The wonderful “cosmic hierarchy” thread (and its sister threads in the Pit) have gotten me thinking, fondly, about my favorite types of woo.
The stuff above is funny and all, but it’s so completely incomprehensible that it’s difficult to fully appreciate. I prefer woo that has a certain logical progression to its madness.
I think my current favorite is the Sovereign Citizen movement. It’s the perfect blend of legalism, magic catchphrase word salad, and filmed real-world attempts to exercise its tenets (with consistently hilarious results).
I’m with Johnny Bravo; I gotta go with the Sovereign Citizen craziness. I see a fair amount of “legal” documents from them and it cracks me up the lengths they go – amid all the cites to the U.S. Constitution and completely inapplicable case law – to also change how their name is written, in an effort to make any charging documents “void” because the documents use the “incorrect” spelling.
Ex. John H. Doe becomes John-H; Doe. and magically any document that uses John H. Doe doesn’t apply to them.
I love really well-done mathematical woo. Some of the advanced forms of “.999~ /= 1” family of woo can actually be elegant. (Most of it is childish and illiterate, but a small handful have actually worked out alternate definitions of “number” that allow for the distinction.)
Some forms of theological woo can be interesting. Medieval and early Renaissance theology – the kind where they define eight different kinds of “grace” – actually reveal a lot of sincere thought. Same for the Kabbalah: it’s nothing more than “system building,” but my goodness what a system!
All youse people who just love that Sovereign Citizen and Freeman On The Land stuff – If you’re into this, you probably know this already but if you haven’t seen it –
There’s that opinion written by Justice J. D. Rooke in Alberta. TL;DR: Dealing with a Sovereign Citizen type of case, he decided to research the entire field, and wrote one massive dissertation, in which he examines the entire field thoroughly, presenting all the types of arguments they use, and demolishing them all. All in the guise of an opinion in one case.
Fascinating, but very lengthy, read. With a bit of googling, you can find any number of other commentary discussing or summarizing the same.
(ETA: If I’m not mistaken, this decision has gained widespread notoriety at least throughout the judicial profession in North America, and has become somewhat of the Universal Guidebook for judges in the United States and Canada alike, for how to deal with cases like these.)
Interesting, by the way, that even in Canada, those FOTL types like to make absurd claims under United States law, particularly the Constitution and the the Uniform Commercial Code.
Personally I prefer Dr. Ben Carson. I particularly enjoyed his theories about the Egyptian pyramids, which were debunked by this website. Said website currently features on the front page three articles about UFOs.
Sovereign citizens are always good for a laugh, too.
Not to nitpick NinjaChick specifically, just using this post as a jumping off point. Something’s been bugging me all this time that people have been referring to this as “Ben Carson’s beliefs about the pyramids.”
I have very vague memories of reading that during the big explosion of European interest in Egyptology in the nineteenth century, spurred by Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt, at least some explorers of that time speculated that the pyramids might have been Joseph’s granaries. Obviously those speculations didn’t survive for very long, as once the pyramids were explored it became obvious what they were. But I understood that this was one of the early conjectures.
Does this ring any bells with anyone? I’m not defending Carson’s viewpoint, or suggesting that this is in any way a reasonable position to hold today. Merely asking if anyone can confirm my memories that Carson did not come up with this notion on his own, and is actually repeating a very early and long-rejected idea about the nature of the pyramids.
I was really trying to comprehend ecub’s proclamations, but he kept accusing me of false projections. Then he got banned. Let that be a lesson to you all! Doubt my word and face the consequences!
<ahem> You can’t question or try to understand the woo. If you ask questions, you’re undermining the sacred belief system. You can’t share in the delusion because every psychosis is unique, like snowflakes. The only personality type that is compatible with the woo is the mindless unquestioning sheep.
It’s a shame because I really want to know the context and figure out the reasoning behind the concept. It can’t be done. The mad scientist trope is an actual thing. The self-proclaimed geniuses/prophets cannot tolerate doubt or dissention. They succeed on sheer bluster and absence of shame.
I’m going to go with the Flat Earthers. I’ve a friend who’s a base jumper who has this eccentric habit of insisting the Earth is flat, just to piss people off. I was watching a video of one of his jumps, and he used a fish-eyed lens for effect. I said it exposed the machinations of the Round World advocates. They obviously arranged for all newborns to be implanted with fish-eyed lens so they won’t see that the Earth is actually flat.