Conspiracy theories
It is well-accepted that many powerful individuals do not have the interests of the people at heart, and even work against the interests of the people. It is also well-accepted that many powerful individuals meet one another in private and make secret dealings unbeknownst to the general population. And yet most people are not willing to go the next step and accept that powerful individuals do conspire against the interests of the people.
A conspiracy is precisely that, “a secret plan by a group to do something harmful”. History is full of such examples that are proven to have occurred. A specific conspiracy may be proven, or it may be a theory that has supporting evidence but that remains to be proven. And so a conspiracy theory is not necessarily false, it may very well be true, and many conspiracy theories turned out to be true.
And yet every time people come up with the idea that some powerful individuals are conspiring against the general population on some matter, that idea gets quickly ridiculed and arbitrarily dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”, as if the very idea that powerful individuals may be doing that was laughable, was a fantasy. It seems the label “conspiracy theory” evokes the same emotional reactions as the label “pseudoscientific theory” commonly used to ridicule and dismiss particular ideas. And yet historically many ‘conspiracy’ and ‘pseudoscientific’ theories turned out to be correct.
The intellectually honest behavior is to analyze the claims made by a specific theory and the evidence that exists in support of that theory, not to dogmatically ridicule and dismiss it by labeling it ‘conspiracy’ or ‘pseudoscience’, which is precisely not a good philosophical or scientific attitude.
Psychologically it can be understood why most people do not want to consider conspiracy theories seriously: because they do not want to believe that individuals more powerful than them are working against their interests. They want to believe they are free, that they have their life in control, that their cherished beliefs are true and not lies that they were deceived into accepting, they want to believe they are their own masters and not unsuspecting slaves or tools, they want to believe they live within such a reality because the alternative would be too difficult to face.
They want to believe that the hardships and the suffering they face are the unfortunate product of unchangeable laws of nature that they have to deal with, or in some particular cases the product of isolated disturbed/evil individuals or groups who can be controlled or dealt with through justice or through war. They do not want to believe that powerful organizations such as mainstream media, law enforcement, pharmaceutical companies, intelligence agencies, their own government or secret societies may be actively and insidiously working against them, not by accident but by design. And well-meaning people working for these organizations do not want to believe that they may be manipulated into working towards fulfilling an agenda that goes against the interests of the people.
And yet when the evidence is thoroughly researched and analyzed, it turns out that many conspiracy theories that are arbitrarily dismissed as ridiculous or as the fantasies of sick minds, have actually much more substance than we are led to believe at first glance, and that the body of evidence does point to some of these theories being true rather than false, in fact it appears as extremely unlikely that some of these theories would be false.
When the only argument that remains against these theories is that “these individuals or these organizations wouldn’t lie to us like that! they wouldn’t do that to us!”, it may be time to change our beliefs about them, even if the truth is hard to accept. It isn’t easy to accept that we’ve lived within lies our whole life, it isn’t easy to wake up and see the horror of reality for what it truly is, we would prefer to keep living in our dream bubble and ignore that reality. But sooner or later that reality will catch up to us, and the longer we ignore it the tougher the wake up call will be, and the more impossible it will be to turn things around.
A conspiracy is precisely that, “a secret plan by a group to do something harmful”. History is full of such examples that are proven to have occurred. A specific conspiracy may be proven, or it may be a theory that has supporting evidence but that remains to be proven. And so a conspiracy theory is not necessarily false, it may very well be true, and many conspiracy theories turned out to be true.
And yet every time people come up with the idea that some powerful individuals are conspiring against the general population on some matter, that idea gets quickly ridiculed and arbitrarily dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”, as if the very idea that powerful individuals may be doing that was laughable, was a fantasy. It seems the label “conspiracy theory” evokes the same emotional reactions as the label “pseudoscientific theory” commonly used to ridicule and dismiss particular ideas. And yet historically many ‘conspiracy’ and ‘pseudoscientific’ theories turned out to be correct.
The intellectually honest behavior is to analyze the claims made by a specific theory and the evidence that exists in support of that theory, not to dogmatically ridicule and dismiss it by labeling it ‘conspiracy’ or ‘pseudoscience’, which is precisely not a good philosophical or scientific attitude.
Psychologically it can be understood why most people do not want to consider conspiracy theories seriously: because they do not want to believe that individuals more powerful than them are working against their interests. They want to believe they are free, that they have their life in control, that their cherished beliefs are true and not lies that they were deceived into accepting, they want to believe they are their own masters and not unsuspecting slaves or tools, they want to believe they live within such a reality because the alternative would be too difficult to face.
They want to believe that the hardships and the suffering they face are the unfortunate product of unchangeable laws of nature that they have to deal with, or in some particular cases the product of isolated disturbed/evil individuals or groups who can be controlled or dealt with through justice or through war. They do not want to believe that powerful organizations such as mainstream media, law enforcement, pharmaceutical companies, intelligence agencies, their own government or secret societies may be actively and insidiously working against them, not by accident but by design. And well-meaning people working for these organizations do not want to believe that they may be manipulated into working towards fulfilling an agenda that goes against the interests of the people.
