When conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact

[andygardener]

By proactively engaging in some research and looking for them, obviously. Not sure of your point here.

 

So we go out and work, we get back from a hard days work, have dinner and then instead of lounging in front of the mainstream media we bally well get stuck in and look for conspiracies.

 

How exactly do you propose we do that? Bally up and burgle the local travelodge on the off chance it's the new watergate? Mug a random stranger on the basis they may be carrying proof that David Cameron plans to sell us all for spare parts to China?

 

Or do you actually mean logging onto rense and the like and regurgitating their drivel over the rest of the web?

[Anna B]

Well, you didn't.

 

Question everything isn't useful advice. Question everything, then jump in saying I told you so when stuff gets declassified isn't useful advice.

 

One or probably many more people within the CIA have with a degree a certainty approaching so close to 100% it's silly will have broken laws and done nasty things outside their authority within the last decade that the public do not know about. Ditto MI6. Ditto the FSB.

 

I have no proof for the above but given what they are tasked with and even under such modern day scrutiny as is available to congress/parliament/not applicable in case of FSB it is inevitable.

 

But what's the point of me saying that? I have no knowledge or proof of whatever ills may have occurred. So why would stating the fairly obvious without any actual evidence make me any more wise or aware than those who just wait for the facts to come out as and when they do?

 

If everybody 'just waited for the facts to come out,' they never would.

 

Every 'fact' in this context is driven by somebody, somewhere asking awkward questions and looking for answers, ie being a 'conspiracy theorist' (though I hate that term) In other words seeking evidence to prove a theory, and often that evidence only comes about bit by bit until the balance of probability is overwhelming.

 

Would you call investigative journalists 'conspiracy theorists'?

[Longcol]

[/b]

 

If everybody 'just waited for the facts to come out,' they never would.

 

Every 'fact' in this context is driven by somebody, somewhere asking awkward questions and looking for answers, ie being a 'conspiracy theorist' (though I hate that term) In other words seeking evidence to prove a theory, and often that evidence only comes about bit by bit until the balance of probability is overwhelming.

 

 

Disagree. Investigation is looking at all the evidence and see where it leads. People with a theory tend to disregard evidence that doesn't fit.

[Anna B]

Disagree. Investigation is looking at all the evidence and see where it leads. People with a theory tend to disregard evidence that doesn't fit.

 

Wrong. Investigation is digging for evidence that is often hidden, disguised or confusing, and mired in red herrings and misinformation. Certainly they need to see where it leads which is why information tends to trickle rather than gush.

In uncovering anything there will always be information which doesn't fit, sometimes it is put there deliberately to put people off the scent. That doesn't necessarily mean that a theory is wrong, just that the whole picture has yet to emerge.

[epiphany]

So we go out and work, we get back from a hard days work, have dinner and then instead of lounging in front of the mainstream media we bally well get stuck in and look for conspiracies.

 

How exactly do you propose we do that? Bally up and burgle the local travelodge on the off chance it's the new watergate? Mug a random stranger on the basis they may be carrying proof that David Cameron plans to sell us all for spare parts to China?

 

Or do you actually mean logging onto rense and the like and regurgitating their drivel over the rest of the web?

 

Is it National Make a Strawman Day today or something?

[RootsBooster]

This is a very interesting topic epiphany, and I seem to remember starting a similar thread myself (a few years ago now, mind). If you want to completely discredit someone then simply throw the label of 'conspiracy theorist nutjob' at them and conjure up an image of a spotty geek who spends his entire life watching sci-fi, eating takeaways, and sitting at his computer coming up with all sorts of weird and wonderful alternative explanations for historical events.

 

I believe you are correct in that those who jump on any and all conspiracy bandwagons, to the point that their world-view leads them to see things which aren't there, are just as bad as those who, convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority, dismiss them out of hand without bothering to view the evidence. Indeed, it is the existence of this latter group upon which those who conspire to fool the public rely in order to get away with it, because without them generating doubt and pigeon-holing the fervent theorists as social outcasts, a much larger percentage of the population would most likely start doing more digging to try and expose their nefarious activities. But I do not agree with andygardener or RootsBooster's belief that there are only two categories in between. I see the middle ground as a large greyscale with numerous different attitudes towards the subjects, but it is always the two extreme groups that polarise the debate (on SF at least anyway) and the sane and rational voices often get lost amongst the abuse and ridicule they throw at each other, which is a real shame.

I never said there are only two categories inbetween. I don't think Andygardener did either.

[Smithster]

So we go out and work, we get back from a hard days work, have dinner and then instead of lounging in front of the mainstream media we bally well get stuck in and look for conspiracies.

 

How exactly do you propose we do that? Bally up and burgle the local travelodge on the off chance it's the new watergate? Mug a random stranger on the basis they may be carrying proof that David Cameron plans to sell us all for spare parts to China?

