Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Servant Corps]

You already knew in the past, I post an article written about conspiracy theories. And I hoped that would have been the end of it. But then, an economist named Robin Hanson made a blog post about conspiracy theories. What is most interesting though was his assumption about conspiracy theories:

Think about it. Why are conspiracy theories in such disrepute, given that there have in fact been many real conspiracies in the world?

Read that quote again. Then, take a look at this Gallup poll in 2003 about the JFK assassination. 75% of Americans believed that more than one person was involved in the assassination of JFK, 19% believe only one man was involved, and 6% offer no opinion.

Then look at this CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corporation 2008 Poll about the Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination (scroll down to see it). 58% of all adults (50% of Whites, 88% of Blacks) believed that MLK Jr. was assassinated as part of a larger conspiracy, only 33% of all adults (40% of Whites, 9% of Blacks) believed that he was not.

...now, well, these two polls doesn't actually indicate who were responsible for being a plot of that conspiracy, and in the case of the JFK assassination poll, there was little agreement on who to name as the suspect responsible for such a conspiracy. This could help to explain why there was so much, shall we say, support for these conspiracy theories. An individual might not believe in the official narrative of events, but does not feel confident to actually name suspects, and the minute someone does so, it becomes less and less plausible.

This could help to explain the 2008 World Public Opinion poll that found no real international consensus on who did 9/11, though on average, 46% of the public believed al-Qaeda did it. I don't really feel the need listing everything, so here's a graph:

Note that there are a large amount of people that says "Don't Know", and how the majority of answers in Indonesia and China are "Don't Know". I'm wondering if it is the same dynamic here, that many people do not believe aQ was responsible for 9/11 (and thus engage in a conspiracy theory), but feel themselves not confident enough to claim who did. (Also note how 49% of Mexicans name a suspect other than al-Qaeda...so it's clear that 49% of Mexicans don't agree with the official narrative.)

This doesn't help explain a fourth "mainstream" conspiracy theory though. In 2005, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press did a survey about the Iraq War.
"Before the war the U.S. and Britain claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These weapons have not been found. Why do you think they made this claim? Was it mostly because they were themselves misinformed by bad intelligence, or was it mostly because they lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq?"
43% of all adults (12% Republican, 67% Democrats, 47% Independents) believed that the governments lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq. 41% of all adults (69% of Republicans, 20% Democrats, 39% Independents) believed that the governments were misinformed.

Here, an actual suspect and motive was given, and here we see that more people believed in this conspiracy theory than not (11% of adults were unsure, and 5% believed that Americans may still find WMDs). There were also other polls on that page about Bush "intentionally misled" the general public (this page have the partisan breakdown for most of these polls if you want them):
CBS News/New York Times - Dec. 2-6, 2005: 52% of all adults believed Bush intentionally misled versus 44% who believed he provided most accurate information
 Time Poll  -  Nov. 29-Dec. 1, 2005: 48% believed Bush intentionally misled versus 45% who believed he was truthful
  FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll -  Nov. 29-30, 2005: 44% believed Bush intentionally misled versus 46% who who believed that Bush gave the American people the best prewar intelligence available
 NBC  News/Wall Street Journal Poll  - Nov. 4-7, 2005. 57% believed Bush intentionally misled versus 35% who believed Bush gave the country the "the most accurate information he had".

I must admit, these polls are pretty, er, old. But they do indicate that there are certain mainstream conspiracy theories out there that haven't really be questioned...especially of this one that claimed Bush lied about Iraq's WMD program. Why is that? Why are these conspiracy theories generally believed? Why is it that sometimes, people agree that a conspiracy theory exist but don't agree on a common suspect (9/11, JFK), and other times, they agree on both the conspiracy and the suspect (Bush lying about Iraq WMDs)? I think there are some questions that we really need to look seriously here. (Also, if you find other polls indicating other mainstream conspiracy theories, please post them in this topic, and I'll update the OP.)

[Phmcw]

I must admit, these polls are pretty, er, old. But they do indicate that there are certain mainstream conspiracy theories out there that haven't really be questioned...especially of this one that claimed Bush lied about Iraq's WMD program. Why is that? Why are these conspiracy theories generally believed?

In the case of WMD it's pretty much he official explanation. They invented the WMD excuse to invade Iraq, after making bogus claim that Sadam Hussein was linked to Al Quaida.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Why do so many people believe Donkey Kong was responsible for 9/11?

_{(I know it actually stands for "don't know" but I couldn't resist)}

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

Why do so many people believe Donkey Kong was responsible for 9/11?

_{(I know it actually stands for "don't know" but I couldn't resist)}

Awesome.

Also, we now know that Phmcw beleives in the "conspiracy" of Bush, WMD's and Iraq.  Whole heartedly, like, its a fact, or something.  How did you Scan Bush's brain, Phmcw, to learn the truth Phmcw?  I want to know!

[Pwnzerfaust]

Why do so many people believe Donkey Kong was responsible for 9/11?

_{(I know it actually stands for "don't know" but I couldn't resist)}

My first thought when I saw "DK" was, "Denmark?"

As for the topic anyway, I think the ones that are more plausible/believable become "mainstream", whereas ridiculous things like 9/11 conspiracy hypotheses are ridiculed, as they should be.

