SIO520: My Talk at SkeptiCal - Selective Skepticism Is Not Skepticism

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 520. I'm Thomas Smith, and I'm excited to bring you my talk from SkeptiCal. It was a lot of fun. Thanks so much to the folks at SkeptiCal for inviting me. Really honored. I had a great time. The talk has to do, of course, with Butler, and you heard me talk about that, I guess, a couple of months back, but this has got all new stuff. Trust me, this is completely different. It's got a ridiculously overwrought hypothetical that I, you know me. I love those, but, this one's a fun one. And I also found a Young Turks video where they discuss Butler and they are Joe Rogan now, I guess. So who doesn't want to hear some debunking of those people? But like I said, tons of fun, new stuff. So I hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much for tuning in, supporting the show, telling your friends, all that stuff. patreon.com/seriouspod. And here's my talk. Selective skepticism is not skepticism.

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0:01:19 Thomas: So yeah, this talk is about conspiracy thinking that is on the rise on the left. So I want to ask you, if you don't mind, and I can kind of see, show of hands, how many of you believe the official story about the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting? That's the famous ear shooting. How many people believe the story? Okay, I'm glad I asked it like that. I wanted to frame it that way, because I feel like if I call out the other way, it might have changed the answer. But I want to say that was like half maybe at most and I find that really interesting so okay so I feel like this past you know year since that happened or however long it's been seeing this happen seeing people on the left and and my little corner of the left which you know the skeptic community a lot of them embracing the conspiracy theories the very same kind of thinking that we have have fought against for so long. There's the typical conspiracy theory patterns of anomaly hunting and fake experts and all that kind of thing. I know that so many of us have spent so much time talking about 9-11 conspiracies, Flat Earth, the moon landing, all that stuff, all the exact same types of arguing and the exact tools for debunking them. All of that applies to the Butler shooting and the conspiracies around it. And it's been like just a bizarre, like I'm not sure if I woke up up in my own personal afterlife punishment to have to see people that I agree with making the same kinds of arguments. And they're also the people who were with me making these arguments against things like the moon landing being faked and all of that. And so that's been the inspiration for this talk. And I think the world, this might be an easy pitch for this audience, but I actually think the world needs skeptics more than ever right now. I think, the information environment is just terrible. I can't I can imagine it getting worse and yet it will probably every single day It's really terrible and the algorithms favor obviously emotionally resonant fast content, that's the key emotionally resonating quick fast content Whoever's up there first and fastest and whoever inspires the most anger sadness hatred all that kind of stuff That's what's favored and Getting to the truth takes time It takes more time, so we're already behind and it just feels like it's getting worse every day. I also found that people complain that it's impossible to know anything anymore. Do you have that feeling? People talk about how it's so hard to know anymore. I disagree with that. I think I disagree. I think it's just as easy, if not easier, than ever to find the truth if you put in the effort, Because the tools we have at our disposal to find information are actually incredible now, but it really is all in how you use them. And if you are the kind of person who wants to engage in the proper skepticism and critical thinking and work, that's the key. Skepticism is work, and online content is as fast as possible, and it's hard. So, here's the thing though, in all of this my biggest lament in this topic, in talking about the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, Trump's ear, all those claims, my biggest lament is actually about how easy it is to debunk. I wish it was harder. I actually found a perfect video, you'll see for today, to kind of embody it. So if you're anyone who's already listened to the episodes I did on this, this is different. I wanted to find a different thing to talk about, and I did. I found a really good, perfect video on YouTube. And this is someone who has way more views than I do. It's way huger than me. So I'm punching up, as it were. But what blows my mind is not how crazy it is or any of that. It's actually how little effort it takes to debunk these conspiracy theories. And yet, there they are with, you know, millions of views. So I feel like the world needs more of us more than ever to be out there doing this. I really do. You know, I wanted to start someplace. Oh, actually, no, I take it back. So when it comes to that official story, when it comes to this, which about half of you said you believed, only 30% of people believe I believe at least one of the three attempts on Trump's life was staged. There's not much polling, but this is the one poll I could find. It seems reliable. It's NewsGuard slash YouGov, so I think it's pretty reliable. 1,000 people, typical kind of polling. 