It is funny tho that Russia's attitude lately is that of surviving a nuclear war. With their underground complex's designed to survive multiple hits, and apparently covertly providing our enemies with the means to produce nuclear weapons, they seem to anticipate a war. Im not sitting in the Kremlin so I dont really know what they see happening. They could know that the US is bound by treaties to defend a few places that are currently very politically unstable, and that could easily boil over. However, Russia has been building their first strike capability as well, not to mention they rapidly published their new ICBM capable of defeating US missile defense.
They could only be carrying their current attitude as a just in case, or they could see current trends in events being likely to lead to the need [for] nuclear conflict.

Also I read in an article about one of their underground complexes that only 20% of Russia's population lives in cities, whereas 80% in the US. Their civilization already has a significantly higher chance of survival.

> to add to what I previously said about revolution... I guess it should be recognized that before we were America we were technically part of England, until we gave them the finger in revolt and declared ourselves a country. And the same thing happened then, the lower and middle class overthrew the upper class British.

[edit on 19-3-2005 by apc]

I'm a few months late, but I do wish to join your club!
- tass

A John Titor haters club? I think you need to get out more, and preferably, a life.

-Chris

Now that it's 2006, I am going to get a bit more aggressive about this.

A John Titor haters club? I think you need to get out more, and preferably, a life.

-Chris

Probably. I'm going hiking later, so I'll let you know how I feel.

Legend, do you agree with JT? Do you think you'd be better off dead? You did read the story, right?

Personally I think meme theory is very interesting. The rise of the Internet has opened humans to a bit more data than they can actually process. The Internet (1995-ish) was only just preceded by the rise of the personal computer (1980-ish). Together, they have created an overflow of information. Humans are having a hard time processing this information glut and they're giving up mentally. They are believing more and more stupid #.

Thousands see TV commercials daily which encourage them to become tech-enabled. [Dude --yer gettin' a Dell!"]
Thousands of new people are logging onto the Internet every day.
Thousands of new people are reading ATS every day.

What's the first thing they see at the top of the discussion list? Why it's JT, the Internet's most successful mental virus! This only discredits the Internet in general.

I wonder if discrediting the Internet is anyone's goal? Hmm... What do you think?

Nuke war is a possibility which I've posted about on ATS. Most of the actions Titor advises are good. Nine Nations is a good book. But, this is my point: The JT story has just enough truth in it to distract a curious population who is now becoming tech enabled into thinking that a nuclear first strike from Russia is our solution and that psuedo-socialism exists after that war. That's crazy talk.

If I were to assume the position of a crazed anti-communist conspiracy theorist, I'd even say that the JT story could be seen as a well crafted mental weapon, meant to distract and cripple a gullible American populace as they try to emerge into the Information Age.


[edit on 2-1-2006 by smallpeeps]

oh!oh! oh!

*waves hand in the air*

Can i be president of this club? pleeeeese? *puppy eyes*

Infinite Said::
Can i be president of this club? pleeeeese? *puppy eyes*

Yes. First job is roll call.


...Oh, and in bumping my own post I reveal my intial distrust of ATS. After a few more weeks of reading, I chilled out and realized how much fun it is. One day I'll spend more time in BTS also.

smallpeepes Said::
I find it interesting that this thread was moved to Below Top Secret >> RANT when the Titor story is CLEARLY a conspiracy subject. Maybe ATS profits too much from the Titor that they don't want it to disappear? Too many new visitors?

This Titor thing could have a negative affect on America if enough people are fooled by it. The Titor piece is clearly anti-American. Interesting that ATS wants to squash this thread.

Man, chill out, willya! Damn!

Almost a year after that initial anger and now I know, ATS rocks! Lesson to newbies for sure.



[edit on 2-1-2006 by smallpeeps]

10th post from the bottom, page two of this thread. You never replied to it, or even commented on it.

I actually forgot that this thread existed, but then saw it in the "most recent topics" and thought, "hey, I may as well". So, I've re-read through the whole thing, and I've found where we seem to differ fundamentally.

