[ulfbert_inc]

>Wearing one signals to others that you’re unhinged, have a deep distrust of the government, or that you’re really worried about aliens.

>have a deep distrust of the government

sure Gizmodo, being distrustful of a massive power entity is a lunacy /s

[zamadatix]

Deep distrust in this context is more like "lizard people are running the government as a tool to control us" where the entity secretly exists for a nefarious purpose rather than the stated one and there can be no level of trust with anything from it as a result. It's not the same as general distrust which would be more like "I don't trust all politicians inherently have our best interests at heart or that they will never abuse their power" where you don't blindly take everything at face value but you also don't blindly dismiss everything as outright untrustworthy either.

[aodonnell2536]

No, I don’t believe it is. There’s much wiggle room between the two scenarios you painted.

Of course one can have a deep distrust of the government without believing it’s run by lizard people from another planet.

[zamadatix]

Neither example is meant to be implied as the only possible way of for forming that kind of distrust rather examples of logic used and types of conclusions reached. I could just have easily said "people who think lizard people want to hold us back from discovering advanced math" as a reason some deeply distrust all formal math and your response would be focusing on how there are other ways (besides lizard people) to deeply distrust all existing math - completely sidestepping the actual point point around the absurdity and unfalsifiability of the type of conclusion about deep distrust of all of math itself vs the types of conclusions normal distrust reaches (e.g. "I know not everything in a maths textbook will always be right but I can try to think about each consideration independent of a central conspiracy on all of math".

Put another way without specific example or analogy: if there is some organization as large as a nation's government (thousands upon thousands of organizations, possibly millions of people) and you can't weigh things done by said government without always invoking a single nefarious/secretive plot or group being behind it every time then you've left the realm of standard or reasonable distrust and entered the realm of unfalsifiable, unhinged thinking the article is meaning by deep distrust. Even the worst governments in our world's history aren't reasonably measured that way. The alternative to this is not blind trust, it's normal distrust GP was arguing for.

[aodonnell2536]

With due respect, I reused your own example to highlight its absurdity.

That being said, you still haven’t convinced me. I claim I t’s very possible to hold deep distrust without attributing intentions/motivations to conspiratorial actions.

The act of distrusting does not require an assumption of motivations (or a nefarious/secretive plot, as you put it).

[zamadatix]

I'm still not sure I follow on what you mean about its absurdity. If the point is deep distrust is supposed to result from some absurd reasoning then of course the example is an instance of absurdity. Highlighting that does not bring a new point of view or show how non-absurd reasoning is also supposed to lead to deep distrust in context of the article. It's one thing to say you're unconvinced, nobody can really respond take away anything from that, but it's another to explain why people should agree with your different take instead.

I think we both agree distrust doesn't require a universal underlying motivation but you're continuing to use "distrust" and "deep distrust" interchangeably without explaining why people should consider them interchangeable in context of the article.

[aodonnell2536]

There really isn’t much to be explained. I’m using the terms somewhat interchangeably because they are essentially the same thing - deep distrust is just high magnitude distrust.

One may distrust their state, but in some regards can still trust. One with deep distrust will likely never trust, their level of distrust is much higher. This does not require a conspiratorial mindset.

[rootusrootus]

Lunacy is seeing “deep state” conspiracies everywhere. That’s not healthy skepticism.

[pessimizer]

Unless you're talking about any of America's current enemies list, where not seeing state conspiracies everywhere is not healthy skepticism.

The real question is when will they start treating skepticism as a medical condition, and how can I invest now in the drugs that will be advertised to treat it?

[roenxi]

That is getting in to citation needed territory. The state in most countries controls between 30 and 60% of the GDP. It is a prime target for corruption and anyone who likes money or abusing power will be drawn to it like a magnet. Pretty much all of the major powers are spying on almost literally everything that happens on the internet and we know that reasonably stable societies can go full Nazi in less than 20 years which is a legitimately terrifying combination.