54% said that it was either staged or unsure. And I think that, on one hand, the people who said it was definitely staged is lower, and that might be encouraging, But the people who aren't sure is actually pretty high and I think Depending on the question that could you know that really changes things. I think if you're asking people You know certain things saying oh, I'm unsure might be like a reasonable view if you ask people is the earth flat And they're like I don't know then that's a that's bad sign. You know and I this is where we are This is that level of question for me, and I hope to convince you of that that this is similar to that and then most importantly for for me is someone on the left this was what was most staggering I'm focusing on Butler because it's the biggest difference so Democrats are just far more likely to call the attempt staged but when you look at Butler specifically so 42% of Democrats called it staged versus just 7% of Republicans and I gotta tell you as someone on the left and being in the skeptic community I'm not used to being on this side of it you know usually it's like it's like well you know uh when it comes to vaccines that's a good one the COVID vaccine is it engineered to kill you or something and then you see the percentage of all americans that believe it and it's not super high but then you look at bipartisanship and it's like oh wow the percentage of republicans is remarkably high and we're looking good but we're on the other end of this one here and it's making me nervous because we need to be tethered to the truth I think people are starting to adopt a a fatalistic kind of view about the truth and almost like they think they can use conspiracy theories to maybe even advance their own political agenda, and that just does not work. That absolutely does not not work, and if we lose touch with information, if we loose touch with science and skepticism, we're never going to be able to govern. We're never gonna be able to do what we need to do. RFK Jr. is the embodiment of that. You don't get to control where the conspiracy thinking stops if you take away the tools to find the truth and you think that's going to work to your advantage there's you don't get to control that it's have none of you seen Jurassic Park I just it's so tails oldest time and here one more on this what I find really can concerning as well is the age difference so of the 18 to 29 year olds 32 percent and that's just everybody that's not Democrats so 32 percent of 18 to 29 -year -olds called them fake versus 15 % of those 65 and older, and that's another one that's a bit of an inversion. You know, we like to, especially my generation and younger, we like to blame the older generations for not knowing their information, but now here it is. It looks like this trend could be the other way, actually, and that's not good. That is not good, it doesn't bode well for the future. So, I wanted to first, though, before I get into that, I wanted to talk about something interesting that happened on the Facebook post for this very talk. Just some very interesting quotes I saw, and I don't want to dwell too much on this, except I do think it's indicative of what people think skepticism is, and that's important. I don't know whose haters these are. They might be mine, they might be skepticals, I don �t know. Or they're both, or they're just random. Who knows? But some interesting quotes here. So just based on the title of the talk. That's all this was. They posted the title of the talk, which is selective skepticism is not skepticism. And someone said it would appear that someone has not thought this through sufficiently. This faulty reasoning opens a portal to all manner of crazy conspiracies. Actually, a whole lot of fun until you start to take it seriously. Someone else said, so you're not supposed to choose what to be skeptical about? What if you have no doubts that the thing is true or untrue? There goes your skepticism, and then the last one. Well, being skeptical about everything, I shouldn't even make fun. Everything's a typo for me. Me. Being skeptical about everything leads to chaos. And I think that's a pretty popular view, but I just couldn't help, when I saw that, I just could help thinking about it a lot. Like, what do people think skepticism is? Because I don't know about you folks, but I am skeptical of everything. And, I don't find that that interferes with my life. Well, maybe it does a little, but not in the ways these people think. I'm skeptical of everything. I don �t think it's a matter of being skeptical sometimes and then turning it off you know I think that's what's being communicated here I think people think that like okay sure you can be skeptical of some things but you know is the Sun gonna rise tomorrow does it you know all that kind of stuff like the basic stuff if you're skeptical every day of you know what's your address or something are you gonna not be able to find your way home and I just think that's so off and I think it's worth talking about because it really does play into a faux skepticism that is actually behind a lot of this conspiracy thinking so if you think about it I mean climate skeptics you know that's in the right in the term somehow you know we're the skeptic movement but climate skeptic are not not anyone I'm a fan of and and it's it's interesting the difference there what does it mean there's a difference between denialism and skepticism skepticism is not doubting everything all the time skepticism in my view and the views of some some much smarter people before me is proportioning your beliefs to the evidence and when it comes to things like does the earth revolve around the Sun or what's my address we got good evidence on that you know that's that's not hard you can and the the good thing about the the earth going around the sun and all that is you can figure that out pretty early in your life that it's a pretty much a hundred percent