In the ATMB forum there is a thread initiated by shadowofneo.
What I DON’T want is for this to turn into a slag thread wherein our shadowofneo, or Conspiracy Theorists(CTs) in general, get bashed mercilessly. I don’t think that would be useful at all, and we’ve done it here enough already. It’s easy pickin’s because a well-executed conspiracy is, whether it is real or the result of incorrect conclusions drawn from incomplete or inaccurate facts, by its very nature difficult to prove and readily debunked/plausibly denied. No point in even getting into that. But I will define a CT as someone who firmly advances a perspective which is not commonly believed or recognized, and who feels his perspective is actively suppressed by some authoritative body. * cough * Galileo * cough *
It’s useless to try and guess what motivates a CT. Maybe it’s attention whoring, or maybe it’s the genuine concern a steer might express to his cowmrades when he alone realizes why they’re all lined up in a pen, marching slowly toward the big, smelly barn. So let’s make this personal.
Let’s say YOU have ‘connected some dots’ and suddenly a bunch of seemingly unrelated stuff paints a picture of the world that is substantially different from what you were taught in school, or what the media have reported. And that picture is absolutely solid–new information fits perfectly and further supports your conclusion. What would it take for you to go public with your idea–knowing you would face public ridicule, possibly involuntary confinement? Why would you bother? How hard would you fight to get yourself heard?
My question to shadowofneo, in particular, is “so what if there IS a bio station alpha?” How is my knowledge of such a thing going to help me feed my family and pay my bills? How is it going to help me in any way? What would you do if The Government went public and said, “Yep, we’re onto something out there and no, we’re not giving you any details for the same reasons you don’t get to refine your own fissible materials, run a still, or know what the hide of a nuclear submarine is made of.” 9/11 was a false flag event? So what? We barely trust the results of our own presidential elections–what could we possibly do about it if W came out and admitted it?
At first, it’s to feel superior (“I figured out something no one else did”) and to get attention. As time goes on, most conspiracy buff become emotionally invested in the idea.
At that point, they are believers and have to reinforce their belief system. They are like religious proselytizers who know the truth and want to spread it to others and can’t accept anything that challenges their belief.
Most conspiracy theories fall apart when logistics are considered, and all of them ignore how actual human beings behave.
And they doubtlessly want the rest of us sheeple to wake up so we stop the conspiracy’s actions and overthrow/imprison those responsible (depending on the conspiracy, granted).
The ‘special knowledge’ thing seems to be the reason most often stated. I can’t figure it out, but I’m a skeptic off the deep end in the other direction. What always amazes me is the otherwise intelligent and rational people that pick up on these things. The world is full of people who for one reason or another aren’t sophisticated enough to see through these things at first glance, but when someone who must have been able to wade through other bullshit to develop some high level skills falls into this nonsense I don’t know what to think. Is this a disease? Are all of us susceptible to the right story?
If you’re talking about a global conspiracy type deal, I don’t think I’d broadcast my findings over the Internet. That’d be like hanging a sign that says “please come to my house and kill me.”
There are a couple of monstrous, multi-dozen page threads out there about this already, wherein Kozmik, one of our resident CTers, claimed to be willing to explain his thought processes. As one might guess, he fails to do this in spectacularly frustrating fashion.
And if you put the frustration aside it ends up looking pretty sad. I think several people did ask the question The Great Sun Jester is asking in this thread - “if this is all true, so what?” - but I don’t remember an answer. It might also be relevant to note here that Kozmik, like pretty much every conspiracy theorist, is unable to explain why the conspiracy allows people to find evidence of its existence. I’ll be the millionth person here to cite Robert Anton Wilson’s comment that if you believe in a powerful conspiracy, it doesn’t make sense to trust the evidence of the conspiracy because the conspiracy could just be faking the evidence.