You're looking at this as a story, I'm looking at this as a possibility. And I mean, hey, that's okay, right? To each their own. But there's a problem with it.

If I walk up to you, and tell you "A car just crashed, and a person died because of it." Then you have no real choice but to accept to truth. You can not look at me and say "I do not like a world where people die. This is a bad idea. The car didn't crash, people didn't die. You're lying, because I don't want people to die." - That just isn't the way it works.

If I walk up to you, and say "So what if a car crashed and a person died because of it?" Then you have the ability to say "I don't want the car to crash, it's a bad idea. I'm not participating in this."

When you look at "The Whole John Titor Thing" and immediately dismiss it as an obvious construction, which it may well be, but, as I feel I've shown to a pretty solid degree, isn't guaranteed to be, you overlook dealing with the consequences, and jump to mocking the plot.

You say things like "I don't like the idea of a revolution occuring" - well, if it's a hypothetical construction, you have every right to feel that way, but it isn't necessarily. If it's the actual truth, then you can not deny it because it doesn't sit well with you. If it actually happens, then you can not say that it is poorly thought out, because it's the truth. A great, great quote from Mark Twain, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't." - it is often paraphrased as "The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense."

You attack the sense of the JT events/claims, but you can only really do this if they are false. You can not prove something is false by assuming it is false. You must assume it is true and wait for something to prove it cannot be.

That's science.

You can hate it, and loathe what it says, and groan at the message it contains, and seethe over the people who are 'infected' by it, but if it's the real truth, then you're the one standing in the way.

Don't forget: while it hasn't been proven true, it hasn't been proven false, so we shouldn't take sides and polarise yet. I hope you don't just ignore this post too.

Originally posted by Viendin
10th post from the bottom, page two of this thread. You never replied to it, or even commented on it.

Okay, okay. Viendin, here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson. I want you to read it closely:

"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors. It is a melancholy truth that a surpression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood" -- Thomas Jefferson

...Do you get what Tom is saying about newspapers (the main media of his day)? He's saying, they're so full of lies, that it's almost not worth reading them. That's my point. If you want to abandon the Internet to prostitution of falsehood, then go for it. You'll not be alone, I'm sure.

Anyway, I will respond to your first post:

As I do keep saying, before September 11th he was talking about missing WMD's and people's repealed rights. He was talking about the unification of the EU into something far more wholly realised, about China being a major superpower, about Russia moving backwards in America-friendliness. About a new major instability in the Middle East that America's involvement in would show a horrific foreign policy adopted by America, and sow the seeds of the civil war.

It is clear that whomever authored the JT myth was clever. That's not in question. They correctly chose several elements that seem to be prophetic. It is a well crafted meme.

WMDS: Guessing that nonexistent WMDs would be used as a pretext for Iraq War II was not excessively difficult. It was known by many people that Iraq had abandoned its WMD programs while it was simultaneously known that WMDs would be the pretext for the next invasion. This was known before 2001. It's obvious to any strategic mind that WMDs are the only big enough pretext to go back into Iraq, which any idiot could have guessed is what BushCo would do. The JT author guessed an obvious plan.

I am wondering if you are one of those people who thinks history happens by accident. Do you think Iraq and the WMD excuse just sort of happened? That it wasn't planned ahead of time? If so, you might want to spend some time looking at actual conspiracies rather than fabricated hoaxes.

EU/China/Russia/MidEast: Guessing that the EU would come together is not tough. They'd wanted a competetive oil currency for years. China and Russia are still communist countries and only fools would expect them to be anything except the enemies of the US. Did you believe Russia was our friend? Sorry if so. I could see how you'd elevate JT's story if you thought Russia were our buddies.

The WMD's were missing - and those words didn't even exist in pre-9/11 America.

I disagree. Please don't make me find pre-2001 ref's to the term 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' because I don't feel like it. They exist. The term WMD was used prior to the JT story. Again, if you think otherwise then I could see how you'd give the JT author credit for inventing it. Again, like I said, there really was only one plan for going back into Iraq and that was the shadow of WMDs, and the JT author guessed right. It wasn't tough, really.