in terms of evidence I mean so we know that as much as anything else and then you're good on that one like for the rest of your life you're You're good on that belief. You don't even have to think about it ever again. So I think that's a caricature. It's not just about doubting everything. I think it's very important. I think also people have this conception that if you're a skeptic, that means you'd be really bad maybe in relationships, like if you are constantly undercutting what people are telling you. If your partner tells you, hey, today someone yelled at me at work for no reason. I think it's a caricature that you'd have to be always questioning and challenging when, in reality, skepticism, no part of my definition, which is proportioning your beliefs to the evidence, no part of that is actually opening your mouth. Like, you actually can just be skeptical all in your head. You don't have to tell anybody about it. Now, you probably should sometimes, but there's other times where you don't have to. It's pretty cool. Why is it doing that? Yeah. They don't want me to talk about every time. I don't know about you, but I'm a fan of really elaborate thought experiments and hypotheticals. It's a way I like to think about the world. And I thought of something. You know, another time when skepticism goes awry, there's too little skepticism, obviously. That's not good. There's also too much in a way, and that's getting back to that denialism. And I really do think that the conception of skepticism online is that you hear whatever it is, climate scientists, vaccine researchers, and then you just go, nah, nah. I don't think so, I don' think so. Nah, I'm not believing it. That's really what it comes down to. And it's so easy to do. It's really easy and it makes you appear so sophisticated to be like, oh, you buy that, you believe what the official scientists are telling you? And it's so easy. Too much skepticism, just a blanket kind of denialism is really bad. And there's a place we do this that I wanted to call out in particular, and it has to do with personal testimony, specifically of victims, specifically often of sexual misconduct, which is almost always, but not always, women. There's a sense, I think, and this, I want to address it, because I think this even a lot of skeptics even think this that when it comes to science and data sure we can form a view but when it comes to something like a he said she said for example proportion your beliefs to the evidence well you got one you got the other it's 50 -50 can never make a decision I think there's a lot people who think that way and it really I think is just completely wrong. I think there are ways that you can hear personal testimony and it could be from the most unreliable person on earth and you could still know that they're telling the truth to the extent we know anything's true. And I was just thinking about it hypothetically and I wanted to set up like the hardest hypothetical for myself and I was imagining like what if you had the least credible person ever? This person just lies all the time. We're not doing the labyrinth door knocker riddle, so it's not like they always lie. It's not like a magic thing. But they're just constantly lying. And then I wanted to take the most reliable person. And because they're going to end up being bad in the story, I was going to do Mr. Rogers, and I didn't have the heart. I just didn't want him to be the villain. So I was thinking, let's have Lying Steve will be the first guy, and then Jesus Christ. We'll just go, Jesus Christ, so everybody's like, that guy never lies. And everybody's lying Steve constantly, it's in the name. He's always lying. And I want My hypothetical was that I can create a hypothetical where just by allowing Steve's testimony, just by his personal testimony, we can know with a certainty that he's telling the truth and that Jesus Christ, the most honest person, is lying about something. And I think it's really interesting. This example that I thought of, it has a lot of parallels that I think are interesting. So in my hypothetical, some people were playing poker with Jesus. Jesus is a big poker fan. Man. They're playing poker with Jesus. Jesus wins. Just crazy, crazy good hand wins a bunch of money from them. And they think something's up. And so they accuse him of cheating. And they accuse Jesus of cheating, but Jesus is like, hey, I'm Jesus. I was shuffling, yes, but it was totally shuffled. I'm good for, you know, I'M HONEST. It was just luck. It was just lucky. I am Jesus. So like luck, pretty, you know, like I'm blessed, let's say. I'M hashtag blessed. And And so that's what Jesus says. But then lying Steve sees this in the newspaper. And lying Steve is like, that son of a bitch. That guy ripped me off. Same thing. Poker game ripped me out 30 years ago. And so let's imagine we're at trial or something. And we got the ripped off, I don't know, six or something that are trying to get their money back from Jesus. And then you get lying Steve testifying. And he says, you know what? This happened to me in college. We were college buddies. Jesus. He was real popular with the frats, you know, because the water into wine thing. They tried to get him to do Jägermeister or beer. He couldn't do it. It was mainly wine. You know, I've always wondered, like, how good is the wine that Jesus made? Like, is it aged? Or is it, I mean, is like, oh, this vintage is literally now, like this second, you know? So, like if it's a red, that's not any good. You don't want a red that's just brand new. Or does he ever make like rosé? Was it ever like, oh, I never expected it would be that. That's so crazy. Anyway, all that is true. So lying Steve testifies, and he's