Primary Source Research Methodology
Primary Source Research Methodology
Preface
During the most recent Sunday Skype call I enjoyed a long chat with Mezzie, Chad628 and Dante from New York.
At one point during the conversation, the topic of research methodology came up. I have repeatedly explained why I do not consider the vast bulk of ‘alternative research’ available online to involve any real research at all. More on that in a moment.
I was asked if I might consider putting my energy towards trying to assist the would-be researchers in the ACT scene to improve their own research methodologies. My response was swift: I already have tried, and it made no difference whatsoever.
JLB1568 – ‘Monkey Ladder Banana Experiment’ and Primary Sources (30-Nov-2015)
I made this video after having only been active in the scene for about 12 months, with the ARP first airing in October 2014.* Back then, I was still more idealistic and optimistic about my content-creating peers in the ‘truth’ realm, particularly on YouTube.
You see, I still thought they were here to genuinely improve themselves, to learn and to grow, as ‘researchers’, as content creators, and as people. I was wrong. I was naive. And anybody who still believes that the many and various figures online who describe or present themselves as ‘alternative researchers’ even care about good research methodology, let alone practice it, is just as naive today I was back then.
I plan to show you that by simply understanding what I refer to as ‘primary source research methodology’, you will no longer be able to take other self-proclaimed ‘independent researchers’ seriously. In time you may find yourself thinking (and even speaking) about them the same way I do: clowns, fools and charlatans.
The lot of them.
Contents
Introduction
1 – The ‘monkey ladder banana experiment’ myth
2 – The masses have no understanding of research methodology
3 – Metacognition: thinking about thinking
4 – What is a ‘primary source’? (Source categorisation)
5 – Hypothetical: Peter the weblogger
6 – Source categorisation is subjective
7 – Scrutinising evidence (Evidence evaluation)
8 – Cross-referencing
9 – Scientific studies
10 – A straight-forward research methodology
11 – A note on ‘truth’ (epistemology, philosophy of history, and all that fun stuff…)
12 – My research methodology applied to the case of Peter
13 – I remain open to new evidence and conclusions
14 – An alternative research methodology (or framework of belief)
15 – There is no record of the ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’ published anywhere, ever
16 – The masses and schooling
17 – A relevant tangent
Revision of Key Points
Footnotes
Coming soon
Introduction
How many of us have spent any considerable amount of time reassessing the method by which we go about ‘research’? The ongoing popularity of the ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’ serves as a useful example of how the masses are typically unconcerned with sourcing or verifying information before believing and propagating stories.
In this piece I will go into detail about my own research methodology, which I casually refer to as ‘primary source research methodology’. I also offer a contrast between this methodology, and the framework of belief employed subconsciously by the masses.
By the end of this piece you will, at the very least, have a better understanding of what I mean when I talk about ‘primary evidence’. This will be very useful as I begin to spend more time covering what I call the ‘History Hoax’.
It is my hope that this piece will prompt you to reconsider not only your own research methodology, but also the frameworks of belief apparently employed by the people around you, and by the prominent voices within the ACT scene.
1 – The ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’ myth
In the preface of this piece I embedded a short video in which I explain why the ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’ is a joke. It never happened. I am not the first person to take the time to point this out. I can only pray that I will not be the last.
The crux of the matter is this: many people repeat the story, but never offer any primary sources to verify their claims. This is partly due to the fact that the primary sources do not exist, because the experiment was never conducted. It is literally make-believe.
And yet the story continues to be propagated on YouTube and elsewhere. The masses love it, normies and conspiratards alike. Roughly two minutes into my video I show a screenshot of the top results of a YouTube search for ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’. A video entitled ‘Five monkeys – how to create a mentality of 85% of the people that we call MASS ?‘ (sic) had about 60,000 views at the time (November 2015). The same video now has almost 300,000 views.
Several newer videos have since been uploaded on the very same topic and have attracted thousands of views of their own.
Above are just four examples of videos which have been uploaded subsequent to my own. Each of them portrays the mythological experiment as though it were real. They have a combined viewcount of approximately 20,000 views (note that my own video had only just passed 10,000 views before the original upload was deleted by YouTube), and of the three videos which display their thumbs up:down ratios, every single one has more upvotes than downvotes.
Just as we have seen with the ‘100th monkey effect‘ myth, people love stories about ‘scientific experiments’ involving monkeys, and will believe just about anything they are told so long as the story involves ‘science’ and monkeys.
2 – The masses have no understanding of research methodology
There is an important meta aspect to the ‘monkey banana ladder experiment myth’: the average person does not check for primary sources before believing (and propagating) stories. Many could not even tell you what a ‘primary source’ is or why sources are important.