And yet when the evidence is thoroughly researched and analyzed, it turns out that many conspiracy theories that are arbitrarily dismissed as ridiculous or as the fantasies of sick minds, have actually much more substance than we are led to believe at first glance, and that the body of evidence does point to some of these theories being true rather than false, in fact it appears as extremely unlikely that some of these theories would be false.
When the only argument that remains against these theories is that “these individuals or these organizations wouldn’t lie to us like that! they wouldn’t do that to us!”, it may be time to change our beliefs about them, even if the truth is hard to accept. It isn’t easy to accept that we’ve lived within lies our whole life, it isn’t easy to wake up and see the horror of reality for what it truly is, we would prefer to keep living in our dream bubble and ignore that reality. But sooner or later that reality will catch up to us, and the longer we ignore it the tougher the wake up call will be, and the more impossible it will be to turn things around.
Comments (90)
What?
:brow:
Facts are events, happenings, states of affairs. Truth is correspondence to/with facts. Judging the quality of an historical account - determining if it's worth seriously considering - determining if it is true, and what the impact of it's being so is requires comparison between what's been said about the past, and what actually happened(assuming there is a difference).
Are you seriously suggesting that we do not use that single standard?
All conspiracy theories are historical accounts/renderings.
Is the account truth apt? Does it consist of verifiable and/or falsifiable claims? Does it rest it's laurels upon logical possibility alone?
Judging using truth and facts is judging using a single standard. A complex one, consisting of individual elemental constituents, but a single whole standard nonetheless.
Well done. It begins the important nuance that is - and has been - in dire need of understanding.
It is also particularly important for the State to make its rule seem inevitable: even if its reign is disliked, as it often is, it will then be met with the passive resignation expressed in the familiar coupling of “death and taxes.” One method is to bring to its side historical determinism: if X-State rules us, then this has been inevitably decreed for us by the Inexorable Laws of History (or the Divine Will, or the Absolute, or the Material Productive Forces), and nothing that any puny individuals may do can change the inevitable. It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any outcropping of what is now called “a conspiracy theory of history.” For a search for “conspiracies,” as misguided as the results often are, means a search for motives, and an attribution of individual responsibility for the historical misdeeds of ruling elites. If, however, any tyranny or venality or aggressive war imposed by the State was brought about not by particular State rulers but by mysterious and arcane “social forces,” or by the imperfect state of the world—or if, in some way, everyone was guilty (“We are all murderers,” proclaims a common slogan), then there is no point in anyone’s becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, a discrediting of “conspiracy theories”—or indeed, of anything smacking of “economic determinism”—will make the subjects more likely to believe the “general welfare” reasons that are invariably put forth by the modern State for engaging in any aggressive actions.
Your interests and my interests are not perfectly aligned. But that doesn't mean you should default distrust me, even in cases where it may be in my interests to lie.
This is just a special instance of a more general principle or injunction of reason. Namely, to trust appearances. If something appears to be the case, then we are default justified in believing that it is the case until some countervailing evidence is provided to think otherwise.
So, if I say that I will be there at 7pm, you are default justified in trusting that I will be, even if it is not in my interests to be.
The fact, then, that there are powerful people whose interests do not perfectly align with ours does not mean we are default justified in distrusting what they say. And thus a conspiracy theorist owes us evidence for the conspiracy. 'Conspiracy' is not the default.
However that something is less probable doesn't mean it's false. The fact of the matter is that people are drawn to conspiracy theories if only because it gets the adrenaline rushing; there's a sense of mystery, a feeling that one is privy to some kind of secret information, etc. Thus conspiracy theories are born and sustained. I've come across a lot of conspiracy theories but most of them fall apart at some level; the more well-crafted the conspiracy theory the deeper one has to go to see the inconsistencies, the subtle glossing over of important details, the weak but professed links between events, etc.
But I believe humans lack the capacity to organize any significant conspiracy that wouldn’t result in their jailing or demise. People have consciences, differing wants, motives, and fears, that any cabal is doomed from the outset.
Is there any room for unintended harm? Ignoring it after it's been disclosed?
If that were true, there would be no cases of guilt and pardon, and/or guilt and no accountability. There are such cases. Therefore, the belief is false.
A true explanation is one hundred percent correct, regardless of whether or not it has been dubbed "a conspiracy theory".
If there are such cases, maybe provide an example.
I'm BACK! Back in the TPF groove!
I'm BACK! Back in the TPF groove!
Anyway, every empire that has ever existed constitutes a master/slave society. The United States empire is no exception. ExxonMobil is the biggest master but not the only one. Corporations (and those who run them) run the United States. The working class are the servants/slaves. The middle class are also servants/slaves but maybe house slaves. The police are the overseers. Freedom amounts to very little besides consumer choice. The state-sanctioned entertainment keeps you from questioning your status as nothing more than a consumer. Businesses are mini-kingdoms. You are never more aware of your slave-hood than when you are at work. The supervisors are overseers at the business kingdoms. The owners are the masters.
There are only so many state-sanctioned religions. You have "freedom" to choose among them, but just don't try to start one (think Waco, TX).