like, yeah, he ripped me off in college. It was crazy. I can't prove it, but there's something about it. I know he did the exact same thing. And the lawyer asked him, well, do you remember what happened? No, I don't really remember the details, but I know we did. And then the lawyer asks, well did you tell anybody at the time? So that I'm not sure I might have told a friend, but I'm just not sure and on the face of it Everybody's like this is ridiculous. This couldn't be more wrong lying Steve sucks execute him. He should go to jail I know he's just a witness in the civil trial, but he should you know, just give him the chair and then and then another person Sees it's happening and says, you know what? Actually, I remember I remember lying Steve told me about this in college and I happen to write it down My name's writes everything down Jeff. So I I just happen to write it down 30 years ago and He told me about this sequence of cards that happened in this game where where Jesus ripped him off ripped off lying Steve and he names the five cards in sequence, he names five cards and sequence that he wrote down and Wouldn't you know it they match five cards sequence from the game where Jesus Ripped off the other people and And then there was a gasp in the courtroom from one person who understood math. And everyone else was like, that sounds like nothing to me. But one person Who understood math understood that matching five cards in a sequence, in a row, in a specific place in a deck, the odds of doing that by random is one in 312 million. And I thought of this because of that cool thing about like every fair shuffle deck is just that if it's a fair shuffle decade, it's never happened before in human history. I think it's really cool. I mean, it's this kind of thing that we nerds love, you know? Five is one in 312 million. Ten is one and 57 quadrillion. The full 52, the number of atoms in the Milky Way. So having the same two decks, if they're shuffled properly, be the same, is like picking one atom out of the Milky way and picking the correct one. So anyway, I created this. I was originally going to do the full 52. And I thought, you Know what? It's even cooler if it's like five. And the reason is because in this hypothetical in my mind I realized what would happen is exactly what happens today one guy who understands math would be like oh my god lying Steve is telling the truth and Jesus Christ is lying they'd be like I can't believe it I'm certain of it there's no other way because if Jesus swears that he shuffled the deck and and this guy wrote down what lying Steve said 30 years ago and it was the same sequence of cards because Jesus like any good magician has memorized one deck of cards in the order he does in that deck of cards, and so he has cheated the same way twice, was the point of the story, but that wasn't clear. For him to name those five cards in sequence is not possible by coincidence. It's virtually impossible. If you do ten, you'd say it's impossible, and I think what would happen is, I don't think people would even really believe that. I think we would reject math for one. They hate math. They would say boo. Boo math. And also they, I think they do this thing where they crunch it down to like, yeah, believe the testimony of one guy? Are you really going to believe lying Steve, who said he couldn't even really remember what happened, versus Jesus Christ who never lies? Are you really gonna believe that? And I think there would be a lot of denialists in that situation, even though by a mathematical certainty we would know, we would know that one person was telling the truth and, you know, one person was lying. And the reason I constructed that hypothetical is because it has parallels to two stories, the E. Jean Carroll one, and the accuser of Kavanaugh, what's the Kavanaugh? That's right, Christine Blasey Ford. And I find myself in that exact situation where we can be certain, virtually certain, that they're telling the truth. And I think that people are uncomfortable with that. I think a lot of people are, maybe even people in the skeptic community. Because they're like, hey, it's a he said, she said. It's 50 -50, virtually. Or maybe you can trim a little off of one side and give it to the other but when you look at how information works when someone's personal testimony conveys information that they couldn't have any other way that's actually a certainty in some cases not all not always but like sometimes it is for Christine Blasey Ford you had told a therapist in 2012 before Kavanaugh was up for the Supreme Court before it would have made any sense for her to have seeded a story with a therapist years before who wrote it down and was able to testify to it or corroborate it, the odds of that happening by anything other than the truth being that Kavanaugh did it is just astronomically small. Same for E. Jean Carroll. Trump was convicted of having sexually assaulted E .Jean Carroll only on the strength of a couple of witnesses. There are some other witnesses who provide some details. It was mainly her friends that she told in 1996, I believe it was, who testified that she told them at the time. And it was consistent. And Donald Trump said he'd never met her. He said she wasn't his type, and then I don't know if you remember this, he famously misidentified her as his ex-wife in deposition. I talk about the worst deposition, I cannot imagine doing worse than that. She's not my type. Oh, that's my old wife, yeah, she's great. Oh, I love her. What? That's, oh, I couldn't see, it was blurry. I think that was the way he did after that. It was a blurry picture. I mean it just went as bad as could be and so it's things like that where well one of those people is telling the truth and as much as people like to discount personal testimony and sometimes skeptics do too a lot of skeptics like to discount personal testimony sometimes for good reason sometimes not we can be virtually certain that that Trump did that with