It goes further: the regular people you deal with day to day, even ‘successful’, ‘intelligent’ individuals, do not possess and practice anything resembling a coherent research methodology by which to evaluate the myriad claims and stories they are presented with every day.
The average person may apply a basic ‘heuristic‘, a simple process of evaluation whereby they reject information from certain sources (e.g. newspapers to the ‘left’ or ‘right’ of their own political preference) and accept information from other sources (e.g. favoured political pundits or e-celebrities). Some of them may exercise intuition and common sense and occasionally reject information even from authoritative sources – for instance, a small proportion of normies remain skeptical of things like ‘climate change’ alarmism. There is often at least some method to their madness.
However, the process of information evaluation of the typical person is ad hoc prone to extreme bias. There is no consistent or overarching framework guiding their beliefs. This is one reason why they can simultaneously hold/express opinions which completely contradict one another. A normie may agree with you that the official story of JFK is bogus, and just a few moments later reject your suggestion that the official story of 9/11 is similarly bogus, because ‘too many people would have to be involved’.
Later in this piece I will outline why the masses are the way they are. It is not their fault. This is how they were designed to be. This is how I was designed to be, and it was only through a miraculous string of ‘happy coincidences’ that I came to be able to undo my own programming, a process which continues to this day. Chances are, you were also just as clueless and hopeless as the normies at an earlier stage in your life.
Key point: The average person has no consistent framework for analysing the stories they are told.
3 – Metacognition: thinking about thinking
One of my primary aims with this article, and with my website/operation more broadly, is to encourage you to think about your own thinking. I have three major motivations for this:
a) Assist you. One of the simplest (although not always easiest) ways a person can improve themselves is via serious contemplation of their preexisting thinking patterns and habits. By encouraging you to do so, I may be encouraging you to help yourself.
b) Assist me financially/emotionally. If my content can help you to improve yourself in any way, then you are more likely to remain subscribed to this website, which means $$$ for me. I also get to enjoy the satisfaction which comes from feeling like I have made a positive impact on the world (no matter how seemingly-small that impact might be).
c) Assist me intellectually. This article constitutes the third attempt I have made to articulate in written form a basic epistemological/research framework.** This process forces me to reevaluate and reconsider my own thought process; I am forced to seriously and methodically think about my own thinking in order to write an article like this. Although mentally exhausting, this process has been (and will continue to be) immensely beneficial.
By merely engaging in the process of thinking about thinking, I put to you that you/I/we are already on a different level than the people we are surrounded by every day. We are also on a different level to the person/people we were before we began seriously thinking about thinking. It is a simple and yet all-too-daunting exercise which can instantly improve our ability to engage with the world around us and improve our thinking patterns.
Why ‘daunting’? Because when we think about our own thinking, we are bound to soon realise just how incoherent and inconsistent our thoughts have been for so long. On just about everything. This can be crushing to the thing some people call an ‘ego’, an inner representation of who or what we think we are in relation to the world around us. The more certain we are that we already ‘know the truth’, the more daunting thinking about thinking will therefore be.
Key point: This article is intended to motivate and assist us (both writer author and reader) to think about our own thinking.
4 – Source categorisation: What is a ‘primary source’?
Different individuals and organisations will define ‘primary source’, ‘secondary source’, and ‘tertiary source’ in different ways. There is no overarching authority who gets to decide precisely what each term means. That said, there is a general categorisation which most individuals/institutions concerned with historical research will generally agree upon:
Primary: From the event/time in question; essentially ‘objective’.
Secondary: Not from the time/event in question; more prone to subjective influence.
Tertiary: A collection or compendium of information of the above two types.
If you were to google ‘primary source’ you might be likely to stumble upon an overview from the University of Maryland, whose definitions I will list here for the purpose of illustration:
Primary Sources are considered original research materials. They are from the time period involved, and can include first-person narratives of the event. Normally, other research can be based on primary source materials.
Secondary sources are written after the fact and generally include interpretation or evaluation of primary source material. Secondary sources are not evidence in and of themselves, but analyze or provide commentary on evidence.
Tertiary sources are those resources that compile and distill results of primary and secondary sources.
As you can see, the UoM categorisation is not so different from the more concise outline I listed immediately prior.
Key point: There is no single rule about source categorisation, but the same general principles are generally accepted, because they make sense.
5 – Hypothetical: Peter the weblogger
To illustrate the distinctions listed above, consider a hypothetical example.
Peter spends a day walking around London and visiting various tourist attraction on 1-Jan-2018. He documents his day with photos and videos, and then writes a physical journal entry, and an online weblog post, while at the hotel that night. He gets hit by a bus the next morning, and it is your job to piece together what he actually did while in London during his last full day on earth.
