PeterS comments on The 9/11 Meta-Truther Conspiracy Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2009 06:59PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (178)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 23 December 2009 04:09:20AM *  22 points [-]

This controversy reminds me of an astronomy professor of mine. He was semi-obsessed with showing that the moon landing was not faked, to the point of conspiracy-nut enthusiasm, despite supporting the status quo. He'd go off on long anecdotes in class about how he saw some light at such and such a latitude at a certain time, which showed unquestionably that there must have been a man-made vehicle at such-and-such a point. Then, he said one thing that stuck with me: if it were faked, that means there are at least hundreds, more likely tens of thousands, of low- and mid-level government employees who are keeping their lips absolutely, perfectly sealed.

That was all the argument I ever needed to hear to dissuade me from crackpot government conspiracy theories. Once an event reaches a certain magnitude of size, cost, and planning, P:Everyone stays quiet rapidly approaches zero. The payoffs and probability of a guilty conscience are simply too high with a large enough N.

Comment author: PeterS 23 December 2009 04:30:06AM *  2 points [-]

Who is to say that those employees were actually involved in the conspiracy? They were just being used by the conspiracy! Flight controllers receiving "telemetry" from a computer/simulation in a basement somewhere, unbeknownst to them, etc.

The 100s of low level employees involved weren't a problem - hell, the 10s of thousands of them weren't. They bought the story just like the rest of us! :P