Have you heard of the Salem hypothesis Salem Hypothesis - RationalWiki.
I don’t want to give them the hit. Summation?
I had not heard of the hypothesis until now. Interesting stuff.
That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. That plus they feel a need to believe they’re so much more intelligent than everyone else that only they and a select few can understand the “truth” of these various situations.
I tend to attract these wingnuts. Dunno if it’s something about me or if we just get so many here in Thailand, but I noticed it stateside too. A fellow student in Hawaii was one, and he was also working full-time as a state official. Or maybe he was taking a leave of absence to further his studies, not sure now. But he was a nice, amiable guy, very friendly. Seemingly normal until you got to know him, then you started hearing all these little theories of things he’d noticed that indicated the state government was doing all these little experiments on the citizens. Really weird. And he had lots of them. It all made perfect sense to him.
But we get plenty of these guys in Thailand. I was sitting in a backpackers’ bar on Khao San Road once. It was pretty crowded, but this Canadian zeroes in on me to discuss his theory – no, his certainty – that the government staged 9/11 so they could sell the steel from the buildings. As proof he offered the “fact” that no one knows what happened to the steel from all that rubble. I left quickly after finishing my drink.
And now I give you the Top 10 Celebrity 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Nutjobs.
And as an added bonus, the World’s Weirdest/Stupidest Conspiracy Theories.
Summation: People who are crazier than shit house rats really suck at web design too.
Regards,
Shodan
Now that I think of it, one of the IT guys in my department is a CTer. Nice guy but he’s got his quirks like not using the microwave/not eating food he knows was microwaved because he thinks it does Something Bad to food. I haven’t asked what, other coworkers will prod him to talk about his theories on odd things - and he knows we’re good-naturedly joshing him, and will explain regardless. He has a couple of CT books on his desk too, mostly of the “who shot JFK” nature and the like.
A friend of mine I have known my whole life just decided to be a 9/11 denier. I have come so close to deleting her off FB because her posts are so freaking annoying. She has posted that flight 93 didn’t crash since there was not enough wreckage, as demonstrated by other crashes.
I have simply mentally added her to the list that includes my Aunt, recently qualified in Rekhi, of people I just don’t pay attention to.
I don’t get it. What in the world do people have to gain by denying the very obvious truth? Especially if she’s, like you, a Canadian. What in the world could motivate someone from Canada to deny the extremely obvious? It’s mind boggling.
Sure, there are paranoid lunatics in the US who don’t trust the government, but for foreigners to sip the Kool-Aid is very weird to me.
I wonder if this is related to general crankery. This American Life recently had a segment about this guy—a do-it-yourselfer with amazing mechanical abilities—is convinced he’s proven E=mc[sup]2[/sup] wrong.
They took him to an actual physicist who found basic errors in his calculations. But he still wouldn’t give it up.
There was a suggestion that as someone who was self-taught in every aspect of his life, he simply could not accept that he couldn’t simplify advanced physics in a way that he could grasp without years if academic study.
This is the segment – A Little Bit of Knowledge - This American Life
I personally do not believe that there was a conspiracy … and that lack of belief stems from my conviction that there would have to have been far too many people involved, and that the probability of not one of them ever blowing the whistle is simply way too low.
Also, as I have been shown by contributors to this thread, there were indeed passengers aboard these planes, and for the conspiracy theory to hold water, these planes would have had to be diverted, the passengers evacuated and disposed of … how would they have been disposed of ?
I do not however go along with the demonisation of all CTers as mentally unstable… there are some questions they ask which, on the face of it, need answered, and if these questions were in fact answered satisfactorily, then I believe the whole CT 911 Truth movement would quietly fade away.
You were doing fine up to this point.
Those questions have been answered and to the great disgust of everyone, the Truthers not only ignore the answers but claim that any evidence presented was planted as part of the conspiracy.
Or everyone in the country was hypnotized that morning. or the airplanes were disguised cruise missiles. Or holograms. And the 1000s of hours of videos were all created in Hollywood.
And so on to infinity.
What questions would those be? Considering that many of the questions I’ve seen are based on false premises or even outright fabrications, I’m not sure how they can be answered.