Here is the problem: You are given this task on 1-Jan-2118. Yes, 100 years later.
For the sake of argument, assume technological advances more or less stopped in 2018. There have been no world wars, no mass famines, no breakthroughs in time travel; society just meandered along for the next hundred years.
And here you are, being asked to play historian and write up a piece to describe what Peter did in London on 1-Jan-2018. Your job is to be as accurate and factual as humanly possible. You’ve got plenty of time to collect evidence and, mercifully, no important evidence seems to have been destroyed since the day in question. There is evidence aplenty.
It turns out that Peter was even something of a well-known e-celebrity, and many other people since then have written books and made movies/documentaries about Peter’s life – and in particular about his last full day in London. You’ve got plenty to work with, but also plenty to sift through before arriving at your own conclusions.
After countless hours spent compiling available data, here is what you are left with:
Primary:
Peter’s physical journal entry
Peter’s online weblog entry
Peter’s photos/videos
Hotel guestbook entry
Hotel surveillance footage
Receipts (from tourist attractions, food and beverage vendors, etc)
Secondary:
‘Peter’s Day’ (‘documentary’ made by BBC in 2040)
‘Peter’s Last Laugh’ (A weblog entry published 2-Jan-2018 by Peter’s longtime friend and fellow weblogger Paul, who claimed to have been the last person to see Peter alive)
‘I Miss Peter’ (‘non-fiction’ memoir written by woman claiming to have been Peter’s secret lover, published shortly after his death)
‘Tourists Still Heart London’ (article from the Telegraph published 4-Jan-2018 in which Peter is quoted by the writer, who apparently vox-popped Peter by random chance at the Big Ben as part of a story about London tourism)
Tertiary:
‘The 27 Club’ (entry in Wikipedia which mentions that ‘infamous weblogger Peter’ joined the club on 2-Jan-2018)
‘Famous Peters in History’ (article in Encyclopedia Britannica Online which lists Peter with a brief bio)
6 – Source categorisation is subjective
Already here there may be reasonable disagreements about the categorisation of available evidence.
Should the Telegraph article be considered primary or secondary? A newspaper article may be deemed ‘primary’ evidence in some circumstances, but in this case I would deem it secondary because the quote itself was recorded and published by a person/organisation who was not Peter. Since I am concerned with Peter’s experience (and not the experience of the Telegraph reporter), I would treat the article as a secondary source.
The same question arises in the cases of his (alleged) lover’s memoir and his friend Paul’s weblog. They are ‘primary’ in the sense that they come directly from the individuals involved, and were recorded contemporaneously with Peter’s life, but insofar as an investigation into Peter’s day is concerned, the best that either the lover or Paul can do is relay their own stories/observations, which are liable to subjective biases and influences.
There are two key things to note here:
1 – Source categorisation is itself subjective: what I consider ‘primary source’ will be occasionally be different from you may deem ‘primary source’, which may be different again to what the next person may classify as ‘primary source’. There is no ‘set in stone’ rule: what we are discussing here are frameworks for prioritising and utilising various data which may be available to us when trying to arrive at sensible/accurate conclusions.
2 – Despite this, there seems to be a basic or fundamental notion in play which intelligent people can generally agree upon: some sources of evidence are more likely to give us accurate/reliable/useful information than other sources. No intelligent person will claim, for instance, that the wikipedia page is of more value to us (when trying to determine Peter’s movements that day) than the hotel surveillance footage, or that the Encyclopedia Brittanica Online article is to be trusted over Peter’s own journal entry.
To illustrate, suppose the wikipedia page claimed that Peter checked out of his hotel at 8am, but the surveillance footage clearly showed that he in fact checked out at 10am. Which would you be more likely to believe?
Suppose the Encyclopedia Brittanica Online article claimed that Peter had been bored while taking a trip around the London ‘Eye’, but Peter’s own words in his journal stated that he thought it was a “terrific experience” which he would recommend to his friends. Which do you think is more likely to accurately reflect Peter’s real feelings on the day?
Key point: Some sources of information are more likely to be accurate/reliable/useful than others.
7 – Evidence evaluation: Scrutinising evidence
Before accepting or employing evidence (regardless of its category) in the final analysis, we obviously need to assess its reliability.
i – Is the piece of evidence genuine?
Of course, the hotel surveillance footage may have been doctored. Peter’s journal may have been forged entirely. His ‘lover’ may have never actually met Peter, but merely used Peter’s infamy as a way to make a quick buck with a titillating tale about a completely fictional affair. Any piece of documentation may be – deliberately or not – a false or otherwise flawed representation of what actually happened.
ii – Direct empirical evidence vs documented evidence
There is a significant difference between direct empirical evidence and documented evidence.