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0:23:35 Thomas: All that said I want to now get to Trump's stupid error because it bears a lot of resemblance the way we can know when I when I said before that I think it's not as hard to know the truth as people think. I'm not talking about every case, but in many cases. It's because of things like that. If you take the theories and you take the competing worlds that they would create, one world in which we have a conspiracy theory about the Butler shooting, I'll go into it, and one world which we don't, if you actually flesh those worlds out, you can compare, like, well, which one makes more sense? And often, they're so contradictory these conspiracy theories that you can pretty conclusively say that there's no way that's true and you know that's not popular online so I found a really good video for this do you know these folks the Young Turks I don't my memory was they were on the left but I'm not sure anymore does anyone know yeah I don't know anymore I think they are but But I was shocked at this video. I wanted to find an example. And I was amazed at how much of the stereotypical conspiracy thinking stuff they did here. And this is pretty recent, April 21st, because supposedly some new evidence came to light via Tucker Carlson, which was like, wow, that's who you're citing. So I want to go through this, because they have five reasons that we should doubt this official story. And this part I wasn't sure if I should play the clips I wouldn't share how well it would work but I could just read this shank jank I forget you pronounce it says first of all there's no such thing as conspiracy theories that's my new conclusion what that is is a term used by the media to make sure you don't challenge the government and their official story because the media is not in the business of news it's in the business of propaganda for the powerful so just drop the conspiracy nonsense it's a theory okay and this particular theory is an interesting one oh sorry is Is this particular theory an interesting one? Absolutely. And I'm a person who thought it was perfectly real and thought it was heroic what Trump did. And now I'm definitely rethinking that based on some of the evidence we're going to show you. And then Anna Kasparian chimes in. First, let me say there's no smoking guns. So don't wait for that. I don't have a theory, OK? My take on this, this is very strange. And I don'T trust our government because our government has already lied about the suspect behind it. It is perfectly legitimate. Is it perfectly legitimate to ask questions? Of course. You're in the media. That's what you're supposed to do. Ask questions of the government challenge the government to find out what really happened You're not supposed to blindly accept things they say especially when they don't make any sense So what do you think that let's go into these five claims? They're pretty big I can poor me see do we want to play that I can play It's in the middle He never talked about any of this stuff. How is it demanded by him? He wants an investigation of the frickin' James Comey, but he doesn't want to know more about motives behind his working as an athlete? Now, look, guys. So it's really hard for us from the outside to determine what actually happened. But is it perfectly legitimate to ask questions of course, if you're in media, that's what you're supposed to do. So yeah, first bit of evidence there. Trump never mentions Butler. I mean, it's just not true. He does. A year later, they did a big memorial rally. The raised fist photo, all his merch is that. He's talked about it. He talked about on Joe Rogan. He showed his scar to Joe Rogin. When I said I wish this was harder to debunk, this is what I mean. That's just not true. He does talk about it. But how much would you expect him to talk about? For one, he's always talking about some new bullshit all the time. It's hard to keep up. You bring up the, you know, if you bring up, the 2020 election, that's a grievance that he has that he will never get over. And his grievances he does come back to all the time. I don't think Butler is a grievance. I think that the guy, the kid ended up being somewhat right wing, although it's a little ambiguous. And in his mind, it's pretty much open and shut case and he has talked about it but how much like what is the thing he still needs to do about that like in his view he knows the motive roughly it was that a kid wanted to do a shooting to maybe because he was depressed and you know it could have been about fame we don't know for sure but it wasn't there's not like a bunch of mystery basically the shooter is what every single shooter it like he's the most profile of a shooter that we have in this country it all fits so I don't what he would be needing to talk about all the time so let's move on to number two here this one here we go this one really got me yeah I might want to ask you why was the job of the head of the Secret Service open? How did he get that promotion? Could it be because the last person had to quit because of this? How was no one punished? Are you kidding me? The person had to resign. Director Kim Cheadle had to resign, and the review said that wasn't even enough discipline. They went for her head, of course. That's why the job was open, dude. The guy who got promoted, that's the guy who dove on Trump to try to save him from the bullets. I mean, I'm not a