Guest Post by Scott Adams
If you aren’t following the dark corners of social media you might not know of something called Pizzagate. Snopes.com calls it a “detailed conspiracy theory.”
The basic idea is that a pizza parlor in Washington DC is alleged to be the center of a major child sex ring that involves top Democrats close to Hillary Clinton. I have labelled this story “not credible,” and that opinion is confusing people because there is a mountain of evidence supporting the allegations.
So let me tell you what a mountain of evidence is worth.
Mountain of Evidence Value = zero.
In the normal two-dimensional world in which we imagine we live, a mountain of evidence usually means something is true. So why am I looking at the same mountain of evidence as the believers in pizzagate and coming to an opposite conclusion?
The difference is that I understand what confirmation bias is and how powerful it can be. If you don’t have the same level of appreciation for the power of confirmation bias, a mountain of evidence looks like proof.
Here’s what I know that most of you do not: Confirmation bias looks EXACTLY LIKE a mountain of real evidence. And let me be super-clear here. When I say it looks exactly the same, I am not exaggerating. I mean there is no way to tell the difference.
That sounds crazy, right?
Suppose dozens of children started coming forth and detailing sex crimes in this particular pizza parlor. Would that prove it happened, or would I call that more confirmation bias?
I would call that more confirmation bias. In fact, the situation would be identical to the famous McMartin Preschool case in the eighties in which lots of kids made similar and untrue claims of abuse. We don’t have to wonder if a “mountain of evidence” including dozens of first-hand accounts can be false because we know it already happened. Moreover, cognitive scientists can tell you that this sort of massive mistake is more normal than you can imagine.
I want to be totally clear here that I’m not saying Pizzagate is false. I see the mountain of evidence too. And collectively it feels totally persuasive to me. It might even be true. I’m not debating the underlying truth of it. That part I don’t know. My point is that what you see as a mountain of evidence that can’t be wrong, I see as something that is far more likely to be confirmation bias. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say perhaps a 20-1 odds the Pizzagate story is false.
Let me put this in a more familiar context. Most of the Pizzagate believers are also Trump supporters it seems. And Trump supporters have watched first-hand as half the residents of the United States concluded that Trump was the next Hitler. Why do tens-of-millions of people believe such a preposterous thing?
It’s because there is a mountain of evidence to support the allegation. Case in point, just yesterday Trump suggested that perhaps flag burners should be punished. That’s clearly dictator talk! (Except that Hillary Clinton proposed that actual law in 2005.)
The argument for Trump being the next Hitler is built on the same type of confirmation bias as Pizzagate. Both allegations are supported by a mountain of evidence. But if you look at each piece of evidence in isolation, none are individually persuasive.
Let me summarize my point by saying that if you were not aware of the McMartin Preschool case you were also not intellectually equipped to judge the credibility of either Pizzagate or the Trump-is-Hitler idea.
People have asked me whether or not an understanding of how persuasion works can protect against unwanted influence. The quick answer is no. Persuasion typically works just as well when you see it coming and you know how it works. But in some specific cases a superior knowledge of cognitive phenomenon can help. This is one of those cases. If you know about the McMartin Preschool case, and you understand the real power of confirmation bias, you might have the tools to avoid believing in either Pizzagate or the likelihood of Trump turning into the next Hitler.
And now you have those tools.
As I told you last year, when a Master Persuader becomes president it will change more than your view of politics. It will change how you view reality itself.
I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now and I think that he is about 90% of the way to the correct conclusion.
There is something wrong with the Comet Ping Pong crowd. Their taste in music and artworks indicate some deeply disturbing thought processes, their idea of what “family friendly” is about as close as anyone without a family could get to “family friendly” and their connections to political/corporate corruption is about as tight as their connections to the guy who supplies the tomato sauce and pizza dough, which is to say very tight indeed.
But why?
Because we’re on the road to normalizing pedophilia as another lifestyle choice and the very first step in that is to make people conscious of its existence. Once people have thought about it- by seeing those sickening “artworks” and hearing them discuss it in such blatant ways, it is now part of the public consciousness. To the people behind these kinds of social movements step one is now a fait accompli.
About 25 years ago I was making jokes about how one day there would be gay marriages and it got big laughs exactly because it was such an absurd proposition, but soon enough it went from wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing to a point where it cannot even be discussed much less criticized or joked about.
I am telling you now that within the same time frame we are going to look back at pizzagate as the Stonewall Riots of the pedophile crowd.
