But my Favorite Truther Said it, So It Must be True…

I’ve written about topics related to developing critical thinking skills in several articles. In this one, I’ll write more on this topic, covering some angles to critical thinking that I’ve not explored before.

These are some of the topics I’ll address in this article:
(1) Bare Assertion Fallacy, Appeal to Authority Fallacy
(2) Hasty Generalization Fallacy, “One Two Three Infinity Fallacy”
(3) The “Spaghetti on the Wall” phenomenon
(4) Post Hoc Propter Hoc, False Cause Fallacy, Big Lie Fallacy
(5) Confirmation bias
(6) Tribalism & loyalty, Either/Or Fallacy
(7) Tribalistic thinking, Levels of Psychological Development
(8) Honest people have a very hard time perceiving deception, esp large scale lying
(9) Ethics are important
(10) Lack of criminal conviction doesn’t mean innocence: OJ Simpson case
(11) Good faith vs bad faith approaches in discussion and debate

I’ve often pointed readers to study lists of logical fallacies, so you can better understand what types of arguments involve good critical thinking skills, by way of understanding what “categories” or patterns of arguments are illogical. Here’s one of my favorite lists of logical fallacies: https://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/engl1311/fallacies.htm
If you study this and come to understand all these fallacies, I expect that your critical thinking skills could increase enormously! These lists are very valuable for that reason.

Bare Assertion Fallacy

So the first topic to address is what’s called the “Bare Assertion Fallacy”, in which someone simply claims that something as true, without citing any facts, evidence or arguments to support their claim. Now we do need to realize that just because someone has no facts or evidence to support their claim, doesn’t mean it’s false. However, their claim is quite weak or “groundless” without anything to back it up. This is why, if people are going to discuss or debate something with others, they would be well advised to come up with supports for their claims or beliefs. You are not likely going to be able to engage in any meaningful discussion about your beliefs or claims, if you have no facts or evidence to support those. Again, this doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but it just means you shouldn’t try to debate anyone, because “you got nothing.” And debates and meaningful discussions are only possible when each side has something to substantiate their claims.

In our community of Patriots and Anons, one way this fallacy shows up is when people claim that something must be true because a Truther who they like or follow, said it was. This is related to two other fallacies: the Appeal to Authority, and Appeal to False Authority. With the “Appeal to Authority” we are illogically arguing that something is true just because an “authority” on this matter said it was true, without showing any facts or evidence. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Authority

Many get confused about this point, and believe that if an authority on a particular subject says something about that subject, it MUST be true. But that is never the case. Everyone has to show grounds for their claims or beliefs, even those “in authority.” Remember, the CDC and Dr Fraudchi made a lot of claims about masking, social distancing, and the Covid quackzines, that were not true. So that’s one example of how “authority figures” are not always right. And why people making claims pertaining to science, need to “show the science” behind their claims.

As well, there is the “Appeal to False Authority Fallacy”, which is what is involved when the authority cited, is not one that is related to the matter at hand. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-False-Authority
This Appeal to False Authority Fallacy is what we find in most advertising campaigns that use someone knowledgeable in one field, such as mountaineering, to promote something unrelated to that, such as home or car insurance. When we are encouraged by these unrelated authorities that the product is beneficial, but no facts or evidence is given, the advertising ploy is to try to make us think that because the person talking is important or a celebrity, or an authority in one thing, that therefore their statements about this unrelated matter or product, are accurate, and that is illogical.

Hasty Generalization, One-Two-Three Infinity Fallacies

This takes us to another problem I often see in Patriot chat groups. Someone will argue that since a particular Truther was right about one thing, or had “intel” that seemed to relate to one or two or three actual events, therefore this means that they are getting high level intel, or they are an “insider” with the White hats, or that they are always right, or various other illogical conclusions.

