Author: Laura Slot

Assumptions are Dangerous

~ Laura Slot

Especially for the Targets of PsyOps: You & Me

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you’d made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.”

-Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy

Last time I wrote about What we can know and epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. This time I write about the value of the ‘working thesis’. A working thesis is the opposite of an assumption. It is a proposition that you assess as MOST LIKELY true, however you do not yet have full evidence or an inner conviction to pour it into concrete and make it an axiom, a premise. As a result, all information that reaches you is absorbed in a relatively neutral manner. You subsequently categorize the information in the ‘pro’ or ‘against’ argument list for your working thesis.

Our world today, and the high levels of fear in it, is fuelled by assumptions.

The method of working theses requires a level of emotional detachment, such as the absence of fear, hope or wishful thinking, and it also requires heart-brain coherence: an energetic equilibrium between thinking and feeling, between ratio and intuition. It also follows the rules of logic as they were formulated most eloquently by the ancient Greek philosophers.

During these times, in which Western citizens are the targets of a sophisticated, enduring psychological operation (PsyOp), I think it’s wise to hold almost everything as a working thesis instead of making assumptions.

During this PsyOp, keep in mind that all information that empowers individuals, solves major world problems and limits human suffering is seldom reaching people.

When transforming your assumptions into working theses, consider two fundamental topics:

  1. Human consciousness: Space and time is not fundamental to consciousness, meaning that, MOST LIKELY, energy exists far beyond what our senses process. What we observe is similar to an internet browser, a purposefully simplified interface but there’s plenty of code behind it. Teleportation, telepathy and other phenomena that operate beyond space and time could therefore potentially exist. Some examples of sources: Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, entangled particles Nobel Prize Physics 2022.
  2. Human civilization is MOST LIKELY much older and much more important and advanced than our history books have been suggesting up until now. This working thesis claims that our current society has been dangerously built on assumptions that urgently need to be reassessed. The amount of arguments supporting this thesis is rapidly accumulating. Sources: Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson and many others.

To quote (Zoroastrian) Freddie Mercury, “This could be heaven for everyone, this world could be free, this world could be one” – never stop dreaming, because nature is abundant and infinite and so are you.

Revenge of the Epistemologists

~ Laura Slot

How to Acquire Knowledge?

What can we know? Perhaps not an uncontroversial question nowadays, yet an important one. Right after his speech at the Heritage Foundation Tucker Carlson said that, in today’s world, we should only cling to what we can smell. Hold on to printed books, he said, implying that it’s wise to approach anything digital with relative emotional detachment.

Aside from our senses, which are obviously important in acquiring knowledge, there are two specific prerequisites to learning that are urgently lacking in Western societies: humility and coherent emotionality. Our individual growth is stunted by our own culture and this process is further fuelled by the ongoing information war.

Socrates is one of the well-known Greek philosophers who worked on this theme, the philosophy of knowledge, also known as epistemology. The more we know, the more we realize how much we don’t know, therefore true wisdom means knowing that we know nothing. If we follow Socrates in his beliefs, humility is both a prerequisite and a consequence for anyone setting out to learn something.

Humility is relatively uncommon in the Western world today.

Another basic ingredient of knowledge acquisition comes from the field of physics. Humans are electromagnetic beings and the heart receives and emits energetic frequencies. The mind functions as a processor of the information first received by the heart. Curiosity, the seed of learning and directly related to humility, may be one of these signals. The heart sends many more signals to the brain than the other way around. In order to ‘know’ something through higher cognitive functions, energetic coherence between the heart and the brain is necessary. Without it, there also can’t be much discernment, the ability to separate right from wrong. In short, you can’t think clearly without feeling.

Feeling is relatively uncommon in the Western world today.

The absence of healthy, balanced emotionality and humility in Western societies is sabotaging our ability to think and learn. This has created fertile grounds for super-powered propaganda machines and the advanced psyops in the information war waged in the Western world, which nobody has described better than writer Jacob Siegel in his piece A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century. It’s important to note that the lack of humility and emotionality is in turn being fuelled by coordinated manipulation, hence it is both a cause and an effect of successful propaganda and indoctrination, on top of the existing cultural predisposition.