The mountains of evidence, as Scott Adams calls it, IS the message.
“What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.”
John Wesley
So true
Normalizing Deviancy.
HSF, I have also considered this. One other perplexing issue appears to make more sense when viewed with your supposition.
I have wondered, “what do the elite gain from their constant efforts to import large numbers of Islamists?” I don’t believe that at the top levels of power that they ( the elites) truly believe Islamists with little education and no desire to embrace our culture, learn our language or forego their heritage will ever assimilate into our “melting pot.”
Aside from the additional millions in permanent democrat voters, the only other thing the Islamists and elites have in common is their mutual abuse of children and the desire to normalize sexual relations and marriage to small children.
No javelin. They want you to take your outrage out on the islamists that are easy to reach while they escape and hide out.
That is their goal.
Nothing to do with mutual beliefs. They hate the islamists more than you… which is why they want you to deal with them.
Not to mention the fact that Muslims have started their own pedophile rings in England and Europe. Perhaps they share with the so-called elite. What leverage if they’re not citizens yet. Give us access to kids, you stay, commit whatever crimes you want.
I look at all the “evidence” with a weary eye.
What are the chances:
– that the Podesta brothers looked like to identity kit of Mccann suspects.
– that the Podesta brothers were in Portugal?
– that they were in the same city as the city Madeleine Mccann stayed?
– that they were in the same city at the same time when Madeleine Mccann disappeared?
– that they were in the same city at the same time Madelaine disappearared and stayed at the house of Clem Freud, a British convicted pedofile, who was himself not at home during the time of her disappearance.
– that the house of Clem Freud is only a few hundred meters away from the place were Madeleine Mcann disappeared.
– that the Mccanns were invited a few times by Clem Freud “to get away from it all”
This proves nothing.
The internet will take down the elite.
I agree….doesn’t prove anything anymore than a photo of me standing over a slain corpse covered in the victoms blood and holding the bloody murder weapon in my hand in the middle of some forest with no one else around for miles after perhaps posting online that I want to kill that person prives that I did it!
Extremely well put, HSF. As someone who barely lived 25 years ago, I can’t even remember a time where the gay agenda wasn’t mainstream. By the time I was old enough to understand what it was, it was already more mainstream than not.
I expect my children (and possibly your grandchildren) will have the same experience with pedophilia, which is a truly horrifying thought.
A few years ago, whilst still pursuing a degree which would add letters after my name for no reason other than I sat in classrooms long enough, I belonged to a reading group. We met monthly and discussed a variety of new literary works, as well as some popular fiction from modern best-selling novelists. One of the sci-fi romance novels we read was so very disturbing, I couldn’t bring myself to participate in the discussion of how the author treated a futuristic world where unwanted children orphaned by criminal and drug-addicted parents were trained to be escorts and courtesans to the rich and powerful.
I saw the millenials in the group in a whole new light as they one by one simply “accepted” the idea that a family might adopt a child into their home with the explicit premise of that child learning to please every member of the home sexually in return for being a member of that family. It was uber creepy and I stopped going to the club meetings shortly thereafter.
I realized I was the token intellectual old lady.
Millenials are fucked. Not you!
Confirmation Bias-Yup!
All one has to do is look at how creationists explain the origins of life and intelligent Design. The only thing they can prove is they can take a turd sandwich and transform it into a side dish at Denny’s.
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I will say there is something wrong with that crowd. I am just having a hard time believing the extents of the conspiracy. Pretty hard to sync that many Ants and keep everything on the down-lo.
Your deciding that the only valid evidence of a person’s ability to be critical is their knowledge of an esoteric case IS confirmation bias.
Hey Twat, Scott Adams wrote the fucking article. I’m not deciding fuck. Read for comprehension dickwad.
You oversaw the post, therefore it’s s good as you saying it yourself.
I have been on TBP for about 5 years and that folks is the stupidest response I have ever read.
WTF!
This place is a free speech zone. Admin doesn’t need to condone or approve everything that is posted. Your premise is retarded and associating the word logic in any way with your rhetoric is an affront to reason. You should scoot on back to Huffpo. There you can get your coodies stroked and your bun out of that knot.
And you can GFYS!
Your obviously a millenial!
Hahaha! Too bad for u
Fuck you douchebag. Your 75 level IQ is showing.
