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[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

There is no discussion thread for conspiracies here. I shall remedy the oversight.

Rules ported over from my other thread: Only civil discussion is allowed. No insults, doxxing, fighting, or killing.



Okay, to start off: Many conspiracies are created by charlatans, with the intent to exploit the gullible and paranoid. Discuss if you want.

[smjjames]

I don't really think this thread is a good idea, there's a reason why such a thread doesn't exist.

Though I guess if it stays out of politics or other sensitive areas, it's okay?

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I don't really think this thread is a good idea, there's a reason why such a thread doesn't exist.

PM me.

[smjjames]

I don't really think this thread is a good idea, there's a reason why such a thread doesn't exist.

PM me.

No, no, nothing like that, just that conspiracy discussions, at least when talking politics or other heated topics, tend to go up in flames.

[Yoink]

Did you hear about the one where those crazy hippies think the world is warming up from pollution? Ha! *slaps knee*
They probably just took too many of their marijuanas, am I right people??!

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Did you hear about the one where those crazy hippies think the world is warming up from pollution? Ha! *slaps knee*
They probably just took too many of their marijuanas, am I right people??!

Yeah, I understand the tropes associated with conspiracy discussions.

I know there's a long, emotional history behind the subject. I thought there was a good chance that conspiracy theories could be discussed constructively on this site.

[inteuniso]

Did you hear about the one where those crazy hippies think the world is warming up from pollution? Ha! *slaps knee*
They probably just took too many of their marijuanas, am I right people??!

Yeah, I understand the tropes associated with conspiracy discussions.

I know there's a long, emotional history behind the subject. I thought there was a good chance that conspiracy theories could be discussed constructively on this site.

It'll be okay for a few pages, someone will say something that crosses the lines, others take that cue to cross the line further, people become enraged, push back against it, flames erupt and the original line-crossing is never addressed, finally it devolves into illogical banter and the thread has to be locked.

This segues perfectly into my conspiracy: people are too self-interested and silly to ever carry out a conspiracy completely successfully.

[Yoink]

Did you hear about the one where those crazy hippies think the world is warming up from pollution? Ha! *slaps knee*
They probably just took too many of their marijuanas, am I right people??!

Yeah, I understand the tropes associated with conspiracy discussions.

I know there's a long, emotional history behind the subject. I thought there was a good chance that conspiracy theories could be discussed constructively on this site.

Probably, I wouldn't know.
I was just making a joke going off the probable reasons for conspiracy theories being a volatile topic.

[Max™]

This segues perfectly into my conspiracy: people are too self-interested and silly to ever carry out a conspiracy completely successfully.

Plus the whole mathematical arguments, which even if you decide they used the wrong assumptions, still lead one to conclude that any secret involving more than two or three people is unlikely to be kept secret for a significant period of time. You jack it up to 100k+ involved? Yeah right, people aren't magical superspies with absolute loyalty and flawless awareness of possible ways info could even accidentally get out.

I like to joke that if I was going to put another shooter for JFK, it would have been in the storm drain just ahead of where he was shot, radio to let them know when to be ready, or even just sitting right would let them see the motorcade coming, take aim, and fire, before crawling down the tunnel to a drainage ditch that leads to the Trinity River.

The only way that could be plausible is if this guy was working with one other person, any more and the likelihood of someone slipping up in all the time since then rapidly approaches 100%, but I'm a Texan, we've all got a bit of the crazy due to brain damage from the skyfire.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

How about a classic historical conspiracy? The destruction of the USS Maine by American forces as a false-flag operation to rally popular support for the Spanish-American war?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(ACR-1)

[Reelya]

people are too self-interested and silly to ever carry out a conspiracy completely successfully.

But there's a problem with this argument: The set of known, successful conspiracies is a set of size zero. But that's because "known, successful conspiracy" is an oxymoron, rather than telling you anything about how many successful conspiracies really exist. If you uncover common traits of all known conspiracies, you are by definition excluding the successful ones.

As an analogy, imagine if you wanted to get tough on white-collar crime, so you studied every known case where someone got caught embezzling money, and then focused on tightening up the system for whatever those people did. The problem is one of perspective: you only looked at people who got caught, you're not looking for people who got away with it. So whatever traits were common to all those cases were in fact traits held in common by people who messed up.

Okay, to start off: Many conspiracies are created by charlatans, with the intent to exploit the gullible and paranoid. Discuss if you want.

The definition of "conspiracy theory" tends to be selective in terms of which conspiracies it includes, meaning there's a circular definition involved. e.g. is Watergate a conspiracy theory? There was a conspiracy, and "the truth" about it, is just a collectively accepted theory on what happened. So what does it mean if the only measurable difference between a "true conspiracy" and a "conspiracy theory" is that you've convinced enough people that the first one is true?

As for how charlatans fit into the picture, most fit into two common types:
- cult leaders, who use fear of outsiders/outsider-ideas to control their followers - religious, anti-government type conspiracies
- book writers / convention speakers - these people generally opportunistically graft onto some pre-existing myth, e.g. The Philadephia Experiment

But in general, most conspiracy theories are not created by people for profit, but spread as rumors because the official version of events is unclear or clear evidence is either withheld or missing. It's a human trait to try and fill in the blanks, and the more extreme memes spread faster than the mundane ones, meaning that the wilder conspiracies get around much faster than more plausible explanations.

[Phmcw]

An awsome historical conspiracy is how Ismail Enver Pasha managed to get the Ottoman empire into WW1.

He allowed German warships to pose as Ottomans and to bombard Sebatopol, prompting Russia to declare war on the Ottoman Empire and dragging it into the war.

[Reelya]

Orwellian government programs are perenial favorites as well, such as MKULTRA and CoIntelPro. These are really "truth is stranger than fiction" type cases.

[Mattk50]

I'm personally a partial perpetrator in at least 5 different conspiracies. The scale is always so small of these things people never consider things that happen commonly in their own lives, make yourself a billionaire and your bound to be up to some mischief at least once or twice.

I think the most interesting area of discussion here are things that look like conspiracies, are malicious, but aren't actually conspiratorial in nature.  Usually economic forces and common interests can lead people to the same actions and to work together without ever actually communicating with eachother, making it appear like the perfect conspiracy. Here's a good example, in america internet service providers are commonly thought to be colluding to establish local monopolies allover the country to increase profits and price gouge. in reality this is just a natural result of having what should be a public utility run by private entities, its just way more profitable for entities not to compete with eachother and they know this. They also lobby governments heavily to ensure competition doesnt get permits to set up.

There's also the not-conspiracy conspiracies, things that are kinda just out in the open that people are just unawares of, often this still gets thrown into "conspiracy theories" for some reason. Going to go with another monopoly esque example, how in the US 90% of glasses brands and stores are all owned by the same company, and any outside company that doesnt play ball gets muscled down and bought out. Does wonders to create the illusion of choice and have people to pay 10x what they would otherwise.

[hops]

More like anti-conspiracy, but you can trust developed governments to tell the truth most of the time, unless it has something to do with the military.

Also whistleblowers tend to not be foreign spies.