If you are looking at a tree in your friend’s yard, then you have direct empirical evidence that there is a tree in that yard. If you take a photo of the tree in the yard, you have documented evidence of the tree in the yard. A more detailed analysis of ’empirical evidence’ is available in the ‘Key Concepts’ section of this article.
When doing research on historical events, we will generally not have direct empirical evidence at our disposal, which means a reliance on documented evidence.
iii – Degradation over time
With each year that passes since you took the photo, the likelihood that it remains an accurate depiction of how the tree ‘actually is/was’ diminishes. With each year that passes since you last directly observed the tree for yourself, the likelihood that your memory is accurate diminishes also. At a certain point you may begin to wonder, ‘did I make that memory up altogether’, and you might also wonder if the photo itself is a fraud, one which has influenced the memory of the tree in your head in the first place.
Even if you remain confident that both your memory and your photo are accurate, others will have every right to doubt both your memory and your photo. Memories and photos alike are easy to manipulate, and in any event they tend to degrade with the passage of time. This is why, when it comes to both eye witness testimony and documented evidence, the closer (in time) it is to the event in question, the more reliable it is generally inferred to be.
Would you be more likely to trust an old man’s account of his youth as told today, or what he had to say about his youth in a journal entry from the time? Would you be more likely to trust your own memory of what happened ten years ago, or a journal entry you made at the time of the memory in question? The answer ought to be obvious.
Key point: Some pieces of evidence may be more reliable/useful than others.
We will need to use our own senses to determine if any given piece of evidence is genuine. Generally speaking, the closer (in time) to the event in question, the more reasonable it is to infer that a piece of evidence is accurate/reliable. This is true of empirical evidence (and resulting memories) as well as documented evidence (such as photos and other artefacts).
8 – Cross-referencing
A key element of any good research methodology involves cross-referencing. If Peter’s ‘lover’ claims to have had lunch with him around midday on 1-Jan-2018, does Peter’s journal entry mention anything about it? If Peter’s journal entry in fact claims that he ate a salad sandwich for lunch in the hotel lobby while reading a newspaper, does the hotel surveillance footage corroborate his story? And so on and so forth.
If two or more independent sources seem to agree with one another then soon enough you will naturally begin to accept that they are likely both legitimate. The more independent sources which agree with one another, the more reasonable it shall be to infer that the story being told is an accurate one.
Eventually one or more sources may be rejected entirely because time and again they are contradicted by other sources. If one piece of evidence is repeatedly shown to be in conflict with the other available evidence, it may soon be sensible to discard it altogether (or, at the very least, to give its claims less weighting in the final analysis).
As we will see later, it is sometimes not possible to cross-reference a piece of evidence, because it is the sole piece of evidence available. This does not mean that the piece of evidence in question is useless, but it ought to go without saying that, ceteris paribus (all things being equal), a piece of evidence which has been cross-referenced is more useful/reliable than one which has not been or cannot be cross-referenced.
Key point: Cross-referencing sources is a key element of good research methodology but it is not always possible.
9 – Scientific studies
One reason why ‘peer-reviewed studies’ are so highly valued in academia is that they are, in theory, harder to embellish or fabricate than studies which are not ‘peer reviewed’.
In practice, ‘peer-reviewed’ studies are fabricated all the time and often can’t even be replicated. In many instances it is doubtful if the ‘peers’ who supposedly review each submission before publication even exist. A research team pays the fee to get published in a well-known journal, and their study is published. Like everything in this world, ‘peer-reviewed science’ is a business.
That said, let me ask you a simple question: If I told you that a bunch of scientists were hosing down monkeys in a cage for an experiment, would you be more likely to believe me if I could at least name the scientists involved (and the universities they work for)? I should think so.
This is where scientific studies can still be useful. They give us something to work from.
Even if the ‘scientists’ involved in any particular study colluded to make up their findings, at least we have names, dates and places which give some kind of potential validity to their story. Even if we instinctively detect that their claims are implausible, the fact that their study was published somewhere allows us a platform by which to scrutinise what is being presented.
Key point: Scientific studies are not infallible, but they are useful, because they at least give us something to work with.
10 – A straight-forward research methodology
With all of the above taken into consideration, I can now present a basic schematic of what I would deem to be a solid, useful, and practical research methodology:
Compile all available and/or relevant evidence
Categorise and prioritise the evidence (primary > secondary > tertiary)
Scrutinise the evidence (does it seem legitimate i.e. not forged or fabricated? How close to the time of the event? Has it degraded over time?)