There is a growing group of people worldwide who are tirelessly repeating the findings of their research despite the severe challenges of the information war: Intrinsically motivated epistemologists who still dare to keep on asking and answering the question, What can we know? It is a diverse group of professors, scientists, independent journalists, researchers and other citizens, who, like me, are worried about the increase in centralization, control and manipulation of information flows.I often think about how to provide a counterbalance. While a large part of responsibility lies with the well-trained truth seekers mentioned above, all Western individuals have a responsibility to free themselves from the sociocultural shackles that prevent them from growing and learning. It’s high time.

On the Denial of Evil

~ Laura Slot

When Moral Relativism Becomes Nihilism

Back in 2007, Argentinian native Máxima Zorreguieta, who married Dutch crown-prince Willem-Alexander in 2002, angered many Dutch people by saying she ‘searched for the Dutch identity’ for several years but had not found it, and that ‘the Dutchman does not exist’.

This display of moral nihilism can be seen as an attempt to push so-called ‘progress’ past moral boundaries and cultural principles, to tease people into questioning the existence of their very identity. Today, 15 years after Máxima’s speech and not coincidentally, Western public debates often revolve around whether women exist.

By Steven Daluz: 
www.stevendaluz.com

Moral relativism has become part of a wider, more dangerous trend: the general denial of evil. If the Dutch or women don’t exist, the concept of ‘evil’ versus ‘virtue’ may not exist either. This view has both covertly and openly been promoted by governments and corporations for decades, to the point where it has been highly normalized.

There is plenty of evidence that moral nihilism is risky business, especially in historical perspective. Moral nihilism implies that ‘virtue’ and ‘evil’ can never be defined because it always depends on perspectives and circumstances. Those in power tend to promote this worldview because it eliminates scepticism and scrutiny.

Especially in The Netherlands, there exists a socio-cultural predisposition of moral relativism tipping over into apathy and nihilism. Free trade and neutrality have long been well-known Dutch traditions, however, during the German occupation no other country in Europe lost so many Jewish people relative to its population. Much evidence exists that ‘evil’ was not only underestimated but that its very existence was often denied.

Today, after relativism, apathy and nihilism, many people rightfully feel that humans urgently need something to believe in and to stand for. This requires a return of a definition of evil and virtue. Politicians and corporations are using tools like propaganda and censorship to provide this: believe in the new battle for ‘climate’, and/or the new battle for ‘social justice’, and/or the ‘fight against Covid’ and/or the new fight for freedom and democracy through appointed enemies like Russia and Trump. Existential threats and crises are being thrown at the public in a desperate attempt to direct attention away from corrupt politicians and towards the causes they control and from which they profit.

At the end of every detour there is a crossroads. Increasing quality of life through ‘progress’ has become impossible without ‘conservative’ values. Do Western societies keep moving towards even more apathy and nihilism or will they rediscover the practical meaning of ethical values and principles, not those dictated by politicians and princesses but those found within the soul of each individual?

Footnote: Dutch writer Hans Stolp mentions in his book “Judas: the Way to Inner Unity” (2006, in Dutch only) that the denial of the existence of evil (not evil itself) is a dangerous trend in modern societies. I recommend his book to anyone who wants to read about different spiritual philosophies on ethics.

All Talk, No Action

~ Laura Slot

Journalism Since the Great Financial Crisis

In early 2009 I attended a memorable panel discussion at Columbia University’s Journalism School in New York. A handful of elite journalists who were trained in finance, statistics and data came to talk to about fifty of us students. The main questions were: What could journalists have done better in reporting on the financial sector before the crash? Why hadn’t we, the best reporters in the world who were writing the first draft of history, seen the crash coming?

These questions were thoroughly answered but courageous action was never taken. A course correction never happened. The Great Financial Crisis may have been the last chance to stand up for what’s right: for journalists to be writing for the reader, and the reader only, the hard-working man or woman who simply wants to know what happened in the world while they were busy doing their jobs. It’s a main reason why the public’s trust in the media today is at an all-time low.

Some of my Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism notes

The first of four main lessons I learned at that panel discussion was that journalists had been too meek: we had not asked the tough questions to the extremely powerful bank managers. We had not been courageous enough, and as a result ‘banksters’ had gotten away easily.

Secondly, we had not taken the time to learn about the rapidly increasing and morally dubious complexity of the financial sector. Journalists had not understood the meaning of Credit Default Swaps, Mortgage Backed Securities, Tranches and so forth.

