Actually, you haven’t told us. What threatens? You mentioned possible environmental catastrophe, which is a real possibility – we’re totally fucked if the sea levels rise even two meters – but that need not be the product of any conspiracy. “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Do you believe in any particular conspiracy out to destroy our “way of life”? Who is behind it and why?
Well there’s not much I can do as long as you old farts refuse to believe in anything. At this point I already know we’re screwed. Fucking with you guys helps pass the time at work.
Well these old guys are bringing it, I’m sure they’d hate to keep you waiting much longer.
And you think stupidity has led us here? Given our ancient history and all the myths and legends of awesome battles, how little we know of our past, and all the hype about the Bible that nobody saw this coming? With all the secrecy and coverups in science (like the nature of tornadoes and hurricanes) I find that even harder to believe.
That’s pretty hard to pinpoint. Basically though they’re making sure the people of the world don’t figure it all out. Men of science, our leaders, the people who blew up the WTC, the ones who went around burning ancient libraries to the ground so that we won’t remember, the ones who jailed Plato and forced his teacher to drink poison. Maybe some awesome event will come across and save us, but with the way we’ve been disrespecting nature, cutting down the forests, and fishing out the seas I don’t see it happening. I think everybody will run around cutting down trees for fuel and eating the last of the animals, so that there won’t be enough of anything for the cycle to continue.
Why is it happening? The same reason the Tower of Babel came crashing down, and the same reason Atlantis was sunk. We know too much.
This one I gotta hear… What exactly IS the “nature of tornadoes and hurricanes” ?
Those things have nothing whatsoever to do with what’s “coming,” if by that you mean ecological catastrophe. People did not start predicting that sooner because the conditions for it did not exist. Nobody in the 19th Century could have imagined the incredible global population growth, industrialization growth, and resultant pollution and climate change of the 20th and 21st. And that is the result of stupidity. What reason have you to think otherwise? We all have to live on the same planet – what reason would anybody have to deliberately engineer the destruction of its ecosystem? (Unless you’re gonna bring ET’s into it . . .)
You mentioned that in another thread but I still don’t know what you’re talking about.
:dubious: Framing it in those terms, the “they” you speak of would have to be a single, self-aware, organized conspiracy thousands of years old. Which, I hope you will concede, is a preposterous theory on its face. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Have you got anything at all to back that up?
Plato was never jailed, BTW. He was, once, briefly sold into slavery by Dionsysos, the tyrant of Syracuse, but that was a personal dispute.
Now you’ve lost me. I thought your point was that we know too little.
As for Atlantis, Plato’s account does not mention why it sank, but implies a routine natural disaster, as do most Greek myths on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis#Plato
And I hope you are using “the Tower of Babel” as a figure of speech, not a historical example.
The concept of the Tower of Babel (or Egypt, or Montezuma, or Xelhua, or India, depending on who you ask) is little more than a retconn for tying all the races and languages to Adam & Eve, and Atlantis was almost certainly a figment of Plato’s imagination.
Know too much of what?
Ha! He can’t suffer you fools…witness his contemporary, Tom Cruise; only he knows the nature of psychology! And so can you with weekly payments of $39.99…
Apparently he’s trying to bring “God” into it.
When I was a kid, I remember seeing some lights in the sky on the way back from a soccer game or something, and my sister and I believing it to be a UFO. Nevermind that it was a well documented and predicted solar phenome, my sister and I knew it was an alien ship of some sort. That night, I slept in her bed, and we wore all yellow because someone on some talk show said aliens hated the color yellow.
I’m 18 now, and that only happened maybe 10 years ago, but looking back it was rather silly. It was a fantastic and outlandish story, and my sister and I fell for it, because we were young and impressionable.
As they say, when you leave childhood, it’s time to put away childish things.
I’ve noticed in my short time on this earth that people will believe damn near anything you want them to. My dad listens to this one radio show, and they can get him to buy almost anything. He takes tons of vitamins, none of which have really been tested by the FDA, and more than likely do nothing. He used to try to get me to put pig fat on my face, because someone told him it would cure acne. He drinks liquid spinach for dinner, for no known reason.
People just simply want to believe in the fantastic, regardless of veracity. Lots of us on the Dope are outspoken for science and the scientific process, but not all of the world is like that. Some people have a disdain for academia, and feel that dismissing facts simply allows them to disapear. You can give them a cold, harsh, logical explanation for why the world is the way it is, but they then turn around and can simply call you an Ivory tower elite in cohorts with the government, and you are expected to defend your stance.
