The username actually refers to an old They Might Be Giants song.
They lyrics of the song tell the tale of a man who goes through life being paranoid about a massive, organized government operation spying on him personally.
In the end, he's murdered and disappeared by his town's local mayor because he's inconvenient, the mayor's just a thug, and there is no shadowy overarching organization watching over him.
People believe in conspiracies because they feel the alternative (disorder, ad-hoc metastability, and a world full of people with short-term views making short-term moves to benefit their short-term ends impacting other folks with no particular plan, just simple, stupid apathy) is scarier. But most evil (and good) in the world is done by regular folks with partial knowledge doing their damnedest to survive, and we perceive patterns because we're pattern-perceiving creatures.
shadowgovt|3 years ago
They lyrics of the song tell the tale of a man who goes through life being paranoid about a massive, organized government operation spying on him personally.
In the end, he's murdered and disappeared by his town's local mayor because he's inconvenient, the mayor's just a thug, and there is no shadowy overarching organization watching over him.
People believe in conspiracies because they feel the alternative (disorder, ad-hoc metastability, and a world full of people with short-term views making short-term moves to benefit their short-term ends impacting other folks with no particular plan, just simple, stupid apathy) is scarier. But most evil (and good) in the world is done by regular folks with partial knowledge doing their damnedest to survive, and we perceive patterns because we're pattern-perceiving creatures.
LarryMullins|3 years ago
> "In general, there's no particular need to make the list of chemicals public."
vGPU|3 years ago
One may or may not be true. One is demonstratively false.