Conspiracy theories 101

Discussion in '9/11' started by GodsMan, May 30, 2019.

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  1. Renee

    Renee Well-Known Member

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    Or maybe there are conspiracies and we should be concerned
     
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  2. Bob0627

    Bob0627 Well-Known Member

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    It's difficult to understand your illogical thoughts so I would agree with you here.

    See what I mean?

    Given that your posts are either illogical and/or poor writing comprehension, I would lean toward the "voices in my head".

    See what I mean again? If conspiracy theories only exist because humans (such as yourself, unless you believe you're not human) are

    not to mention delusional and paranoid, yet you're here claiming you "know" what a "conspiracy theorist thinks", what do you figure that says about you?

    Sorry but this "discussion" has gone well beyond amusing to boring and irrelevant. I'm really here to discuss 9/11, not you, your nonsense or I.
     
  3. Bob0627

    Bob0627 Well-Known Member

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    Hey what happened to that email you sent?:

    Did they respond or was that just an empty threat? I'm still waiting for you to post their response (if your threat is for real).

    As a side note, I noticed your fellow OCT lovers at Metabunk are hard at work trying to "debunk" (or trash) Hulsey's draft report before it's published. Just an FYI in case you didn't read the posts and want to get in on the action.

    I would just love if one of you grew a pair and filed an Amicus Curiae Brief in defense of NIST and the FBI/DOJ for the two legal actions underway. Any chance you want to give it a try? I don't believe anyone is going to take posts at Metabunk or anywhere seriously so it is your best chance.
     
  4. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, it’s not difficult to understand. I wrote 3 simple statements. They were even in list form. Humans are illogical. Humans are bad at identifying patterns. Humans leap to predetermined conclusions. Real easy.

    Nope. This is typically the point where you would say what you mean. Ya didn’t. You made an accusation, but haven’t supported the accusation with any premises.

    My prediction was correct. You would side with the voices in your head, rather than the actual source of the information. This is not logical. This is leaping to a predetermined conclusion.

    Whatever gave you the idea that I excluded myself? It didn’t happen here in text. Must have happened in your head. Humans need those qualities in order to make predictions about the future. All predictions are leaps to predermined conclusions. Most are the result of some pretty specious pattern recognition. And they are both heavily influenced by emotion, how we feel about things, and not necessarily strictly based on evidence alone. The key is in how you modify your premises when your predictions fail to come true. Do you plod on with the same premises, or change them to match how the world actually functions around you? Humans are really really bad at that. Especially those centered around fear responses.

    No, you’re here in this thread to discuss the reason conspiracy theories exist. Though I will point out you haven’t even attempted to rebut any of the three premises I put forth. We haven’t even gotten to the research part of the discussion yet. Can you support yourself with any published literature on the subject?

    I can.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724570/

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6238178/

    https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/conspiracy-thinking-and-pattern-recognition/
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2019
  5. perotista

    perotista Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Conspiracy theories exist because the government loves to hide things from the public. People do the same, hide things from one another. If you don't trust the government or someone else, a conspiracy theory is bound to rise. If one trusts and believes what you are told, a conspiracy theory is less bound to arise. We have a ton of conspiracy theories today. They all boil down from lack of trust. We don't trust our government anymore and really haven't since 1964. So who shot JFK? Was 9-11 an inside job? Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor in advance? The last one you probably never heard of, it didn't catch fire, most people back then completely trusted their government. But over the last couple of years, it has grown.

    https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/
     
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  6. Bob0627

    Bob0627 Well-Known Member

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    The discussion was really over when I provided the correct answer in post #12. Conspiracy theories exist .....

    Case closed, the rest of your rant is mostly just about me, not about conspiracy theories.

    /end thread (for me)
     
  7. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's interesting. Conspiracy theories are more about their purveyors than they are about any connection with reality. All these pieces that you've added to the conversation about what you think I'm saying are projections of your own self. How can I not talk about you when I'm having a three way conversation with you and the voices in your head?
     
  8. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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  9. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So I started reading the first link from Global Research. The article begins with an italicized paragraph that appears to be cited as sourced from a CIA document (1035-960). None of the italicized text exists in the source document. It’s an opinion of the document by some unnamed source. (the author possibly?). Was it intentionally dishonest? No clue, but it's certainly not what the sourced document said.

    The second paragraph is a quote attributed to a CIA director, but in tracking this quote down I found that it is sourced to a third party who ironically wrote a book about a conspiracy theory. I'd feel a lot more comfortable about its veracity if there was some sort of transcript for context, but there's nothing. Who the heck knows what they were talking about? Who the heck knows what he was thinking? Not me. It's provided to get you to jump to a conclusion. You're supposed to fill in the blanks of what he thought with your own thoughts.

    This isn't starting out promising. It's certainly not objective.

