#Groupthink

[sidewalkchemistry]

Exposing Scientific Dogmas: Rupert Sheldrake's Banned TED Talk

The talk was reshared again in a video by the YouTube channel "After Skool." It was based on his book The Science Delusion.

Here are the 10 Scientific Dogmas he listed (which could prevent science from greater discoveries and true scientific thinking since they create the default worldview of people worldwide):

#1 Nature is mechanical

#2 Matter is unconscious

#3 The laws of nature are fixed

#4 The total amount of matter and energy is always the same

#5 Nature is purposeless

#6 Biological hereditary is material

#7 Memories are stored inside your brain as material traces

#8 Your mind is inside your head

#9 Psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible

#10 Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works

#txt #exposing scientific dogmas #rupert sheldrake #scientific materialism #materialism #science #mindful consumption #mindful living #mindfulness #mindsets #dogma #paradigms #worldviews #philosophy of science #unlearning #laws of nature #autodidact #food for thought #groupthink #thought experiment #genetics #sidewalkchemistry

[sepdet]

Remember when some redditors propped up Gamestop stock to prank Wall Street traders…

only to become an apocalyptic cult, appointing the failed CEO of a pet supply shop as their oracle

and themselves as the righteous faithful out to expose Wall Street corruption through the beleaguered vessels of Gamestop and Bed Bath and Beyond, whose second coming will crash the market and allow the real (not fake) stock owners to exploit a glitch that grants them infinite money, lets them hold the world monetary system to ransom, forces the US government to accede to all their demands, anoints them god-kings, and transforms the world.

No really. This is a comic, tragic, what-the-fuck-is-happening-you-can't-be-serious-oh-hell-they-are-serious video that I highly recommend, along the same lines as that "A BOOMERANG!" takedown of Sherlock. It's funny but it's long, good background for knitting, phone games, or doing chores.

(The author's "Line Go Up" vid on crypto and nfts is also amazing— but more sobering, as their cultists proponents really do have some impact on the real world.)

#gamestop #meme stock #video essay #groupthink #group psychology

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Detransition: School Indoctrination, Bullying, Testosterone Damage, and Healing - Jade Martin

Chloe: What was your life like before you transitioned?

Jade: Well, I socially transitioned at 12. So, my life before that, I was the girliest girl ever, the most stereotypical little girl that you can imagine. I loved princesses and dolls and fairy tales. I was just very girly. But I was also heavily bullied, from the minute I was entered into kindergarten, I was isolated. I don't know why. I think it's because I was awkward and had social anxiety but, I was bullied up until I hit puberty.

Chloe: Why was that?

Jade: I don't know. They would pick at me for random stuff, my eyebrows or having bug eyes, being tall. I wasn't tal, I mean, the bullying picked up when I hit puberty, because the other girls hadn't gone through what I was going through. I was growing hair and a chest. And I didn't want to wear a bra because I was uncomfortable so it just made them stand out more. And I was growing fast. I mean it was obvious that I had hit puberty and that's what I was bullied for.

Chloe: It's hard enough dealing with developing so much and so quickly at a young age. And then like the social element of your peers pointing it out and bullying you for it, has to make it all the more difficult. How did that affect your your view of yourself? Did it affect the way that you saw being a woman and femininity?

Jade: Definitely. I was scared. I didn't know what it was. When I first got my period, I thought I was dying. I was that little I was nine years old. And no fault to my mom, you know, what parent thinks their daughter is going to get their period that young? And I grew up teaching my older cousins about their periods, which was crazy because they were like 14. They got theirs at like 14, 13, 12, but I was nine.

Chloe: And you're the one telling them about it.

Jade: Yeah. And now they're the first ones to have kids, and I don't. Not yet. But it was uncomfortable. Not the puberty itself. I think I was scared at the very beginning but after that I got used to it. I wasn't ready to grow up. I still wanted to play with dolls, and hitting puberty is growing up so I I feel like...

Chloe: There's just too much, too soon.

Jade: Yeah, it was too much, too soon. And about one or two years later, the kids in my class hit puberty. They all grew taller than me. That's another thing they picked on me for was being tall. Five-three. I'm not tall. So eventually they towered over me. I stopped being the tall freak that was taller than the teachers. Their breasts grew bigger than mine. I was this freak that got her period and had to change her pads in the middle of class, but suddenly they were growing faster and acting promiscuous and having sex and kissing and making out. Mind you, this was when they were like 11, 12.