Freedom of choice? Sure. You can choose between PC or Mac, Android or iPhone, MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News, etc... All of these are corporations that keep you boxed in a prison. Our several domiciles are also prisons that are constantly "watched" by Google, Apple, Microsoft ... even your smart TV has a camera on it.
The judicial system works to exonerate the rich and condemn the poor (masters and slaves). The prosecutor has a team. The rich can hire an arsenal of lawyers to debate the best strategy and pick the best jurors. The poor have one public defender with a gigantic workload. S/he is paid a pittance, and s/he knows you are probably going to get convicted. Well, what did you expect? A slave would walk free?
The NSA, CIA, and Pentagon (read "War is a Racket" by General Smedley Butler) work on behalf of the corporations as does the President, Congress, and the judicial system. There are too many unconstitutional laws that are legal to be counted here because of the corrupt judges and justices. Never mind that judges relate to the rich as people, and they look down on the servants/slaves. The slaves get life sentences and the wayward masters get parole after slaps-on-the-wrist sentences.
Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann conceived of this society to keep our minds shackled (just Google them and read their books). Personal responsibility? Sure. Everyone is responsible for themselves. That's by design. The system doesn't create working-class crime. It's bad individuals. Sure. Crimes of poverty, in reality. Think "Prison Song" by System of a Down (the metal band).
Not convinced yet? Just ask questions and I will try to respond to all of them.
The man is wanted in the US for uncovering a "conspiracy theory" in which the US government and tech giants work together to spy on the American public. This happened in 2013, and if you asked the common person about the situation, they would probably tell you they thought it was one of the other conspiracy theories like aliens in area 51 or wearing a tin foil hat.
For the foreseeable future he's living in Russia, because if he ever returned to the US, he will face one of the most one sided trials of all time.
It seems that while a theory is still a "conspiracy theory", it is assumed false, and as someone above mentioned, that is how it should be. The burden of proof lies on those who make claims. But when those who make claims are correct, their theories are suddenly credible and they lose that "conspiracy" part of the name. The theory is given credibility, but its past is forgotten. It's a fundamental disconnect, sort of a doublethink, where one moment something is completely impossible, and the next it is the only way things have ever been. Maybe we forget the history because it's too painful to remember that we were wrong or that we could be wronged. That kind of thinking will only cause more pain in the long run.
What's interesting is how nobody seems to care about these kinds of situations, the above in particular. It isn't that they deny or accept, it's that they are unaware. Crazy things happen, people just don't see them. It's interesting how the world is so chaotic, history is unfolding right before our eyes, and you may have just been blinking when it happened.
This is a common claim of people trying to debunk conspiracy theories. I have four points of refutation that have been on my mind. I'm so glad we're talking about conspiracy theories. I love conspiracy theories.
Now, the claim is that "All those people couldn't keep a secret." I disagree.
1) Consider the Manhattan project to build the atom bomb in WWII. 130,000 people worked at 32 separate locations for three years and nobody breathed a peep. There was one German spy and he got caught. So a very large group of people CAN keep a secret, if the reason for secrecy is good enough.
2) The fact that secrets usually leak out is a kind of survivor bias for secrets. The only secrets you know are the ones that leaked. You don't know all the secrets you don't know. The things the CIA and FBI and other alphabet soup agencies do in your name that you don't know about are highly numerous and mostly evil. You don't know about them because people DO keep secrets.
3) Not everybody needs to know. The 1977 movie Capricorn One, is about a US mission to Mars that is faked by the government. Only a few people know about the plot. The workers in Mission Control are fed fake tapes. They think they're getting the live data.
So even if a thousand people are involved, only a handful at the top might actually know what's really going on; and the rest have no idea they're participating in a nefarious activity.
4) Who says you have to keep secrets? Say you have 1000 people in a room, and you are the Evil Leader of their terrible plot. You COULD say to them, "If any of you talk, you'll be in big trouble." Guaranteed that at least a few of them will get their story to Wikileaks or equivalent. Your plot will be on the front page of the New York Times by morning, even if just to call Wikileaks liars.
So no, that doesn't work. What do you do instead? You say to them: When the plot is complete, I want you all to go out and tell every wild story you can think of to the press! Some of you can even tell them the truth. Use my name! Tell the truth. Tell lies. Sow confusion!
Isn't that much more effective? And doesn't it fit the pattern? Take the JFK assassination. Is the problem that nobody's talking? No, it's that everybody's talking. You have so many people out there putting forth alternative theories that the average American doesn't bother to listen to any of it. There's a guy named James Files who has actually confessed to being one of the grassy knoll shooters. Nobody believes him!
So that's what you do. You don't keep secrets. You sow confusion. Look at 9/11. Dozens of alternative theories, all of them conflicting with each other. Planted explosives. Thermite. Micro-nukes. Reports of explosions in the basement. Real planes. CGI-projected fake planes. Missiles disguised as planes. Cheney did it. Mossad did it. The Saudis did it. No plane wreckage was every recovered at Shanksville. Yes there was! No there wasn't! The alternative literature on 9/11 is huge. Buried in there somewhere is the truth. But you can't separate it from the lies. The average person sees all this confusion and goes, "Well they're all nuts. What the government told me must be right."