A lot of people are very unhappy, and the world isn't a very stable thing right now.

So the future was going to be rosy after 2001, and the JT author was an oracle because they figured out things might become much worse, globally? Uh, there are only a few thousand books which spell a change of world affairs when 2K rolled up. Where were you? Little thing called Y2K had everyone freaked out. For the JT author to predict doom circa 2005 wasn't a tough one. I don't know ANYBODY who thought 2K would mean a better world. Most of my informed friends realized things would get bad. Does that make us time travellers?

Now, all that is interesting coincidence, and that's all. I'm just saying that regardless of how 'wrong' Titor's been regarding specifically Waco-like events, and regardless of how many little holes you poke in his story, or how many hater's clubs you start, he's made his mark, and he's been remarkably correct about what's happened to us so far.

Remarkably correct. Uh huh. Yeah.

Even if he's wrong, which he could (and likely will) be, then the story will be known as false, and remembered with interest as something to have 'happened on the early internet' that was never disproven over 5 years until the actual prophecies became undoubtedly incorrect. At that point, people could study this.

Sure, it could happen that way, but the JT author said that Y2K didn't happen in his timeline, so the JT story will surely linger for several years due to this litttle twist. Since Y2K didn't happen for us, that means JT might still be right in a couple years, eh? Our timeline is different from JT's as has been mentioned by Titorites in other threads.

So the anti-American JT story will continue to be fed into people's heads and discussion of civil war will continue.

And for all of it, I don't care. But there's still a minute possibility that this story is real, and until you present some piece of rock solid proof, I'm not going to let you kill it. Regardless of whether I like it (I don't want to die) I won't see it removed simply because you don't.

Oh I cannot kill it. Memes like JT will always find fertile brain matter in which to germinate.

You want the JT story to be true for what reason, exactly?

Now here's your recent post:

You're looking at this as a story, I'm looking at this as a possibility. And I mean, hey, that's okay, right? To each their own. But there's a problem with it.

If I walk up to you, and tell you "A car just crashed, and a person died because of it." Then you have no real choice but to accept to truth. You can not look at me and say "I do not like a world where people die. This is a bad idea. The car didn't crash, people didn't die. You're lying, because I don't want people to die." - That just isn't the way it works.

If I walk up to you, and say "So what if a car crashed and a person died because of it?" Then you have the ability to say "I don't want the car to crash, it's a bad idea. I'm not participating in this."

Poor analogy. A car accident is minor. Let's alter it a bit, okay? Suppose you come to me and said, "Peeps, the only hope in our future is Russia hitting the US with nukes. Trust me on this." ...Then we'd be closer to reality. Now what is my choice? To believe you or not? If I believe, then I accept a horrible future based on your story. If I disbelieve, I lose nothing, and I gain my bright future back.

When you look at "The Whole John Titor Thing" and immediately dismiss it as an obvious construction, which it may well be, but, as I feel I've shown to a pretty solid degree, isn't guaranteed to be, you overlook dealing with the consequences, and jump to mocking the plot.

The consequences? No, I'm dealing with those. I believe nuke war to be highly probable in my lifetime. I will not latch onto the JT story just because it might give me a little more ammo to scare people into stocking food or digging a shelter. I'll scare people with facts or theories based in reality, but putting your weight behind this JT thing just because it might get people motivated, well that's just stupid.

You say things like "I don't like the idea of a revolution occuring" - well, if it's a hypothetical construction, you have every right to feel that way, but it isn't necessarily. If it's the actual truth, then you can not deny it because it doesn't sit well with you. If it actually happens, then you can not say that it is poorly thought out, because it's the truth.

Total Titoria.

Keep waiting, and when civil war comes, I'll apologize to you, okay? Not that it'll do us much good then, I wager.

You attack the sense of the JT events/claims, but you can only really do this if they are false. You can not prove something is false by assuming it is false. You must assume it is true and wait for something to prove it cannot be.

That's science.

