The Source of Flat Earth Foolishness: Cognitive Infiltration

Thanks to the Internet, valuable information has become easily accessible. One doesn’t have to go to the public library to search for a book using the Dewey Decimal System to find the information he or she is seeking. We just pull out our iPhone or Smartphone and use Google to search for it. The answers often come in seconds. But sad to say, as most people now well know, there are a lot of resources on the Internet that are misleading. Some propagate falsehoods, pseudo-science, scams, heretical religious doctrines, and disinformation.

One such disinformation I especially hate is Flat-Earth. I believe it to be a disinformation campaign designed to make conspiracy researchers look foolish. By “disinformation campaign” I am talking about paid trolls on the Internet who are purposely promoting Flat Earth when they themselves know it to be false! It’s called “Cognitive Infiltration” of what the government calls “extremist groups”. Do you think I am promoting yet another conspiracy theory?

Below is taken from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein#.22Conspiracy_Theories.22_and_government_infiltration

(Cass) Sunstein co-authored a 2008 paper with Adrian Vermeule, titled “Conspiracy Theories,” dealing with the risks and possible government responses to conspiracy theories resulting from “cascades” of faulty information within groups that may ultimately lead to violence. In this article they wrote, “The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.” They go on to propose that, “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups“,[37] where they suggest, among other tactics, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.“[37] They refer, several times, to groups that promote the view that the US Government was responsible or complicit in the September 11 attacks as “extremist groups.”

The authors declare that there are five hypothetical responses a government can take toward conspiracy theories: “We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.” However, the authors advocate that each “instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).”

Who is Cass Sunstien?

Cass Robert Sunstein FBA (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012. (Taken from Wikipedia)

What do you think about this? Are you ready to mock those who question what the media says about 911 and how the World Trade Center collapsed by calling information that differs with the mainstream media, “conspiracy theory”? Or are you a Flat-Earther who dismisses ALL science and calls the notion of a globe earth part of a great conspiracy to deceive the public? In either case, your mindset and worldview may have been influenced by paid trolls who do not have your best interests at heart.