The "Nobody can keep a secret" theory stands refuted.
Conspiracy is in the nature of states, large corporations and other centers of power. State secrets, intelligence services, hidden lobbies, etc. Power justifies secrecy with different excuses: efficacy, self-protection, etc. but when some of these conspiracies are revealed we can see that they are bad or even illegal and against people in general. They usually serve to the groups of power.
Less democracy and more conspiracies. Given the significant amount of secrecy in today's democracies, everyone can draw conclusions.
I suppose the expression conspiranoia is legitimate to point to some fantastic conspiracy theories that only serve to hide the real conspiracies.
And so many more:
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/wtf/7-bizarre-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/news-story/51a5e8dee2b311fafa11511d72afa7b5
https://bestlifeonline.com/true-conspiracy-theories/
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/lopc
It all happened, and that’s only ones that were acknowledged as correct. How many more conspiracy theories are true while being still presented as false by the mainstream media or thought to be false in the public opinion?
For instance are we to believe that there is no more mass spying? No more mind control programs? No more false flag operations used as a pretext to start a war or invade a country or topple some government? No more weather modification programs? No more powerful companies pushing harmful products while manipulating politicians and scientific research? That the public opinion is no more manipulated? That somehow powerful governments/agencies/companies have all come clean and everyone is suddenly working for the public interest now, that there are no more lies?
I’d like to talk about conspiracy theories that are still widely ridiculed or dismissed as false today, and yet when the evidence is thoroughly researched and analyzed it appears that they are most likely true, beyond a reasonable doubt. The first one I want to talk about you will probably laugh when I mention it, not long ago I thought the idea to be ridiculous myself because I had never really looked into it, it seemed so far-fetched, and yet once you look at all the evidence and consider the arguments for/against, it is true beyond a reasonable doubt. And if we can be lied to on such a great scale for so long, it is a sign that this may be just the tip of the iceberg.
The Bletchly Circle kept their work secret for decades after WW2 despite it not being a threat to national security.
It becomes a matter of what constitutes sufficient and/or adequate reason to believe.
What counts as evidence, and is it adequate and/or relevant to the explanation, and in what way?
I've seen and heard plenty to believe that those in power went into Iraq knowing that there were no weapons of mass destruction aside from the chemical ones that were already known about.
The Gulf of Tonkin. Well... that's already been proven. So much of our involvement in Vietnam was based upon lying to not only the American public, but the world as well, including the puppet government we put in place in the south.
I've seen no good evidence to suggest that Oswald acted in cooperation with anyone else.
I've seen no good evidence that there have been aliens and alien spacecraft recovered and/or captured by US governmental agencies.
I've seen plenty of evidence to suggest that the American electoral process is corrupt.
I've seen plenty of evidence to suggest that elected politicians have enacted legislation that has resulted in demonstrable and quantifiable harm to a very large majority of Americans.
The crash of 08...
Well, that looks remarkably like it was not an unforeseen accident.
In the past fifty to sixty years, I've seen more than enough evidence that nearly all of the governmental agencies put in place to protect American citizens from the negative affects/effects of certain kinds of business practices have been systematically rendered toothless. "Drain the swamp" has been the continued systemic removal and/or dismemberment of many American safeguards originally put into place as a means to protect less fortunate Americans and cultivate a more robust socio-economic landscape with increased levels of equal opportunity.
I somewhat agree, but even though a conspiracy theory shouldn’t be blindly believed it should at least be seriously considered, based on its arguments and on the evidence supporting it, instead of being blindly dismissed.
Surely when we evaluate a theory we should evaluate it on its merits, and neither blindly believe nor blindly dismiss it simply because it is about a conspiracy.
Yet the default behavior is precisely to blindly dismiss conspiracy theories, to ridicule them without seriously considering their arguments and the evidence supporting them, and that’s a big problem, because it prevents us from uncovering the true conspiracies that are carried out against us, and enables the conspirators to harm us or take advantage of us without our awareness.
And in fact I would say the default behavior should be to consider conspiracy theories very seriously, and even to distrust powerful individuals by default until we have very good evidence that they are truly working for the interests of the people, because history is full of powerful individuals working against the interests of the people, and powerful individuals working for the good of the people are the exception rather than the rule. Also by virtue of their power powerful individuals can harm us greatly if that is their desire, and that’s why we should be extremely careful with them, question their true motives, look for inconsistencies in their narrative, look for contradictions between what they say and what they do, and not blindly trust them.
The building was evacuated... yes?
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/summary.html
There's also the actual definition of a conspiracy. The definition you refer to, basically making and/or believing wild assumptions on the cause of some event is another thing, actually.
Quoting creativesoul
With time there emerges a historical agreement, which very likely is at least close to the truth (even if details become unknown and forgotten). This takes many years, even decades.
True conspiracies or false conspiracies, which emerge either from disinformation (false information which is intended to mislead) or misinformation (incorrect or misleading information), do tend to be exposed once:
a) The matter is not anymore of political importance
b) the conspirators are around anymore
c) the archieves and data are open for historians to work on them.
