what do you think of Oliver Stone’s JFK
Do you have a job, and if so, what is it?
Do you have a DSM-IV-TR disorder, and if so, what is it and how are you dealing with it?
Do you have a spouse, and if so, how does that spouse deal with your being a conspiracy theorist?
What actions have you taken, or intend to take, to combat the conspirers?
Do you own a gun?
You’ve mentioned that you read The New York Times every day. Do you read The Wall Street Journal at all, and if not, why not?
I’m interested in the answer to this question too.
For instance: what do you think about the theory that government is deliberately seeding the atomosphere with toxins (“chemtrails”) to make people sick? Are there conspiracies to cover up great dangers associated with aspartame sweetener and water fluoridation? Are Bill Gates and major corporations plotting to depopulate the world through vaccination? Are scientists and drug companies covering up the existence of cheap, safe, effective cures for chronic diseases and cancer?
Do you find any of the above theories to be nonsense, or are all either substantially correct or reasonable theories worthy of investigation?
There are dozens of theories about 9/11 alone. You can’t believe them all, many are mutually incompatible (planes vs. no planes, for example). Which one(s) do you find the most credible, and why?
Please describe what ones you find NOT credible, and why, too. I’ve got all day, so take your time.
A short list, just from memory:[ul][]There were no planes[]There were planes, but they had rockets (pods) attached and shot them at the buildings before plunging into them[]There were planes, but they were not passenger planes[]There were planes, but they were remote controlled[]There were planes, but they didn’t hit the towers and all the news reporters inserted images in the videos real-time to make it believable []The towers and Pentagon were hit by missiles, not planes[]The towers were brought down by explosives planted in advance and the planes (if any) were just misdirection[]Bush gesticulated hypnotically and the nation was brainwashed because he wanted to invade Iraq and needed an excuse[/ul]
I totally read that in the voice of the narrator for Ancient Aliens…
If you believe what you do, explain why you are permitted to post about it?
I thought everybody believed this.
Seriously, I believe that those with the money and the power work with each other to keep it. For example, during the Cold War the US supported various regimes in attempts to retain or gain power in various regions.The USSR did the same thing.
There have been studies showing that conspiracy theorists have no problem believing contradictory theories Contradictions Don't Deter Conspiracy Theorists | Live Science
“The more people were likely to endorse the idea Princess Diana was murdered, the more they were likely to believe that Princess Diana is alive,”
Seeing as how we haven’t heard from Kozmik in over 19 hours, I think we can safely assume that the Illuminati got to him. Any ideas about how to avenge him?
We should start by
Agreed. Then follow up with
Hope he’s not butt-hurt. (Why don’t the ever lube those probes?) It’s almost as if they
So… why didn’t the people you believe actually carried out the attacks do that? And, given their apparent power and mastery of pretty much everything, including the natural human tendency to talk, why didn’t they also do something like release poison gas into the NYC subways or unleash a Captain Trips-level superbug using crop dusters over San Francisco? Hell, flying a plane into the Hoover Dam would have been a wonderful example of Evil Conspiratorial Thinking. Why hasn’t anyone done that yet?
In short: That was a worthless question which proves nothing. Please try harder in the future.
Man, that article made my brain hurt trying to absorb how such cognitive dissonance is possible. It’s like those people are so paranoid of being fooled by shadowy forces out of their control, they prefer to fool themselves in order to at least be in control of their own fooling.
They’re seemingly incapable of just withholding from drawing any conclusions due to lack of facts/evidence/knowledge. Instead, they prefer to draw multiple contradictory conclusions as a weird sort of all-bases-covered “insurance” against being fooled.
Ultimately, the Anarch.
Because anybody could come out and claim responsibility for the attacks. I remember that some organization came out right after 9/11 and claimed responsibility but it was ruled out.
For someone, the towers must collapse. Remember that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing did not bring down the towers while the September 11 attacks, of course, did.
No.
Yes.
Yes.
We’ll see.
Yes.
Not as often as SDMB.
Yes.
I think that the “average man on the street” is more paranoid than me. I think that I am not necessarily more informed than most - I think that I have the possibility of being more informed than most – a distinction that I am making for a reason.
Because they are in control they intentionally leave evidence that is just that - evidence. Evidence of evidence is what - nothing. It’s like the perfectionist that intentionally makes one mistake so that they know that that is the only mistake that they have made.
Because it wasn’t about maximizing damage it was about maximizing viewership of damage.
No.
Yes, among many the most prominent being the moon landing hoax.
Yes, an associate degree in pre-business.
