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Disinformation
And The Clustering Illusion
Ryan Fairley (February
7th, 2006)
So often we hear of the white rabbit. Neo in The
Matrix even had his chance to follow one, and to most
avid conspiracy theorists there is no better time spent
then looking for a cottontail with a pocket watch. Whatever
your theory or truth, there are two seriously important
pitfalls to keep one’s eye on when trying to communicate
your findings to friends, loved ones, or others who might
be interested in finding out more about what you have
to say. There are two really huge issues that confront
those who look beyond
the “known”… and they are disinformation
and the clustering illusion. These to monsters must be
slain if one is to have any credibility when confronting
a favourite rabbit hole, no matter what its shape or colour.
Disinformation can be described as “the spreading
of deliberately false information to mislead an
enemy as to one's position or course of action.
It also includes the distortion of true information
in such a way as to render
it useless.” (1) One of my favorite writers,
Hunter S. Thompson (a crazy yet highly astute politcal
wirter and “narcotics investigator”)
had his own world for disinformation… he called
it “hired bullshit”. Just as life is
cheap during a war, information and disinformation
is cheap in the information age. When anything of
consiquence happens there is no lack of places to
get information, but no one knows where the information
came from, who said it, why they sid it, who they
said it to, and why the hell they were there in
the first place. If you want to sound creditable
to your readers or your audience you must first
get the facts straight. It most
likely that you have your hands full merely understanding
what is going on, let alone find out what is really
going on.
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Not to sound paranoid, but there are many ways to make
sure that the “signal to noise ratio” stays
really high. There are people out there who make their
living out of smearing the facts so that no one can really
separate the sheep from the goats; if you want to see
a class act follow any politcal campaign to watch the
buzzards room and soar. Also, for those who love history
and nukeclear weapons, the term “coldwar”
should come up nice and strong. Disinformation was used
during the coldwar in its purest
espionadge form. As the years have progressed more and
more generations of children have grown up to be told
that the media exists to fool them. Lewis Black, an outspoken
topical comic says on his album “Rules of Engadgement”
that he assumes that “everyone is lying” and
that “he is used to being lied
to by his government” and that “he wishes
they would do a better job when they lie to me”.
Are we North Americans confronted with an era with less
trust then nutritional content? It is important that we
know what we know is true if the truth is to come to light.
Next we move to the subject of something called the “Clustering
Illusion”. Dear reader, if you have seen the movie
PI then you know what I am talking about. The Clustering
Illusion can be defined as “the natural human tendency
to ‘see patterns where actually none exist.’”
(2) Now I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but
lets just calm down and take a look at what really happened.
I realize that if there are any of our readers out there
that work for The Discovery Channel, The History Channel,
or stations like The
Civilization Channel then they are not interested in “not
seeing patterns” because patters fill airspace and
lets face it, there are only so many antiques out there
to apraise.
A strict “Clustering Illusion” is limited
to mathematics, but it is also a good word for looking
for something that isn’t there but is so important
to the viewer’s emotional state that it magically
appears. One of the problems about real conspiracies is
that unless one is willing to deal with a serous amount
of backtalk from the “coincidence theory”
people then a real conspiracy (no matter what its origin)
can go nannounced for a very long time. A “coincidence
theory” is “used by proponents of controversial
theories (often called conspiracy theorists) to counter
those who dismiss their claims; they mean to express thus
that these dismissals rely on too many coincidences to
be plausible.” (3)
Many times people who are affected by a serious tragedy
are hunting for something that just isn’t there.
Like a treasure hunter who bankrupts not only his bak
accounts but his entire life for some ancient hoard that
didn’t exist, many people look too closely at something
and when obesssion sets in they have to much at stake
to simply walk away. This being said one must remember
that in many ways patterns can and often are hidden in
chaos in order to confuse their true nature; anyone who
knows about code breaking can attest to how covert operatives
can use various cypers to hide a message in plane sight.
The Book “The Art of War” written by the ancient
philosopher general Sun Tzu contains a line that goes
something like “it dosent require sharpe eyes to
see the moon”. This reffers to how any general can
see an imminent defeat, but only a general of true excellence
can see a victory when all of his seargents see defeat.
To reach into the chaos of disinformation and to ciritcize
one’s own tendency to fabricate truth when no truth
exisits can one truly precive on a level that will bring
a revalation. Only then, with cautious and sobre research,
can we root out injustices and those Hunter S. Thompson
would have called “filthy, poisonus weasles and
lovers of hired bullshit”.
BY: Ryan Fairley
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation
2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion
3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_theory
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