Quoting creativesoul
Yet was believing the Domino theory a conspiracy or simply an error of judgement? Communists looked quite the same (or at least their rhetoric was the same) and I think no Western analyst would forecast in the sixties or even in the early 70's that China and Vietnam would fight a border war in 1979.
And how much of a puppet state is South Korea? I like it that there's South Korean gadgets and cars and pop videos. And not more people that have starved to death under North Korean dictatorship. At hindsight we can spot the differecence. Knowing that Vietnam would be different could perhaps been anticipated, but still it would have been a long shot.
Quoting creativesoul
Yet a speculative bubbles bursting is something that truly isn't a conspiracy. Many saw this coming, and remember that a lot of the most irresponsible culprits got their millions and didn't go to jail.
It's not just speculative bubbles.
I'm referring to the financial agents who created financial instruments as a means to leave those depending upon them with inevitable fallout of the bad mortgages when it occurred. Those mortgages were going to be defaulted on, and everyone involved on the lending side knew it...
Here, you call them "irresponsible". I find the exact opposite to be true.
Kennedy stood for equal rights. Many others in American government at the time did not. Hoover has been recorded talking about his own serious issues with Black leaders, and talked explicitly about not allowing them to gain too much power/momentum. So, there was a definite governmental impetus against Blacks... and thus, against the parts of Kennedy's political leanings involving those.
The fetish with 'communism' was real and spilled over into thoughts about American culture by those paranoid fucks that were in power at the time. The evidence for this is overwhelming.
I'm not denying Kennedy's assassination had more to it than Oswald. I'm saying that Oswald worked alone.
My bad. The building seven issue...
Wasn't it evacuated?
A recent study by the University Alaska also does not support fire as the cause of the collapse. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/university-study-finds-fire-did-not-cause-3rd-towers-collapse-on-911-300911896.html
It also pretty much just looks obviously like demolition.
and demolition is not easy. To get a building to fall into its footprint takes expertise, tons of preparation, carefully placed and times explosives and still one can find on the internet failed demollitions of buildings by professional teams.
And yet on 9/11 three building received asymetrical damage, one building 7 minimal, and yet all three buildings fell straight down into their footprints.
Demolition companies should just start fired high up in buildings. It'd be cheaper and time saving. There is lot of other evidence, including seismic measurements, witness reports of explosions, scientists who found nano-thermite in the dust after the explosions and a lot more that do not fit with the official story.
I think anyone mulling over, from an engineering viewpoint, how three buildings with asymmetrical damage all fell directly into their footprints at near freefall speed, would be skeptical of the offical report. There is a tremendous amount of evidence relating to many different facets of that day by professional in a variety of fields out there.
Building 7 got me. That's just BS. Look at the films of the fires, then the film of the collapse, then listen to the architects and engineers who are critical explain their criticism, then read the report from the Alaska university and listen to the NIST whistleblower. If that doesn't give you a serious skepticism about the official story and curiosity to research further, then I don't think other angles will, though there are many. But that angle, to me, is just obvious. The official story of building 7 is to me obviously false.
I am not sure what it's having been evacuated means, but if that seems to preclude it having been intentionally taken down, I would need to hear the argument in a fuller form.
No. What I mean that the behaved irresponsibly, didn't care much about possible credit losses because the loans were packaged together and were thought to be then OK. The financial system had evolved and improved, you know. People genuinely talked about self regulation of the capital markets.
I could go on detail on this subject because it comes close to my Masters thesis. I've personally been in the 90's in the university arguing that 'speculative bubble could happen even today' and been given an answer that your idea is bullshit, that the international financial markets work just fine and such market disasters as speculative bubbles simply cannot happen. Perhaps people were crazy in the 17th Century Netherlands with Tulips, but such manias are of the past. Economists truly believed so.
Simply put it: enough people truly believed in the "New Economy" to make a speculative bubble to appear and you simply do not need behind it a conspiracy. And the conspiracy buffs like Alex Jones were busy talking about the 9/11 conspiracies back then to take ANY note of what was happening in the real estate market. And betting on the bubble to collapse will make you poor if and when the bubble goes longer than you have anticipated.
This seemingly ridiculous conspiracy theory I refer to is the theory that astronauts never set foot on the moon. That theory is obviously false, right? Until recently that’s how I reacted. And yet when we look at all the evidence in depth, it appears that the rational stance is to consider that this theory is true beyond a reasonable doubt.
I won’t go into all the evidence in this post because there is so much of it, but the first questions that come to mind is why would NASA and the US government fake the moon landings, and how would they fake them? A reasonable motive that can be put forth is that ever since the beginning of the 1960s they had promised the American public that they would set foot on the moon by the end of the decade, and they spent billions of dollars towards achieving that goal, but as the end of that decade got closer they realized that they would never solve all the technical problems by then and so they decided to fake it, which would be much simpler. In fact there is evidence that as the years passed, the prospect of putting astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade grew more and more unlikely.
As to how they faked them, there is plenty of evidence that many photographs and videos were taken in a studio, and that sometimes what they show would defy the laws of physics if they had been really taken on the moon.
