Conspiracy theorists

Lefty said:
And you're saying that means aliens?
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I'm not saying anything other than the pentagon and senate committees within the US are more forthcoming and interested in what we would term UFO's and tend to think they aren't something belonging to a foriegn nation on Earth
 
Lemmy_kilmister said:
Never known as many conspiracy theorists around social media etc as there currently are.
Friends and even a family member of mine are perpetually posting about how covid, banks, television news, vaccines, royalty etc are all forms of government control over the population.

Illuminati, Rothschilds, lizard people, David Icke. 🙄🥱🥱

And they all allude to the fact that they have this secret knowlege that sets them above 'the sheeple'.
Personally I don't really think I could spend my day desperately searching for any kind of clandestine and outrageous plots by real world Bond villains to control the populace.

Think I preferred it when it was just about the Apollo moon landings.
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I think people are scared and/or don't understand certain things.
CT are a simple narrative and give an element of predictability.
 
The only one I do give credence to is Dianna as if you’ve watched the Keith Allen doc you have to wonder and why in a liberal democracy with an open and free press is this well made documentary so vigorously quashed.

I’m not saying who but let’s face it here were a lot of people who wanted to silence/remove her.
 
dooderooni said:
Without looking online, how can a smart meter track you?
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Smart meters can't track you, but someone could use the data they generate to work out whether you are at home, or away, and if away, how long you've been away.

Some people worry that the smart meter reveals stuff about you that can disadvantage you. For example, if you bake cakes in the middle of the night, a prospective energy company might decide not to offer you an off peak tariff.

I think energy companies have more to worry about than people baking cakes in the middle of the night.
 
Soutra said:
Smart meters can't track you, but someone could use the data they generate to work out whether you are at home, or away, and if away, how long you've been away.

Some people worry that the smart meter reveals stuff about you that can disadvantage you. For example, if you bake cakes in the middle of the night, a prospective energy company might decide not to offer you an off peak tariff.

I think energy companies have more to worry about than people baking cakes in the middle of the night.
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The problem with "smart" anything is that they are anything but smart and far too prone to being hacked.
 
Colgates_shaving_foam said:
I wonder whether the increase in conspiracy theorists is linked to the incompetence of the government. Maybe some people prefer to think that there's some kind of plan behind it all; rather than face the reality that the government are just making it up as they go along and are asleep at the wheel.
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Alvez_48 said:
Many conspiracy theories (look up the definition) are factually real, simple as that. Many are false.
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There are conspiracies, I don't think anyone doubts that. We need to differentiate between the 'Grand Conspiracies' and conspiracies concocted in secret between a very small number of people, such as Watergate, Iran Contra and WMD 'intelligence'.

Conspiracy theorists tend to gravitate to the Grand Conspiracies. These always involve a triangle of sorts. There will be the conspirators, which will be a large, powerful, shadowy organisation with vast resources and control. Then there are the majority of us who are sheeple who simply accept the standard explanations offered. Thirdly are the 'enlightened' ones who are 'clever' enough to see through the conspiracy.

So, what is going on in the minds of these people? The answer is it is a confluence of a number of logical fallacies and cognitive biases. People accept things easier if it suits their beliefs and political ideology. There are some people who do just have a tendency toward conspiracy thinking in general.

The John Oliver segment on this showed that we tend to want to attribute big causes to big events. The bigger the event, the more likely there is to be a conspiracy theory, the bigger the conspiracy and the more persistent it is. As a species, we tell ourselves stories to explain the world, we don't feel comfortable when things don't have an explanation, with randomness, or with helplessness/lack of control. Conspiracy theories help us avoid this cognitive dissonance.
 
Rauko said:
I'm not saying anything other than the pentagon and senate committees within the US are more forthcoming and interested in what we would term UFO's and tend to think they aren't something belonging to a foriegn nation on Earth
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For clarification, do you mean the Pentagon and Senate Committees tend to think they aren't something belonging to a foreign nation on earth? Or you tend to think that?
 
Someone did some mathematical modelling a few years ago around the probability of a conspiracy being successfully concealed, mainly factoring the numbers of people being complicit and keeping it a secret. Christ knows how many would have to be involved in a pandemic conspiracy. Obviously these calcs would have to include a number of big assumptions, but vaguely interesting anyway
https://www.theguardian.com/science...e-calculations-for-keeping-conspiracies-quiet
 
Lefty said:
There are conspiracies, I don't think anyone doubts that. We need to differentiate between the 'Grand Conspiracies' and conspiracies concocted in secret between a very small number of people, such as Watergate, Iran Contra and WMD 'intelligence'.

Conspiracy theorists tend to gravitate to the Grand Conspiracies. These always involve a triangle of sorts. There will be the conspirators, which will be a large, powerful, shadowy organisation with vast resources and control. Then there are the majority of us who are sheeple who simply accept the standard explanations offered. Thirdly are the 'enlightened' ones who are 'clever' enough to see through the conspiracy.

So, what is going on in the minds of these people? The answer is it is a confluence of a number of logical fallacies and cognitive biases. People accept things easier if it suits their beliefs and political ideology. There are some people who do just have a tendency toward conspiracy thinking in general.

The John Oliver segment on this showed that we tend to want to attribute big causes to big events. The bigger the event, the more likely there is to be a conspiracy theory, the bigger the conspiracy and the more persistent it is. As a species, we tell ourselves stories to explain the world, we don't feel comfortable when things don't have an explanation, with randomness, or with helplessness/lack of control. Conspiracy theories help us avoid this cognitive dissonance.
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In the 'grand' conspiracies there tends to be grains of truth mixed in with assumption and falsehood then it all becomes a cool story.

Take JFK for instance (a wonderful conspiracy theory) there's evidence around Lee Harvey Oswald not being the only shooter mixed in with the Warren commission report which reads like fiction and the fact that he was then taken out by Ruby before trial.
It makes a fascinating story where it's easy to then start mapping events on top of each other to make grander and grander conspiracies.

Then you have the absolute nonsense stuff like flat earth, 5g etc..
The irony is that it's those 'conspiracy theories' that get all the media attention.
 
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