The legitamacy of conspiracy theories.

[FinnAgain]

And I was about to post “well at least nobody claimed that the Tuskegee syphilis study was a CT”. It’s taking longer than we thought.

@Strassia

It was kept form the public until a whistleblower exposed it in 1972.

No. Wrong. Fictional.
It was published and freely available information, for decades, it’s just that nobody cared. Even the claim that there was a “whistleblower” is simply fictional. You can’t blow the whistle on something that’s published in freely available medical journals.

That’d be like me blowing the whistle on the fact that there’s a corporation named google and they have a search engine.

@Jackmannii

What generates immediate and profound skepticism is promotion of conspiracy theories that are 1) based on wildly improbable premises, 2) involve the participation of large numbers of people, all of whom keep absolutely quiet about the conspiracy, 3) are intricately and skilfully executed by geniuses who also manage to commit stupid errors that expose their actions to conspiracy theorists, and 4) survive and are circulated endlessly by the credulous no matter how thoroughly they are debunked by good evidence.

This is exactly the point. There are actual conspiracies, of course, nobody with half a brain could deny that. But a conspiracy is not the same as a Conspiracy Theory. If it helps, just substitute the word “bullshit” wherever you see “a CT”.

CT’s are often over-simplistic glosses designed to ‘make sense’ of complicated, difficult phenomena. There isn’t a tumultuous and potentially dangerous culture of Jihadists who wish death to innocent Americans who aren’t easily identified or attacked, so our government did it. The economy sucks and you’re not in control of your own life as much as you’d like and other people seem to be having better luck than you, so the Jews did it.

They’re often based on not just wildly implausible, but contradictory claims. The US government was crafty enough to rig two of the most heavily used and populated office buildings with enough explosives to stage a controlled demolition, and then simply rather than blowing them up and blaming the same terrorists who tried to do just that a few years prior, flew air planes into the buildings. Israel knew that the US was so thoroughly in their pocket that they would ignore an attack on a US intelligence gathering ship with malice aforethought, but they didn’t just say “um, can you move your boat?” and they attacked it from a deliberate plan, but forgot to bring anti-ship weaponry and instead had anti-infantry weaponry equipped. The Bilderberg/Trilateral/Skull and Bones rule the world/the country and control everything behind the scenes, but they also have designated meetings at public places for organizations whose identity they publicly confirm.

That, I think, is the real hallmark of a true CT. It’s not just that it doesn’t make sense, but that people have a need to force it into a mold, a need that’s so strong that they dream up a society of Genius Fools who are both utterly ruthless fiendish geniuses and schmucks whose plans are so obvious that a child could unravel them.

“Hey, let’s attack the Pentagon and the WTC’s.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“And, hey, let’s hijack some planes to do it.”
“Sure, why not.”
“And then, let’s not even use the planes on the Pentagon, and instead let’s hit it with a missile.”
“Well, why would we do that, wouldn’t people see it? Wouldn’t a plane hitting the Pentagon be an an act of war anyways? Why even use the missile if we already have the plane?”
“That’s just the way we roll.”

[Jackmannii]

@Strassia

There is a current CT that the CIA introduced crack cocaine to the inner cities to destroy the black community. How is that theory different than a CT that the FBI is infiltrating left leaning organizations and trying to destroy them from the inside by inciting violence and criminal activity?

The latter makes a certain amount of sense given the FBI’s historical preoccupation with Communists/leftists, and evidence backed up the existence of an organized infiltration effort (note that there was not a band of conspiracy theorists devoted to exposing the existence of Cointelpro against the jeers of skeptics). The former is a CT that does not make sense unless one is paranoid/filled with racist bile, and evidence does not support it.

So yes, I see a big difference there.

And even if one could cite examples of real conspiracies revealed by conspiracy theorists performing their amateur investigations, that would not give credence to new/existing CTs with loony premises and absence of evidence. If I announce that I have discovered a cure for cancer in my basement laboratory that costs pennies to produce and is 100% effective with no side effects (but present no valid supporting evidence), I am not entitled to a respectful hearing on the basis of Alexander Fleming having discovered penicillin in 1929.

[FinnAgain]

@FinnAgain

There are actual conspiracies, of course, nobody with half a brain could deny that. But a conspiracy is not the same as a Conspiracy Theory. If it helps, just substitute the word “bullshit” wherever you see “a CT”.

