kohlrak: Sometimes that manipulation is justified. For example, if you tell me you want to loose weight, would I not be manipulating you if i told my staff to flirt with you a little as you show visible signs of loosing weight?

kaboro: Hello fr33kSh0w2012, thank you for posting those links.
Didnt read or watch everything, just browsed through it a bit.
Conspiracy theories wouldnt be so attractive and convincing if they didnt make sense, or if they didnt contain a certain amount of truthful facts.
My problem with all conspiracy theories that i encountered so far, is that all of them contain more fallacy than fact, there is extensive word play involved, they all come against historical evidence, and in the end conspiracy theories only make people believe they know some bigger truth, when in fact these theories are just diversions, distractions that keep people out of focus.

Not so long ago i bought a book called (roughly translated from french) "the whole history of the world in one book"
There was a particular paragraph in the preface of the book that i particularly liked and considered important:
The internet is full of good and bad information, how is a person supposed to distinguish the truth from the false if they dont know history?"

Could elaborate a lot but im afraid that most of the things i would have to say might come across as annoying to you, and this is not my intention, so i will stop here.

kaboro: You are crossing into moral ambiguity territory.
Everything can "sometimes be justified", but that doesnt make it right.
Regardless, even accepting your badly chosen example (as false flirting can lead to serious problems), there is manipulation that is intended to help an individual, which is probably what you hinted at, but the manipulation i was talking about was not intended to help the individual, but make the individual serve a purpose that the manipulator has chosen. This is not justified by any stretch of the imagination, and just because there are examples of useful manipulation, doesnt make manipulation right.

kohlrak: Except the most famous conspiracy theory turned out to be real: MKUltra

kohlrak: My point being that manipulation is a thing, and sometimes it's necessary. Whether or not it is ethical needs a bit more scrutiny. Of course arguments like "it's for the greater good," etc are not justified arguments. IMO, the question, when it comes to manipulation, is whether or not the manipulation comes from a place of truth and honesty, or does it come from other purposes? In my, admittedly bad, example of the gym, everyone who goes to gym knows that people actually do constantly say "you look good" etc, especially staff, so the customer most likely knows what's up. That doesn't make it any less manipulative. The same is to be said about sales, advertisements, etc, but can we honestly say they're unethical?

kaboro: Lol more of the same from you, you seem to be trying to contradict for the sake of contradiction.
Most famous conspiracy theory? Based on what metrics exactly praytell?
Turned out to be real? Personally i would take anything the CIA, or former CIA employees say with a grain of salt, they are not here to provide information to the public.
Their main purpose is...erm...i dunno, they failed to inform me.

kohlrak: It's easy to identify: when people talk about "conspiracy theories," what is the most common phrase? "Tinfoil hats." Where did the phrase come from? A long time ago, these people had this idea that a government sponsored mind control experiment was going on, and that the tinfoil hats would reflect microwave radiation (which, it does) so that they would be unaffected by the experiments. And, while the government was both working with microwave experiments (as a weapon) and mind control experiments (MKUltra), the tinfoil hats themselves were worthless.

but, hey, either he CIA was involved in a conspiracy with a mind control experiment program, or the CIA's involved in a conspiracy with a program to make people skeptical of the government. It's not like MKUltra was just "leaked" by a few ex-cia employees: the information was officially released. If you don't want to believe that MKUltra was real, fine, but that doesn't change the fact that a conspiracy took place.

kaboro: My problem with all conspiracy theories that i encountered so far, is that all of them contain more fallacy than fact, there is extensive word play involved, they all come against historical evidence, and in the end conspiracy theories only make people believe they know some bigger truth, when in fact these theories are just diversions, distractions that keep people out of focus.

Not so long ago i bought a book called (roughly translated from french) "the whole history of the world in one book"
There was a particular paragraph in the preface of the book that i particularly liked and considered important:
The internet is full of good and bad information, how is a person supposed to distinguish the truth from the false if they dont know history?"

richlind33: I have a better question: how is a person supposed to understand history if they can't distinguish truth from untruth?

It is informal logic that is prerequisite to gaining knowledge, not "proper" histories that pander to this or that authority or interest.

kaboro: The answer to your valid question is simple.
You should study history, not understand it. There is nothing to understand in history, there is a lot to learn from it though.
History is not about truth or untruth, history is about events that did happen, and the reasons behind these events and what can we learn from them.
History is like your memories, what would you be without them?

Logic and knowledge are two different things, logic is not a prerequisite for gaining knowledge.
The science that deals with knowledge is called epistemology and you would be surprised what you can find out reading about it.

Distinguishing truth from untruth has been an existential issue since the dawn of mankind.

In my humble opinion, learning from history is a good tool for helping us distinguish truth from untruth, also accepting the fact that there is no absolute truth is also very helpful.
Humble approach is always better in my opinion, because im seeking the truth, not trying to impose to others some random truth that i happen to consider to be absolute.

richlind33: Informal logic is a scientific system of thinking critically that allows a person to test by means of reason. This knowledge is above all other knowledge, because without it a person's ability to learn will be stunted and their weakness will be taken advantage of.

kaboro: Posts like this make me lose hope in humanity and its future. Its game over.

richlind33: Hope based on preconceptions are frequently misplaced.

kaboro: True that, but the good thing about hope is that a misplaced hope doesnt make the hope bad, just makes bad the object on which the hope was placed.

kaboro: We simply dont have enough reliable [url=][/url] information to go by, and aggressive action in the absence of solid information is from my experience very dangerous and could have results that are opposite to the intended results

LootHunter: Well, we DO know two things:
1. Linko90 became a target of harrassment campaign (I personally recieved a short story "Linko the tranny killer" in chat, obviously ment to set me against him).

2. GOG haven't stood up to the mob who harrassed Linko90. Which means that the mob from ResetEra will continue to prey on GOG's PR people. And it doesn't matter if Linko90 is still working at GOG or not.

My opinion is that we DO need to raise people's awareness of the issue. Not just here, but everywhere else. We don't need to focus on the "fired" aspect (since we don't know that for sure), but on the fact that GOG had allowed harrassment of it's employee to go unpunished. And if GOG reputation would be hurt in the process - good, maybe they will be compelled to do better next time.