My question goes to @luc: with your method of thinking, outside of the b/w box, discarding "Team 1" and "Team 2" - would you be able to formulate some words, for direction? I consider much your push for remaining flexible, and understand it's the big basic - not critallizing any fixed idea. This would boil down to "dynamism" and "transiency" of the phenomenon observed. It cannot be directly approached in 3D terms, or with the usual logics.
Well one thing I try to do is to "feel out the truth" - telling myself the word "truth" while at the same time letting my mind take in the information. It doesn't automatically produce the correct take of course, but it helps me re-adjust to what matters, which is trying to see the situation playing out as best as I can, as opposed to getting swept up by the emotional drama.
Secondly, it's crucial to understand people's thought processes when reading their takes, to understand their premises and blind spots, as opposed to just reacting emotionally.
The Cs taught us to ask open-ended questions and avoid pre-formed conclusions. You can use that training to detect hidden premises in people's takes, because everyone has their "hard premises" that inform their reasoning (in fact most people "reason backwards" from their pre-formed conclusions).
For example, from Shellenberger's text (and also from what I know about him), it's clear that he doesn't really want to "go there" when it comes to Jews and their tribal dynamics. Further, his mind seems incapable of entertaining the idea that Epstein might still be alive, which would explain for example why he wrote a will before his "death" (which Shellenberger takes as evidence he did commit suicide). He also has read Political Ponerology (I believe), which gives context to his warning of emotional reactions/moral panic as opposed to "clinically" study the phenomenon. He also seems to have little understanding of how modern intelligence agencies/elite networks operate - which is something Whitney Webb pointed out as well. So once you figured out these premises, you can understand why he says the things he says, and react less emotionally to the points you disagree with, which allows you to focus on the substance, and the interesting points, whether you end up fully/partially agreeing with it or not. The fact is, even resoning backward from pre-formed conclusions can provide useful information, such as certain facts that people with different pre-formed conclusions avoid.
Speaking of Whitney Webb, you can do a similar thing with her response to Shellenberger (that
@Beau posted above). For example, the fact that she opens her text with this (as opposed to the substance of her argument):
I just think it's really interesting that the leading outlet pushing the "Epstein Mythology" narrative is Compact Magazine, which is funded by Soros' Open Societies and Peter Thiel. Thiel has a lot of egg on his face with respect to Epstein given the releases of the last 12 months or so and Soros' nephew Peter is a circled name in Epstein's black book (i.e. accused of actively enabling sex trafficking by Epstein's former butler).
...tells you a lot about her premises and reasoning. She is a "conspiratorial dot connector" whose mind first and foremost goes to things like controlled opposition, orchestration of everything, etc. She simply assumes that there is a direct connection between Thiel or Soros funding Compact, Shellenberger's association with it, Thiel and Soros appearing in the Epstein drop, and therefore Shellenberger being part of a PR campaign to whitewash Epstein and therefore by proxy whitewash themselves. Notice that it's a pretty strong statement when spelled out like this, for which she doesn't provide evidence - it's an assumption, a premise. (She may provide evidence for the funding, but that is a very different thing.) Her story could be true, but so could alternative explanations, such as for example simply Shellenberger's own premises and blindspots which could explain his particular take.
Teasing out these premises and thought processes then allows you to focus on the more interesting and substantive claims Webb makes (of which there are quite a few in her response) without forcing you to "swallow it all". In fact, Webb does lay bare some of Shellenberger's "hard premises", and Shellenberger lays bare some of the more conspiracy-minded "hard premises", which makes this exercise even more useful.
Pizza is popular on the Hill.