Cross-reference the evidence (if possible)
Once this process is complete, a researcher can arrive at a sensible conclusions about the facts concerning the case. With the facts established, the researcher can then make reasonable inferences about what actually did (or did not) happen.
11 – A note on ‘truth’ [epistemology, philosophy of history, and all that fun stuff…]
In the previous section I stated that the researcher can make inferences about what actually did (or did not) happen. That is all the researcher can do: draw inferences. That is, come to a position about which he is confident, without being able to claim he knows for certain (‘100%’) what ‘really’ happened – especially if he wasn’t there himself to observe it empirically.
This article is neither the time nor place to go into any great depth on this matter. Believe me, I have tried in the past, and it is a frustratingly tedious process.** What is ‘truth’? How can we ‘know’ something? If a tree falls in the woods…
A worthwhile exploration of the ‘historical method’ and its relationship to the ‘truth’ can be found here. If you have a lot of time on your hands, this exploration of the ‘philosophy of history’ is also useful.
Key point: This article is concerned with presenting an overview of solid research methodology, rather than a philosophical analysis of the nature of ‘truth’.
12 – My research methodology applied to the case of Peter
For the purpose of this article it shall suffice to say this: If I am confident that the surveillance footage does not seem doctored, and if it shows Peter eating a salad sandwich in the lobby, and if Peter mentions his salad sandwich in his journal, and I see no primary evidence concerning his ‘lover’, then I am going to be pretty confident that she is making her story up.
Or, at the very least, I will be confident that I have no reason to believe that her story is true. It may be true, but I have no reason to believe it. I can remain open to the possibility that her story is true, but in presenting my findings based on the evidence, I would not include the lover’s story as part of the final interpretation.
Why? Because it is not supported by the primary evidence.
Even if the BBC ‘documentary’ mentions the lover and includes a dramatised reenactment of the alleged tryst, I will not believe it to be true. Even if everybody I know has seen the documentary and believes the lover was real, even if the latest reprint of her book is flying off the shelves following a BBC special re-screening of the documentary, it will not matter to me.
Why? Because I base my beliefs (my inferences) on my own research, and in my research I prioritise the primary sources over all else.
The collective opinion of the masses has no bearing on my belief. If I have read Peter’s journal, if I have seen the surveillance footage, if I have read the lover’s memoirs and detected contradictions between it and the primary source evidence, then I will arrive at my own conclusion – and my conclusion will be that Peter did not shag a secret lover at lunchtime of that particular day.
This point bears repeating: It does not matter to me if every single person on earth believes the lover’s story. It does not matter to me that the lover’s claims made it into a ‘documentary’ about Peter’s day. My opinion is not based on the opinions of the masses, nor is it based on secondary sources (such as the documentary). My opinion is based on the primary sources.
Key point: My research methodology is founded upon primary sources, and is not in any way concerned with the consensus or belief of others.
13 – I remain open to new evidence and conclusions
I will remain open to the possibility that I am wrong.
New evidence may surface which sheds new light on the matter. Perhaps we learn that the footage we thought was from 1-Jan-2018 was in fact from the previous day (and the recording software incorrectly timestamped the video). Perhaps we learn from a previously-unknown source that Peter intentionally failed to mention the lover because he knew his wife secretly read his journal. Perhaps the lover comes forward with supporting evidence that at least proves she had been with Peter previously (adding weight to her claims more broadly). Endless possibilities abound.
In this sense, if I were to say that I believe the the love affair angle is fake, what I am in fact saying is that, based on the evidence I have seen, the love affair angle appears to me to be make-believe, the primary sources contradict (or do not support) the claim, BUT I cannot be 100% confident of what actually happened, and remain open to new information, and also open to the possibility that my current inferences are wrong.
In the field of genuine, independent research, this comes with the territory. I can and will be wrong from time to time. This makes it even more important that I emphasise not only my evidence but my logic: why I make the inferences I do. The surveillance footage contradicts the lover’s claim about lunch, as does Peter’s journal entry, and generally when a witness lies about a small thing they are not to be trusted on anything, and since her testimony is the only evidence to suggest a lunch-time rendezvous, I reject her story as unlikely at best.
Key point: With research we can only make inferences.
We can’t ‘know’ the ‘truth’ with ‘certainty’ (even if there is such thing as absolute truth) because we weren’t there. A solid research methodology allows us to arrive at reasonable inferences about what happened, which we may revisit at a later time if and when new evidence comes to light (or if somebody can point out holes in our logic).
14 – An alternative research methodology (or framework of belief)
The most common framework of belief I have encountered in life in general, and in the ACT scene in particular, is the ‘true until disproven’ paradigm. Those who operate with this system will accept the commonly-accepted narrative until somebody else disproves it, even if the commonly-accepted paradigm is built entirely upon secondary sources.