That sort of thinking involves what is called the “hasty generalization fallacy”, where you are using an insufficient amount of data or examples to prove a case. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Hasty-Generalization

I also developed another name for a similar fallacy, which I call the “One-Two-Three Infinity” fallacy, whereby people take a small number of anecdotal examples of something (say, referring to how many times a particular Truther’s intel predictions were correct) and then unreasonably deduce that therefore “that person is always correct” eg they will be “infinitely” correct. (And along with this we will often see a lot of fudging eg that Truther’s supporters claim that if the Truther was wrong, “well it was probably disinformation.”) Simply put, you cannot take one, two or three examples and conclude anything definitively from this. In order to give serious study to such a situation, you’d have to carefully and meticulously list every single prediction a given Truther made and then see how often they were correct, and compare that to similar lists of outcomes for other Truthers.

Spaghetti on the Wall

Related to the above is what I call the “spaghetti on the wall” phenomenon. I have unfortunately had cause to be somewhat involved in the Cabal “Justice system”, and learned from this experience, that what we call the justice system is a clown show, and allows unscrupulous people to make money by throwing around a lot of false allegations. One way that this is done is what’s called “throwing spaghetti at the wall.” An unscrupulous (meaning, unethical) attorney can simply “make up” a couple dozen allegations about someone in a certain situation or certain business, hoping that even though all of this is “made up”, some of it will stick, or relate to a tiny amount of truth. Especially given that we live in an environment created by an enormous and ever-increasing burdensome multiplication of Cabal rules and regulations governing every last detail of our lives (business and otherwise), it’s relatively simple for an unethical attorney to just make up any allegations and thus, to figuratively “throw spaghetti at the wall.” Most of the spaghetti slides down and off the wall. But some of it may stick.

The basic idea here is similar to the saying about how even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

In a similar fashion, any “Truther”, especially if they are intelligent and clever, can “read the writing on the wall” and make up “intel” about what they predict is about to happen. Some of that will be spaghetti that slides off the wall, but some may at least minimally relate to actual events.

So, in that type of situation, my advice would be, “Do not mistake the spaghetti stuck on the wall, for a legitimate Truther.”

Post Hoc Propter Hoc, False Cause Fallacy, Big Lie Fallacy

Another type of illogical thinking we will see among those following a particular Truther, is to erroneously correlate two things that occur in close relation in time. The fact that two things happened close to each other, doesn’t mean they are related. Eg the fact that a particular Truther posted a picture of shoes, and then Trump was selling shoes, doesn’t mean these things are related. If I post enough spaghetti on my wall, some of it will stick.

With the “Post Hoc Propter Hoc” fallacy, people erroneously presume a connection between two things if they occur close in time to each other.

With the False Cause fallacy, the close time relationship between events is presumed to point to a causal relationship:

This tendency for some people to believe there are connections between events where there may be no connections, could originate in a “Big Lie”. The Big Lie fallacy, or technique, was used by Hitler and the Nazis. It is used by the Cabal. It involves telling a lie so often, that people come to believe it’s true just because of how often it is repeated. Eg, if a Truther tells you that there are comms (eg secret or coded communications) in everything he posts, that could be a “Big Lie” that then could lead people to start looking for and finding connections where there are none. If over and over and over he tells his followers there are “comms” in his posts, many will believe this. Because people WILL find what they are looking for. And this goes to my next subject, confirmation bias.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is another type of fallacy, and it refers to our tendency to see only the facts or evidence that supports our existing beliefs, or biases, and to not see the facts or evidence that do NOT support our beliefs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias Confirmation bias is defined as ” Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.^[1] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is insuperable for most people, but they can manage it, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills.”

Most everyone engages in confirmation bias to some extent, because of our attachment to our beliefs. So, when we believe in a particular Truther, we will tend to look for what supports our belief in that Truther or what they say. We will ignore the facts or evidence that suggest that what the Truther says is not correct, or which discredits them.

However, especially when the evidence against our view or faith in someone continues to mount, it’s not responsible for us to keep refusing to address the many concerns. If we are really seeking to deploy good critical thinking skills at all times, we MUST face up to the facts, eventually.