huge, like, fan of the Secret Service but like if anyone there deserves a promotion maybe that guy does deserve a promotion that doesn't seem unreasonable to me but the director had to resign was forced she didn't want to she was forced to resign that's why the guy got the job how is this what our media is this is millions of views nobody was punished guys nobody was it's like this is too easy someone I shouldn't need to do this you know all the claims end up being this one now this one's a little weird but I want to include it for an important reason Oh, sorry, weird cutoff. Yeah, I'm not going to go too deep into this because I had to decide what I can keep in addition because I needed all that time for my lying Steve Jesus Christ story. But the reason I'm including this, I am not going to dig too deep into it, but here is what is important. Now, I am sure a lot of you are familiar with or have questions with the Trump ear shooting thing. You know, like there are discrepancies or people think they're discrepancies. I'm sure you have questions. You know, it seems fake. Was it a blood packet? Was it whatever? I just want to note that if your theory, though, is that it was an attack planned by Iran, that goes against all of the it was fake stuff. That's a different theory. That's an it was real theory. That counters everything else. And here's where I want to emphasize this. Anomaly hunting drives me crazy because it is the credit default swap of reasoning. You get to package anything, any anomalies together. One anomaly that says it was real, one anomaly that said it was fake, you get to put it in a little package and sell it back to the banks or whatever the hell that was, and they get to sell it as two evidences. That's two evidences that something's weird. Those contradict each other. That adds to zero. That is a bad mortgage or whatever. You can't sell that as two things. But they do, that's what anomaly hunting does. You get to grab everything, everything that looks weird, and package it into one thing, just be like, hey, I don't have a theory. That's why they always have to do that. Hey, I don' t know what happened. I don'' 't know. I'' 'm just saying. I'm just saying it was a little weird. That'' 's why they have to doing that, because when you'' 're actually forming a thesis about a hypothesis about something, you have to construct a real sequence of events that could have happened, a real possible sequence of event that''' s coherent. If you''''' re not doing that And you just are casting doubt you don't you just get to say that's weird. That's weird That's we're that's we even though they all contradict each other it drives me insane But the Iran thing it's a different plot So there's there was somebody that was caught that was trying to or like was hot paid to maybe assassinate Trump They were caught it was a couple days before this shooting. There's literally no linkage other than the timing and I guess it could be a little weird, but the FBI, and this was Joe Biden's FBI at the time, so I guess if you wanna be like the MAGA people and say it's the deep state going after Trump, maybe, but again, that's a whole different set of conspiracy theories. Then everything that people have said about the ear thing being fake and the, oh, that looks staged and this looks staged, that's all fake then, that all wrong, if you're going with the theory that this was a real shooting. And you have to keep track of which world you're building. So anyway, there's no link. The FBI says there's no link, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of a link, so I don't know what more to say. I could go deeper into that, but I want to get on to number four here. Here's a good one. I don't think I need to play this because I am a little low on time, but basically this is the big Tucker Carlson piece of evidence. They say, oh my God, we were able to find his number crooks his number the shooter crooks based on some documents that were released and we traced it to an email account and this is all Tucker Carlson's guy who did this and the email account we were able to trace it to several online accounts and the FBI according to them said that he had no online presence that's a lie why they line well they never said that would be how do you solved that one. Again, it's just too easy to debunk this shit. They never said there was no online presence. They said that it was a little unclear at first. They were trying to crack into some things. His motive wasn't instantly clear. And he wasn't as, like, he didn't have as many posts as you would expect from this. Sometimes they have a whole bunch of posts about why they did it. And it seems that this person didn't really. But ultimately, after a while, they did a conference, I forget what it was, if it was a press conference or if it was when they went in to testify, but one way or the other, they released a bunch of stuff that they had and include hundreds of posts from 2019-20 that had some anti-Semitic stuff, so there was plenty. There was plenty, and the accounts that Tucker Carlson found was like chess.com and Quora and some other stuff, and he's like, they said he had no presence. It's like, do you think he was doing a manifesto in his chess .com account, man? It's just, there's nothing here. There's not, there's really nothing here, so this last one actually, this one's fun. I want to watch this one. This is the last claim. It's number five. How do you guys find that? Convincing or not? Yeah, no, not really to me. So there's a lot going on here. For one, I think that's just a Secret Service guy who went down to make sure people weren't going to come rush to Trump when he came down the steps. That's what it looks