Are those who don't honor logic deceitful egomaniacs?

[Dtris]

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Anyway, I'm mainly interested in what skeptics have to say about material things and ideas concerning these, not what they have to say about metaphysics dealing with consciousness. What's your take on what skeptics say about things like shoddy alternative history, drinking bleach as a miracle cure, worldwide satanic conspiracies in which secret machinations will automatically conquer every soul with a vaccinated body, and various much smaller health scares and promises with shoddy argumentation about very physical things?

I've been realizing I had various smaller useless fears, and there were also other things I didn't need to care about, after some good skeptical reading. Then I can focus on what matters. Also, I think it sucks that others are often distracted by all the junk (unless that's what they really want). But it's very emotional for many non-skeptics to touch on the general area.

It can be a mixed bag when skeptics get involved in those things. Lets take alternative history, or alternative theory in general.

There are theories much more coherent than the ones which are popularly known and promoted by the scientific establishment and media. Usually these theories are "debunked" in a rather cursory way usually by forming a straw man or without delving too deeply into the theory. For Cosmology you have the Electric Universe, for Geology you have Expanding Earth, for quantum mechanics you have various etheric based systems like Subquantum Kinetics. All of these theories are sound, explain observations and usually fill gaps or explain unexplainable phenomena. When Einsteins Special and General Relativity came out it was not immediately accepted, but since it explained a known problem with Newtonian Gravity it eventually won the day.

They say that new understanding is never accepted, the old theories just die out with its adherents. Most people can't change a long deeply held and invested belief, even when presented with overwhelming evidence. The skeptics provide a service of protecting the establishment from legitimate progress by being a proxy for institutional inertia.

On the alternative history front a good example is Giants. There is a book called The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America, which has numerous accounts from historic sources which would normally be accepted as academic 1st rate sources. Of course outside of select circles, your average person dismisses the book entirely without a thought and just repeats the skeptical "knowledge" that giants are a myth and never existed. Despite there being giant versions of almost every other animal type in megalithic times.

Then we have things like Flat Earth. A internet troll which naive people believe and now it has actual people who are really convinced the earth is flat. The skeptics do the job of making sure the claims of flat earthers get set straight wherever they appear.

When it comes to plots with the vaccine and other fear porn, I don't think a person needs to be a skeptic to realize most of that stuff is just not probable. Skeptics can actually boost the signal for a lot of that stuff though. Debunking the theories in some ways legitimizes them and just empowers their followers. At its root a person is gaining something from these beliefs that is otherwise missing. What they gain is worth enough to allow them to ignore the inconsistencies and logical fallacies. People usually believe what they do because they WANT TO. Logic is then used to justify those beliefs.