    This is a prime example of what's going on inside a conspiracy theorist's mind. They make sweeping generalizations, cast large groups of people into these film noir 1 dimensional roles, and then convert these fantasies into deeply held convictions of reality. To them that's not an opinion. That's real.

    Unfortunately that's not how complex systems work. There's not a design to the patterns that conspiracy theorists find in random events. There's not a supreme overlord pulling the strings behind the screen that controls all things. There's just millions of individual actions and reactions that are motivated by millions of different motives. Do people do bad things? Absolutely. Happens all the time. But conspiracy theories consistently rely on hundreds of thousands of bad people all coordinating their bad things together for a single unified purpose. Society doesn't work that way. It's quite the opposite. It's billions of individual choices that just churn out good and bad outcomes that eventually average in or out.
     
  10. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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    Sometimes there's a lie told by the government that's been exposed that's simply too clear to obfuscate and the disinfo agents are all over it trying to control the damage and just end up looking silly. One tactic they use to muddy the waters is to call the people who expose the lie "Conspracy theorists".

    Here's one example of an official lie exposed.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...he-missing-jews.558565/page-8#post-1070883208

    Here's another.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-sir-questions-sir.211182/page-5#post-4779133

    Here's another.
    http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=1118.15
    (posts #25 and #26.

    Here's another.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/american-imperialism.371897/


    It's clear that the government lies. The government probably has a public relations department or it may just hire public relations agencies to try to control the damage in cases such as those. Anyway, the shills* are all over it when a lie is exposed and sometimes they scream "Conspiracy theorists". That tactic sways some people when the situation is not very clear but it doesn't work when things are very clear such as the above cases.

    The people they call conspiracy theorists are sincere truth-seekers who don't blindly believe what they hear on TV and read in the newspapers (Do a YouTube search on "Chomsky media". The people who call them conspirace theorists are usually paid shills who don't even believe their own arguments.


    *
    http://www.whale.to/m/disin.html
    http://www.whale.to/b/sweeney.html
     
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  11. Shinebox

    Shinebox Well-Known Member

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    still on lampshades Scott? .... is this the best you can do? ...
     
  12. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Rather than change the subject, can you instead address the Global Research post you asked me to read originally? What's up with the italic section of the opening statement? Was I supposed to think that was a quote from the document cited at the end of the italic section? What's up with the next quote? What was I supposed to think from that quote?

    Research, like the kind I offered presents a hypotheses, a procedure to test the hypothesis, data collected from the test, and a conclusion. Your "research" contains innuendo and statements presented as fact that cannot be independently validated. Do you not have a problem with that?
     
  13. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If the lamp is made of cloth, you must ignore the J.A. Topf and Sons invoices, the open pit mass graves, the personal testimonies, or any bit of evidence that you might once have thought actually proved that the endlösung der judenfrage was the extermination of the Jewish race.

    How could we have missed it all these years?
     
  14. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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    My point is that what I posted renders what you said moot. You seem to be taking the stand that everything the American media say reflects reality and only a screwball would question it. I showed some cases in which the American media were obviously lying. People who discover these lies and point them out are not screwballs.

    See above.


    That issue seems to have your camp checkmated. Your playing it down doesn't change that. Also, objective truth-seekers don't get checkmated; they modify their opinions when their being wrong is pointed out to them. When you people are checkmated, you tap dance around and try to muddy the waters to confuse the viewers instead of simply recognizing it and changing your stands. It's pretty clear that the people in your camp aren't truth-seekers.

    Come over to this thread to discuss it.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/question-for-holocaust-deniers.557536/
     
  15. Shinebox

    Shinebox Well-Known Member

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    I don't have a camp Scott ...
     
  16. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here's some more of that poor pattern recognition. Nothing I said takes "the stand that everything the American media say reflects reality" I read one of the articles you posted, and I have issues with it. The issues deal directly with the claims made by the one article I was referencing. It was one of the articles that you posted in response to my request for documentation. The article made claims about a CIA document and when I actually found and read the CIA document it was clear those claims and quotes weren't true or accurate. It made claims about a CIA director, and when I actually tried to verify those claims I found them to be unverifiable. What do you have to say about that?
     
  17. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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    Here's what you're referring to.

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/weapo...ory-disinformation-agents-and-the-cia/5524552
    (excerpt)
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
    ‘Conspiracy theory’ is a term that strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events as off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States, raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs… CIA Document 1035-960 played a definitive role in making the ‘conspiracy theory’ term a weapon to be wielded against almost any individual or group calling the government’s increasingly clandestine programs and activities into question. – From CIA Document 1035-960
    ------------------------------------------------------------------

    You seem to be saying that the above is a direct quote from the document. Here's the document.

    https://archive.org/stream/CIADOC1035960/CIA DOC 1035-960_djvu.txt


    It's not a direct quote. It just says that it's making "Conspiracy theory" a negative term.