There is an exceptional documentary on the subject that I watched recently: American Moon (released in 2017). Unlike most videos about conspiracies it is very well made, very well reasoned, and it progressively asks a series of 42 questions that pinpoint contradictions in the official story. In order for the official story to be true, these 42 questions must be answered in a logically consistent way (the answers to different questions can’t contradict one another), and that seems impossible.
In fact as a general case this is a good methodology to uncover a true conspiracy: finding holes in the official story, inconsistencies, contradictions. If they can’t all be resolved in a consistent way, then the official story is self-contradictory, which implies that it is false.
I leave you with a link to this fascinating documentary, it is quite long but well worth the time, personally once I started watching it I couldn’t stop. I watched it believing I would find a lot of holes in the documentary, but instead the holes are to be found in the official story: https://www.bitchute.com/video/eZramDBFkXRU/
Building 7 supposedly housed millions of classified CIA documents. It has also been reported that the owner of the World Trade Center property took out an $8 billion insurance policy before the attack.
Not at all. A master can be nice but a master or a member of the master class nonetheless. Many slaves like their masters. It's kind of like Stockholm Syndrome. The rich don't exactly share the same interests with the poor (to say the least), and their privilege makes them natural enemies of the poor. The poor populate the prisons. The rich populate the country clubs.
Of course. What else is there but money, power, and politics?
Also, social control is crucial to maintaining the power structure.
Social control given with the blessing of the American public and their unquestioning jingoism maintaining the power structure of big oil and the war industry.
9/11 was perpetrated by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Oh. I know da answer for that.
Sex, drugs, and Rock'n'Roll!!
:up:
and as of yet freedom from propaganda.
I caught a flee in my undershirt. It jumped off, but I caught it. I killed it.
Upon closer examination under a microscope it turned out it had a built-in microchip, several of its legs were bionic, and it spoke seven different languages concurrently and fluently. It was of course incomprehensible, what with speaking seven languages simultaneously, but still, even my grade 7 class can't do that.
"Poverty is where it's at. Yeeee-Haw, poverty, don't leave home without it." -- Does not have the same ring to it. They have better writers.
If you're mocking me, then I don't find that interesting or funny. It's vapid and lazy.
"Just say NO."
It has a ring to it, it has the writers behind it, it is unmistakeably a slogan... yet even this hasn't worked.
Ah, yes. Nancy Reagan. Dumb cunt.
It did not work... for long. There is no presence that we know of by the USA in the Middle East wars.
We have 40-50,000 troops in the Middle East as well as oil executives and contractors and military bases in the countries surrounding Iran.
But she was nice and religious.
She so dumb, she couldn't cunt up to five. She kept missing the number 4.
Yeah, but half of that number in troops are Americans-turned-Jihadists who were enchanted by the wonderful promise of the Islam. Plus, after joining up, they could kill people without repercussions... big attraction for most young hot-blooded All-American Boys.
Whatever. You're a fool.
They learned this from Hitler's Nazi movement, and from the Communist terror propagation. Except in America everyone buys the lies. This is because the powers that be suppressed education. The communists' biggest mistake was to teach science and literature and art to their young. Consequently, every citizen saw right through their lies.
I have news for you: the American establishment lies are almost identical to those of the communists. The difference? Amys believe them. Russkies did not.
NO, no. My conspiracy theory is in the news. Yours is behind the headlines. Mine are in the li(n)es. Yours are in-between.
Which are more likely to be true?
"When two conspiracists lock antlers."
Now you're making sense. The working and middle classes mostly believe the lies, too. But, hey! We got the Super Bowl and Twinkies, right?
Now you are talkin'. Sports, and drugs. Rock'n'Roll went out the window with sex, i.e. with the sexual counter-revolution, due to AIDS. It was only coincidental (or a conspiracy) that new musicians can't make any serious money whatsoever. Grand theft is a national pastime in certain industries.
I'm not being ludicrous and inane. You are. You are more than welcome to look up all of my claims. They are consistent, coherent, and logically inferred from the available public historical record. You are just trying to be funny or trying to get my goat. You're trolling, and I don't really care much for your lack of intellectual honesty.
And besides, ExxonMobil profits never helped anyone I've ever met. Oil is sold on the world markets and the prices are the same for you, me, and everyone else I've ever met no matter if ExxonMobil owns it or not. I don't give a fuck about ExxonMobil. They are fucking the vast majority of Americans.
Of course it didn't. Only a fool would believe that a building would fall like that from small fires.
The point of this thread is first of all to show why it is important to consider conspiracy theories seriously, and not blindly dismiss them or ridicule them, which I believe I and others have shown quite well.
Then I want to show that there are conspiracy theories today which are true (beyond a reasonable doubt), while almost everyone still believe that they are false (and blindly dismiss/ridicule them). Since philosophy is in great part concerned with uncovering truth, I think you will agree that it is important to find out which conspiracy theories are true.