“And collectively it feels totally persuasive to me. It might even be true”. —Scott Adams
Scott. Sometimes you have to go with your gut. There are things involved in pizzagate that are just too coincidental to be…coincidental. Tony Podesta’s hanging statue that is almost identical to one of Dahmer’s victims is what I’d call a BIG FUCKING RED FLAG! There are so many others.
Pull your head out of your confirmation biased arse Scott.
I’m sure a 300,000 user DDOS attack (I saw the records) is also just… a mountain of confirmation bias. surely every pizza restraunt has botnets on hand for cyber defense. of encrypted pizza menus…
(sarcasm sarcoma)
how lazy and directive of Scott to spend half the article saying “its just the trumpers in a frenzy” (its bigger than that)
Me thinkest that Scott doth protest too much–maybe he is more of an insider than he even readily admits to?
I understand what Adams is saying here. And I want to believe him. But I am not convinced. Most of the pizzagate “evidence” can be interpreted as something basically harmless, if stupid and offensive, if you give the people involved all the possible benefit of the doubt, and ignore some things that aren’t right (child taped to table) but don’t have to indicate a pedo ring.
However, there are three pieces of evidence, or whatever, that I cannot explain away:
1) The Podesta brothers look EXACTLY like the suspects in the Madeline McCann disappearance, and they were in that city, and even nearby, at the time she disappeared.
2) Podesta’s home “artwork” goes miles beyond any sort of avant-garde and well into the territory of serial killers or supernatural evil.
3) One of the many photos claiming to show pedo things is a bare-chested man holding an infant, with some dopey yellow-bead necklace wrapped around both their necks, and the caption “chicken lover.” I cannot think of any possible innocent explanation for this. At the very best, it is an extremely disgusting joke about pedophilia. AT THE BEST.
I’m not convinced that Comet Ping-Pong is the center of actual crime, but I think it probably is a focal point for some very sick people, and I think that there is something very evil about Podesta.
“Most of the pizzagate “evidence” can be interpreted as something basically harmless.” -Anon above
Posters like this at the pizza joint don’t appear harmless to me. Note the “all ages”, meaning any kid is welcome. What parent would want their kid exposed to concert advertisements and venues like that?
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I would just like to comment here, since Scott closed his own comments section some months back due to too many dangerous dickwads commenting, that I really enjoyed his writing this past year regarding the Trump Experience.
Entertaining as all get-out, and very eye-opening as well.
Nice work, Scott.
I don’t know if the pizzagate thing is real. I keep an eye on it because the actual evidence they bring forward is….interesting.
Things I know:
1. The porn industry and sex trafficking in general are at an all time high. While I love the internet, it has allowed people to network in as many good ways as bad ones.
2. They normalize behavior that is often socially unacceptable. This is all well and good when its two consenting adults, but the amount of incest and daddy/daughter “scenes” is normalizing abominations.
3. Its well known that Hollywood targets young boys/girls in ways that would make most of us vomit.
4. “Rape apologists” do exist. Sandusky got away with it for a long time. Bill Cosby. Polanski. The list goes on, and includes very powerful people who used their wealth, fame, and connections to prevent any repercussions from landing at their feet.
5. The Catholic Church pedophile “scandal” covered the globe. Essentially nothing happened to the church. No crackdown. No armed action. No loss of finances. Zero. Zip. Nada.
6. Looking at the above list of 5 items, it is easy to conclude that such a thing is not only possible, but probable.
That is why I believe the accusations. I also believe the conspiracy theorists are terrible at presenting their case, and are incredibly easy to mislead. I don’t believe anything will ever become of THIS particular batch of accusations.
But eventually something like what is happening in South Korea right now will happen, and that will be all she wrote.
As recently highlighted in the award winning movie “Spotlight”, no one in Boston believed how many Catholic priests were involved in pedophilia. Then they did.
It would make perfect sense for TPTB to require an initiation of some sort before allowing just anyone to enter into the halls of power. Blackmail is an ideal way to keep people in line. Maybe this why Chief Justice Roberts wrote both dissenting and majority opinions when making the unconstitutional Obamacare legal.
Hell, I remember Alex Jones once ranting how sick the Bilderbergers were who ate babies, and I thought “What?! No way.”
Then, later I read on another fake news website about an Asian guy who got caught in London with a bunch of fetuses wrapped in gold foil during the time a Bilderberg meeting was taking place.
Think about it – wouldn’t pizzagate be the easiest thing to disprove if untrue? Yet what we are seeing are attempts by TPTB to cover it it up. Why?
As I said above, I don’t need “confirmation bias” to validate anything, it’s just that nothing would surprise me at this point in time.