Tribalistic Thinking

In relation to a person’s “devotion” or “loyalty” to a particular Truther, is the issue of Tribalistic thinking. We see a kind of tribalism at work when a community starts developing a clear pattern of problematic behaviors or views, including: (1) putting the leader or leaders on a pedestal, making them god-like and immune from criticisms, (2) adopting “us vs them” aka “either/or” thinking, where they begin to view the world in overly black and white ways, and view those outside their community in derogatory terms, if not as enemies, then as “haters”. (3) the community is replete with confirmation bias, refusing to look at facts that are not favorable to their group, its leaders, their views, focusing only on the situations where their Truther was right, ignoring the many instances he or she was wrong, perhaps dismissing those as “intentional disinfo”, (4) any shortcoming or fault of the group leader or Truther is dismissed as a minor issue (even if it is an issue of major concern, such as serious ethical considerations) (5) the group members lose sight of the principles that ostensibly brought them together –namely, TRUTH — and begin to appear more like a cult, almost deifying their leader or the Truther figure they gather around. (5) the leader encourages values like loyalty, but loyalty only in regard to the leader themselves, not to the principles such as TRUTH which the community ostensibly is oriented towards. (6) There is a tendency to the Blood is Thicker than Water fallacy, eg something must be true, because it was said by someone “on our team” such as our Truther who we rally around.

Unfortunately, many well-meaning people do not perceive the dangers of tribalistic thinking, because to them it seems like tribalism is just “building community.” It is not. It is building an unhealthy community. It is essentially building the type of divisive situation that the Cabal wants you to build, so it can keep people divided, separated, and fighting each other. A healthy community never requires that you put truth and critical thinking on a shelf because it’s inconvenient to the purposes of the group. A healthy community never demands that you cannot point out concerns you have about its leaders. Actually, that is what we are SUPPOSED to be doing, as regards our leaders, is holding them accountable by observing their behavior, and calling them out when in our view they are not honoring the community values or the values they promised to uphold.

In the Patriot and Anon community, our views on the White Hats and what is happening in the world, are based on the Q drops. Q is our foundation, so we should NEVER be setting aside Q and believing a Truther instead, when the Truther says or does things that do not align with what Q tells us. Now there are many things that Q does not mention which Truthers talk about…such as NESARA…I’m not referring to that. I’m referring to things Q does talk about, that some Truthers are not aligned with, or seem to be intentionally trying to misinterpret, perhaps for their own purposes. Such as Q drops 1295, 60, 513, and 1318.

Tribalistic Thinking Represents a Low Level of Psychological Development

Not only is tribalistic thinking unhealthy for the reasons mentioned above, but it represents a relatively low level of psychological development. The following chart is based on the Spiral Dynamics system of understanding the development of human psychology, which is just one way of understanding human development. There are many others. In this study, the various levels of human development are correlated with history and related to colors to organize the system. We see movement from the lower “survivalist” mentality (beige in this chart) through to the turquoise or holistic orientation, potentially moving on to a higher coral colored stage later on.
On this chart, a tribalistic orientation is the purple stage, the 2nd lowest stage of development, just up one stage from sheer survivalism. While we may not see “animism” in modern day tribalistic communities, we may see various “traditions” develop in these communities.

It is interesting to note that up just one level from tribalism is the red color level, which is the egocentric level, where people are entirely focused on themselves and their own needs, power and dominance. Thus, it doesn’t seem surprising that some people who are very egotistical, would tend to encourage tribalistic communities to form around them. Such a community would tend to give them the inordinate and unhealthy amount of devotion, uncritical adulation and excessive loyalty that their ego demands.

Honest People Have a Hard Time Imagining Large Scale Lying and Con-Games

Most people are good, and most people are honest, and for this reason, we’d have a very hard time imagining that someone we admire, perhaps a Truther in our midst, could look us right in the face and tell us the most immense and enormous lies, day after day, week after week, month after month. This would be hard to believe for those of us who are honest. Given that we ourselves can feel quite guilty after telling only “small” lies, we have great difficulty imagining that someone could tell lies on a spectacular scale, week after week.