like to me. Also, the photographers, if you'll notice, the ones he's talking about, they aren't where the good photo is. Am I crazy? They're kind of to the side a little bit, and you see him kind of holding them back slightly. Also, for one, they're the Secret Freakin' Service, and the photographers themselves, we've heard from four of them who said, oh I saw the opportunity for a shot and I wouldn't got it like that are they in on it now like you know how many people are in on this freaking thing goes all the way to the top or the bottom I guess it would start at the top there's the bottom the other thing about a lot of the you know there's a lot of claims about like they were so calm and he's not even afraid anymore well they killed crooks within like eight seconds and it went over the radio that he's down and they knew he was and this was much more than eight seconds so So Trump was down for a little while. They knew it was safe at that point. It was over the radio. And they're still cautious, obviously, but that answers the question as to why they're not freaking out and why they'RE moving them, a lot of those questions. They got crooks very, very quickly. So there's nothing there. So according to Cenk in this show, if you dismiss all five of those incredibly strange pieces of evidence, you've been brainwashed to believe the government always tells the truth. And that's me. I believe the government always tells the truth. All the time. Everything. That's called the excluded middle, I think is that one, where there's a lot of middle you're excluding if those are the two possibilities.

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0:38:20 Thomas: Now I just want to get to this. There's so much talk online. This is the biggest thing. The blood was fake, the whatever, you know, couldn't have been real easier. And he says, in this video, he says in wrestling, they get hit with a chair, roll under the ring and cut their forehead. And because you're sweating, even a tiny cut would bleed all over their face. Trump goes under the podium and comes out with a bloody ear. You ready for how hard this debunk's going to be? Man, I had to work really hard for this one. Here's what happened. This is a shot from the New York Times. This is an incredible shot. It actually captures the bullet. It whizzed by his ear. Within like one second here, he reaches his hand to his ear, this is all in sequence. This is like within a second or two. And you see right here, there's nothing in his hand. There's nothing in his hand here unless you think he's got the blood packet ready because he knows a bullet's going to hit him in the ear or something. Even though the bullet's real and it's there, he still had a blood packet. Anyway, he reaches, and within a second, there's blood. Wow. Did you see him go under a podium and then come back up with blood? No, because that didn't happen. I debunked that by watching it once. I don't know what to do, guys. We need more of us. Go out there and just debunk this stupid crap because it's not hard, apparently. How is this our information environment? And the answer is incentives, I think. The incentive, like I said before, is to get something out fast and to appeal to emotion. It looks so smart to be cynical and to say, you believe the official story. It's a shortcut to looking smart, but really it's cognitively easier and lazier. It's a way to save energy. You know, it's economics almost. I mean, it is the least work to provide the product that's going to have the most effect online. And I just thought that one was so silly because like, I don't know why people have this idea that like faking a shooting is even in the realm of possibility. I don'T know where people, people will have responses like, oh, that is something they do. Really? Who has ever done that? Do you have a record ever anywhere in the history of Earth of someone faking their own shooting to this extent? By the way, someone died and two people got hit. I also have their interviews of the two people that got hit, you know. It's like when you actually engage with the information, it becomes a lot harder to say they're actors. It's, like, god damn, those are the best actors I've ever seen in my life. And they pre -came ahead of time to get that gig to book the gig they got the injuries to be ready for the gig I don't know it doesn't make sense the point is it's it's not that hard and the idea that this was some pre -planned thing there's you know you talk about your priors like what are your priors on something and you know that's that's your like prior probability just apropos of nothing like what are the odds that something might happen that's kind of what you start with you know with the Bayesian probabilities but the Bayesian probability of a shooting that's pre -planned and that's fake should be zero because it's never happened there's no example of it it should be very low at least you start low but I because we all live our lives on the internet where people just convince each other that that is what they do oh yeah that is what they normally they hire fake actors to go die and be in a thing oh yeah what they did and they create this fake like Bayesian probability world where that's like plausible but it's just not here's one thing that gets me you know what gets me the most is the people who say that all three shootings were fake those people are so funny cuz like how many times do you think Trump should have been tried to be assassinated you know like how many what's your Bayesian prior on that because for me it's a lot more than we're seeing like I'm I'm not I'm NOT advocating anything I'm just saying I'm surprised it wouldn't happen like all the time you know