HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO BELIEVE JUST ABOUT ANYTHING/Even That Alien Craft
are Well-Documented!!

by Rick Thorne

Dedicated to those who have believed or have convinced people to
believe any of the various ludicrous ideas that keep humanity from
evolving into a more knowlegeable and worthy species.

Contents:
1. Encouraging Blind Belief: General Principles
2. Being a Blind Believer

1. Encouraging Blind Belief: General Principles

- Be loud.  Make your statements bold and without a hint of the quiet
dignity and humility that becomes people with the credentials you don't
have and never will.  If you're on Usenet, use all caps in your posting
titles.  If you have a web site, use the largest boldfaced font your
web development tools will allow.  If you speak, make sure you look
like you're insane.  Point often and wag your finger!  It'll get some
of the people you're not telling to get out of your yard to follow you.

- Be adamant.  Remember, you're an advocate - a salesman for all that
is right enough to be undeniable even if it's completely unsupportable!
  Don't let those well-researched and well-educated and knowledgeable
science people bowl you over - you're right, even if you're irrefutably
wrong!  Make sure people know where you stand, and make sure they know
other poeple are completely wrong even if their evidence is so
overwhelming it would sway even you if you listened for once in your
miserable life!  Since your conviction may be the only leg you have to
stand on, make sure you stand on it firmly!!

- Appeal to fear.  Patriotism, family, traditions, survivalism,
religion, and slavery.  These aren't just nouns or collective human
concepts - they're weapons, friend, weapons.  They're instruments of
mass distraction in the hands of the leader of the blind.  You're a
natural bully, as a leader of the fearful blind, and in this capacity
your best friend is intimidation, and fear is intimidation's greatest
ally!  Once you get really good at being a fear-monger, have some fun!
If possible, combine two or more of those great collectives!  Here's an
example: "if we continue to allow aliens to intrude into the
government, they'll destroy the Constitution, enslave your children,
encourage inter-galactic marriage, and re-write the Bible/Koran/The
Prophet/Book of the Mormon/daVinci Code."  The possibilities are
endless!!

- Create the conspiracy, then denounce it.  be sure to drive home the
idea that everyone who isn't for you is against you!  make it as big
big big as you can; "those scientists aren't just collegues; they're
disinformation agents from the UN who want your DNA to conduct unholy
experiments!"

- Declare yourself the expert.  Once you do this, 20% of the population
will follow you without hestitation.  Mind you, these are the same
people who believe Rush Limbaugh is only doing it for the good of
democracy, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere.

- Declare all opponents to be phonies.  If you combine this concept
with the fear aspect we discussed earlier, you can start your own
religion.

- Keep the message simple.  It's OK to quote some lunatic with a
doctored 50-year old Polaroid somewhere and call it a scientific study.
 It's even OK to make up a ridiculous story, call it authoritative, and
cite it with authority and call it evidence.  Please remember
something, tho: science and all that intellectual noise that you and
90% of the people who follow you will never have the ability to
understand just muddies the water.  The principle here is simple: if
you're promoting a crackpot idea, your base constituency is probably
either simpletons or undisciplined people who really don't do much
research, so you must keep the message simple.  Also, be sure to
misquote and present only relevant parts of important philospohical
principles like Occam's Razor and the scientific method (e.g.,
"evolution is all like complicated and stuff, and ancient alien
landings is a simpler way to describe how humans came to the earth, so
according to Occam's Razor humans must, like, be of alien origin").
Likewise, only recognize the parts of real scientific studies that make
your point.  For example, of you read a census that says "16% of the
people in Southern California are illegal aliens", leave off the world
"illegal" and make sure people are advised the study came from the
census bureau.  You'll be amazed at how many people will believe it
without another word!

- When all else fails, make yourself the victim.  This is an age old
defense for people getting the snot beaten out of them intellectually:
you're not losing the argument hands-down, your opponent is like, waa,
a big meanie who's abusive and unfair and poor poor me all I want is
for people to listen to me, waaaa, and this guy who has an order of
magnitude more intelligence and has actually been there first hand to
see the evidence is using his intellect and erudition and knowledge and
it's it's it's waaaaa so mean waaaaaaaa.  If you question the potential
power of this concept, look at the religious right in America; it's not
just a tool with them, it's most of their resume.  Saying you're sick
of Christians being stigmatized by the Left is a golden-paved road to
Congress in some districts.  In these newsgroups, Ed Conrad isn't a
fringe goofball - he's a victim of a deeply-entrenched selfish and
elitist scientific cabal.  He offers no transcripts of any real debate
he's tried to have with anyone with any credentials in front of an
impartial panel, but he's still being oppressed by the man.  Art
Wholeflaffer isn't a crackpot who quotes unverifiable studies - he's a
victim of a corrupt scientific community that's all in the conspiracy
together.  He's never had his doors kicked down by this
government/commercial he cartel he claims has it in for him, and that
same cartel lets him post freely in Usenet and has for 15 years even
thought they could've stopped him anytime they wanted to, but just
because he doesn't have a single phaser scar to prove it doesn't mean
they're not dying to take it to him!

2. Being a Blind Believer.

It's simple:

- Anyone who's loud and adamant is right, especially if they believe
like you do.
- Anyone who scares you must be right, and you should follow them
because you're going to go to hell or die or you're children will be
vectors for an alien invasion if you don't.  This is  especially true
if the person scaring you is loud and adamant.
- Anyone who denounces a conspiracy must be right, especially if
they're loud and adamant.
- Anyone who says something simple, especially if it's something you
believe, is right.  What the hell do scientists know?  Just because
they defined all the principles that enables engineers to create the
technologies that you enjoy and use doesn't mean they know  anything.
It's especially convincing if the simple message is expressed loudly
and adamantly.
- Anyone who follows your beliefs and claims to be a victim is right.
They don't need to prove it - just claim it.  Victimization is, after
all, the basis of all conspiracies, and conspiracy appeals to fear
which is, again, the bully's greatest weapon against you, the person
who's just dying for some pathetic knob to hang on to.  It's especially
convincing if the alleged victim is also loud and adamant.

Rick
www.ricksongs.com