Even 60 Minutes has reported on pedophilia and the Satanic eating of dead babies by the rich and powerful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLgNm_ay4Sk
The McMartin Case was a day care center caring for toddlers with no physical evidence of abuse and based solely on the testimony elicited from these pre school kids by psychologists.
Removing the pants from a toddler who has soiled him/herself and wiping the child off can be and was reinterpreted as a monstrous sexual act when the child is asked to demonstrate what happened with the use of a doll.
We know paedophiles have networks where they exchange kiddie porn. If you have a taste for that kind of thing you can’t just go buy it ( legally) at a store or online. You have to network to get it. Why is it so hard for Adams to believe that a paedo network could exist amongst high ranking political people. Don’t the examples of Dennis Hastert and Gerry Studds ring a bell for him?
BTW I just used the Yahoo search engine for Tony Podesta before I read this article. There was a picture of Pedosta standing above a contorted figure and picture showing the identical pose of a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer! Sure it could be a coincidence but if Donald Trump has a similar piece of art in his penthouse you can bet it would be the lead story in the New York Times tomorrow.
I, for one, believe the McMartin Preschool case was sabotaged, but true. And there was physical evidence that the kids were abused.. A mother finding such evidence started the whole case. But when pedophiles have friends in high places, especially within the courts and the police, nothing gets done. and nobody gets puts away where they belong.
My first thought was to call out Scott Adams as clearly wrong on this one, but after some reflection I suspect he may be playing a game here similar to when he publicly endorsed Clinton early in the campaign (tongue in cheek.) He’s not saying for sure it’s all just conspiracy, but what he IS doing is keeping the meme alive and adding to its veracity by merely talking about it.
So, obviously all those emails were coded for fun, no reason, just screwing with the heads of those who might some day come upon them in a Wikidump. Please!
You might be right, Scott, but you’re probably wrong here. There has been plenty of evidence of (so called) Elite scum pedophilia all over the world that mysteriously never gets investigated or prosecuted. Sounds a lot like our recent national experience with Hillary and all her outed crimes. In this case I would say, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Chances are 20 to 1 that the whole lot of them are guilty of this and far more. Some of the evidence points to murder after sex as a power enhancer.
Come on, Trump, drain that swamp!
Gunderson has a speech in which he says there were tunnels under the McMartin school, for what it is worth.
The FBI is too busy stinging the low intelligence individuals and running their own kiddie porn sites.
I doubt that comet pizza is anywhere near the epicenter of this thing. It’s so big that there isnt going to be one single person or corporation that could rightfully be called the epicenter or nexus. Hell, we still dont know if that whole area (Comet Pizza, Besta Pizza, etc) isnt one big FBI front. That was my first impression when I saw that google street view. I dont know why… it has that look to it. And it would make the perfect cover. “There’s no real child trafficking going on there, its all just one big FBI sting operation. All that sick shit was posted just to bait predators.” wink wink. We already know these guys pretty much own the FBI and probably every other alphabet soup agency. It is only a matter of time before they are called upon to provide cover.
I’m not sure what the proper term for is it, but I think the McMartin Preschool case could have been some sort of “judicial psyop” that was orchestrated to discredit institutionalized child sex abuse. If it was, then it was mighty effective.
Sorry, Scott, but I am Persuaded that Podesta(s), Clinton(s), Loretta Lynch, Joe Biden, Obama and nearly everyone else in power in D.C. for the last decade or so is corrupt, treasonous, criminal and greedy.
Adding depraved to the list is neither a great leap nor an unsupported assertion; those (tame) pictures (girl taped to table, guy holding infant with yellow necklace on both, original Besta Pizza logo, etc.) are bad enough; if we HAD the really bad pictures no one could post them! (Sidebar discussion: if you criminalize the very POSSESSION of evidence, do you immunize the criminal? What kind of proof THAT WOULD CONVINCE YOU could we post online?)
Keep digging!
I hate to get in the way of the hang-em high crowd, because I generally share their sentiments, but there is that pesky freedom of speech and rule of law thing to consider. Even given that all the available Instagram posts are sick/disgusting/borderline psycho, is all of it put together enough probable cause to justify search warrants on the main targets? I’m not anything close to a lawyer, so I don’t know. Not to mention that they’ve had plenty of opportunity to hide or destroy evidence. What is needed is a very quiet and thorough investigation, possibly including a sting operation, that avoids entrapment. And I do not agree with using illegally obtained evidence from NSA surveillance in a criminal case, no matter what the crime; that’s too dangerous a precedent to set.
