From what I understand it’s not insanity or paranoia, it’s just normal behavior.
Some who I know of in this industry make their political feels known aboard ship, demand you follow their lead and post some extremely questionable material plainly on their Facebook pages.
They’re just loonies, and as history often shows they find a cozy home at sea.
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If you write this book I’ll preorder now. Just reading that “title” brought to mind a rogues gallery of characters who one couldn’t help but wonder about the shoreside half of their lives.
But which of us is perfect?
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“Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.”
–Horace.
(“Why do you laugh? With the name changed, this story is about you.”)
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No. I was on one of the largest vessels operated by the largest operator in the GOM many years back. The captain was of course in his position due to how much the company thought of him. Standing on the bridge wing with him one morning I looked at the contrails of the jets flying from New Orleans and Houston and mentioned all the air traffic. He said in all seriousness that he hoped I understood they were spraying chemicals to control the population. I told him it was water vapor and he was adamant it was chemicals to biologically control the people. Bat shit crazy yet at the top of the GOM food train. He was not an anomaly. This moron was making a lot of money and was highly placed in the company. Due to that other people listened to his insanity. You can’t fix stupid but you should be wary of it.
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Was he batshit crazy about other things & how was his attitude? I once meet a 3rd party vetting auditor who believed Operation Highjump was the last battle of WW2. He was retired USCG & pleasant as could be. It was fun talking to him about it & I hope he would say the same. I sometimes find it fun to read Heiwa’s posts with his crazy conspiracy theories. He is persistent but never offensive as far as I seen. I don’t believe it was a magic bullet that killed JFK & haven’t ruled out Epstein was murdered. I don’t mind crazy, enjoy it sometimes, it’s the assholes who I don’t talk politics with.
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Sometimes conspiracy theorists are the only people questioning both political parties. I would not
mention it except they talk about what makes you say “woah” about either party. If you have ever listened to Sam Tripoli’s podcast “Tin Foil Hat” (I am aware the title does not lend much credibility) you would understand.
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I don’t think belief in conspiracy theories is caused by stupidity per se, but rather by a failure of analytical thinking, which is an acquired skill. In other words, it’s a kind of stupid we can fix. Actually, most of the hardcore conspiracy theorists I’ve run into have been remarkably intelligent. Since there is a negative correlation between education and believing in conspiracy theories, and since intelligent people tend to gravitate towards higher education, I’d expect them to be far stupider than they actually turn out to be.
I went looking for data on IQ vs conspiracy theories, and while I didn’t find that, I found this article. It does a decent job of explaining the mental process, and has enough references to get lost for a week:
The problem with this type of crazy is that it’s contagious, so you can’t just let it stand unopposed. It’s relatively harmless when it concerns obvious topics (“the earth is flat” or “the moon landing was fake”), much less so when it crosses over into topics where readers might not understand the subject beforehand. When it is perpetrated by people who openly refuse to engage in intelligent debate, but instead demand that you read and accept some external source of dubious veracity, it only results in a lot of noise with nothing of value added for anyone. Whatever entertainment value it may hold comes at the cost of degrading the quality of the discussion.
When people disseminate conspiracy theories and general bullshit because they are honest victims of their own delusions, it warrants pity and help with understanding reality more accurately. When they do it for the lulz, I postulate that they are in fact assholes.
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Over a year ago a commentor on gCaptain forum made a wild, unverified claim that someone at the Mandeville USCG REC was selling USCG licenses. How unbelievable is that? Some other commenters called it bullshit & fake news. The guy was dismissed by some as just another loon. Turns out he was right. Below is an article from Readers Digest Australia that claims 12 former conspiracies turned out to be true. Another link is from NBC & the NYT saying the US Government has a group people who chase UFO’s & we still don’t know what many of these unexplainable flying objects are. Except for the Flat-Earthers, I’m not challenging or dismissing anyone. I tell the Flat-Earthers to pool their money together to charter a small yatch from Chile to New Zealand. If the trip takes 8x as long as it should on a round planet then the Earth is probably a flat disc.
I would like to change my position a little bit though. It’s the assholes & fanatics that I won’t discuss politics with. If they are too pushy with their conspiracy theories or if it consumes too much of their life then I avoid them.
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Totally believable, same thing was going on at the Seattle REC when I tried to get my AB. Guy was a prick
Anyway, a conspiracy theory and and a theory of a conspiracy sound like the same thing but the terms are used to mean different things.
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I had a hard time for years believing in UFO’s for many years. About 25- 30 years ago, was transitting the Florida Keys when “Something” at a high altitude scooted across the sky. The other vessels in the area that witnessed it called the Coast Guard. VHF radios lit up .The response from them was "Atmospheric phenomena ". It had a horizontal trajectory. Never believed that explanation. I don’t know what the fuck it was. And yes, the Chief was on the bridge to witness it on one of his rare night time visits. So, that was an unidentified flying object.