Take for example the myth of Nikola Tesla. It is commonly accepted by normies and conspiratards alike that Tesla was a great genius who invented many things. Where do they get these beliefs? Secondary and tertiary sources. History Channel ‘documentaries’. Hollywood films. In rare instances, they may have even read biographies by shrewd money-makers like Marc Seifer.
In my own research into the story of Nikola Tesla circa mid-2016, I was amazed to learn that Tesla published no books. Even more surprising, there is no recorded footage of this man, despite the fact that he did not officially die until 1943 – well after the advent and spread of video recording technology. Note that the 1936 Berlin Olympics were, according to official history, televised far and wide.
The great genius who is revered to this day wrote no books, and was recorded in no video footage; we are left just a small handful of photos. How peculiar…
Tesla allegedly filed over 300 patents in his time. Take a look at the signatures of ‘Nikola Tesla’ on a few of the patent applications and see what you notice.
The most useful primary source information available to us concerning Tesla’s life and works comes to us by way of articles he wrote for newspapers and magazines. When I took the time to search for, find, and study these texts, what did I discover? That Tesla claimed to have communicated with Martians (whose civilisation, he stated, ‘probably’ still existed on the Martian surface).
From ‘Signalling to Mars – A Problem of Electrical Engineering’, The Harvard Illustrated Magazine, March 1907. Direct link to primary source.
The astonishing evidences furnished by Lowell are not only indicative of organic life, but they make it appear very probable that Mars is still populated; and furthermore, that its inhabitants are highly developed intelligent beings. Is there any other proof of such existence? I answer, emphatically, yes, prompted by both an instinct which has never yet deceived me, and observation. I refer to the strange electrical disturbances, the discovery of which I announced six years ago. At that time I was only certain that they were of their planetary origin. Now, after mature thought and study, I have come to the positive conclusion that they must emanate from Mars.
I also discovered that Tesla claimed he could, if he wanted to do so, pass the electric current of the Niagara Falls hydroelectricity plant through his body like Superman.
From ‘The Problem of Increasing Human Energy’, The Century Magazine, June 1900. Direct link to primary source.
I still remember with pleasure how, nine years ago, I passed the discharge of a powerful induction coil through my body to demonstrate before a scientific society the comparative harmlessness of very rapidly vibrating electric currents, and I can still recall the astonishment of my audience. I would not undertake, with much less apprehension than I had in that experiment, to transmit through my body with such currents the entire electrical energy of the dynamos now working at Niagara – forty or fifty thousand horsepower. I have produced electrical oscillations which were of such intensity that that when circulating through my arms and chest they melted wires which joined my hands, and still I felt no inconvenience.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
For more detail about my research into the character known as ‘Nikola Tesla’, see the Tesla page of the Key Topics section.
Ever since I first published my findings on this matter it has been my hope to produce a more detailed exploration and analysis of what I call the Tesla myth. Instead I have found myself occupied with a never-ending series of new topics and rabbit holes which have captured my interest and attention.
One day I will write an article detailing the following facts:
The most prestigious science fiction awards to this day are named the ‘Hugos’.
The Hugos are named after (((Hugo Gernsback))).
Hugo Gernsback was the proprietor of a magazine called the Electrical Experimenter.
The Electrical Experimenter was the main magazine in which articles by ‘Nikola Tesla’ were published.
The Electrical Experimenter was also the chief magazine via which Tesla’s ‘inventions’ were popularized.
The closest thing to an ‘autobiography’ Tesla ever wrote was a series called ‘My Inventions’.
The Electrical Experimenter was the magazine in which Tesla’s ‘My Inventions’ series was originally published.
Hugo Gernsback was himself a science fiction writer.
Hugo Gernsback was accused by those who worked for him of being a money-grubbing crook.
Nikola Tesla has only one direct, living relative (officially).
The man claiming to be Tesla’s only direct, living relative receives accolades and money for doing so.
From those facts, I will then explain why I make the inference that Nikola Tesla is likely a fictional character. I am pretty confident this is the case.
However, if I am wrong about that, and if a man named Nikola Tesla did indeed exist, then we can be very confident that the stories we are told about him bear no relationship with reality.
Either way, it seems clear to me that the normies and conspiratards alike are wrong.
The point here is this: there exists a gigantic disconnect between what the masses believe about Tesla, and what the primary sources suggest. This is because the masses do not base their beliefs on primary sources. Instead they base their beliefs on secondary sources (like Hollywood films), hearsay, and urban legends.
