
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Independent -- ISMISM New concepts for the Nineties No.13: confusionism

'Confusionism permits some radical redefinitions. Where once two wrongs didn't make a right, now two wrongs, confusionistically, are merely a dry run for more wrongs.'

philosophy confusionism confusion doublethink wrong via:replayzero
april 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- 60 Minutes: Ben Bernanke's Greatest Challenge: Part 2

'Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke candidly speaks to Scott Pelley about his personal life, as both visit his old high school and how the current financial crisis is affecting Main Street America.' -- Cuddly Bernanke. Yay! FAIL

economics federalreserve BenBernanke doublethink delusion FAIL
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- 60 Minutes: Ben Bernanke's Greatest Challenge: Part 1

"If you think your job is tough, consider Ben Bernanke's. As Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the task of reviving the U.S. economy falls largely on his shoulders." -- FAIL IS YOU

economics federalreserve BenBernanke doublethink delusion FAIL
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Peter Schiff Vlog Report (16 March 2009)

On Bernanke's increasingly bizarre doublethink.

economics debt doublethink BenBernanke PeterSchiff
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Mail Online -- Bank's £150bn leap in the dark: Darling orders 'printing of money' to stave off a full-scale recession

"The Prime Minister believes his trip to meet U.S. president Barack Obama in Washington has paved the way for an international code to prevent dangerous risk-taking in the financial sector. Mr Brown also hopes to strike agreement on an end to tax havens, with countries who refuse to cooperate potentially being added to an international 'blacklist'." -- Morons.

economics debt fraud inflation obsfucation credit bubble doublethink lies deception misdirection corruption GordonBrown
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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Michael Hudson -- The Language of Looting

'Having undermined the economy at large, Wall Street’s public relations think tanks are now dismantling the language itself. Doublethink and doubletalk with regard to “nationalizing” or “socializing” the banks and other sectors is a travesty of political and economic discussion from the 17th through mid-20th centuries. Society’s basic grammar of thought, the vocabulary to discuss political and economic topics, is being turned inside-out in an effort to ward off discussion of the policy solutions posed by the classical economists and political philosophers that made Western civilization “Western.” What is being attempted is nothing less than an attempt to destroy the intellectual and moral edifice of what took Western civilization eight centuries to develop, from the 12th century Schoolmen discussing Just Price through 19th and 20th century classical economic value theory.' -- Newspeak gobbledegoop

* economics credit debt fraud language newspeak doublethink crimethink thinking ignorance freedom democracy socialism feudalism oligarchy history ph "capitalism" argumentation
march 2009 by adamcrowe

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CynicusEconomicus -- Mainstream Economics (or why we are in deep trouble)

"Keynesian theory of government borrowing and spending is simply absurd. Essentially, under the theory, building something with absolutely no value is a good thing, as it increases economic activity. It is related to the theory that smashing a shop window is a good thing, as this also creates activity. Another article points out how prevalent window smashing view is, and how utterly silly it is. Such thinking would see an economy in which we would build a new skyscraper, knock it down the day after it was built, in order to build it again. The fact that nobody might want to live in, or hire office space in the skyscraper is irrelevant, as it will create economic activity. Economic activity is 'good' for the economy. Nobody wants the skyscraper. Why on earth build it? It is literally flushing all of that labour and material down the drain. It moves resources into quite literally pointless activity." -- Another thorough debunking.

economics debt fraud keynesianism malinvestment corruption doublethink myopia delusion inflation theft
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge

'What's going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is "the study of culturally constructed ignorance." As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. "People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says. "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not." -- *covers ears*

ignorance denial delusion disinformation agnotology newspeak thoughtcrime doublethink fraud corruption power language control facts knowledge reality truth #specialization CliveThompson
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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WSJ.com -- 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

'...the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs... and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism. The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."'

economics debt fraud government socialism corruption politics feedback doublethink ignorance predictions criticism fiction objectivism AynRand libertarianism atlasshrugged
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Wall Street Unspun with Peter Schiff: 1/7/09 pt 2/2

'Eisenhower on the New Deal: "The deficit is a down payment on the surplus."'

economics debt fraud keynesianism doublethink denial PeterSchiff
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- MP stopped and search under anti-terror laws for taking pictures

'The MP said later it was "pleasing to see just how vigilant" the police had been.' -- Oh, the tyranny!

terrorism! thoughtcrime doublethink
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan (1966)

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided ... to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper ... and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." -- @alangreenspan

economics debt fraud inflation fiat money dollar ponzi gold doublethink
january 2009 by adamcrowe