The phenomenon of alien abductions has significantly abated now that everyone has a smartphone. Perhaps some kind if ubiquitous technology would offer such answers?
Bones, check out this thread to get a glimpse of how a CTer will ignore, distort and outright ignore evidence.
My September 11 Thoughts
Exactly. I suspect that Bones Daley doesn’t have as much experience dealing with Truthers as many of us do. Some people feel sympathy for people that are “Just asking questions” like the Truthers claim to so it makes a pretty effective opener. However, it is also a huge lie because they aren’t asking questions at all. If they were, they would actually be interested in the answers and asking further ones to learn something.
Instead, their “questions” are nothing more than opener to speculate on whatever flavor of Alice’s Wonderland that they happen to favor. In that world, the most basic and irrefutable facts become irrelevant, the laws of physics differ from our own and people behave quite differently than they do in the real world. If that isn’t one good definition of insanity, I don’t know what is.
They rely heavily on the good old toddler strategy of asking “Why?” or “How?” until they hit the limit of knowledge in a particular area and then exploiting that to “prove” that you know nothing and their whacked out and hopelessly complicated answer is therefore, obviously the correct one. That is a massive logical fallacy and indicates yet another type of mental weakness that they are susceptible too.
The sad part is that there are such a thing as real conspiracies. They just aren’t the ones that the Truthers and their anti-intellectual cousins happen to be interested in for some reason. Iran-Contra had everything you wanted in a real conspiracy - guns, Reagan, Iranians, communists, Chiquita Banana and much more - and you hardly ever hear anyone talk about that at all these days. The NSA spying revaluations and the mortgage industry meltdown in 2008 were pretty good real-life examples too but most people just shrug their shoulders over those as well.
Instead, we have a bunch of nutters claiming that we never went to the moon, arguing over which of about 20 different groups really killed Kennedy and claiming that the U.S. government did something really nonsensical with 4 passenger planes for some unknown purpose even though it was broadcast live on national TV and took place in the biggest city in America. If we lived in a just world, the Truthers could become activists against the real conspiracies and government injustices but I suppose they are thinking, “What is the fun in that?”
I don’t know if this is what you’re thinking of, but I happened to read about a similar case recently in the 2007 book Quirkology (by Richard Wiseman); here’s the excerpt:
http://www.quirkology.com/UK/extractfrombook.shtml
Other such stories can be collected using search terms like “false memory” and “source confusion.” A Wikipedia discussion (which mentions the Reagan story) can be found at Misattribution of memory - Wikipedia
You are completely wrong that. It doesn’t work that way. Conspiracy theorists really do have some extremely deep-seated mental processing issues that are incredibly resistant to critique even though they can be smart in other ways. However, I don’t mean to imply that they are all potential terrorists or are building up to anything worse. I know a few of them personally. Besides that flaw, they are generally just like most people if not a little more eccentric. They can be good spouses, employees, parents and everything else. That is the one thing that makes them so odd among the spectrum of people with mental disabilities. They can function just fine or even quite well on everyday tasks but, if you tap into their pet subject, the mental gloves come off and the insanity begins.
I have an aunt that I am going to see next week in Colorado. She has a masters degree and her husband is a psychiatrist. She firmly believes in both Bigfoot and UFO abductions. I don’t mean just a little, she spends good money to go to the conferences on them and has for years. She is in constant contact with the “experts” in that field of research. I can’t say she has ever been normal but she is the epitome of what a what an eccentric multi-millionaire aunt should be and I can’t think of anyone I would trust more with my daughters. However, I have told her to her face more times than I can count how batshit insane she is and burst out in laughter at what she is saying (in a good natured way). You have to be careful with family members but sometimes you can you can just tell them directly that their thoughts are insane without causing any problems.
No, I’m afraid no amount of explanation will ever be good enough for them.
…not quite true. There are plenty of reformed 9/11 Conspiracy theorists. I’ve chatted to a few. There are a few that will never reform, and a couple that are just doing it for the money. But I’ve watched, especially over at the Randi Forums, the process of people gradually realizing how impossible 9/11 Conspiracy theories really are. Its like coming out of a fog.