Unfortunately, something that all of us have to learn at one point or another, is that not everyone else in the world is like we ourselves, and some of them will turn out to be dramatically unlike ourselves. Some people will be capable of lies on a massive scale. Who are these people, are there any big liars in the Truther communities? As I see it, there are good reasons to believe that yes, there definitely are.

I mention this primarily because at times, some of us will struggle hard to make sense of something that some Truther or Patriot leader is saying, or several things they’ve been saying, and it just hasn’t occurred to them to consider that maybe the reason these things do not make sense, is because they are lying. And not just with small lies. But with huge, humongous, absolutely spectacularly large lies.

For those who think this isn’t possible: do you not realize the Cabal has done this all along? The scale of the Cabal’s lies has been spectacular. Do not deceive yourselves by saying “well that is because they are the Cabal, and we are different.” Do you not think “the Cabal” are human beings like the rest of us? If one human being can do something, this demonstrates that that thing can indeed be done by human beings.

If you think “only THEY can do that, not US”, then you are stuck in the either/or fallacy, which I explained above is quite linked to tribalistic thinking. What we all need to come to understand is that humanity is a holistic whole, we cannot split ourselves into “them” vs “us.” Anytime you’re involved in “them vs us” thinking, believing that some people are “thems” and will always be “thems” , and that your group is a group of “us” among whom there will never be any “thems”, then you are deluded. This is the type of delusion we see in the lefties, who have great trouble believing the crimes that the Cabal has been committing, because they think of those government leaders as “us.” These Cabal are clever and they’ve intentionally portrayed themselves as the wonderful “us”, doing all the virtue signaling things the lefties love, so the lefties will view them as family, and never suspect they are genocidal psychopaths.

If you think any community or “tribe” you are in, only has people who can never do wrong, or at least no serious wrong, then yours is the blindness of the type of mother whose son can do no wrong, no matter that he’s robbed from people, even if he kills people, she will never believe he committed a crime, “because he’s my son.” This is how familial loyalty can become dangerous. In tribalistic thinking, truth takes a second priority to family and tribe loyalty. Your tribe is always right, no matter how many crimes or atrocities they might commit. Tribalistic thinking is gang thinking, it’s mafia thinking. It’s not how awake people who value truth and justice and critical thinking skills should be thinking.

Importance of Ethics

In communities of awake people, ethics are important. The more awake you are, the higher your standards are going to be, both for yourself, and what you expect of colleagues or community leaders.
In a previous article and video, I explained my concerns about the ethics of a particular Truther named Phil constantly urging people to sign up under his Multi Level Marketing companies, claiming these were “great opportunities”. I pointed out that this was a concern because my research indicates that MLMs are decidedly NOT great opportunities, but that most who sign up with them earn little to nothing. MLMs are described as “deceptive and predatory” in reports I read.
In what appeared to be a response to these concerns, one person said MLMs are not illegal. So, to begin with, that response contains 2 examples of the strawman fallacy. First, I had never stated that MLMs were illegal, and so for someone to reply to my concerns with that statement, misrepresented my concern. My concern was about ethics, not about crime.

Second, the person responded that the Truther made a lot of money because they are a good businessperson. This totally ignores the point (and avoids engaging with the real argument) that Truthers, according to Q drop 1295, are not to be profiting from this movement. The meaning of this Q drop is quite clear.

As well, in our Great Awakening community, it should be fairly obvious that simply to say that someone is a good person because they haven’t committed any crimes, is a very low standard.
“Gee, Betty must be a great person because she hasn’t robbed, killed or stolen from anyone.” That sounds silly doesn’t it? It sounds silly because the example makes it clear that whether or not someone has committed crimes, is an extremely “low bar”, and we must demand much more than that from our leaders, particularly if they want to call themselves “Truthers” and represent the Great Awakening.

