Conspiracy Theories

C

Cancel 2016.11

Darla
Before anyone has a heart attack, I want to use a pull quote that I just know no one will get to:

Kathryn Olmsted, a historian at the University of California, Davis, says that conspiracy theories wouldn’t exist in a world in which real conspiracies don’t exist.
Click to expand...

I think this is a really interesting article.


Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

In the days following the bombings at the Boston Marathon, speculation online regarding the identity and motive of the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators was rampant. And once the Tsarnaev brothers were identified and the manhunt came to a close, the speculation didn’t cease. It took a new form. A sampling: Maybe the brothers Tsarnaev were just patsies, fall guys set up to take the heat for a mysterious Saudi with high-level connections; or maybe they were innocent, but instead of the Saudis, the actual bomber had acted on behalf of a rogue branch of our own government; or what if the Tsarnaevs were behind the attacks, but were secretly working for a larger organization?

Full article
 
Darla said:
Before anyone has a heart attack, I want to use a pull quote that I just know no one will get to:



I think this is a really interesting article.


Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

In the days following the bombings at the Boston Marathon, speculation online regarding the identity and motive of the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators was rampant. And once the Tsarnaev brothers were identified and the manhunt came to a close, the speculation didn’t cease. It took a new form. A sampling: Maybe the brothers Tsarnaev were just patsies, fall guys set up to take the heat for a mysterious Saudi with high-level connections; or maybe they were innocent, but instead of the Saudis, the actual bomber had acted on behalf of a rogue branch of our own government; or what if the Tsarnaevs were behind the attacks, but were secretly working for a larger organization?

Full article
Click to expand...

The Dreyfus Affair
The Mafia
MK-ULTRA
Operation Mockingbird
Manhattan Project
Asbestos
Watergate
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Operation Northwoods
1990 Testimony of Nayirah
COINTELPRO
The Iran-Contra Affair
The BCCI Scandal
CIA Drug Running in LA
Gulf of Tonkin Never Happened
The 1933 Business Plot
July 20, 1944 Conspiracy to Assassinate Hitler
Operation Ajax
Operation Snow White
Operation Gladio
Operation Mongoose
The CIA Assassinates A Lot Of People (Church Committee)
The New World Order
Kennedy Assassination – the 2nd Investigation by Congress Few People Know About
1919 World Series Conspiracy
Karen Silkwood
CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas
Bohemian Grove
Operation Paperclip
Cecil Rhodes and The Round Table
The Illuminati
The Trilateral Commission
The Federal Reserve Bank

Background at link
http://www.infowars.com/33-conspira...out-to-be-true-what-every-person-should-know/

.. with the exception of Operation Mongoose .. background here ..
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/peopleevents/e_mongoose.html

Just a few conspiracy theories that have proven to be true.

I think a study of why people have an aversion to hidden truth .. especially in these times .. would make a more interesting study. Although that answer can be found in my sig.
 
I don't know what quite a few of those are, but are the Mafia and The Manhattan Project really "conspiracies"? I definitely agree that there are conspiracies, and I thought of the Tuskegee Syphilis study while reading the article. I think it would have behooved them to mention that one. Even within the article it states that we wouldn't have conspiracy theories of we lived in a world with no conspiracies. However, IMO many of them are just ridiculous. The Sandy Hook "was staged by actors" being the most recent example.

There's a lot more in that article than just conspiracy though. I think it's a very informative look at the mind.
 
Darla said:
I don't know what quite a few of those are, but are the Mafia and The Manhattan Project really "conspiracies"? I definitely agree that there are conspiracies, and I thought of the Tuskegee Syphilis study while reading the article. I think it would have behooved them to mention that one. Even within the article it states that we wouldn't have conspiracy theories of we lived in a world with no conspiracies. However, IMO many of them are just ridiculous. The Sandy Hook "was staged by actors" being the most recent example.

There's a lot more in that article than just conspiracy though. I think it's a very informative look at the mind.
Click to expand...

This is just a few 'conspiracies' that turned out to be true .. I can think of many more .. but the point was that they do often turn out to be true.

Conspiracy theories are an important tool in criminal investigations.

For quite some time, many people denied that the mafia even existed.

They do talk about the Tuskegee Syphilis study .. which was a demonstration that just about anything black people thought to be true was often called just a conspiracy theory .. such as, we often get stopped by police for no other reason than we're black.

Who is going to believe that?
 
blackascoal said:
Background at link
http://www.infowars.com/33-conspira...out-to-be-true-what-every-person-should-know/

.. with the exception of Operation Mongoose .. background here ..
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/peopleevents/e_mongoose.html

Just a few conspiracy theories that have proven to be true.