By the way, this was rambling for the peanut gallery, not Jack in specific.

[ElvisL1ves]

@psikeyhackr

Consider the turbine car that almost won the Indy 500 in 1968. Turbines were then banned from the race. What was the LOGIC of that? Suppose turbines had been allowed. Wouldn’t consumers eventually want turbines in their own cars. But what since did it make to ban the fastest technology from an auto race?

It isn’t entirely about going fast. It’s also about developing and promoting technology for the automakers’ commercial products. And it’s about keeping costs affordable for enough teams to have a good race.

Turbines were and are never going to be an attractive choice for production cars, for numerous functional reasons (need for wide variations in power output, lethally high exhaust temperatures, etc.). But they’re also inherently a helluva lot more expensive than piston engines (high temps mean nickel alloys and close tolerances mean expensive manufacturing processes, for starters). The turbine ban by USAC allowed oval racing to remain competitive and to maintain its marketing function. It was a sound business decision, based on those reasons, which were openly explained at the time. But not a conspiracy.

[AndrewL]

@ElvisL1ves

It isn’t entirely about going fast. It’s also about developing and promoting technology for the automakers’ commercial products. And it’s about keeping costs affordable for enough teams to have a good race.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, either. Essentially any time a team uses some really clever bit of technology that makes their car faster than everyone else’s, race officials promptly ban it in future races. The rules are there to keep the race safe - which often comes down to limiting car speed - and to enforce a reasonably even playing field for all the teams. No conspiracy required. You can still see jet powered race cars at certain dragster and funny car exhibitions where the rules permit it.

[tomndebb]

@Strassia

The Tuskagee syphilis experiment lasted for 40 years.

@xtisme

The Tuskagee syphilis experiment didn’t stay hidden…it just didn’t come to the public’s attention for that period. People knew about it…it wasn’t a conspiracy.

@Strassia

It was kept form the public until a whistleblower exposed it in 1972.

It was never “kept from the public”; it was written up in medical journals throughout its duration. Unfortunately for its victims, no one who read those journals thought that those people, belonging to a discriminated-against class, were being treated unfairly and mentioned it publicly. It was, however, never hidden. No effort was made to keep it secret.

[tomndebb]

@Strassia

There is a current CT that the CIA introduced crack cocaine to the inner cities to destroy the black community. How is that theory different than a CT that the FBI is infiltrating left leaning organizations and trying to destroy them from the inside by inciting violence and criminal activity?

Well, the “CIA introduces crack” CT has been around since a couple of months after crack came to national awareness, (replacing the “CIA introduced heroin to the inner cities” theory dating back at least as far as the Vietnam War), and no one has actually provided any evidence for them.
OTOH, the FBI has actually had agents provacateur who were called upon to testify at trials in which the Defense showed that much of the violent rhetoric originated among those plants.
(The FBI has recently had a number of “infiltrators” outed by Muslim groups who did not realize that they were plants and turned them in for acting like Islamist radicals.)

When there is actual evidence, it stops being a Conspiracy Theory and can be recognized as a conspiracy. When there is no positive evidence that is not manufactured, lots of negative evidence, and the CT seems implausible, it is a good chance that the CT is bogus.

[tomndebb]

@FinnAgain

That’d be like me blowing the whistle on the fact that there’s a corporation named google and they have a search engine.

You do know that now Sergey Brin and Larry Page have to kill you?

[TriPolar]

@AndrewL

It’s not the first time it’s happened, either. Essentially any time a team uses some really clever bit of technology that makes their car faster than everyone else’s, race officials promptly ban it in future races. The rules are there to keep the race safe - which often comes down to limiting car speed - and to enforce a reasonably even playing field for all the teams. No conspiracy required. You can still see jet powered race cars at certain dragster and funny car exhibitions where the rules permit it.

Actually, the turbine engine was getting too close to the secret technology that allows cars to run on water.

[FinnAgain]

@tomndebb

You do know that now Sergey Brin and Larry Page have to kill you?

Nah, modern conspiracies find it to be much more effective to use their pawns to paint critics as crackpots, biased by an agenda and unreliable even in factual reporting and… hey… wait a minute…