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washingtonpost.com -- Banking Regulator Played Advocate Over Enforcer

"...the regulator's overly close identification with its banks, which it referred to as "customers." -- A regulator has 'customers'. Priceless!

doublethink corruption ponzi fraud "capitalism"
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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Lose The Game

"Training yourself not to think about The Game is nearly impossible, and often counter-productive. The best strategies involve causing others to lose more than yourself. The best way to do this is to always announce your loss to as many people as possible. This reminds current players about The Game and initiates new ones." -- You lose!

games alternativerealitygaming memes doublethink recursion
december 2008 by adamcrowe

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vanityfair.com -- Wall Street Lays Another Egg: Politics & Power by Niall Ferguson

"This year we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth... On Planet Finance, the securities outnumbered the people; the transactions outnumbered the relationships."

economics debt fraud history finance property junkbonds leverage inflation risk hedging wealth value psychology fear greed trust delusion denial depression numbers myopia herd conformity groupthink doublethink reality virtuality ponzi simulacra fake NiallFerguson recession
november 2008 by adamcrowe

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Energy Bulletin -- Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US by Dmitry Orlov

"The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day, and leaves everybody in the lurch. It is not necessary for us to [...] match the Soviet lackluster performance... We have our own methods, that are working almost as well. I call them "boondoggles." They are solutions to problems that cause more problems than they solve. Just look around you, and you will see boondoggles sprouting up everywhere, in every field of endeavor: we have military boondoggles like Iraq, financial boondoggles like the doomed retirement system, medical boondoggles like private health insurance, legal boondoggles like the intellectual property system. The combined weight of all these boondoggles is slowly but surely pushing us all down. If it pushes us down far enough, then economic collapse, when it arrives, will be like falling out of a ground floor window. We just have to help this process along, or at least not interfere with it."

economics debt fraud boondoggles doublethink failure america russia history predictions DmitryOrlov * life
november 2008 by adamcrowe

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New York Times -- Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals

"Surely the Fed cannot be called upon to provide backstop financing whenever a large member of the financial system runs into trouble. How does it prevent a replay of this scenario, and can it be done without stifling innovation?" -- The Fed (a private company) makes it's money by issuing loans. It seems economists still don't want you to understand the *business of economics*. The most useful of all the useful idiots. Read between their lines.

doublethink economics finance money loans fraud
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- Terrorism Fear Could Create Psychosomatic Epidemic, Feds Warn

"The analysis recommended that the government and health system educate people about chemical and biological attacks so they can recognize real symptoms, as well as quickly isolating both real and psychosomatic victims in the case of an attack or perceived attack." -- This is classic.

terrorism psychology paranoia fear hysteria doublethink wtf
september 2008 by adamcrowe

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Vimeo -- Jeremy Bullmore: In praise of Antinomies

;^)

planning antinomy doublethink postrationalisation intuitivism serendipity linearity both JeremyBullmore
august 2008 by adamcrowe

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Infothought -- Nick Carr: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", and Man vs. Machine

"I've often wished there was what I call "technology-positive social criticism"... criticism of techo-hype often seems to end up couched in a certain type of fogeyism (which alienates tech types) because there's no power-center for that criticism."

criticism paradigms scale thinking doublethink technology media literacy ecology mediaecology literaryculturevsoralculture augmentationistsvsimmersionists hackersvsvectoralists
july 2008 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Britannica Blog: Clay Shirky -- Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr

"... the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture... The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the *idea* of reading War and Peace."

internet information culture modernism postmodernism literacy literaryculturevsoralculture themediumisthemessage reading cognition concentration digestion ADHD attentiondeficithyperactivedisorder attention continuouspartialattention networks distributed brain informationoverload cognitivesurplus doublethink retribalization media
july 2008 by adamcrowe

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Whistle Through Your Comb - Dear Kettle One, huh?

**Dear Ketel One Drinker. Thank you.** WSJ: "It's an attempt to buddy up to buyers by pretending to share their dislike for advertising. But an anti-ad is really just an ad that doesn't have the guts to admit to what it is."

advertising backlash precuperation doublethink postmodernism vernacular
october 2007 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

NEWSLOSE - Hillary Clinton says she is not lesbian but…

“I Am Not But I Am is a new type of thing we are trying in political marketing. Everybody was doing it, we are just making it more straight-forward and blunt ” said Hillary Clinton.

funny politics marketing campaign doublethink
september 2007 by adamcrowe

copy to mine

Wrong

"What’s Wrong?"

agency agencyagency startup wrong failure creativity thinking doublethink do adamcrowe
september 2007 by adamcrowe

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