 

Or do you actually mean logging onto rense and the like and regurgitating their drivel over the rest of the web?

 

Wow. That's one hell of an assumption. It seems my point about greyscales was completely lost.

 

Some blinkered people will spend their evenings willfully swallowing everything that sites like rense tell them. Some people like to spend their spare time infecting their brain with utterly pointless turd like X Factor or I'm a Celebrity Get Me on TV, blissfully unaware of the machinations shaping the world around them.

 

Others, like myself, have an interest in the ideas put forward by the conspiracy theorists and then go about searching out information which will either confirm or refute them through various media such as books or the internet, while deliberately avoiding such agenda-driven sites as rense.

 

Take the whole 9/11 issue for example. Like most, I imagine, it never even occurred to me that there might have been something fishy about it until I started seeing discussions on forums such as this one about it. I was intrigued. The idea that we may have been hoodwinked by the most powerful government in the world for their own political and financial gain was, to my mind, not outside the realms of possibility, so I started reading as many sources as I could and even bought a couple of books on the subject. A large chunk of the supposed 'evidence' put forward by the conspiracy theorists can easily be debunked (like the idea that the towers could have been rigged for demolition without anybody noticing) but in many aspects of it, the official story just doesn't add up. I have now read an awful lot on the subject, viewed from both sides of the argument, and the only aspect of the whole affair about which I am certain is that the 'investigation' carried out by the 911 Commission was nothing of the sort, and was actually a complete whitewash designed to hide the truth rather than expose it. Now, I don't claim to know what it was intended to hide (Complicity? Utter incompetence in failing to prevent the attacks? Who knows) but I am certainly not the kind of person to deduce from this that it must therefore have been shape-shifting lizards who are hell-bent on global domination, nor am I going to just shrug and say "Oh well, never mind - when is Strictly on?". Like I have tried to point out I, like most people I imagine, am somewhere on the spectrum in between.

[erebus]

Regarding 9/11, the way the twin towers collapsed does suggest something was not right, as the steel structure, and we are talking many massive nertical steel beams here, holding up the structure, appears to have broken up having fallen amongst the rubble. But I am willing to believe that cold steel, can do strange things, hot steel by the way looses its tensile strenght, thus bends. But so what, we all know that steel beans can snapinto tiny bits when a heavly load falls on them. We also know that one of the buildings was having its fire rating/proofing improved, but again its a red herring.

 

Now let us talk about the THIRD building, the one no one talks about, that suddenly collapsed for not good reason. A plane failed to crash into it, as ther was no third plane, and the fires in it were superficial. When that pile collapsed it did so uniquely, it decided to collapse in on itself, thus another free fall. This has never been explained. But I think that it collapsed in sympathy with the twin towers, or god likes counting in threes. That is the fly in the ointment, and that is the building that should have made people reconsider the amazing vertical fall of the other two.

 

Ask any demolition expert, show him jut the part of the film after the plane crash, as in the second building and the third, and they see it as a demolition job, and when told it was not, and could never have been quite upsets them. I am no demolition expert, and have to trust their opinion.

[Mr Prime]

As I read it the 'Engineers Association of America' or similar titled organisation stated that the way the buildings fell was perfectly normal. Are these CIA dupes? Who do I believe? The association or the daft dweebs that produced the multiple ever changing (and money earning) editions of 'Loose Change'?

[dosxuk]

Now let us talk about the THIRD building, the one no one talks about, that suddenly collapsed for not good reason. A plane failed to crash into it, as ther was no third plane, and the fires in it were superficial. When that pile collapsed it did so uniquely, it decided to collapse in on itself, thus another free fall. This has never been explained.

 

Except it has, in quite a lot of detail over several reports. However, the conspiracy fan network don't like to acknowledge these reports, and will quickly declare them as whitewashes and completely fictional without reading them because they don't agree with the conclusions.

 

But I think that it collapsed in sympathy with the twin towers, or god likes counting in threes. That is the fly in the ointment, and that is the building that should have made people reconsider the amazing vertical fall of the other two.

 

Ask any demolition expert, show him jut the part of the film after the plane crash, as in the second building and the third, and they see it as a demolition job, and when told it was not, and could never have been quite upsets them. I am no demolition expert, and have to trust their opinion.

 

This is also the other major problem with the collapse. Very few of the conspiracy sites include the full video of the collapse, which starts several seconds before the main collapse with one of the rooftop plantrooms disappearing. They all choose to show the shortened edited version which starts just at the main collapse and ends just after.

 

If you try and question why they haven't used the long version of the video, they'll start talking about how the building was going to be "pulled", and the BBC reported the collapse early, and totally ignore their own misuse of evidence.

 

WTC7 is a good example of how, when presented with limited evidence, and a predetermined theory, it's very easy to convince the man-on-the-street that something did/didn't happen. Something the same people accuse the mainstream media of doing every day...