Not only this, but the ‘researchers’ – both mainstream and ‘alternative’ – who promote the Tesla myth are just as guilty of poor research methodology as the lemmings they attract for their audience.
Is it possible that a man named Tesla actually existed? Yes. Unlikely, but possible. It is it possible he communicated with Martians and could pass the entire Niagara Falls hydroelectric output through his body? Yes. Very, very, very unlikely, to the point where I would say with great confidence that it is simply not true, and did not and could not happen. But I remain open-minded.
Can I ‘prove’ that Tesla did not exist, or that the stories we are told about him are ridiculous? Not really. And so those who operate on the ‘true until disproven’ framework will continue to believe in the myths about Tesla, no matter how outrageous, no matter how absurd, and no matter how little primary evidence there exists to support their beliefs.
Key point: An alternative to my research methodology is the popular ‘true until disproven’ framework, whereby a believer will accept secondary source stories until they are ‘disproven’, even if those secondary source stories are not supported by any primary sources whatsoever.
15 – There is no record of the ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’ published anywhere, ever
The entire story is make-believe. It is not even a question of, ‘did the scientists make up their story?’ It is a matter of there are no scientists, there was no experiment – this story has no more basis in reality than a children’s fable.
The most basic element in any research methodology, before even categorising or scrutinising or cross-referencing the available evidence, involves first finding the evidence. Those who repeat the ‘monkey ladder banana’ or ‘100th monkey’ stories don’t even do that.
When you hear somebody repeating such stories, you are listening to a human parrot, a retard. When I used to repeat these kinds of stories, I was a human parrot, a retard.
Look around you and see just how ubiquitous these baseless beliefs are among the masses today. See how quickly your fellow humans will blindly repeat urban legends and myths as though these stories were real. See how insightful your fellow humans believe themselves to be when they repeat these stories. See how much the normies and conspiratards alike value these stories for their supposed explanatory power about the human condition.
It is not simply a matter of a person being ‘misled’ when they believe and repeat a story like the ‘monkey banana ladder experiment’. It is not a one-off. It speaks to the process by which these creatures interact with the world around them. It reveals that we are not dealing with thinking, thoughtful creatures. We are dealing with parrots in human form.
16 – The masses and schooling
It is debatable just how much of the current level of mass retardation is due to ‘nature’ and how much is due to ‘nurture’.
Is it the case that humans are naturally capable of genuine critical thinking, and this faculty is simply retarded en masse by the system?
Is it the case that most humans would never have been capable of critical thinking to begin with, and the system merely homogenises the proles into a predictable and docile group?
I don’t have any firm answers on this, and my mind has changed more than once over the past three years. Today I am at a loss to explain it all.
What I do know is that, regardless of any innate human potential for intelligence (or lack thereof), modern schooling exists to dumb people down.
As John Taylor Gatto explains, the purpose of modern schooling has nothing to do with teaching people how to think or how to research.
This is why we are not taught logic or the logical fallacies, it is why we are not taught about research methodologies such as the one put forward in this article, it is why we are not encouraged to seriously ponder metacognition, and so on and so forth.
It is also why I can sit here and say with confidence that, if you have been able to follow this article, from start to finish, without getting distracted by buzzing phones, or triggered by the suggestion that Nikola Tesla may be a fictional character, then you likely sit among an elite tier of humans alive today.***
In many ways, this is no great achievement, considering that your peers genuinely believe stories about ‘scientific experiments’ for which there is not a shred of primary evidence.
In another way, however, it may suggest that there is something different about you, something truly special, even if entirely outside of your control, which led you down the path to where you find yourself now.
Key point: There is a reason why the masses are the way they are (even if we may not know the exact reason) and school certainly plays its part.
17 – A relevant tangent
Most people today suffer from systematic retardation processes when entering the world and while growing up:
Conception as a result of lustful (possibly drunk) copulation rather than intentional life-creating human bonding.
Caesarian-section or epidural birth in an alien hospital surrounded by money-driven strangers.
‘Vaccinations’ supplied en masse by billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies.
Breast milk laced with the byproduct of artificial foods and/or entirely artificial ‘formula’ ‘milk’.
Copious exposure to artificial lights, screens, sounds, and all manner of technological distractions.
Artificial ‘foods’ which were transported/stored in boxes and oftentimes heated by microwave.
Thousands of days spent inside a ‘school’ with other children similarly deprived and retarded.
Brainwashing about the ‘accidental’ and/or ‘purposeless’ nature of your life and existence.
Depletion of life energy via regular hedonistic sex and masturbation.
To name just a few.