Chloe: That's pretty early.

Jade: I was freaked out. My perception of romance and love when I was little was what you see on Disney, like fairy tale stuff. You know, a prince comes to sweep me up and he takes me to his castle and we get married and he courts me, pretty much. I didn't think that love was dressing in small clothes to get a boy's attention or stuffing your bras or having sex. That scared me. Not only did I grow up too fast because my period came earlier than everybody else, but now I was being pressured to grow even more. And that was uncomfortable. I forced myself to stop playing with dolls, and I didn't want to. So, that did affect my relationship with being a woman, the over-sexualization.

Chloe: But how did that then turn into wanting to become a boy, not believing that you're a woman? What was the turning point?

Jade: The turning point was the internet. It was Tumblr, it was Instagram, it was YouTube. I didn't even know what transgender was until I went on the internet. And the only reason I had been on there was because I had no friends. I would have a single friend here and there, but at the end of the day I was alone. I didn't go out and play with other kids, I didn't invite them over. When I went online, I found these stories of fictional characters that I had enjoyed. YouTubers. And both of these characters were male, and teenagers and adults online would write these stories about these two men falling in love. And that appealed to me because it was love, but without being a woman. And alongside that there were also people online telling me that I could be one of those guys. I could become a boy and experience that kind of love.

Chloe: Were you interacting directly with those people at the time?

Jade: Some of them, yes. Some of them were posts and group chats. But yes, I was talking to adults at a very young age.

Chloe: What exactly would they say?

Jade: We would share those interests. So if we were into two male YouTubers and we paired them up together. We were in group chats together. And that's how we would talk. And that's how I was introduced to transitioning, and I slowly fell into a hole of transition videos. And my gut was telling me that it was off and it was wrong, but you know, this was the answer. I could finally be a real boy. I don't have to try to earn love by being sexual. I can be these two gay men in fiction and be loved for who I am and not for my appearance.

Note: Helena Kerschner has a very well laid out and argued hypothesis about the influence of fandoms, which is worth a look: "Trans, Tumblr & Fandom"

#Jade Martin #Chloe Cole #detransition #detrans #medical transition #social transition #gender ideology #queer theory #fandom #social media #social contagion #puberty #precocious puberty #fandom culture #groupthink #religion is a mental illness

[falkonryderz]

Listen/purchase: Groupthink by Smoke

#bandcamp #smoke #groupthink #2022 #doom

[imkeepinit]

#tribal conformity #assimilation #groupthink #twitterature #Shibetoshi Nakamoto

[realm-of-possibilities-62]

#poetry #poems #words #fake people #fakesmiles #phony #lie #pretend #conformity #groupthink #weird

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Track of the day // Groupthink & Abra - Gold On Me

#new music #music #recommended #track of the day #groupthink #abra #gold on me #concord #Youtube

[aowski]

“People inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control.” —Fr Richard Rohr 

#group #groupthink #tribalism #belonging #citizenship #control #threat #people #human #richard rohr

[ex-cogtfi]

This is part two of a look at the context of the word “security” in the cult.

The Family International (formerly the Children of God and the Family of Love) have spent over 50 years avoiding prosecution for their crimes, conning donors, and developing and honing strategies to handle legal attacks and combat public criticism.

They’ve worked to create a carefully curated image of a wholesome missionary group, misunderstood by the public and maligned by detractors. Through setting up charitable fronts, befriending people with influence, and coaching members to practice the doctrine of “deceivers yet true”, TFI have attempted to publicly distance themselves from policies that resulted in the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of children. TFI has been so successful in their rebranding campaigns and coverups that they were invited to perform at the White House during the administrations of two United States presidents.

Meanwhile, TFIs internal publications show that the cult’s leadership have no remorse for the harms they have and continue to cause. Internal documents by the current leader and co-founder Karen Zerby explicitly state that the cult still believes there is nothing inherently wrong with adult-child sex and adult-child sexual interactions.

