Posted: Dec 13, 2012 11:11 pm
by InsaneRobot
tolman wrote:
CdesignProponentsist wrote:The one comfort I have in life is the fact that there is no governmental organization that is competent or organized enough to pull off the type of conspiracies that are consistently attributed to them.

Though typically when it comes to conspiracies, not only are the plans overelaborate, but they're also at an intellectual level easy to imagine by the average conspiracy theorist, and frequently have planning details which are all somehow accessible to an average (or even below-average) citizen.

tolman wrote:Many conspiracy theories require large numbers of such people to have been bribed or intimidated into silence, strangely without any having reported that to have happened.
But that's classic conspiracy-theory logic - the conspiracy somehow knows [i]in advance[/i] that its attempts to co-opt or coerce people, many of whom would be expected to be entirely opposed to its aims and methods, will be successful to a frankly unbelievable extent.
Which seems to suggest typical conspiracy theorists have a shockingly low opinion of the honesty and bravery of pretty much anyone apart from themselves.

A lot of the problems with conspiracies make more sense if you think of the theorists working backwards to get to their point.
For example, we can take a look at the Moon Landing Conspiracy as done by the reverse Scientific Method:
Now, let's assume someone just watched the Moon Landing on live TV, and they have trouble believing such a thing is possible. And so they start with...
1) A Conclusion (the moon landing was faked) that is used for the basis of their argument. Since they know people aren't going to believe them without evidence they...
2) Examine the data (the moon landing tapes) for evidence of things that support their conclusion (the flag was waving) and make sure to...
3) Use scientifically tested information (flags on earth wave because of wind, there should be no wind on the Moon) that conflicts with the data, and...
4) Make a prediction/hypothesis (it was due to air conditioning) that supports the conclusion.
5) Only then can they ask questions, such as "how did they get that kind of secrecy?"
It's not a perfect model, but I feel it gets my point across. The priorities are messed up.

So if you look at them working backwards, it makes sense why they would assume the government was willing to spend 250 years in secrecy planning to overthrow itself even though was chosen democratically by the people to protect itself, or how it was even capable of such a thing. They start with the assumption that the big thing happens, and never bother to explain all the little things that would be required for the big thing to happen. Probably because they think they've already proven that the big thing happens. If the data contradicts their conclusion, the data must be wrong/tampered with.

This sort of backwards thinking is sort of shown in this sort of comment:
Minimolas wrote:The one thing I can't get past about 9/11 is WTC 7

It seems reasonable at first, there's an anomaly that current explanations are insufficient, but therein lies the problem. If there's just one issue that remains unexplained, then obviously we don't have enough information on that issue. Even if all the things about the conspiracy theory or whatever are totally true, the fact remains that a conspiracy on that level would collapse unless the government is secretly more competent than would be expected. I've never heard a conspiracy theorist explain how the government managed to get past all the scientists who would speak up or news organizations who would cover all the obvious facts when the very same government never been shown to even have control over their own group in much less crucial matters. Wouldn't we expect just one of the many people who were in on it to be a spy, or have a sense of human decency?

It's not even that I'm denying the 9/11 conspiracy. It certainly has more evidence than other theories I've heard of and would probably involve less cover-up as well, but I can't help but think that the people who are involved are looking at the big picture without realising that all the pixels need to be there as well.