Thirdly, we had become too easily convinced that major rating agencies such as Moody’s and S&P were trustworthy, doing their jobs properly and informing the public correctly. We had been too lazy to double check.

Finally, journalists were simply far too alpha trained instead of bèta: we were not well-versed enough in reading raw data to be able to properly report on statistics and finance: we needed to learn that statistics can be easily portrayed in the media in many possible perspectives, including deceptive ways.

All these valuable lessons went straight to my heart, and they have stayed there ever since. I interned in the office building where Lehman Brothers had been only a few months prior, and a few years after that I became responsible for the production of the Dutch book translation of Michael Lewis’ bestseller ‘The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine’. I kept on following the developments in finance closely ever since that panel discussion. It worried me to see no improvements in the financial sector, but it worried me more to see little to no improvements in journalism.

Another major development coincided with the demise of quality reporting. Google and Facebook took almost full control of the online global content creation industry around 2014, which includes news reporting. This article from Harvard Business Review from January 2015 describes this trend well. The Big Tech companies were able to grow fast through allowing everyone to use their product for free and by allowing all content, in other words, by being a platform. After that milestone was reached, they deceptively and perversely transformed into all-powerful omnipresent publishers. It was the nail in journalism’s coffin: its business model was dead and its soul was now sold.

Meanwhile, a lot of dirt kept coming out about the structural and existentially destructive corruption within the financial sector. Heroes like Carmen Segarra revealed this. Some important links you’ll find in that article don’t work anymore. The information is out there but it’s being censored, removed, memory-holed and there is little to no journalistic counter force. Our fate is in the hands of corrupt billionaires until the media reinvents itself and decentralizes. The financial sector has never been cleaned up, on the contrary, it gets bailed out until it crashes again, but the perfect storm is caused by journalism never stepping up, shortly after I graduated it crumbled to dust.

Dutch Media’s Unforced Errors

~ Laura Slot

Balancing the Scales after Deceit

A law of nature dictates that energy always tries to balance itself, like a scale that’s always moving to the middle, which is the most natural, comfortable and peaceful position: homeostasis. Call it physics, biology, whatever you like, but this law also applies to all the energy that humans put out into the world. Today, in the Dutch media landscape, the scales have been tipped toward a gigantic imbalance that can only be restored by building new media initiatives.

For more than a decade, Dutch media brands have been gradually diluting their ethical standards, not unlike Google removing in 2015 the ‘Don’t be evil’ code of conduct that had defined their company culture since 2000. In media and technology, slowly letting go of inconvenient or unprofitable standards has been an important trend happening mostly behind the scenes.

The public didn’t know about any of this moral decay until it started to become increasingly obvious. People noticed when magazine advertisements started to look more and more like news articles, or when ‘paid promotion’ became increasingly finer print, or when once esteemed newspapers started writing click-bait social media posts. Or when the most trusted journalists started contradicting their own reporting, and people verified with their own eyes and ears that the news was either wrong, leaving important facts and stories out, or straight-up lying. Or when increasingly hateful and divisive columnists triggered people’s emotions to get more clicks. Or when the leaders of media companies started saying out loud that sometimes, it’s best not to question the government and that people are not always able to think for themselves. Or when even the media’s rectifications shifted blame rather than take responsibility.

It’s not a coincidence that these developments unfolded at a time in which smaller national media companies were acquired by multinationals. Ninety percent of all Dutch media brands, including websites and local outlets, are part of Mediahuis and DPG, two large Belgian conglomerates. Recently, ANP, the main news wire service in The Netherlands, was bought by an almost-billionaire who says fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of information are a threat.

It’s also not a coincidence that the moral decay of Dutch media unfolded at a time in which two main companies conquered almost all global market share of websites that people use to connect, share and interact with each other. Media companies may create content, but social media companies have gained so much power that the media has lost all independence regarding distribution and reach. In other words, media and technology are simply holding each other at gunpoint.

The good ‘news’ is that all imbalances are eventually restored. The bad ‘news’ is that balance can be restored only after the old is torn down and the new is built. The time that passes in between is like winter, a power vacuum full of unpredictable risk. That’s another beautiful law of nature: everything is cyclical.