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Analytical thinking is an acquired skill and one acquires that skill with education. That conspiracy theories abound is a statement to the quality of education in any country. The lower quality of education in any country seems to directly correlate to the number of conspiracy theories to support grievances real or imagined. For many years the USA has ranked very low among developed countries for providing a quality education in public schools on average.
Here! Here!
The Kindle /e readers completely changed reading for me. I read twice as fast. The genius aspect put me onto books I didn’t know exist. The ability to cover diverse topical opinions with multiple authors is fantastic. Keeping up with periodicals is a pleasure. I can recall paying extra luggage to bring a bag full of books to the ship, to have it all in your carry-on luggage is clearly one of my favorite technical advancements.
That & the track record of honesty from their government & media. I know some really smart people from China who are pro-China but don’t trust their government or state controlled media at all. The same with many people I met from the old Soviet Union & Russia today. They constantly expected to be lied to by their government. I think it is a fallacy of Americans to search out confirmation biased information from our government & media & then think we are too intelligent to be tricked by lies. Remember the WMD, Colin Powell & all our leaders who voted & cheered for war?
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The genesis of some conspiracy theories is questionable “facts” that lead to wild assumptions. When tragic events of the magnitude of JFK are left inconclusive the resulting conspiracy theories seem inevitable. Analytical thinking runs the gambit basis ones chosen sources. In the case of JFK, 60% of Americans still believe Oswald did not act alone, even though as far back as 1967 there has been substantial ballistic evidence that the 3 shots in 8 seconds with a single bolt action Mannlicher -Carcano on target was not impossible.
The upside of the theorist is they pose worthy questions, the downside is when they assign non-substantiated conclusion that the masses instantly cling too. Consider Oliver Stone’s JFK, he simply took every possible theory and rolled it into one, and for a time his drama had substance, today not so much. Consequently there are several historical tragic events that even after absorbing a fair degree of information on both sides of the debate I conclude my 'analytical thinking" is inconclusive at best, and these topics will never be solved and will remain ripe for conspiracy theories. Even the House Select Committee on Assassination in it’s efforts to clarify the Warren Commission came up inconclusive
So these days while onboard, when the conspiracy theories and political foder fly I endeavor to shut my piehole and just let it fly. It all seems futile, no one ever changes their opinion basis a conversation in the mess hall. The attachment is too strong. Politics is no longer debatable policy differences it is cultural attachment combined with a two opposing sets of “facts”. Politics lives far down river from culture. It is a zero sum game.
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I am surprised by how many generally smart and sensible people think that the sky is falling just because we have a new President who is not from their political party.
Every four to eight years we get a new President from the opposite party. He steers left or right, but before the course changes very much his term is over and a new President takes over and steers in the opposite direction. The ship may follow a bit of a serpentine course, but the overall general direction remains the same.
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As a cadet with MSC I was the media guy responsible for threading and spooling up the films. Being MSC they had the resources for a new movie nearly every night. I recall the 16mm films were so pervasive that there was even a CFR question regarding the stowage of the cannister. Shortly thereafter in came VHS that were easily pirated, next the massive DVD.s libraries, too today when many mariners ship with a few
1tb of movies. I recall being amazed in 2016 when an OS told me he had the entire Disney catalogue.
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I didn’t find it unbelievable at all. That damn near made my short list of things I love about this place: The scuttlebutt and delicious rumors that instill a feeling of having my ear to the ground. Another good one is the recent allision in Valdez; It wasn’t in any way obvious that the rumors were true, but figuring it out was great fun.
I absolutely don’t advocate discounting theories simply because they don’t fit the established narrative. For example, when a good friend of mine told me that the moon landings were fake, I examined the evidence and then formed my opinion that it the idea is plainly ridiculous. In certain cases I don’t feel the need to investigate further, because I already have a decent grasp of the available evidence. A good example would be the allegation that the Estonia was sunk by the Swedish navy in order to cover up shady dealings with the former Soviet union, where I’ve already read enough about the case to understand that the idea is quite crazy.
UFOs make a great example. There is a myriad of objects whizzing around up there, and they can’t all be identified. Thus, the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects as such is pretty non-controversial. Some of them don’t conform to common knowledge about flying objects in general, and those are especially interesting. Now if you were to tell me that they are in fact flying saucers crewed by little green men who like to abduct people in the dead of night for the purpose of conducting vaguely sexual experiments, I’d respond that the evidence doesn’t seem to support that notion, and propose a neurological explanation for the widespread belief.
Unbelievable how in a short period of time the video recording scene has changed. Betamax had a superior picture quality but lost out to VHS because of the much cheaper recorder of the latter.
Sowing distrust in government is a deliberate tactic of autocrats seeing to gain or hold power.