# Commonly attributed motives that don't make sense **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 22, 2016, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386 "2016-12-22T17:52:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/41 "2016-12-23T20:15:35Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Another one that doesn’t make sense is Flat-Earthers talking about how many different countries and entities are in on this conspiracy to make a flat Earth appear round to everyone, going so far as to doctor photographic images, etc…why and for what? 1. Convince everyone in the world that it is actually round. 2. ??? 3. Profit ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/42 "2016-12-23T23:28:22Z")
Most of my source material comes from the Michael Bay film “13 Hours”. So take that as you will. In the film, it is the station chief at the CIA Annex who gives the order to “stand down”. While the station chief and most of the CIA personal are portrayed as some combination of naïve, officious, pretentious and a bit cowardly, a legitimate argument can be made against pretty much the entire security detail leaving the Annex defenseless to possibly get drawn into an ambush or at the very least a firefight where they are unable to disengage. It is also portrayed that most other military forces such as gunships, drones, combat aircraft, SOCOM units, rapid response forces and whatnot are either too far away to lend assistance or sidelined through bureaucratic red tape and misguided political concerns. Whatever the actual reason, the narrative told by the Right is that Liberal Democrats are inept and cowardly, more concerned with not ruffling any political feathers than saving Americans. And that feeds into the simplistic Middle American Conservative notion of American exceptionalism - that we are the greatest country in the world with the greatest people and the best military. That all we have to do is unleash our military and the rest of the world will straighten up and fly right. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/43 "2016-12-23T23:38:52Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > The Gubmint is hiding evidence about UFOs is my favorite. And with this election there goes the last chance to find out. Hillary was probably the last candidate ever to make UFOs a priority. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2016, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/44 "2016-12-24T11:39:40Z")
More mundane than other posts, but one that continuously baffles me: Driving fast and aggressively because you’re in a hurry (in an urban environment). I and maybe 3 other people in Texas possess the mental competence to understand time and distance. The rest honestly believe that tailgating, rapid lane changes, and speeding will somehow get them to work faster. One of the gearhead shows did an experiment with this a few years ago. Two identical cars, same route, with one aggressive and speeding, the other camped in the right lane and taking it easy. Over their 20 mile journey\* on urban freeways, the speeder gained 3 minutes. Driving fast cannot make a significant difference in travel time in a normal urban commute. It only matters on long trips without traffic or signal light interruptions. \*from memory, I might have a few details wrong but as I recall the diff was only 3 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2016, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/45 "2016-12-24T14:02:44Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Horror movies are constantly showing us big evil corporations that create monsters that they expect will bring them huge profits. > > Sorry, but I can’t imagine the CEO at General Dynamics chortling gleefully about how much money txhe US Army would pay him for millions of flesh eating zombies! The last “Jurassic Park” movie comes to mind. The Defense Department wants an Army of velociraptors, huh? Sure they do. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2016, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/46 "2016-12-24T18:37:41Z")
Got into a discussion with my sister, who is normally quite rational. It was about those services which will determine your ancestry via DNA samples you send them. She talked as though there was something sinister about them having all those samples. When I asked what they could possibly do with them, she drew a blank. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2016, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/47 "2016-12-24T20:52:20Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > More mundane than other posts, but one that continuously baffles me: Driving fast and aggressively because you’re in a hurry (in an urban environment). > > I and maybe 3 other people in Texas possess the mental competence to understand time and distance. The rest honestly believe that tailgating, rapid lane changes, and speeding will somehow get them to work faster. One of the gearhead shows did an experiment with this a few years ago. Two identical cars, same route, with one aggressive and speeding, the other camped in the right lane and taking it easy. Over their 20 mile journey\* on urban freeways, the speeder gained 3 minutes. > > Driving fast cannot make a significant difference in travel time in a normal urban commute. It only matters on long trips without traffic or signal light interruptions. > \*from memory, I might have a few details wrong but as I recall the