And yet, despite many of the above applying to me, and no doubt to you, too, here I am, and here you are 🙂
It may well be the case that there is indeed an experiment with monkeys taking place as we speak. And it may well be that the monkeys do in fact try to tear one another down, to keep each other at the same level, scared to strive for more, too frightened to attempt to ascend the stairs.
And it may well be the case that an external force created this environment to observe and document our behaviour, to see if we would continue to be like the others, or if one or more of us might come along and do something which had never been done before, unafraid of the opinions or actions of those around us…
Key point: Even if the retardation cannot be undone on the macro level, it can be undone on the micro level. This is evidenced by my experience in life thus far – and, hopefully, by your experience as well.
Key Points Revisited
Key point [i]: The average person has no consistent framework for analysing the stories they are told.
Key point [ii]: This article is intended motivate and assist us to think about our own thinking.
Key point [iii]: There is no single rule about source categorisation, but the same general principles are generally accepted, because they make sense.
Key point [iv]: Some sources of information are more likely to be accurate/reliable/useful than other sources.
Key point [v]: Some pieces of evidence are more accurate/reliable/useful than other pieces.
Key point [vi]: Cross-referencing evidence is a key element of good research methodology but it is not always possible.
Key point [vii]: Scientific studies are not infallible, but they are useful, because they at least give us something to work with.
Key point [viii]: This article is concerned with presenting an overview of solid research methodology, rather than a philosophical analysis of the nature of ‘truth’.
Key point [ix]: My research methodology is founded upon primary sources, and is not in any way concerned with the consensus or belief of others.
Key point [x]: With historical research we can only make inferences.
Key point [xi]: An alternative to my research methodology is the popular ‘true until disproven’ framework, whereby a believer will accept secondary source stories until they are ‘disproven’, even if those secondary source stories are not supported by any primary sources whatsoever.
Key point [xii]: Even if the retardation cannot be undone on the macro level, it can be undone on the micro level.
Footnotes
*You will probably notice that my production values have improved markedly in the two years since I produced the above video. Naturally I re-watched my ‘Monkey Banana Ladder’ video for the purpose of putting this article article together. It felt like I was listening to a ‘former self’, somebody who is ‘me’ but is not ‘me’ at the same time. It has only been two years. This is another example of how far we can improve in both our thinking and the presentation of our thoughts to others if we are constantly practicing both.
I appreciate that many people feel too busy to write a blog or make youtube videos (and so forth) and am not trying to talk people into trying. What I will say is that there is nothing stopping any of us from engaging in regular practice of directed (i.e. object-oriented i.e. purpose-driven) thinking and presentation should we choose to do so; it has never in recorded human history been easier to do so; those who make this a hobby will benefit from doing so; and my own experience is proof of this.
**One article, written in March of this year, remains in draft form at 3,000 words. It is more technical and wordy than this piece; that is, it is more ‘academic’ and befitting a university essay, whereas this article is more appropriate for a website post. If there is demand for me to do so, I can publish the unfinished draft of that piece.
*** At least, outside of secret schools and/or some inter-generational human-ruling elite (the existence of which I am neither arguing for nor against in this piece).
Did you find this article interesting?
There are several articles on johnlebon.com which apply the framework you have just read about, to various stories of so-called ‘history’. Here’s just a few of them, and when you sign up as a Full Member of johnlebon.com, you’ll instantly get access to the rest.
The ‘Hundredth Monkey’ Effect
Article #17 – The Hundredth Monkey Myth [7,000 words]
Herodotus
Article #30 – The History of Histories [5,000 words]
The Library of Alexandria
Article #36 – Burning the Library of Alexandria [8,000 words]
Credits
The production of this article, as with all new content on this website, was facilitated by the support of the following individuals. Without their financial contributions, none of this would be possible at this point in time. If there existed more people like the following, perhaps the ‘truth’ scene might not be so bereft of quality research and material.
(Full Members as at 17-Oct-2017)
Alistair Caine | alphaxomega | Big Dave | Chad628 | dbuser | Dante from NY | DJMoe1987 | G Malicious | Hando | Harry Ell | Jimmy Scoular | Jumpy64 | Nate M | local_chump | mas | Mezzie | Negentropic | PJG | Rebel | Shirt Ninja | Silvertree | Stansen | Sts1316 | TheProphet49 | TheyAreLaughingAtUs | Tikielimited | Tomfoolery | Wattzupsport
Production notes: Originally published to Full access members 17-Oct-2017. Released publicly 14-Nov-2017. Minor tidy-up 21-Aug-2018 as part of inclusion in Welcome to Johnlebon.com piece. Updated JLB1568 video on 10-May-2019 due to old channel being terminated. Updated on 19-Mar-2021 in line with promo 19-mar-2021 [2] ‘response to reddit’.