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veryday, several times a day, emails claiming that someone wishes to give me money end up in the junk folder of my email box. They vary, some are quite clever, my favorites are from British barristers, and they have one thing in common: I wish all of them were true.
None of them are true, but how I wish the UN peacekeepers had picked my non-profit as their favorite charity for Syrian gold.
They do not gain plausibility merely by multiplication. They are not independent testimony from credible sources. For all I know, they could be variations on a single email scam from some source deep in the heart of Someplace whose Name I Wish I Could Pronounce.
While I once bought a timeshare, I have generally avoided scams, because philosophy, a discipline steeped in Socratic skepticism, and the wisdom of West Virginia have united in making me dubious of remarkable claims. West Virginians know exploitation. When western Virginia, the slavers in the rest of the state exploited us. When we became West Virginia, corporations came and looted our state, while governor after governor ended up in jail for payoffs. If someone came to help, we assumed that they were shooting a film to mock us, write us up as interesting sociological cases, or somehow use us.
If you get used to the paint being stripped off your car from the Carbide and Dupont air, you learn a thing or two about big promises. Many things we wish for are probably not true.
The good news is that some promises we wish are true are true. So how can we avoid the grift, the lies, the oversell?
Here are five infallible signs that, sadly, probably mean this great promise is not so true.
Big Claims that Run Away from Debate in the Appropriate Forum:
If there is evidence that Bigfoot is in the forest, collect the data and publish that data in an appropriate peer reviewed journal. If the journals are close minded (this might happen), then put the data out to the public. Critics will come. Interact with those critics in some manner.
You can tell a scam when they dismiss critics with labels and do not respond to the criticism.
“The medical establishment rejects my cure,” the man says, “because. . . .”
Maybe.
But when specific problems with the general claims are made, the scam artist or fool simply will repeat the original claim without responding in detail to the criticism.
Claims do not change, but evidence shifts:
The one thing all the scam letters have in common is that I am getting a huge windfall. Sadly, the reason I am getting the windfall shifts from letter to letter. The claim is the same: I am rich. The reasons range from a UN gold cache, a Nigerian civil war, and a dying British lady. This was just today.
Of course, a philosophical idea, say idealism, may have multiple reasons for why some philosophers think it is true, but idealist philosophers* interact with critics in public. They develop arguments over time, responding to criticism but do not just throw up arguments, get a criticism, and move one to the next argument, quickly abandoning the original idea.
A scam claim will look for any old evidence and push all the “stuff” out the door at once. Most will fail quickly, so the humbug will trot out totally different evidence.
People otherwise inclined to support the claim do not:
My lawyer and finance friends would love me to get a windfall and become rich. They would even benefit as I would take my business to them, but when I show my scam letters to them, they frown and point out misuse of basic legal and business terms.
Check out sane allies and see if they are willing to defend an idea or if only people in on the payola are pushing the idea or program.
In politics, one way to know an idea is fringe or very unlikely is when people that have been sane allies in the past start warning us that we are making a mistake.
The claim keeps being wrong about basic things you can check for yourself:
Recently, I saw a claim about a website that I visit a good bit. The claim was that this website had retracted the “call” on a particular state in the Presidential election. I knew this was false, because the state had never been called. That made me dubious about the rest of the things this person was saying about politics.
Everyone makes mistakes about some facts, I have and will again. However, when the people we know that are in the area where the claim is being made (government, medicine, finance, law, religion) are dubious, then we must be skeptical. Christians wish we had found the Ark of the Covenant, but nobody I know who is an expert and also wishes we have found the Ark believes we have found the Ark.
If you hear something about the pandemic, here is a basic rule: ask your own doctor. Ask all the questions you can. If you are not sure about his or her opinions, find another medical doctor at church or in your community and ask them. Go local. Check out the details.
The Use of Odd Methods of Communication:
Mayhap the Irish lottery will contact me about my winning via my email, but I doubt that this is the way the government informs people of vast winnings. Maybe mainstream conservative media outlets (Wall Street Journal) or liberal (New York Times) are not willing to publish vast breaking news, but getting major, world changing news, from a Twitter account with a few thousand followers created this month should give pause.
Run down the information. Where did it start? Perhaps Internet atheism would be well served if skepticism about major philosophical breakthroughs (“Theism refuted!”) occurring at “Skykingissilly666” became more common.
We all wish to believe what we wish to believe. Sometimes wishes do come true. Often good news is real. However, in a world where attention can be monetized, that click on a site matters to them, then the temptation is to make things up and tell us what we wish to hear.
This information gets transmitted by people we do trust, who did not check the source or use their God-given skepticism.
If Eve and Adam had doubted the serpent more, while he was selling them a convenient view that fit what they desired, then the cosmos would be a better place. Let’s all work to discern better!
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*I am not an idealist.
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