[RedKing]

The WMD is tricky. There was definitely some lying going on, but it's not clear that Bush himself knew it. I think Cheney though, absolutely knew they weren't there, as did Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and a variety of other folks that were trying to steer intelligence in the pre-war runup. That, and a lot of political pressure and biased interpretation of scant evidence caused people to see things that simply weren't there. Wouldn't be the first time. Actually most of that same damned group did the same thing in the 1970's, when they cooked up some wild intel reports about Soviet death rays and accused the CIA of not seeing any evidence for their batshit crazy stories because they were being too passive...maybe even inflitrated by the Soviets. Read the Wikipedia entry on Team B.

The bullshit about the CIA getting it wrong is precisely that: bullshit. CIA, INR, DIA...there were a number of intel agencies that were privately saying "Um....we don't have good evidence of anything. That PowerPoint thing that Colin Powell did? We don't know where he's getting that shit from..."

There were numerous articles before the war with anonymous agency sources saying this. But *EVERYONE IGNORED IT* because "Woohoo! War! We'll get them raghead sons-of-bitches after all!" and "We can't afford for the smoking gun to be....A MUSHROOM CLOUD! MUHAHAHAHAHA!"


The whole Team B fiasco should have been a clarion warning of what happens when you lets politics and ideology get in the way of good, hard intelligence analysis. Instead, we wound up with most of the same fu*kheads in power, and we got a repeat of the same. The first time around, it caused us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on ramping on the US military and SDI. The second time around, it cost us trillions in Iraq and thousands of dead soldiers. God help us if they ever get another chance.

[Phmcw]

Why do so many people believe Donkey Kong was responsible for 9/11?

_{(I know it actually stands for "don't know" but I couldn't resist)}

Awesome.

Also, we now know that Phmcw beleives in the "conspiracy" of Bush, WMD's and Iraq.  Whole heartedly, like, its a fact, or something.  How did you Scan Bush's brain, Phmcw, to learn the truth Phmcw?  I want to know!

By reading a newspaper, goro, you should try some , one day.
I said official version : you know, as in "widely accepted among experts". Go find a serious source that say that the US adminisation was honest on that matter. Again, fox news doesn't count.

[Servant Corps]

Nobody post anything about whether Bush lied or not. If you want to argue and scream, do so in another topic, not here. I'd like to talk about "mainstream theories", if that means anything.

[RedKing]

Oooooookay. Considering that's one of the "mainstream theories" you referenced in your OP, it's a little weird to put the kibosh on discussion of it. But hey, it's your thread.

[Hiiri]

I believe the "need" for conspiracy theories (, gods and nationalism) is (are) pretty much explained by the need to have a sense of order in the world. And that need is especially strong for conservative brains.

To some the thought of us being just random atoms floating in infinite space is just too much to handle. Or that someday some random nutjob can actually KILL US for no apparent reason. "Won't somebody think of the children?!" 

[Bouchart]

The US Government probably did it.  They certainly benefited the most.

[Cthulhu]

I love how Egypt and Jordan think Israel did it.

It's interesting this came up because I'm having a good back and forth with a conspiracy theorist right now.  He's on the whole thing about how the recent disasters are manmade.  His evidence was loosely connected at best and completely ridiculous at worst, lots of non sequiturs and misunderstanding how frequent disasters are.  For one he thought there were no major disasters between 9/11 and the Chilean earthquake.  I'm not sure what his metric for severity is but the only ones he'll acknowledge were "major" when pressed are the Indonesian tsunami and Katrina.

Faux-edit:  Oh shit, here we go again.  The conspiracy theorists are out in force today, just got a message explaining to me that Osama died months ago and this is just a ploy to get Obama back in the white house.  What is with people thinking motive=evidence?  How many times today am I going to have to explain that I didn't like Osama either but that isn't evidence that I killed him?

Ninja-edit:  Fuuuuuuck!

[ChairmanPoo]

Nobody post anything about whether Bush lied or not. If you want to argue and scream, do so in another topic, not here. I'd like to talk about "mainstream theories", if that means anything.

In my hometown we call that "To throw the stone and hide the hand". AKA: you (knowingly?) opened Pandora's Box by begging the question on WMD-conspiracies, and now pretend that you did no such thing and that people that bring this up are "derailing the thread", when in truth you started the whole mess.

[Servant Corps]

Nobody post anything about whether Bush lied or not. If you want to argue and scream, do so in another topic, not here. I'd like to talk about "mainstream theories", if that means anything.

In my hometown we call that "To throw the stone and hide the hand". AKA: you (knowingly?) opened Pandora's Box by begging the question on WMD-conspiracies, and now pretend that you did no such thing and that people that bring this up are "derailing the thread", when in truth you started the whole mess.

I brought it up in relationship with other mainstream conspiracy theories, such as JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in a conspiracy involving more than one person. I wanted to focus discussion on what conspiracies become mainstream, and only mentioned the Iraq WMD conspiracy as an example of one mainstream conspiracy theory, to prove that they exist.

[Earthquake Damage]

I believe the "need" for conspiracy theories (, gods and nationalism) is (are) pretty much explained by the need to have a sense of order in the world. And that need is especially strong for conservative brains.

To some the thought of us being just random atoms floating in infinite space is just too much to handle. Or that someday some random nutjob can actually KILL US for no apparent reason. "Won't somebody think of the children?!" 

Fixed.  Improved.

I think ignorance has a vastly stronger influence than political ideology.  But what do I know?