Saturday, September 24, 2005

The Stuff of Delusion

Baldilocks thinks that it is doubtful there is a coverup going on regarding Able Danger. She makes some good points.

Her conclusions differ from the Strata-Sphere and other bloggers (including Dr. Sanity) speculating about this issue.

These differences in perspective and opinion are completely normal when dealing with a situation in which all the facts are not known.

When all the facts are not known, the mind naturally will "fill in the gaps" and try to create a coherent picture -- perhaps even when there is no coherence. This process is similar to what happens to paranoid psychotic people. They experience something for which they have no explanation--say, a strange tingling in their head that occurred when an airplane flew over.

What could be the cause of this? Was it connected to the airplane? Maybe the CIA was on the airplane and has a new device they were testing out? Maybe they tested it out on me? Maybe they are controlling my thoughts.... and so on to more and more delusional thinking.

Each step of process seems logical and coherent to the paranoid. And from an internal perspective, it is logical. It is just that he/she started out with an incomplete data set; a incorrects perception or both.

Sherlock Holmes stated in A Study in Scarlet: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment."

And that's the problem with Able Danger. We have an incomplete data set. We don't know all the facts; and what "facts" we seem to have conflict with one another. Our perceptions are clouded because of it.

It can easily become the the stuff of delusions.

Baldilocks, as someone previously connected to military intelligence, has thrown a bucket of cold water in everyone's face. We should probably not get too carried away with speculation just because the behavior of the DoD/Pentagon is so delusionogenic (I don't even know if that is a word!).

The explanation may be as simple as "the DoD was and is confused and unsure about how to handle all the rules and regulations in this area; and hence we are confused about the confusing way they handled and are handling it."

If nothing else, let us hope the hearings on October 5th will cure our confusion and not lead us further down a delusional path.

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