Yes, Anarcho, you are right. Seems these freaks know how to take things to the extreme and carefully not cross the line. At the very least these people should be shamed out of business with picketers and boycotts.
Comet Ping Pong Pizza’s website had .zip files in a password protected area. If those could be accessed and analyzed, there could be a smoking gun there.
Anyone with critical thinking skills can see something very wrong is going on with these heathens. There is a mountain of circumstantial but damning evidence on pizzagate.
And to think they are within arm’s reach of the highest people in power. Sickens me.
If you were operating a scam on all of humanity… what is the first thing you would guarantee? That no individual should ever be allowed to act judiciously unless approved by “the system” to the point that people can barely contemplate acting judiciously themselves… because the risks will be too great for being wrong.
At the same time… you start making sure more and more judicious folk are… in a ‘compromised’ position… before they start casting judicial decisions.
They use informants and infiltrators in every other case, why not this one? What about surveillance? Not to mention access to “locked” photos and posts on Instagram that they can look at any time without a warrant thanks to our non-existent privacy laws that law enforcement has been given access to.
The pedophile symbols alone, which the FBI itself provided,, would have been enough for a warrant for at least surveillance, if not actual entry and search/retrieval of documents, etc.
‘BOTTOM LINE – We have ZERO TRUST in the media, ZERO TRUST in the FBI, ZERO TRUST in law enforcement, ZERO TRUST in the celebrity culture, ZERO TRUST in the “art” world knowing what is art and what is pedophilia.’
That summarizes very well where I am, and I suspect many others are with me. I am at the point that I could believe the powers that be capable of ANY possible evil.
Douglas Dietrich says the government people, who you think are going to rush to investigate, have tons of child porn on government computers. He says the DARPA computers are loaded with the shit.
The Data knows the truth. It just has to be let free.
But once it is free.. we are all under total surveillance for our own good that we will demand once we see the data.
Gosh. I wonder who is gonna be at the center of that data management.
Huge disparity of missing children in Virginia compared to much larger states. Comet Pizza and Besta Pizza (same block in D.C.) is a 15 minute drive across the Potomac River from Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Virginia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaM3GIEX0yU
The picture of the little boy in front of the man with his pants down is all the proof I need!
If these azzholes don’t get locked up, I have a feeling vigilantes might go into action!
Had I witnessed this while holding a gun…
Andrew Breitbart was on to John Podesta as a pedophile in 2011. Now that former Breitbart.com editor and Andrew Breitbart (now deceased) friend Steve Bannon is on the Trump team, maybe Bannon will push Trump to look into this scandal.
https://steemit.com/pedofile/@mm3/andrew-breitbart-on-twitter-from-2011-regarding-podesta-pedofile
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The normalization racket is quite disturbing as well as the nothing too see here lies.
Really, how the fuck do you know Scott?
Plenty to see here for any genuinely concerned about the well being of our most vulnerable members.
Years ago a friend in law enforcement drew an important distinction for me:
1. Pedophile = someone sexually attracted to children
2. Pederast = a pedophile who acts on their attraction
The evidence that Comet Pizza involves people in the first category seems pretty strong. Proving they are also in the second group is the issue.
How would you categorize someone from the first group that tapes a kid to a table for a cute picture and then poses sexually while coated in “blood” almost nude under the ping pong tables open to all ages and posts it publicly?
BULL!!
Translation: Scott Adams = Pedo
PIZZAGATE IS PEDOPHILEGATE? 🙄
Scott misses one very important point. The pizzagate internet warriors don’t claim to know what’s going on at the Comet Ping Pong. What they do know is that there is a lot of shady stuff going on, the news media has rushed to their defence, and Alefantis hasn’t successfully answered any questions about his artwork, toddler fetish, hole digging, and relationships with the Clinton Crime Family. Podesta has disappeared since the election, not a peep out of him anywhere. Unacceptable.
The whole point of pizzagate is calling for a professional investigation into these sick fucks.
@razzle.
A satanist.
Where there is smoke there is most likely fire-Clintons voodoo wedding Chelsie wearing inverted cross-
“Crime once exposed has refuge but in audacity.”
Tacitus
@admin – the last two #PizzaGate articles fail to load from the RSS feed link. Never had that problem with any other article in the years I’ve been coming here. Methinks someone may be fucking with your site. Looks like the articles moved.