    Here are all the sentences from the document that contain the word "Conspiracy".


    The author of the article seems to be belittling people who are objective about conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assasination. I can't identify any dishonesty here.


    I researched this quote...
    ...and found this.
    https://www.quora.com/Did-CIA-Direc...rything-the-American-public-believes-is-false

    Unless we see a video of it, we can't be sure if he really said that.


    The bottom line is that the info in these links blows you out of the water.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/conspiracy-theories-101.556634/#post-1070653442

    You used the classic tactic of finding something vague in that mountain of info that you could try to discredit.

    http://www.whale.to/m/disin.html
    (excerpt)
    ---------------------------------------------------------------
    4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------


    Why don't you go over to this thread...
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...he-missing-jews.558565/page-8#post-1070883208

    ...and address the issue that seems to have your camp checkmated. Calling us "Conspiracy theorists" won't sway many viewers in that issue.
     
  18. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't seem to be saying it's a direct quote. The paragraph does. The document put the paragraph in italics, and then ended with "From CIA Document 1035-960" What does that mean to you?

    Look below in my signature line. It says:

    "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design" - Friedrich Hayek

    If I put it in italics does that change it to mean that it's something I think about Friedrich Hayek?

    The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design - Friedrich Hayek

    Which is a subjective opinion of the researcher, not a point of researched data.

    So why include it then?

    One step at a time guy. Do you still think this Global Research article "blows me out of the water," or do you concede that it contains misinformation?[/QUOTE]
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2019
  19. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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    You're seeing what you want to see. It's ambiguous so it can be taken as a quote if that's what you want to see. It could also be taken as a summary of the message the article seems to be sending. I doubt the guy meant it to be a direct quote as the document belittles conspiracy theorists and the Global Research article belittles the people who belittle conspiracy theorists. No one would deliberately lie about something that could so easily be verified. I think it was pretty lame of you to try to make the viewers think that was a quote.

    That's the classic style for quotes. The Global Research article says, "From CIA Document 1035-960". It contains the word, "From". I admit it's ambiguous but, as I said before, nobody in his right mind would misquote something that could so easily be verified.

    That's clearly the idea of the document. The writer has the idea that conspiracy theorists don't think clearly and people who simply accept the official story think clearly. You're making a big deal out of this because it's the only thing in those four articles that vague enough to obfuscate. Try to deal with a real issue such as the one everyone in your camp is avoiding.
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...he-missing-jews.558565/page-8#post-1070883208

    It might turn out to be true.

    I think the guy didn't mean it to be a direct quote but a summary of the idea the people who wrote the document were trying to project for the reasons I gave.

    Let's hear you deal with the issue I mentioned that everyone in you camp is avoiding (on that thread of course). That issue blows you people out of the water; that's why your camp is avoiding it and that's why Shinebox tried to play it down without addressing it directly.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2019
  20. Shinebox

    Shinebox Well-Known Member

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  21. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You guys and your ideas.

    Irony...
     
  22. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    There are two types of people, those who know conspiracies exist, and idiots.
    Here are some examples of undeniable conspiracies..

    Holucaust
    Operation Mockingbird
    MK Ultra
    US Black Budget
    Gulf of Tonkin
    The US Department of the Treasury poisoned alcohol during Prohibition — and people died.
    Tuskegee Study
    Operation Northwoods
    Iran Contra
    Gulf War 2
    Asbestos Manufactruing Corporations cover up cancer dangers
    Tabacco company conspiracies to cover up cancer danger and nicotene addiction
    Oil company conspiracies to cover up lead danger
    Watergate
    COINTELPRO
    CIA Drug Running in LA exposed Gary Webb alongside LAPD Narcotics Officer turned whislteblower
    Military coup against President FDR by Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush
    Church Committee
    JFK Assasination according to United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations 1979
    1919 World Series Conspiracy
    CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas Mena, Arkansas
    The Federal Reserve Bank

    I can list many more if you would like....
     
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  23. Scott

    Scott Well-Known Member

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    I came across this and I was looking for a good thread on which to post it. This thread seemed ok.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...pant-thanks-to-modern-technology-6260128.html
    (excerpt)
    ---------------------------------
    The number of people who believe conspiracy theories is staggering. According to various recent surveys, a third of Brits believe Princess Diana was murdered (a Daily Mail survey), a quarter believe the moon landings were faked (from Engineering and Technology magazine), nearly half of all Americans do not believe global warming is man-made (a Yale University survey) and 84 per cent of them believe 9/11 was an inside job (a New York Times/CBS poll).
    ---------------------------------

    Eighty four percent seemed kind of high to me but I haven't been in the US since 1995. Most of the Americans who I talk to by email believe the official story and won't even look at the stuff I send them*.


    I'd like to hear from the truthers who post here.


    *
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...orted-9-11-terrorists.456423/#post-1066183060
     

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