I guess this really is the core of my question. It’s not so much “How in the hell did you do the math for that one?” (trying to follow the logic of a CT can be maddening) as “If your math is correct and someone has gone to great lengths to cover up a reality, how long do you think your uppitiness will be tolerated?” To which the self-serving answer seems to be, “Now that I’m in the open, they wouldn’t dare touch me! If I went missing, people would notice and wonder…and believe.” Which brings us again to the need to feel superior, or at least meaningful in some way.
I remember an earlier thread from that guy that I thought was fairly revealing. He was asking about two eighties sci-fi movies - I think it was Night of the Comet and The Last Starfighter. In both films, the first time you see the main character, it’s a reflection of their face in the glass of an arcade game cabinet. He was absolutely convinced that this was somehow significant. Not in an Illuminati/Tr-Lateral Commission sense, just that either one of these movies had to be referencing the other, or they both had to be referencing some other, earlier film. He couldn’t accept the idea that two mediocre film makers might come up with the same mediocre shot independently.
I was not at all surprised later on when he started talking about big C Conspiracies. Exactly the same sort of thought process at work in both situations.
Logically, they wouldn’t. If they ran the world they would never allow you to find the evidence in the first place, and if you somehow did, you’d be killed or dealt with in some other way. I think that’s an indication of what motives these people- the important think is that they know about the conspiracy; they can’t apply logic to the whole scenario. It could be ego or it could just be desperation to feel important.
in an episode of Kim Possible, the general in command of Area 51 says that they like the conspiracy theorists to be as publicized as widely as possible. It basically immunizes the public, so if anyone ever finds out what **really **happens there, no one will believe them!
IMO, I think that most of the CT woo gets started by being unable to handle the fact the life is so random and weird. When you are a child everything can be explained by your parents, mentors and teachers but when you get older the answers are not as easily obtained. Take the Fermi Paradox, it can be hard to accept the idea that we could be alone in the Universe and if we are not it is unlikely that we will ever meet them. I desperately want this to be untrue, I want there to be FTL travel, I want there to be civilization and aliens all over the galaxy and to meet them but I can accept that this all is highly unlikely if not impossible. Hence my screen name.
I think the CT crowd just cannot accept that the World is what it is, IOW there must be a reason, someone must be in control and I must find out what it is.
9/11, How could 19 guys do that? Impossible it must be something else. Which leads to all the woo, bombs, no planes etc.
I could go on but I think it boils down to this
“it all must mean something otherwise there is no point”
We can accept that there is no meaning to Life the Universe and Everything and the CTers cannot.
Then of course you get to the secret knowledge and it spirals down from there.
What I don’t understand is, if you’re a card-carrying CT do you have to believe in EVERY theory? It’s like the people who believe in UFOs (the little green men variety). There are aliens that visit the planet. Great. Oh, and they helped build the pyramids and Stonehenge. Okay. Oh, and there are also some other types of UFOs that exist underwater. Of course. Oh, and the government has alien bodies from a wreckage stored somewhere in Booger, Montana. Yep.
It’d be a refreshing change to see someone who believes in a conspiracy, NOT believe in some of the others.
Kozmik was quizzed about that as well. He believed firmly in some conspiracies, and scoffed at others as ridiculous nonsense. Neither I nor anyone else in the thread was able, so far as I could tell, to determine exactly what led him to either conclusion, other than that if he read something that day in the New York Times that mentioned something vaguely related, then the entire theory must be true.
Yes, I don’t recall meeting CTist who believed in every conspiracy. There probably are some. Maybe it ties to the ‘special knowledge’ thing, they’re still special among their fellow believers because they know which conspiracy is the real one.
Well, when you’ve been fooled (whether by others or yourself) into believing that science itself supports your CT when actual scientists know it doesn’t…
Exactly. If the conspiracy is so well organized that they can succeed without the slightest snag in its execution, then they certainly would kill anyone who stumbled onto the truth.
It’s the essential paradox of conspiracies: If you can point out a conspiracy in an event like this, you have to be wrong, since if you were right, the conspiracy would not let you reveal them.