(The content of these posts has been adapted and excerpted from articles on exfamily.org, especially “The Family - Official Policy on Lying & Deception”. Underlining is consistent with the original cult publications.)

#deception #cogtfisurvivors #cultsurvivor #karenzerby #davidberg #childrenofgod #thefamilyinternational #groupthink #coercivecontrol #indoctrination #cultpropaganda #freedomofmind #theinfluencecontinuum #theBITEModel #undueinfluence #gaslighting #trauma #igotout

[immaculatasknight]

How to abort a scientific renaissance

#empiricism #Oxford #Tavistock #Malthus #randomness #reductionism #Darwinism #Huxley #Bertrand Russell #Hobbes #Leviathan #technocracy #social engineering #dehumanization #groupthink #elitism

[the-funtime-autocrat]

That means that, ironically, the most individualistic people will likely be those who make it known the loudest just how much more "collectivist" they are than the next man, with extreme exaggeration being the obvious mark of the faker.

Edward Dutton.

#virtue signaling #Atomization #Individualism #Social Status #Sociology #Groupthink

[ophelia-network]

"Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench." Chief Seattle

Birds of a Feather... by Alexandra Manukyan

#birds of a feather #alexandra manukyan #dark humor #quotes #chief seattle #city #stench #crane #figurative painting #fantasy #ophelia net #art #bird #figure #painting #forest #dark fae #groupthink #cities suck #soulless city #spiritual #funny

[ankhmeanswombman]

#ConstantPropaganda steam for the train of thought held by the group/CULTure. Think tanks are easy to control. Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see in this #InvertedPatrix we call reality. Reality is just a group dream understood by/through the 5 senses. Those who sense things beyond that which is sensed by the hive and its shared 5 senses are mocked and derided, for being tuned into a different version of reality. But what lies beyond the 5 senses, perhaps the ability to control what is felt/seen/heard by others... CERN switched on the Hadron Collider right around the time #StrangerThings season 4 was released. The internet was also discovered there in the late 80s. There is a Shiva statue outside CERN premises. They are playing with reality and unlocking hidden worlds. #ScienceIsBlackMagic and whether thats good or bad depends on which brain hemisphere you're using to dissect/process the information given. We all have the #YinYang #GoodEvil duality within us.

#occult #black magic #age of aquarius #stranger things #metaphysics #magick #dark psychology #groupthink #large hadron collider #CERN #new age

[silencemachine]

hive mentality / groupthink

#art #artists on tumblr #drawing #hivemind #groupthink #fine liner pen #illustration

[originalamateur]

Rhinocéros

Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros demonstrates groupthink theory in which it shows how a new form of ideology is at first rejected by the people and then later on widely embraced by them due to the collective form of thinking that influenced the people in the play. This is a concrete example of how paradigm shift in a society works.Groupthink is simply characterized by overestimation of the group,…

View On WordPress

#daisy #Eugene Ionesco #Groupthink #ideology #paradigm shift #play #Rhinoceros

[cazort]

Hey just a heads up, a terf with the username @/rabid-tarantulas is following you. Just wanted to let you know so you can block if you need

I have a lot to say in response to this ask. So first, thanks for writing and I do appreciate the desire to help.

I am aware of this user, I discovered them through this post of theirs, which was explicitly affirming of intersex openly not identifying on the gender binary, which is something I support.

Now a big comment here, that I'd encourage you and everyone to reflect on: I don't ever like using the term "terf" to refer to people. TERF is an ideology, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism. Calling a person a "terf" is problematic in a long list of ways, one of which is that people don't adhere to the idelogy in an all-or-nothing way. When we call certain people TERFs and not others, it gives the wrong impression that you can cleanly categorize people into the TERF or non-TERF bin. I've noticed that a lot of people who claim to oppose TERF ideology, actually hold a lot of views that seem TERF-adjacent. I can't even count how many times "progressive" people who openly advertise that they support trans rights, have suddenly flipped on me, throwing my pronoun preference and nonbinary identity out the window, and attacking me as a "man", just because I disagreed with something they say. It's like, oh, trans people deserve respect and I'll acknowledge their identity and defer to their pronoun preference but only if they agree with me. Yes, I've had both cis and trans people treat me this way.

But it's also problematic to call people "a terf" like as a noun, because it's a negative label. It's a personal attack. But it's also not particularly truthful the way it is used. For example, I've been conversing with the user you drew attention to here, and they are certainly not someone who fits the profile of "typical TERF" viewpoints.

Over the years I've conversed with a lot of people who identify as radical feminists, "gender critical" feminists (the newer term for TERF ideology used by people who support or adhere to those viewpoints), and lots of others who hold varying degrees of TERF-adjacent viewpoints, and one thing that is clear is that there is a huge range of viewpoints among people who post TERF or TERF-adjacent content. These viewpoints range from stuff that is overtly hateful towards trans people, to stuff that is aggressively dismissing of trans people's identities but not overtly hateful, to stuff that is dismissive of trans people's identities but more respectfully worded. TERF ideology is also frequently associated with man-hating, but the degree to which people get into this varies hugely.

I think a lot of the ideas in TERF are untruthful, and as such I think it's important to challenge them. However I also think some of the disagreements between TERF and mainstream progressive ideologies surrounding trans people, are more a question of semantics or differing definitions than anything else. I also sometimes dislike how mainstream trans activism has pushed ideas into the mainstream, and some of those ideas can be problematic at times too, and just like TERF, it can be problematic how these ideas are advanced.

For example, I know a lot of older trans people who use terms like MtF, FtM, and use language like "I was born a woman / I became a man / etc." and I have seen people who use the newer terminology attack, argue with, and publicly shame these other people, saying they are "wrong" or are promoting "transphobic" viewpoints when they're just using the language that helped them through their journey of discovery of their trans identity.

I get really uncomfortable too with the idea that it's bad to interact with someone just because you disagree with them, and with any sort of social norms that encourage people to push out and ostracize others.

Like the fact that you wrote an ask to me, about a user who has only liked and reblogged a few of my posts, starting in the past 24 hours, makes me wonder how many other users you have contacted. I recognize you are probably trying to help, but I also am not sure that what you are doing is going to be having the effect that you think it has. What would happen if anyone who ever voiced any TERF-adjacent viewpoints, were totally shunned and ostracized by the community of trans-supportive people on Tumblr? It's not going to ban these people, it's just going to isolate them to where they only interact with other people who have viewpoints that are not particularly supportive of or respectful to trans people. It virtually guarantees that these people will become further radicalized.

Do you want to create a world where people are isolated of people into echo chambers where everyone is surrounded only by people who think exactly alike?

I don't. I find this idea horrifying. And we already see this on a lot of the other social media, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, where the algorithmic feeds show people more of what they want to see and create echo chambers and reinforce groupthink. And predictably, politics gets more polarized, extremism rises in many different forms. I've seen the shift over the past two decades of my life and it's been horrific. Back when I was a teenager, I could converse with people with a wide range of political views and they'd more-or-less be respectful of me and of each other. Even the worst presidents in my life, like Reagan, were respectful when they talked about their political opponents. Now we have unhinged people like Trump, and people think that anyone with views other than theirs are necessarily hateful people, bad people, and "the enemy". It's terribly unhealthy. And it contributes to mental illness too.

I can protect myself. I block people on this site almost every day, if you count bots, and still pretty frequently if you only count real users.

If a user posts stuff that I don't like, I won't follow them. I don't need to block them unless they're either messaging me disrespectful stuff, adding disrespectful commentary on reblogs of my post, or posting content I find disrespectful or annoying in tags that I browse.

But no, I don't want to block this user, at least not unless they become much more disrespectful to me than they have been. And I would encourage you and anyone reading this to reconsider both the practice of labeling people TERF's, and the practice of encouraging people to block anyone they see voice TERF or TERF-adjacent views. And I'd also encourage you and everyone to introspect and consider whether or not you harbor any TERF-adjacent views yourself, because it's something that, in my experience, a lot of people actually do harbor.

And on top of that I would also encourage you to more broadly, embrace the idea that it is good for people who have different viewpoints to interact. Sometimes people are disrespectful and then you can block them. That's fine. But it is rare that it is in any way warranted to go around warning other users about someone. That would require a truly dangerous level of negative behavior far beyond anything I have seen here.

#asks #anon ask #terf #transphobia #gender critical #groupthink #echo chamber #social media