I don’t want to start with 9/11 because it isn’t the easiest one to prove and because it puts many people off, even though indeed as was mentioned the collapse of Building 7 is difficult to explain without invoking controlled demolition. Instead I want to start with the moon landings, because it is easier to prove that they were faked, because the subject matter is less bleak, and because almost everyone considers that theory (that astronauts never set foot on the moon) to be extremely ridiculous, so if it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that this theory is indeed true then this has far-reaching implications, and can serve as a motivation to look more deeply into other conspiracy theories.
And again there is an outstanding documentary that was released recently, which shows beyond a reasonable doubt that astronauts never set foot on the moon, that these landings were faked in a studio. If you can’t believe it, I suggest you watch the documentary, I suggest everyone watch it and then give their thoughts on it, it is well worth it, here is the link again:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/eZramDBFkXRU/
1. Oil is a commodity. It is sold on the commodity markets, which are not retail markets. If you buy a Columbia Coat in Vancouver, and one in Toronto, they may have vastly different prices. But oil is not such a goods. I can't explain it any better than saying it's a commodity. I can't explain it better precisely because I don't understand it either. But it's not the only commodity... corn, soy beans, minerals, uranium, etc. all have world-wide uniform prices.
2. ExxonMobil has helped lots of Americans, barring the sharing of profits. Americans' cars would not run without oil production; retail goods would skyracket in price or not be available whatsoever if they had to be manufactured and distributed without oil production. ExxonMobil sure takes a huge profit, and it sure takes the government by the balls and squeezes them until it gets what it wants (including wars), but one thing you can't say is that ExxonMobil does not help Americans.
3. As a private opinion, and I don't suppose anyone here will agree with me, I offer and put it to you that there is no difference in lifestyle between people who earn $2000,000 a year and people who earn two billion a year or anywhere in-between; and I put it to you that the life of the rich is only marginally better, if at all, than that of the middle class, or even that of the poor (outside of America, the poor).
- all three strata enjoy medicare (in rich countries outside the USA)
- all three strata have enough to eat, and good tasting food too;
- all three strata have access to public education (free until grade 12)
- all three strata have access to entertainment;
- all three strata have access to hygienic products and lifestyle;
- all three strata have access to clothing, transportation and telecommunication.
These all apply to Americans and non-Americans in the rich countries, except the first point.
MY point? A rich can't eat a thousand or million times more food than the poor. He can't get a thousand to a million times cleaner, healthier, uncold, unhot (against the elements), unnoised, he can't dance a thousand or a million times more steps, he can't get a billion or a hundred million times laid more, they both have the same amount of orgasms over a lifetime, see the same amount of movies, play the same amount of computer games, sing the same amount of blues in the shower.
Being rich is an American dream which is idolized by the poor, protected by the rich, and unbeknownst to all involved, who are stupid enough to not think it through, in and by itself being wealthy by a large margin buys you double the fun, but not even triple, never mind 1,000,000 times the fun.
What you and I pay for gasoline has a lot to do with this oil price coupled with the billions of dollars that our government hands out to companies like ExxonMobil free of charge, which pads their bottom line more than it helps you and me afford their prices.
It would make zero difference to you and me if ExxonMobil is the owner or if British Petroleum is. I say let the British be the imperialists, and lets spend our money on subsidizing renewable energy, electric cars, investing in affordable housing and college, universal healthcare etc.
You’re wrong about the rich and the poor. The poor have nothing to be taxed. The rich should be taxed at pre-Reagan levels to make it a more just society. Also, the rich have longer life expectancy than the poor, better education, and have many more opportunities.
Furthermore, you’re a psychopathic asshole.
The federal government requires television networks to beam free NFL football games into my living room in HD. That's the kind of authoritarianism I can get behind.
:100:
Of course, all of my recommended prescriptions for US society are only meant to slow the race to our ultimate ruin.
No further comments.
Perhaps you will not consider this evidence, but give it a watch and see if it shifts how you approach the issue and how you go about looking for evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWz4SXfyCQ
I'm curious. I've not watched the link you offered on the moon landing, although I've read a number of different people's writings on it as well as watching a number of different 'documentaries' about it... So, unless there is something new in that one - as far as evidence goes - I remain unconvinced of the landing being faked.
So, as I was saying... I'm curious...
What is the standard for the burden of proof here?
Are the anomalies that are being pointed out as evidence of the moon landing being faked explained by more than one account? Is being faked the only explanation thereof? Are the expert opinions the only ones? Are there other experts who denounce the fake landing explanation in lieu of another? Are some of those experts not tied to the governmental explanation in any way?
Surely there are many living witnesses to that landing who watched it happen and/or played an instrumental part of the operation itself... right? Are all of these people liars? Buzz Aldren? Neil Armstrong? All of the other astronauts afterwards? There was more than one moon landing... right?
Is the underlying reasoning for faking the landing along the lines of the US government trying to impress upon the world American dominance and/or exceptionalism... cold-war style? Because JFK said it... we cannot fail or be seen as having failed to actually do it?
You can theorize the current wikipedia/time page is a conspiracy (if you believe the author had evil intent.)
However, I think the word should be changed to stress less 'intent', there is also human stupidity.
Yeah...
Looks pretty convoluted.