No, that's stupid. --Believe something while waiting for the proof? Did you read what you just wrote?

You can hate it, and loathe what it says, and groan at the message it contains, and seethe over the people who are 'infected' by it, but if it's the real truth, then you're the one standing in the way.

Don't forget: while it hasn't been proven true, it hasn't been proven false, so we shouldn't take sides and polarise yet. I hope you don't just ignore this post too.

How can I be standing in the way of "real truth" when that real truth says our only hope is to be bombed by the Soviets?

Vienden, my initial post says that JT was a jerk. I didn't try to debunk the JT story as such, I tried to expose the motivation of the writer. So why don't YOU respond to MY post, that is to say, the first one. Specifically, if JT is real, why aren't you angry at him for not telling us how to avoid our own doom?






[edit on 4-1-2006 by smallpeeps]

I respond to your initial post:

If it's true, I don't hate him for not telling us how to avoid it, because I think that, if it is actually true, it is something that we cannot simply avoid. The actions of the Russian and American governments are relatively unchangeable by us within the next 3-5 years. While we can make minor changes, I doubt something as large as "Let's oppress people and milk more money out of them" from the US government, or "Let's nuke people." from the Russian government is really within our circle of effect.

I'm not angry because I think that, were he peddling an answer, he'd seem more like a fake. He'd be trying to show us "the way out" which he really doesn't know. Instead, he told us a few ways to keep safe if it happened, and wished us all good luck. If I went into the 1930's I couldn't stop WWII. I couldn't tell people that another major War would brew in Eastern Europe (which was honestly a bit visible beforehand) and then tell them a way to stop it. ... Because I don't know of one.

Now, to your newest post.

You keep acting as if I want JT's story to happen, and I can say with all honesty, I don't. Were it true, I gain a certain comfort in knowing how bad it can possibly be, yet, I lose more than that in knowing that it's going to be hell. I want us to develop a space-economy and get the crap off the planet, so we can take the load off of the environment and start working off the damage. When there's 8 billion of us here, using resources, we do more damage than we can fix. However, when there's 4-5 billion of us here and 6-10 out there in space, we can refine our existence and reform it, and bring the planet back to a much more balanced and healthy state.

I kind of want contact to happen with Extra Terrestrials, if there's any chance of it.

Those are things that I think could be very positive, and I could really enjoy, and we could all benefit from. I don't want World War III and Nuclear Winter and the forced end of society as it is known. Yet, we've been told by someone who claims to know that that's the way it is.

As we've managed to get across to each other (I think): The story is not remarkably provable, and yet, is still viable after 5 years, and is very interesting at the least.

I don't think that any sort of an organization devoted to hating a subject should ever have to exist, and I don't think it's at all in good taste. Good examination of a topic and some skepticism balanced with some open mindedness should (in my mind) be attempted to be executed by all. I wouldn't join a JT-Supporters or a JT-Haters group, and will continue to show that the story is not purely bunk, but will gladly recognise that there are a few flaws. Nothing large enough to bring it down, but they do exist.


And, about science, that is the way it works.

I stated it a bit laxly. I shouldn't have said "wait for it to be proven false" - I should have said "attempt to prove it false." - You take a theory, and say, "Well, if this is true, then this should happen." and you check. If it happens, your theory isn't wrong. So you find another prediction and check. You keep doing this until you can't make any more predictions - or can show that all different 'classes' of predictions made by the theory have been tested and shown to be true, at which point the theory becomes widely accepted and thought of as true.

Thus, you're assuming it is true and attempting to show that it is false. Aside from 'waiting', it's what I said.

No scientist would assume that they are wrong and try to find something that shows they are right - because something else could show they are wrong, and they would have proven that they were right already.

Yet somehow, I have a feeling that you knew that, and still decided to 'call' me on it.

Originally posted by Viendin
If it's true, I don't hate him for not telling us how to avoid it, because I think that, if it is actually true, it is something that we cannot simply avoid. The actions of the Russian and American governments are relatively unchangeable by us within the next 3-5 years. While we can make minor changes, I doubt something as large as "Let's oppress people and milk more money out of them" from the US government, or "Let's nuke people." from the Russian government is really within our circle of effect.