I think a study of why people have an aversion to hidden truth .. especially in these times .. would make a more interesting study. Although that answer can be found in my sig.
Click to expand...

Just the use of Infowars as a source negates your argument, BAC. Here's their definition of a conspiracy theory, taken from your link:

Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning.
Click to expand...

Few, if any, of your cites fall into that category. Conspiracies take a smidgen of truth and create a mountain of disinformation out of it and lose any credibility in doing so.

It all boils down to one thing...if you're gullible and want to believe something...anything...your mind will allow you to.

I posted this last year...

Howey said:
I mentioned this article elsewhere and remembered a piece I'd done on this elsewhere so I thought I'd republish it here.

Inside A Conspiracy Theorist's Mind


I thought I'd look for something explaining the insanity of the conspiracy theorist crowd after reading some of the latest conspiracy theories. Fortunately, I found this article from Psychology Today yesterday. It's a compelling explanation and IMO spot-on. The following is but a portion of the article...the full piece is worth a read.
Click to expand...
A friend of mine recently convinced me to watch "Loose Change", a documentary about the alleged conspiracy and cover-up of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by the U.S. government. I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories, and I knew little of the specific theories surrounding 9/11, but I watched the film with the most open mind I could muster.

I found the film to be very engaging, and though I didn't buy the film's conspiracy and cover-up hypotheses, it did make me question whether something important was being kept secret. Seeing the conspiracy theories laid out so confidently and so sensationalistically also helped me to understand why one-third to one-half of Americans believe that our government either was somehow involved in the attacks or covered up information about them.

One reason I generally have trouble accepting conspiracy theories is that they're usually based on far-fetched claims that are nearly impossible to disprove, or prove. My skepticism is further strengthened by the fact that we humans have an assortment of cognitive biases that can distort our judgments and allow us to maintain beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Some of these biases include the tendency to see patterns where none exist, and to interpret new information and recall old information in ways that confirm our expectations and beliefs. However, most of the time we're unaware of these biases and overly confident that our perceptions represent the objective truth.

Melley proposes that conspiracy thinking arises from a combination of two factors, when someone: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks a sense of control. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual's right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government). But combine this with a sense of powerlessness in one's own life, and you get what Melley calls agency panic, "intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy" to outside forces or regulators.

When fervent individualists feel that they cannot exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces are to blame for usurping this freedom. "For one who refuses to relinquish the assumptions of liberal individualism, such newly revealed forms of regulation frequently seem so unacceptable or unbelievable that they can only be met with anxiety, melodrama, or panic."

For one thing, conspiracy theories help us cope with distressing events and make sense out of them. Conspiracies assure us that bad things don't just happen randomly. Conspiracies tell us that someone out there is accountable, however unwittingly or secretly or incomprehensibly, so it's possible to stop these people and punish them and in due course let everyone else re-establish control over their own lives. Conspiracies also remind us that we shouldn't blame ourselves for our predicaments; it's not our fault, it's them! In these ways, believing in conspiracies serves many of the same self-protective functions as scapegoating.
Click to expand...
 
blackascoal said:
This is just a few 'conspiracies' that turned out to be true .. I can think of many more .. but the point was that they do often turn out to be true.

Conspiracy theories are an important tool in criminal investigations.

For quite some time, many people denied that the mafia even existed.

They do talk about the Tuskegee Syphilis study .. which was a demonstration that just about anything black people thought to be true was often called just a conspiracy theory .. such as, we often get stopped by police for no other reason than we're black.

Who is going to believe that?
Click to expand...

No that's true, black people have been on the receiving end of a lot of actual conspiracies. I would never deny that.
 
Howey said:
Just the use of Infowars as a source negates your argument, BAC. Here's their definition of a conspiracy theory, taken from your link:



Few, if any, of your cites fall into that category. Conspiracies take a smidgen of truth and create a mountain of disinformation out of it and lose any credibility in doing so.

It all boils down to one thing...if you're gullible and want to believe something...anything...your mind will allow you to.

I posted this last year...
Click to expand...

I'm not interested in your source wars. If you don't like the source .. don't read it.

If you can demonstrate that the information contained is false. I'd be happy to hear it ..

.. and NO, you haven't proved anything .. but that you believe what you tells you.

Here's a conspiracy theory for you .. Collapsing mass ALWAYS seeks the path of least resistance.

Weak minds can't deal truth they can't handle. :0)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top