Lmst

They Asked #ChatGPT Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.

#GenerativeAI #chatbots are going down #conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort #reality.
#ai #conspiracy

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html

What Trump, Putin & Orbán Understand About Your Brain

#Lying, #conspiratorial thinking might seem 2 different problems, but they're related

I study political rhetoric & work to understand how populists use language to develop cult-like following, divide nations, create culture wars & instil hatred. This pattern goes back to antiquity

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/30/the-connection-between-political-lies-and-conspiracy-theories-00108378

#dictators #cults #authoritarian #HybredWar #disinformation #oppression

I work with some #right-wing and #conspiratorial types who say things I haven't heard from respectable sources. One claim: Biden did little for the people of North Carolina after the hurricane other than give them $750. Trump, on the other hand, has suspended all foreign aid to provide them with hotel rooms. Sounds like bull. Another claim: State Farm had canceled all fire related policies in California 3 months before the recent fires started around Los Angeles. I doubt that.

Donald Trump's #mental #state appears to have further #deteriorated since last night’s news about a new grand jury’s #superseding #indictment of him on charges of trying to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

Over the course of about four hours this morning, Trump #posted #50 #times on his social media platform, mostly reposting material that was associated with #QAnon, #violent, #authoritarian, or #conspiratorial.

🔸He suggested he is “100% INNOCENT,” and that the indictment is a “Witch Hunt.”
🔸He called for trials and jail for special counsel Jack #Smith, former president Barack #Obama, and the members of Congress who investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
🔸And he reposted a sexual insult about the political careers of both Vice President Kamala #Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary #Clinton.

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign has today escalated the fight about Trump’s photo op Monday at #Arlington #National #Cemetery, where campaign staff took photos and videos in Section 60, the burial ground of recent veterans, apparently over the strong objections of cemetery officials.

Then the campaign released photos and a video from the visit attacking Harris.

A statement from the Arlington National Cemetery reiterated:
♦️“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign. ♦️
⭐️Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.
We can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed.”

Arlington National Cemetery was established on the former property of General Robert E. Lee in 1864,
after the Lee family did not pay their property taxes.
At the time, Lee was leading Confederate forces against the United States government, and those buried in the cemetery in its early years were those killed in the Civil War.
The cemetery is one of two in the United States that is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army, and it is widely considered hallowed ground.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-28-2024

“#Cosplaying the #paranoidfringe, Birds Aren’t Real delivers a knowing #satire of #American #conspiratorial #thinking in the century of #QAnon.”

“An important dynamic of people falling into a #conspiratorial milieu is how such theories can help rationalize difficulties an individual may be experiencing by flattening complexity and providing answers that soothe and distract from uncomfortable realities. (2/4)

#TIL #TodayILearned #Religiosity and #Conspiratorial #Beliefs were strongly linked in a Baylor University study

https://news.web.baylor.edu/news/story/2021/religiosity-and-conspiratorial-beliefs-linked-baylor-religion-survey-findings

- The intersection of religion and politics makes the discrete religion effect on conspiratorial thinking hard to concisely determine, and we must note that there are lots of different types and expressions of religiosity.

1/3

#ElonMusk, influenced by the #farright, publicly displayed his #conspiratorial outlook.

He calls moderating #hatespeech "#censorship," attacked the #press, #DEI efforts, targeted #advertisers fleeing a #toxic #socialmedia #platform, and backed #racist #GreatReplacementTheory.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #SocialMedia #Hate #Bigotry #Discrimination #AntiSemitism #Homophobia #Misogyny #Racism #Transphobia #Xenophobia

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/19/media/elon-musk-don-lemon-interview-analysis-hnk-intl

Donald Trump's attacks on prosecutors are increasingly conspiratorial and authoritarian in style and threaten the rule of law, say former justice department officials.

Ex-officials and other experts say Trump’s campaign and social media bashing of the four sets of criminal charges – echoed in ways by his lawyers’ court briefs – are actually a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and very tenuous legal claims, laced with Trump’s narcissism and authoritarian impulses aimed at delaying his trials or quashing the charges.

Much of Trump’s animus is aimed at the special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged him with four felony counts for election subversion, and 40 felony counts for mishandling classified documents when his presidency ended.
#conspiratorial #authoritarian #narcissism

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/01/donald-trump-legal-problems-ex-president-strategy

👀

Inside #Trump's Plot To #Corrupt the 2024 #Election With #GarbageData

OF ALL THE STRANGE, #conspiratorial, and potentially dangerous #theories Donald Trump and his allies came up with in the days after the #2020 election, this was the strangest, the most conspiratorial, the most potentially #dangerous.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-election-plans-corrupt-voter-registration-eric-eagleai-1234920083/

Ngl #antisemitism is a skeleton key that opens up a lot of #conspiratorial #rightwing thinking, it is at least vacuous and at worst irresponsible to explore most #reactionary #conspiracy #theories without understanding how deep the Protocols of the Elders of Zion #brainrot truly goes

People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features - Scientific American (March 2019)

Baseless theories threaten our safety and #democracy It turns out that specific emotions make people prone to such thinking

The dangerous consequences of the #conspiratorial perspective—the idea that people or groups are colluding in hidden ways to produce a particular outcome—have become painfully clear.
#ConspiracyTheories

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/

1 Million March met with thousands of #counterprotesters across #Canada.

“These (Farright) #protests are supported by a big tent of #rightwing and #conspiratorial #groups, including #ChristianNationalists (#Fascists) , #conservative #Muslims, #COVID19 #conspiracytheorists, #sovereigncitizens, anti-#publiceducation #activists,”

https://xtramagazine.com/power/1-million-march-met-with-thousands-of-counter-protesters-across-canada-256956

The so-called “woke” narrative, much as the culture war, is the sound of one hand clapping (the right) without the hope of enlightenment.

https://financialpost.com/opinion/tories-embrace-woke-backlash

#StitchedInkMedia #Politics #Rightwing #Conservatives #Woke #Con #Fallacy #Ford #Harper #Trump #Republicans #False #Tiresome #Repetitive #Unoriginal #Harmful #Insulting #Unempathetic #Disinterested #Nature #Science #Art #NationalPost #Spin #NoAgenda #Conspiratorial #Hate #Unoriginal #Idealism

Okay, so in case people have not noticed, anti-science #activism is rearing its ugly head in the US.

The current #conspiratorial & political #myth-making class (GOP, rightwing ideologues, grifting influencers, etc...) has identified #science as an obstacle to its ambitions for dominance.

The main reason is that science plays an important social role in society, it disrupts the convenient stories we tell ourselves, and the narratives of the powerful who seek to #manipulate with fiction.

" Nobody becomes a #billionaire by accident. You have to have wanted that level of power, control & wealth more than you wanted anything else in your life. They all sacrifice family, relationships, stability, community, connection, and belonging in service of keeping score on a scale that actually yields no additional real-world benefits on the path from that first $100 million to the tens of billions.

This makes billionaires "a cohort that is, counterintutively, very easily manipulated." And they're all #manipulators
and hang out together, which means that when a #conspiratorial belief takes root in one billionaire's brain, it spreads to the rest of them like wildfire.

Then, billionaires "push each other further and further into extreme ideas because their entire careers have been predicated on the idea that they're genius outliers who can see things others can't, and that their wealth is a reward for that imagined merit."

2/2
https://www.anildash.com/2023/02/27/tycoon-martyrdom-charade/

Summary: Corey Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/15/in-the-dumps/#what-vacation