Open thread, September 22-28, 2014

Gunnar_Zarncke

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Rather, a "conspiracy theory" is a conspiracy theory that the speaker wishes to ridicule.

I don't think this is accurate.

What characterizes the things generally called "conspiracy theories" is not only that the people talking about them want to ridicule them. They also tend to have the following features not widely shared by more credible theories with conspiracies in:

They have very little evidence directly supporting them. (Advocates tend to focus on alleged evidence against rival "mainstream" theories.)
They involve large conspiracies, with many people with varied interests, successfully keeping a big secret unexposed, even though it would take only a small slip-up or leak for it to get out.
They require those many people to be consistently villainous in ways there's little reason (outside the conspiracy theory) to think they are.

So, for instance, "9-11 truthers" can't (e.g.) point to leaked government memos saying "let's fly planes into buildings and say it was terrorists"; rather, AIUI they argue that (1) the "usual" explanations are no good because being hit by a plane can't actually cause a building to collapse as the WTC towers did and (2) that means the government is covering something up so they probably planned it all. This theory requires that a whole lot of people in the US government knowingly betrayed their country and killed thousands of innocent people, and did it without getting caught, and no one involved blew the whistle.

Obviously, any false theory isn't going to be adequately supported by the facts. But I dispute that they necessarily have any pattern of features, and I suggest any apparent pattern is more read in by people trying to denigrate.

For example, why would a 9-11 conspiracy require a massive number of government operatives to know? Obviously, it could have been carried out by a small terrorist cell taking over commercial airliners - a conspiracy only requires a single government agent telling them to do it. Now, in the absence of specific information, Ockhams Ra... (read more)