diff was only 3 minutes. But the motive makes sense. The actual performance - in terms of time shaved off the commute - isn’t much, but at least the motive “I want to get there sooner so I’ll drive faster” makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2016, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/48 "2016-12-24T23:27:25Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > There’s a sort of first-glance veneer of credibility to it, sure, that’s why it’s so persistent. But doctors have cured _all sorts of things_ from cave man days right up to the present. > > Maybe it’s because I’m a professional, too. As an engineer, if someone told me that my profession was holding back the technology to make our cities earthquake proof, or to prevent power outages or something, I’d laugh out loud. > > Then there’s the whole economic angle pointed out above. There’s more competition than you think. Sure, nobody is going to start another Pfizer in their garage, and the size of and regulations on these few huge pharmaceutical businesses make them a virtual oligopoly, but nobody is immune from competition. > > It doesn’t have to be a startup, either. All that illegal back room collusion goes out the window as soon as Mallinckrodt sees a chance to eat Pfizer’s lunch. They might have the current pie all divvied up and each company’s slice agreed upon, but as soon as one of those companies sees a brand new pie entirely, they’re going to be all over it. Also, let’s say Pfizer has a cancer cure locked up in a vault, somewhere. Aside from just not marketing it, they’d also have to not patent it, and not publish any scientific papers on it. Otherwise it’s not a “secret” cancer cure anymore. In other words, they have no way to prove that the cure they’ve got locked away actually belongs to them. And the board members and shareholders who are allegedly making billions by sitting on this cure are not, by and large, going to be the same people who created it. At some point, one of those researchers who actually developed the cure, and who probably earns somewhere in the mid-six figure range, is going to realize that he’s in a position to make a hell of a lot more money with his own cancer-curing start up. And what’s Pfizer going to do about it? Admit publicly that they’ve let millions die while they sat on a cure for a couple decades to maximize their profits? ---
**Author:** ![phantom\_lamb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@phantom\_lamb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phantom_lamb)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2016, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/49 "2016-12-25T00:59:01Z")
Anti-vaxxers. I just don’t understand what the world’s medical community would have to gain from poisoning, maiming and killing all of mankind. Just cartoon evil villains I guess? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2016, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/50 "2016-12-25T01:22:20Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > On the issue of abortion, there are folks who claim that some men oppose abortion because they want women to suffer the consequences of sexually promiscuous behavior and that allowing a woman to get an abortion would be “letting her off the hook” for casual sex, or something like that. Well, people do argue exactly that. I’ve seen that argument made right here on the SDMB. > [@Velocity](#): > > There are surely many other such examples - for instance, “the war in Iraq was for oil (why would the US spend thousands of lives and trillions of dollars on Iraqi oil when it would have been far cheaper and easier to just drill more at home?)” and also examples from fiction and cinema - a lot of characters in movies and books do things with motives that don’t make much sense. They wanted long term _control_ of the oil. To deny it to other people, not just use it; it was part of that “Project for a New American Century” plan the Bush Administration was a big admirer of. The idea that it _wasn’t_ about oil is pretty much historical revisionism; Bush was boasting beforehand about how we’d make a profit off the war. And the people who spent those lives and dollars weren’t the ones _losing_ them, so what did they care? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2016, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/51 "2016-12-25T02:01:42Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Well, people do argue exactly that. I’ve seen that argument made right here on the SDMB. > > They wanted long term _control_ of the oil. To deny it to other people, not just use it; it was part of that “Project for a New American Century” plan the Bush Administration was a big admirer of. The idea that it _wasn’t_ about oil is pretty much historical revisionism; Bush was boasting beforehand about how we’d make a profit off the war. I dont see that. > **[Project for the New American Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)** > > Defunct > Economics > Gun rights “Portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region, and emphasizing the potential danger of any Weapons of Mass Destruction under Iraq’s control,…” There’s a huge difference from saying SH was a danger to oil resources (he most certainly was, as he deliberately destroyed most of Kuwaits oil wells, causing a huge environmental problem) vs saying we should control the oil. and that was only a small portion of their ideas. Nowhere do i see the idea was that the war was fought over oil. It was fought due to GWB’s ego, stupidity and bad intelligence- and driven by Rove and Cheney who knew they could enrich their cronies. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2016, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/52 "2016-12-25T03:42:11Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This motive, I think, actually makes sense. It’s clearly false, but at least the logic, as outlined, makes sense, if chemo, etc. could make healthcare providers more money than simply curing cancer outright. The catch is that collective agglomeration “provider_s_”. The relevant compassion isn’t for the industry as a whole, but for whichever individual company (allegedly) has the cure. Obviously, that tilts the equation in favor of marketing the cure and letting your competitors suck up the losses from their therapies being rendered obsolete. The conspiracy-theory version where everybody agrees to suppress the cure is even more dubious, since it relies upon everybody being evil but not so evil as to stab the rest of the cabal in the back. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/53 "2016-12-25T20:35:30Z")
Another attributed motive that doesn’t make sense is that “People who hate homosexuals are secretly closeted gays themselves.” If someone is a Communist, does that mean he is, deep down, a secret capitalist? If someone roots for the Yankees, is he a secretly closeted Red Sox fan? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2016, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/54 "2016-12-25T21:12:32Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > The cure for cancer either already exists or is just a research paper or two away, but the pharmaceutical companies and doctors don’t want to lose all that lucrative chemo money. Some people have said the same thing about diabetes. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/55 "2016-12-26T00:50:07Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Another attributed motive that doesn’t make sense is that “People who hate homosexuals are secretly closeted gays themselves.” > If someone is a Communist, does that mean he is, deep down, a secret capitalist? > > If someone roots for the Yankees, is he a secretly closeted Red Sox fan? I think the “Virulent homophobes are secretly self-hating homos” meme got its start from several prominent right wing pundits and politicians who’d made quite a name for themselves as strident defenders of True Blue Hetero-ness against teh evil homoz. Until they were caught on film cruising gay bars or hanging out in public restrooms. After that happens enough times it becomes a convenient label to hang on any other strident homophobes. Even if in their personal case it’s undeserved. The underlying point you’re missing is the self-hating part. If you live in a Communist country and have to loudly profess the Party line to get ahead, you may well do just that. Regardless of your actual feelings. The genuine true believer commie is one thing; the guy who doesn’t believe but is going along to get ahead may well “protest too much” and overcompensate in spouting the rhetoric, etc. So yes, you’re over-the-top commie enthusiast may well be faking it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/56 "2016-12-26T00:56:42Z")
Late add: As another example of the same psychology, think back to HS or early college. Remember that one guy who bragged the most about getting all that nookie? From your more mature perspective today do you think he was telling the truth? Or was he compensating? ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/57 "2016-12-26T01:17:55Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Late add: > As another example of the same psychology, think back to HS or early college. Remember that one guy who bragged the most about getting all that nookie? From your more mature perspective today do you think he was telling the truth? Or was he compensating? Definitely that he was scoring with a lot of girls. Believe me, as a nerd who never had a date in high school, I’d love to believe the hetero studs I used to know were closet cases. But no, they weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/58 "2016-12-26T01:19:15Z")
Obamacare. Why the hell were the Republicans so opposed to a law that forced everyone to buy a product they didn’t want from the for-profit sector? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/59 "2016-12-26T01:46:48Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Late add: > As another example of the same psychology, think back to HS or early college. Remember that one guy who bragged the most about getting all that nookie? From your more mature perspective today do you think he was telling the truth? Or was he compensating? Unfortunately, it’s very well possible indeed that such folks were “getting all that nookie.” Confidence/jerks/attention/Type A/assertiveness and all that. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2016, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386/60 "2016-12-26T02:14:45Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Obamacare. Why the hell were the Republicans so opposed to a law that forced everyone to buy a product they didn’t want from the for-profit sector? **Obama** care, they hate Obama and want to excise his achievement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-attributed-motives-that-dont-make-sense/775386.md?page=4)