Lack of Criminal Conviction Doesn’t Imply Innocence

As well, we learned from the OJ Simpson case, that just because someone was not convicted in a criminal trial on a matter, doesn’t mean they are innocent on that matter. OJ Simpson was acquitted on the double murder charges in his criminal trial, but in the following civil trial, was found responsible for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and ordered to pay $33.5 million as a result.
So, if a particular Truther is not convicted in a criminal trial, that in itself doesn’t mean they are innocent on the matter. If there are concerning facts that remain, one would do well to keep those in mind and not sweep those under the rug.

A case in point: Phil laid out quite clearly that in his criminal case where he was charged with sex with a minor, all the charges relating to such, were dropped. https://rumble.com/v46m1lx-what-is-defamation-nolle-prossed-how-to-find-docket-sheets.html
However, this in itself does not mean he is “innocent.” We do not know why the charges were dropped. Is it because, as Phil claims, the “victim” was lying when the accusations were made? Or were the charges dropped because Phil pressured the “victim” to not testify against him? We do not know.

Good Faith and Bad Faith in Discussion and Debate

People used to know how to discuss and debate all kinds of subjects. We’ve lost that skill, in large part because the Cabal has undermined both our critical thinking skills, as well as our respect for those with different views on things. The Cabal has taught people to believe (or should I say, brainwashed people to believe) that if people disagree with you on certain core tenets of the “woke” worldview, you do not have to debate them, you can just call them names, (that’s the Ad Hominem Fallacy, by the way, to think that one “wins” by calling others names) because by disagreeing with you, they’ve essentially demonstrated that they are not worthy of the least amount of respect. So, the Cabal’s propaganda and brainwashing have dramatically decreased people’s ability to engage in civil debate and discussion. This was intentional: remember, even as they put out a lot of “stop hate” propaganda, they worked to dramatically increase the amount of division and hate among all of us. They wanted us to be fighting each other, and ignoring our real enemy: the Cabal itself.

So, if we want to fight the Cabal, we need to re-learn how to have good faith discussions and debate. We need to throw out the Cabal programming that we have unwittingly taken on, whereby when we are upset about what someone else is saying, instead of coming up with logical responses, we simply seek (in bad faith) to try to insult them, attack them, shut them up, or use various “bad faith” strategies like the strawman fallacy, to mischaracterize what they are saying so we can more easily (in bad faith) shoot down these misrepresented arguments.

This is a good article about how to debate in good faith:
https://www.shondaland.com/live/family/a33916045/debating-with-an-open-mind-and-friendly-spirit/

For instance, as stated in this article, when we debate and discuss in good faith, we should not seek out our opponents’ weakest argument, much less intentionally misrepresent their position in order to shoot it down, but rather, we should seek their strongest argument and debate that. Doing that shows respect to the other side, and it’s far more honest and legitimate than the nasty tactics we see in all too many disagreements now.

“In a good-faith debate, each person should be able to steel man the other person’s position,” Huertas says. A “steel man” argument is the opposite of a “straw man” argument. In the first, you seek out the strongest and most logical argument of whomever you’re debating and argue against that position; in the latter, you reduce your opponent’s argument to a position that’s illogical and easy to refute. A straw man argument is one of the most common logical fallacies — errors in reasoning that invalidate your position.

As well, when discussing with another, we should never use an argument that we ourselves know (or should know) is flawed. Doing so involves us in the “Mala Fides” fallacy.

The next time you disagree with someone in the Patriot or Anon community, try your best to discuss the matter honestly, and respectfully, with good communication skills, and actual logical arguments, instead of dishonest manipulations, distortions or misrepresentations of their position. Studying logical fallacies will help enormously in this, as this could prevent you making all sorts of illogical statements which are actually not legitimate arguments. It will also help you see if the opponent is arguing logically or not, and point it out if they are resorting to logical fallacies.