Conspiracy Theorist Conversion Therapy

 

I have undergone a course of conspiracy theorists' deprogramming. Now, before anybody starts worrying, I'm not about to hang up my tin foil hat; I was simply curious what it would be like. I also like to test my own beliefs against dissent. The course is not an A Clockwork Orange eyelid holding torture session; it is actually just a six-part series of videos by a YouTuber called "Skeptic of the North", probably because he comes from Northern Ireland.
Here is where to watch the course... if you dare!
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iugn-2qw3mU.
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U3quU1ODKk.
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOOM-n6dgA.
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpn-pegFKUY.
Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5zEgIzZI-Y.
Part 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op4uVTooDYk.
 
There is actually very little factual information in this series that I'm not already familiar with because it has been circling the skeptisphere for a number of years; the studies on JFK and 9/11 etc. However, the presentation is far better than what you get from an average skepper. This could be because the YouTuber is a former conspiracy theorist. He knows how we think and so how to try and persuade us. Despite this, he does fall short on an evidential basis and he has not convinced me at all. The part which I think was the most penetrating was the segment where he asks: "How do you know what you know?" This is a valid question. How do I know I'm not caught in what Stephen Law calls an intellectual black hole, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvkbiElAOqU? Really, I can't prove I'm not, but I doubt it simply because I have always made such an effort to examine the skeptic side of every story. On his channel there is also an interview with another ex-conspiracy theorist, Brent Lee. This is somebody I remember from the original David Icke forum. He was radicalized soon after 9/11, but in the 20-teens began to have doubts. In the last couple of years he has rejected all his previous views, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D3dBrkuf8E. Will I one day follow in his footsteps? I have to admit that I cannot rule it out. I might indeed possibly one day become a skeptic. However, I think with me it's unlikely because I know the skeptic worldview; I'm familiar with their arguments. In the interview at one point Brent says: "When I was a conspiracy theorist I hated the debunkers!" Ironically, and paradoxically from a superficial perspective, it is the biggest zealot who is least tolerant of those who disagree who is by far the most likely to cross the aisle and join them. This point was made by Richard Seymour in his biography of Christopher Hitchens, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS1AKW0Tt5o. Seymour thinks this is because they so easily feel betrayed. I feel no hostility to skeptics, even those who are former woo-woos like me; except those I've spoken of before who are rude and antisocial towards me. At one point Skeptic of the North asks another very well thought out question: Why do we conspiracists feel such distrust for mainstream experts and yet champion every word alternative experts say as gospel truth? Are alternative experts not capable of lying? He shows a series of pie charts illustrating the proportion of climate scientists and architects and engineers who believe the official stories of climate change and 9/11 compared to those who don't. It is true that the mainstream side vastly outnumbers us. But is this really just a simple election? I had to think for a while how to answer this point and I still am mulling it over. I'm well aware that human beings are very varied and people of all kinds have weaknesses and vices. However, I must say that there is something inherently and especially dishonest about Illuminati occupied institutions; or to be more precise, the way people behave when they are under the influence of those institutions. I have the perfect example, my own discharge from the NHS. Not one single person within the management system deviated in the tiniest way from the objective of removing me, even though all of them must have known that the case against me was a false one and that they valued me as a porter, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html. Naturally there are liars, charlatans and fools inside the conspirasphere and I have been targeted by them myself, for example see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2018/03/fake-defamation.html. However, at no time during these troll drama outrages was there the unity of purpose that you see in the mainstream world, the robotic mindlessness, the conformist copycat behaviour. Skeptic of the North started out from a similar position to myself, like Brent Lee did; but for whatever reason, he has moved on to a very different place and now sees the world in another way. I think he's made a mistake, but I bear him no ill will for it. We do not choose our beliefs. I wish him all the best for the future, wherever it takes him.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.