Yes.
Because they are so powerful. Also anonymity is a form of power. They will remain anonymous after this thread. And this is the Straight Dope Message Board.
They are like students who just read the textbook and don’t, in the journalistic sense, “check it out”.
They are like people that rely on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is one place among many where the official stories are.
I can see where they are coming from. I wish that they would investigate more.
They mistake the forest for the trees.
There was a book from the 1970s. I can’t remember the name of the book. It claimed that the moon was a hollow satellite. I don’t believe that conspiracy theory anymore.
It strains plausibility when in the moon landing hoax or in the moon is hollow (that was a book from the 1970s that I remember reading, believing and dismissing) theories are looked at in isolation. For example, people that believe in the moon landing hoax don’t generally believe that Sputnik was a hoax. They go from point to point whereas I connect the dots. For example, most people know that NASA was created in response to Sputnik but most people (outside of the SDMB) don’t know that DARPA was also created in response to Sputnik. NASA, DARPA, the Roswell UFO Incident, the Manhattan Project, MK Ultra, HAARP. Now we’re on to something.
I don’t necessarily look at people who believe that heads of state are secretly lizard people as being kooky. It’s not evidence that separates my conspiracy beliefs from theirs. It’s plausibility that separates my conspiracy beliefs from theirs. My intuitive gut feeling would not tell me that the Illuminati would be behind the heads of state, my intuitive gut feeling would tell me that, for example, they might be different than most humans.
There are similar patterns of behavior, for example, those who believe that no planes were involved on 9/11 look at video evidence to support their conclusion just as those who believe the moon landing was a hoax look at photo evidence for their conclusion.
No.
It’s a good starting point for those who don’t believe in conspiracy theories.
Yes, I have a job. It’s a job that pays the bills. It’s a general business job. I am at very bottom of a very large corporation.
Not that I know of. I think I might have OCD.
No. Funny you should ask that. Someone is interested in me (by interested in me I mean mutual communication). She is a Simpsons fan, among others things. She is a somewhat famous writer. I want her name to appear in the Simpsons credits. Because she is something of a comedian, she might be ok with that.
Post on the SDMB. Fighting ignorance and all that.
No.
I don’t read The Wall Street Journal because then it would take two hours out of my day. If I read NYT, WSJ and The Washington Post, then that would be three hours out of my day. So I read The New York Times for approximately an hour every day and occasionally look at the other newspapers.
They are all health related conspiracy theories and they are worthy of investigation.
It will take me more than a day to answer this question. I will answer this question.
Because it’s the SDMB.
I will also answer these questions even though they were not directed toward me. I have to go to work
They wanted people fearful and vengeful, but most of all, still useful, not totally overwhelmed by the horrors they were witnessing.
Thanks for the constructive criticism.
Are you saying that Americans are markedly more likely to become overwhelmed than the British? Because 9/11 was nothing compared to the Blitz, and the Brits weren’t overwhelmed.
Hell, the Japanese were able to keep fighting and making the tools needed for war while their entire island group was methodically reduced to smoking ash, and that was before the nukes. Ditto the Germans. And my god you must not know a damned thing about what the Russians went through. Or the Chinese, especially in Manchuria. And yet most people kept on doing what they had to, or thought they had to, and even in the worst parts of that one war most of the governments didn’t collapse until their enemies had actually invaded pretty far into their homeland, and not even then if you’re talking about the Russians and the Chinese (well, to the extent the Chinese had a government then).
So, yes, please take my advice and step this up a bit. My brain is mostly sleepy now and I can still see the major holes in your arguments.
Thanks - this is interesting.
I don’t understand what you mean by saying you’re allowed to post about these conspiracies because ‘It’s the SDMB’. Do you mean that the SDMB has connections that make it too powerful for anyone who’s part of the conspiracies to have you censored or banned? Or that you’re allowed because no one takes the SDMB seriously, so the people in power don’t feel threatened by your exposing them here?
Do you assume that any conspiracy theory you hear about is automatically worthy of investigation, or do you have a filtering process that means you can dismiss some outright and investigate others before you decide? If so, is it evidence-based (‘Well, there’s zero evidence for this person’s claim that Mitt Romney is actually made of doughnut holes, so I’m not going to put any thought into it’) or gut-based (‘It’s totally implausible that Mitt Romney would be made of doughnut holes, so I’m not going to put any thought into it’)?
Someone needs to link to Kozmik’s Pit thread from several months ago. I’m too lazy to do it, but there’s like 20-30 pages of this stuff in it.