It would be strange if that kind of work was not highly complex.
Not wanting to believe something should not blind us, but the other side of the coin is confirmation bias: some people unjustifiably believe the world (or the rich) are out to get them. When examined more closely, that rarely seems to be the case.
The notion of not being able to place one's hands near the reactor(due to 'gravitational waves') contradicted all the later talk about 'placing' the sphere off and on the pedestal. It lost me with a tremendous amount of forgetting what he was saying amidst two hours of aimless wandering...
It’s not so much that the rich are out to get the poor. It’s that the rich have privilege that they don’t want to give up. It’s a matter of habituation and what people get accustomed to. The rich couldn’t handle maximum security prison with the life-hardened poor. Judges know this. The judges delude themselves that the rich convict is really a good person that just made a mistake. The judge’s bias is never more transparent than when he sentences the black crack dealer to life in prison for his third offense. The judge believes the convict is a hardened criminal who can’t be reformed even though dealing crack was probably the best opportunity the poor black man ever had in this society where everything was stacked against him from birth.
People really aren’t all that different in their morality, however. It’s just that some have had easy lives and get all the chances in the world. Some have one or two opportunities in life that they better not fuck up. Most people have no choice but to live in oppression and poverty, or to take a chance and deal crack.
Senators are just as much criminals as anyone else. They just don’t have to worry about police harassment and biased judges because the judges are biased in their favor.
I haven't watched the movie, but "Creating gravitational waves" with a reactor sounds fishy. Force of gravity is a funcion of mass and distance. In the classical physics sense. Neither can be faked. If someone claims to be generating "gravitational waves" with a reactor, methinks he is blowing it from the hothole. In other words, his or her credibility is gone. Because the person obviously has no physics knowledge, yet tries to use physics, false and impossible physics, to prove his or her point.
This is beside the point of believeing the conspiracy theory or not.
Another point is the convoluted serving of the topic. They don't have a point; they try to pull the wool over the viewers' eyes by presenting their own self-contradictory facts so far away from each other in time and in topic line, that they hope nobody notices it. If they had a clear case, believe me, they would present it clearly. If they don't have a clear case, their (the conspiracy theorists') only hope is to not be noticed for that, and the only way to do that is to convolute their presentation.
These are not criticism of the theory of conspiracy in the film, these are general observations also applicable to the film, which conspiracy theorists often use, but not necessarily always use.
"Wrong reaction to the reaction to the reactor." I like this. Three occurances of the very same concept that have three different and distinct meanings, in one sentence, with each meaning unmistakeable for the other two. Sort of a humourless pun. But those of us who revel in puns, find a somewhat perverse pleasure reading something like this.
I think that's poor epistemologal practice in a few different ways. Quoting god must be atheist
I don't understand. You didn't watch the film but talk about the 'serving of the topic'. Then go on to attributing motivations to a person you have no experience of. You seem also to be claiming that people who have presented cases for ufos being alien craft, etc. don't present clear cases, period. The go on to present more mind reading about their hopes.
You use the general term 'conspiracy theorists' though obviously some people who believed in conspiracies later had their cases confirmed,even when consensus opinion was against them. These conspiracies are not longer, of course, considered the product of 'conspiracy theorists', a term that is irrational in the extreme, since it implies conspiracies, or at the very least large conspiracies, do not happen.Quoting god must be atheistI thought this was fascinating. Your hypotheses, including knowing what is going on in other minds (motivations, hopes....) is applicaple to the person in the film you haven't seen.
Now I don't think the film should convince anyone that something specific is true. I just found him extremely credible. I think one needs to have an interest and continue looking at evidence, and, yes, choose people who seem to have nuanced and intelligent minds and focus on what they say and what data and evidence they provide. But I don't assume anyone should pursue this. Nor do I think there is any problem with skepticism. I have it in boatloads.
But I find it interesting how some people, supposedly on the more rational team, approach learning and drawing conclusions.
I do truly think it is fair to conclude from you post that you have a closed mind on the subject. I also appreciate your post because i think it is part of a general pattern where specific conclusions are considered a part of skepticism rather than specific processes of inquiry.
You drew a conclusion soley based on intuition and speculation and mind reading. If people you considered not skeptical used just those tools you would likely bring out some valid criticisms of those processes, but seem unaware of your own epistemology when reaching your conclusions.
I find that what is presented as a gap in epistemologies is actually just people on different teams. Sometimes they try to reverse engineer their conclusions so they seem the result of the epistemologies they supposedly value, and so what I appreciate about you post is that no effort at all is made to do this.
I'll be ignoring you on this topic. I know you have an excellent mind, from our contact in other topics, and a flexible one in some areas. But on this one I hope even you can see that you don't.
This has been documented? If you want to pull in fantasy and imagination to prove conspiracy theories, then you are really gone far out.
I believe things. That's why I don't believe things.
So...
The reactor looks like a globe atop a squat obelisk. It cannot be gotten near when it is on and producing this - never before seen by anyone aside from this guy - 'gravitational wave'. It goes off and on by placing it atop the pedestal.
Did I misunderstand?
Did he not say just that, or words to that effect/affect?