An entity with that level of power and reach deserves extreme scepticism. As we discovered through the noble sacrifice of a lot of Chinese and Russians the people in bureaucracies are quite comfortable with accidentally causing millions of needless deaths through sheer administrative efficiency in implementing bad policies.

The problem with deep state conspiracies isn't the level of scepticism, it is that the theories don't protect the people who hold them. Knowing that a bureaucrat is willing to disarm you then starve you to death ... does not help that much when the army or secret police gets involved.

[dingnuts]

> the theories don't protect the people who hold them. Knowing that a bureaucrat is willing to disarm you then starve you to death ... does not help that much when the army or secret police gets involved.

the unelected bureaucrat branch of the US government, referred to as the "deep state" by some, is so large and powerful due to funding.

The people who use the term "deep state" unironically are engaged in political activism where they are arguing for dismantling, drawing down, and defunding bureaus that they feel are out of control.

it's ironic that these activists are dismissed by you as being mere "conspiracy theories". it's like calling BLM a conspiracy theory. people who are fighting the power of unelected bureaucrats are political activists. They're just defamed by the same machine that they're opposed to. What a shock! The people in power defame and attempt to discredit those who seek to remove them from power.

Truly, if you do not understand the complaints of those who decry the undeserved and overgrown power of the deep state, you are not thinking about the position of those who hold those views long enough to understand them. You don't have to AGREE with them, but they aren't touting a conspiracy theory. The administrative state exists, is large, has power, and these are activists who want to change that.

They want to stop it before there are secret police or the army is corrupted. Of course, the CIA is secret police, and they coined the epithet "conspiracy theory" that you repeat in order to discredit these activists. Coincidence?

[stetrain]

Corruption, as in individuals working in their own interest in a way that best provides them power and/or lines their pockets, is different than a grand conspiracy that a large percentage of that state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public.

The government is not "an entity", it is layers and levels of elected and unelected officials working towards their own personal goals.

The idea that many of them do things that they shouldn't for personal gain is fairly obvious.

Ideas that huge numbers of them are working together in secret across both public and private sector to execute a singular master plan, fake a moon landing, mess with the population via brain wave broadcasts, spread chemtrails via commercial aircraft, etc. with zero hard evidence are on an entirely different level.

[pessimizer]

> a grand conspiracy that a large percentage of that state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public.

But this is a straw man. Do you know any conspiracy theorists that believe that a large percentage of the state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public, or is that just the easiest thing to discount? The conspiracy theories I hear about are about small groups of people that "control things from behind the scenes."

> The government is not "an entity", it is layers and levels of elected and unelected officials working towards their own personal goals.

This is a false dichotomy. The non-existence of government as an entity is a conspiracy theory so wild that very few people believe it. It's like saying Apple doesn't exist, just some people who happen to be sitting at desks near each other that conspiracy theorists decided to make a big deal about.

[stetrain]

> But this is a straw man. Do you know any conspiracy theorists that believe that a large percentage of the state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public, or is that just the easiest thing to discount?

The moon landing conspiracy theory is a good example. It would involve hundreds of thousands of people across public and private sector all keeping such a secret. It would even involve the governments of other countries (namely Russia, or Australia who received and relayed many of the lunar broadcasts on the US's behalf) who had their own tracking and radio equipment and could have at least attempted to discredit the mission, but did not.

Chemtrails is a common conspiracy theory as well that again would require cooperation and secret keeping among thousands across both public and private sectors.

Part of my point is that a small number of people keeping a secret for a short time is plausible, but as the number of people and length of time scale up it becomes less plausible due to human nature.

In countries with extreme state corruption, secret police, rigged elections, people being "disappeared", etc. those things are not secrets, and the problem is not a lack of evidence of the corruption.

The citizens know that the secret police exist and that you are at risk of being detained by the secret police for publicly stating forbidden positions. The citizens know the autocrat will always win each election. They are just powerless to change it.