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Just for kicks, and something for you guys to plagiarize anytime that other list is posted  .
10 characteristics of self proclaimed skeptics
A useful guide by shaolin_Z
- Arrogance. They are always fact-seekers, questioners, people who are intellectually honest: independent thinkers are always "conspiracy theorists", dupes for shoddy research, Alex Jones and the 'Truth Movement' etc. They rarely acknowledge logical fallacies in their arguments.
- Relentlessness. They will always go on and on in denial no matter how little evidence they have to go on or how much of what they have is simply discredited. (Moreover, as per 1. above, even if you listen to them ninety-eight times, the ninety-ninth time, when you say "no thanks", you'll be called a "conspiracy nut" or "liar" again.) Additionally, they have no capacity for independent thought whatsoever. They go on and on at enormous length, copy pasting material they do not even understand themselves. Some of them even troll "conspiracy threads" to no end.
- Inability to answer questions. For people who loudly advertise their determination to the principle of questioning everything, they're pretty poor at answering direct questions from genuine skeptics about the claims that they make.
- Fondness for certain stock phrases. These include "conspiracy theorist," "tin foil hat," "lying ****," "truther," "paranoid," "uneducated fuck" and "intellectual dishonesty." What these phrases have in common is that they are attempts to absolve themselves from any responsibility to think critically themselves.
- Inability to employ or understand logic. Aided by the principle in above, self proclaimed skeptics never notice that the small ambiguities [or unknown variables] in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any "official" accounts; a very common example would be the appeal to authority fallacy with respect to arguments regarding the cause of the WTC collapse.
- Inability to tell good theories from bad. Self proclaimed skeptics have no place for questioning the integrity of sources. The fact that a claim has been made by authority, anywhere, is enough for them to reproduce it and demand that the questions it supposedly answers be accepted, as if intellectual inquiry were a matter of submitting to logical fallacies. While they do this, of course, they will claim to be "educated" and abuse the skeptics of conventional (or "official") accounts for apparently lacking same.
- Inability to withdraw. It's a rare day indeed when a self proclaimed skeptics admits that a claim they have made has turned out to be state propaganda, disinformation or without foundation, whether it be the overall claim itself or any of the evidence produced to support it. Moreover they have a liking (see 3. above) for the technique of avoiding discussion of their claims by "swamping" - piling on a whole lot more material rather than respond to the objections to the previous lot.
- Leaping to conclusions. Self proclaimed skeptics are very keen indeed to declare the "alternative" account totally discredited without having remotely enough cause so to do. Of course this enables them to wheel on the stock phrases as in 4. above. Small ambiguities [or unknown variables] in the narration of an event, small unanswered questions, small problems in timing of differences in procedure from previous events of the same kind are all more than adequate to declare the "alternative" account clearly and definitively discredited. It goes without saying that it is not necessary to prove that these ambiguities are either relevant, or that they even definitely exist. A good example of this would be automatically assuming a non-existent terrorist network, Al-Qaeda, managed to pull of the largest terrorist attack on American soil, with out any non-controversial evidence and absence of transparency.
- Ignoring previous conspiracies and atrocities, perpetuating their pathological denial and cognitive dissonance. This dismissal makes critical thought unlikely, in order to try and demonstrate that their coincidence [or conspiracy] theory should be accorded some weight. They do not pause to reflect that the nonsense they are touting is almost always far more unlikely and complicated than observable patterns in human history and real-life.
- It's always a coincidence. And it is, isn't it? No sooner has the body been discovered, the bomb gone off, than the same people are producing the same old stuff, demanding that there are questions which need to be answered, at the same unbearable length. Because the most important thing about these people is that they are people entirely lacking in discrimination. They cannot tell a good theory from a bad one, they cannot tell good evidence from bad evidence and they cannot tell a good source from a bad one. And for that reason, they always come up with the same answer when they ask the same question.
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"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller
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. You guys seem to get all bent out of shape when people don't buy your fallacy laden arguments:
. For me, that generally requires logical consistency and soundness, but apparently that makes one a 'conspiracy theorist' around here. If an appeal to authority is accepted, it makes you 'intellectually honest' lol.
