In Today’s Tutoring, after the math component, we fleshed out our Conspiracy Theory course outline.
Developed together, we will be doing the following:
We’ll be Exploring the Mandela Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandela_Effect) as a case study in Conspiracy / Fringe Theory.
We’ll start by taking the “keystone” examples that proponents of the Mandela Effect put forward as “proof” of its validity.
We’ll then look at the best skeptical rebuttals as “proof” of its invalidity.
We’ll go over the basics of how you pull an argument apart into premises (both explicit and implicit) and conclusion(s), and will then model the arguments from both sides.
We’ll then dive into epistemology, primarily “Justified True Belief” models, particularly Foundationalism and Coherentism. We’ll explore the arguments and appeals by both sides from this standpoint.
This will likely lead into an exploration of psychology (from the “Con” side) and quantum mechanics and many-worlds interpretations in both epistemology / language (as per David Lewis https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-worlds/) and physics (as per the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation of QM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation).
We’ll likely then explore the “Conspiracy Theory Ecology”, looking at epistemological attractors and repulsors, and vectors by which any given theory mutates.
As a bonus, we might read and discuss Anathem.
Looking forward to the year 