like when it came to Kennedy how many people wanted to kill Kennedy I'm maybe some you know and like it like if you had a button that you could just get everyone in the United States say you push this button the president dies how many people would have pushed it for Kennedy versus how many people would have pushed it for Trump hundreds of millions for try and this and it's happened three times and people are like those are all fake really so nobody would ever try to do that I just it's it's crazy yeah mine's broken it's not yeah there's just so much to it I tried to do my best to rush through well let me let me see if there's any other quick debunks that I missed and the thing that was so funny was this was all in an effort to win an election that he wasn't even really behind in at this point you know he was you know the they had internal polling that showed them winning which we found out kind of after the fact when Kamala's team kind of said that and I don't think Trump ever thinks he's losing anything can you imagine that guy being like shit I'm losing I'm gonna lose to Kamala Harris a woman of color I'm so scared about it I need to fake a shooting I can't imagine him doing that especially when you actually look at the forensics unless you want to say that the New York Times is now in on it which just imagine the project manager for this conspiracy they got to be just like the most overworked person. Like now I got to pay off the New York Times because they caught the freaking bullet. I don't know if you can see it, but they caught the bullet. That's a photo of the bullet, and based on that and the trajectory and the people who, you know, the person who died, we really were a centimeter away from not having this guy anymore, and for that to have been planned is just, that's ridiculous. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous, there's just no way for it to be planned that way. It's just insane. And I also wanted to remind folks what it looks like when Trump does try to plan a hoax. That's what it looks like with our super competent president, and for anyone who's not seeing this, this is the famous Sharpie gate when he just drew with a Sharpie on a map that there was an extra path that the hurricane, I guess, might take after it died or something. I don't even know what that was just so this is what it looks like when he tries to pull off a big conspiracy it's sharpie gate so I just don't think he has it in him so well I got three minutes left I don't know that's really a lot of time for a question or anything if anyone still has any nagging questions about Trump's ear let me know if not I can find the other points I didn't get to because I thought I wouldn't have time so the ear um now that ear picture is ridiculous and I And I don't think you're crazy if you look at this and think that that seems like a little much. But yeah, that was at the, you know, the, what was that, CPAC or something? No, that was at, yeah, the RNC, right after this. For one, it might have just been a little much. He might have wanted to play it up a little bit. For two, I actually, I don't even know, like, how do you bandage an ear like that? You know? Like, it's not like that crazy, I mean, like because it did, if you looked at the high It did take out this little piece of his ear right here, just a little bit, and it was consistent. Actually, there were a lot of things you might have seen, a lot of claims about Trump's ear like, oh, it healed miraculously. Those were made up. Again, I'm trying to fast forward through a bunch of the stuff that I debunked. Those actually weren't real. I read, I went, this was hard for me to believe. I went back and read his doctor's account of what it was, and it was actually pretty reasonable. The doctor, when you look at the real quotes, it was like, yeah, he lost a little skin there didn't quite go to the cartilage but it was a little bit of a wound it's like oh I saw a bunch of fake quotes about how it was worse than that um oh no I remember what I wanted to say oh I have two minutes okay here's what I want to say and I meant to lead off with this early on because I really do what was so interesting about this whole thing and I want to confess this was a thought that I had and I don't know if any of you did too but right when it happened because it's so wild to try to process how close we were to the president being killed. Right away someone said, oh, you know what, it wasn't a bullet, it was a glass fragment from the teleprompter. I remember thinking, oh yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then after a while I was like, wait, why does that make sense? Why is that more probable? But I had this emotional need, right, I had emotional need for one, for it to not be how Trump said, you know, for two, for it to not, like, I can't process that we were this close and he turned his head and it's just like so hard to fathom. And for some reason it felt better to say it was glass than not. But then when you think about it, you're like, what, that's not more likely. If you had shattered glass, how is it more likely that one little piece would do that than the bullet that's trying to hit him there, basically? And then ultimately that's another instance where there wasn't any shattered glass. There was no shattered glass if you look it up, there's no shattered glass. So that was a claim that's still out there. Oh no, it was the teleprompter. There's photos afterwards, both teleprompters, totally intact, nothing shattered. And that's our information environment, everybody. So Trump got shot in the ear. Hate to break it to you. It's real. And so please go out and debunk more things, everybody, it's not hard. Thank you.