I'm not angry because I think that, were he peddling an answer, he'd seem more like a fake. He'd be trying to show us "the way out" which he really doesn't know. Instead, he told us a few ways to keep safe if it happened, and wished us all good luck. If I went into the 1930's I couldn't stop WWII. I couldn't tell people that another major War would brew in Eastern Europe (which was honestly a bit visible beforehand) and then tell them a way to stop it. ... Because I don't know of one.

I have bolded the parts I think are wrong.

If you subscribe to Multiple Worlds Theory, then a 3% diversion would represent countless millions of worlds, potentially. Certainly, the time-sensing computers (kinda like Han Solo's 'navicomputer' which plots a course through hyperspace) could have looked into those alternate worlds. I am sure that some of them would have involved circumstances like assasinations, coups, etc, which somehow stopped the US elites from wrecking the country. If JT cared about his mom, dad, and little-self, here on our world, he'd have investigated it. He didn't care. "Hi mom, I just showed up to tell you-- Duck and cover!" ...Gee, thanks son!

We seem to be disagreeing that JT could have known what those other worlds were, or what their history was. To me, denying this point sounds like you're still wanting to believe. Clearly if he had a fuel-free time machine, he could have visited or researched the matter before hand. I can't believe I'm making this point because it's all fantasy anyway, but 3% of all possible worlds is still an arseload of worlds.

Anyway, since the ONLY positive of the JT myth is the part where he encourages us to prepare for the worst, why not approach civil defense preparation from a more logical base? Why does it need to be romanticized? Yes, nukes may kill us all. I didn't need JT to see that. Do you? If JT is what motivates you to prepare for the worst, I'd say it's still a bad trade because you are locking yourself into Total Titoria, or complete acceptance of the JT timeline. Why sacrifice your brain to do something you should be doing anyway (preparing)?

I want us to develop a space-economy and get the crap off the planet, so we can take the load off of the environment and start working off the damage. When there's 8 billion of us here, using resources, we do more damage than we can fix. However, when there's 4-5 billion of us here and 6-10 out there in space, we can refine our existence and reform it, and bring the planet back to a much more balanced and healthy state.

Well said and you speak for me also, in these visions. JT has nothing to do with them, of course.

As we've managed to get across to each other (I think): The story is not remarkably provable, and yet, is still viable after 5 years, and is very interesting at the least.

Yes, viruses are interesting.

I don't think that any sort of an organization devoted to hating a subject should ever have to exist, and I don't think it's at all in good taste. Good examination of a topic and some skepticism balanced with some open mindedness should (in my mind) be attempted to be executed by all. I wouldn't join a JT-Supporters or a JT-Haters group, and will continue to show that the story is not purely bunk, but will gladly recognise that there are a few flaws. Nothing large enough to bring it down, but they do exist.

Some folks don't like the word "hate", and I admit I am really too amibivalent about JT to actually hate the author. I do hate the idea of civil war in America and I am deeply offended by those who would actively perpetuate or foment that idea. What are your emotions about Americans being executed en masse?

And, about science, that is the way it works.

Scientific attempts to disprove a theory when applied to conspiracy theory, might work. I say might because you are still at risk of believing a lie simply due to absence of evidence to the contrary. That would be stupid, in many cases.

What you have here, however, is not a scientific subject, because it is a futuristic fantasy, and so attempts to disprove it are a victory for the author. The author wants it discussed as fact. When this happens, he wins.

I am saying that any emotionally-intelligent mind who looks at the JT story will say, "This person hates the majority of humans and would prefer to see most of us dead." In fact, if you look closely, the whole JT story exists so that he can tell us what he thinks of us, that is, that we are useless pigs who should be dead so humans can get on with the future.

That points much more strongly to some lonely guy in a one bedroom apartment with a shelf full of books and gaming manuals than to a time traveller.

I like the idea of the Canadian-haters club...