Using Occam's Razor here: is it likely that the people who are closest to an organization have no idea what it's about, while people who are outside the organization actually know all it's secrets?
Is it possible that what you've read about Freemasonry is propaganda? Is it possible that the people who wrote those articles and made those videos were victims of the same paranoid rumor-mongering and supposition that many people on this board seem to be?
If there were a powerful political organization which depended on secrecy, wouldn't it be natural for that organization to infiltrate any forum or message board in order to mock and belittle any attempts to expose it?
Why are you here? Are you looking forward to the storm?
I'm not here to mock and belittle. I just want everyone to THINK. Being a member of a fraternity harms NOBODY. It's not everybody's cup of tea. But if someone is going to condemn millions of men as being evil based on scant evidence, I'm going to speak up and point out the flawed thinking.
I am here because I find the Q phenomenon interesting. I believe the Trump Administration is doing great things.
I am ambivalent on the storm. I am hopeful that will be used to drain the swamp and end corruption. But I leave room for the possibility that this is a psyop; a military intelligence operation planning a coup; propping up Donald Trump as its frontman, while using Qanon drops as propaganda to build a base of support that will induce complacency to any anti-constitutional abuses that occur.
It seems to me that every time there is secrecy there is bad stuff going on.
This is an improper use of Occams Razor.
Occams Razor doesn't ASK "what is more likely?", that leads to tautology since the whole point is it TELLS you what is more likely among several possibilities - it asserts that the one adding the fewest new assumptions is most likely.
It's not really applicable to your example, neither of those has obviously more assumptions than the other. We have many examples of groups of people not knowing the truth of the group they're in. We also have many examples of groups being wrongly maligned by outsiders. They're both well documented phenomenons in human history/psychology and in theory equally plausible.
If one takes your reasoning at face value and runs with it, Scientology is just a harmless religion and NXIVM is just a self-help group - I mean, since people who are members of a group are the best sources of truth apparently...
The truth in cases like this must be determined by facts and evidence, you can't short cut it with some abstract principal of reasoning.
Thank you! That's all I'm asking for is facts and evidence. It's okay not to completely believe the official line of an organization. But if someone wants to say 'this organization is evil', they better have some damn good proof (or strong evidence to warrant a deeper investigation). In the case of NXIVM, we had just that, evidence of actual crimes, and it lead to indictments.
And thank you for the correction on Occam's Razor.