Up until Galileo, empiricism wasn’t even well defined. People throughout history have always used whimsical stories to explain what they couldn’t understand, or when they could, what they couldn’t accept. That is why snake oil sold so well before, and why quartz crystals are being sold today. Sometimes, the truth is so complex, so cold, and so outside our view of justice, like knowing there simply isn’t a cure for cancer, that it is far easier to believe in some made up, easily dismissable “truth.”
After all, people will believe anything you tell them, if you sound confident enough.
I had looked at the over-the-top macho posturing expressed by bigpappadiaz and figured that it was an attempt by a young girl to appear male. I have been assuming that she was just having us on with the username.
Without addressing any of the specific people who have recently stopped by this board I have a few ideas on why some people believe in CT’s.
1.) CT’s are fun. They’re a vast convoluted science fiction thriller brought to life, like the X-files or Watchmen and you are the star! People believe in CT for the same reason they buy thrillers or watch movies. It’s exciting to speculate on a vast all-powerful conspiracy. Since you don’t have to prove anything or do any detective work, it’s an endless source of amusement.
2.) CT’s are complex. Part of the amusement of CT’s is their complexity. Some of the CT fans I’ve met IRL are very smart people with weak education. CT provides these people an ability to excercize their minds without discipline or training. Also, one has access to the secret world, the truths behind the illusion. This is a heady feeling.
3.) CT’s are oddly reassuring. One thing I agree with bigpappadiaz on is that the world is pretty messed up. And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. It’s actually somewhat comforting to believe the messed-up state of the world is caused by a vast conspiracy. A conspiracy can perhaps be defeated, however slim that hope may be. The reality is far more depressing. The world is was and always will be messed up because we–all of us–are a stupid violent short-sighted species. We may progress, but it will be a slow and painful process.
4.) CT’s stroke the ego. It’s a huge boost to the ego to believe that you are one of the elect, one who has escaped the bonds put upon the rest of the “sheeple” to stare boldly at the awful truth. You are both more insightful and braver than those fools out there who blindly accept consensus reality. Note how often CT Buffs urge us to “use your minds.” It doesn’t do much good to tell them “We are using our minds, we just reach different conclusions than you.” See The Matrix for a perfect description of how CT fans imagine themselves.
5.) madness. Again I’m not talking about anyone on this board, none of whom I’ve met. But there’s a rather obvious connection between CT belief and Paranoid Delusion. I’m not saying it’s true of every CT believer, but it’s certainly true of some.
However, banning trolls (which is what you have just copped to being) helps me pass the time waiting for the hamsters to load other pages.
This is an official Warning that you are out of line.
[ /Moderating ]
Bah. So the CT bunch have fun with their hobbies, are a complex bunch, have hope, and are arrogant? Hmmmm… Not having their findings recognized or even merely thought over can really piss someone off, and so the arrogance can be a compensation for that poor, pitifull soul. This apathy can also really piss someone off, if they believe that they’re findings deserve merit. Like electromagnetics in our Universe. Suffer the poor fool who tries to convince anyone that it deserves its place in celestial mechanics.
You know, most conspiracy theorists jump at the chance to explain their theories to a receptive audience. And we still have no idea what yours are.
But nothing you believe in is true.
How can you say that? You don’t know what bigpappadiaz believes! None of us do!
Bingo. Philip Dick (a man who knew a thing or two about the CT impulse) said in one of his lucid intervals that (paraphrase) just because religion goes away doesn’t mean the religious impulse does. This applies in a number of ways: The moralism and preachy side of religion find their secular expression (some would say) in the modern nanny state. The appeal of a cosmology, an overarching purpose to seemingly random events – a Theory Of Everything – is obvious, and can be met in part by a grand CT.
Not even him! 
While this explains the psychology behind various foamings of the mouth and hysteria-based actions, it does not, unfortunately, impose upon the sane and the knowledgable an obligation to humor those so afflicted.
When a toddler has a fit at the check-out counter because “his” candy has been taken away to be rung up, neither the parent nor the cashier has an obligation (or even a right) to return the candy to the child before it has been included in the purchase total. One may understand the outraged cries of the toddler–who mistakenly believes that it is “his” candy–without acquiescing to his demands or stealing from the store simply to encourage him to be quiet.
I always knew there was something strange about that guy.
I, for one, welcome our reptillian overlords!
The latest nonsense from my favorite CT: