Conspiracy theories in general

From the pentagon thread:

Originally posted by REASON
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!!!!!!!


I can't seem to stand people that when faced with good evidence that the pentagon was hit by a plane will still nit pick everything CH has stated so they can still hope for a conspiracy.

YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE IT IS THE REAL THING IN QUESTION HERE.


It's like trying to convince someone that the world is round when all his/her life thought it was flat.

It's not a matter of evidence anymore, its a matter of believing it was a conspiracy for the past 3 years and having that all flipped upside down.

Get a Grip...

There is no Santa Clause....

There is no Easter Bunny....

There was no global hawk involved....

I'm sorry to break the news....


Embracing Ignorance


Later,

Reason

I think that reason has hit on a crucial issue here. People want to believe these conspiracy theories, not because of some overwhelming evidence, not even based on slim put plausible evidence; people want to believe these theories based solely on their world view that the U.S. government/NWO/Republican party/Democratic Party/Fremasonry etc. is evil.

Look at the leading conspiracy theories.

Pentagon missile theory: Requires that of the hundreds and thousands of people in Washington DC that day, none of them would have a video camera with them. Requires that the perpetrators forget about the security camera in the parking lot, Requires that the Eye witnesses be part of the conspiracy, requires that the hundreds of firefighters and other emergency personnel be part of the conspiracy.

Chemtrails: This theory requires thousands of airplanes, hundreds of thousands of pilots, mechanics and other support personnel to mount an operation of the global scale that has been proposed.

The WTC was prewired for explosives: this theory requires that many, many people be involved, from firemen, to building tenants, to the building engineers, management, etc. be involved.

Who are all of these people? Are they all that stupid, evil or clueless?

Isn�t it much more likely that things are just what they seem to be?

One thing about conspiracies and secrets. They suffer from the following inverse square law. �The likelihood of a secret remaining a secret is inversely proportional to the square of the number of people who are in on it.�

Why do some people persist in the believing in some of these theories when all rational examination of the facts proves them wrong?

If a conspiracy theory has been proven to be completely and utterly wrong, and yet they continue to cling to the tattered remnants of that theory like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a piece of wood, what does that say about that person?

Do conspiracies exist? Yes, the probably do, but they are generally much more mundane then generally claimed, and they rarely remain secret for long. Human nature is after all human nature.

Oh no another disinfo agent posting on ATS

The one point you missed is the fact that all of these theories stem from America.Maybe all that junk food is messing with there heads.Maybe just the way there society has evolved.In Britain you rarely see info on ufo`s the biggest one which made the news came from where ,you guessed it an America Air Force Base in Britain
Guess they have a had time believing anything to be true and the X Files programme got a lot to do with it.

Which of the following people is most likely to discover the truth?

a) one who mistrusts the mainstream press, and performs independent research before accepting mainstream (or conspiracy) ideas and theories, or

b) one who trusts the mainstream press, and labels people who mistrust the mainstream press as "conspiracy theorists"

?

HowardRoark.......some quotes you might enjoy.......

From the "Mushroom Cloud Seen After N.Korea Explosion" thread:

Originally posted by RR98
Blew up a mountain for a hydro-electric project? But that would logically and neatly explain everything..........non-nuclear, big crater, no news because there's nothing worth reporting, seismic readouts for an extended period rather than a single catastrophic event...........

UNACCEPTABLE!!! ALL LIES!!! It was a joint "Black Op" by Israel and the US with the help of the Alien Grays to advance the NWO. OBL was, of course, also involved..........

and

Originally posted by RR98
And let's not forget how this also ties in with the JFK assassination!

I agree wholeheartedly with you that people too often forget the "Occam's Razor" principle and make things needlessly convoluted to fit some preconceived notion of conspiracy based on mistrust and paranoia.

Those posts were on page 17. Page 18 contains this item:

Originally posted by NothingMakesSense

Originally posted by SgtNFury
This is amazing. Page 17 of this thread contains the NK explanation of the blast as reported by the BBC, which is entirely consistent with the facts as known. RR98 posts some humorous and mocking comments that are right on target, yet this is still being discussed as a serious conspiracy topic here?

Give me a break!

Get real, get a life, and stop speculating over stupid CRxx that doesn't deserve a second glance and has already been explained in a satifactory manner!

Umm....what do you mean? This has yet to be satisfactorially explained IMO. Without actual photos of the cloud it is amolst impossible to say whether it formed a nuke-like cloud or a MOAB-like cloud. The difference is mostly in the shape of the top. In a nuke, and especially the H-bombs, the top is very, very smooth and even, like a jellyfish. This can be seen in the videos of nuclear tests and the Nagasaki explosion.

Why is this not a serious conspiracy topic?

On a side note, you sound like you are attempting to imitate the Colonel.

I have no idea who the "Colonel" referred to is, but you can see what I mean. BTW, the conversation petered out shortly after..........

[edit on 15/9/2004 by RR98]

[edit on 15/9/2004 by RR98]

Chemtrails. Who would believe in such a silly thing as that?

Thank God there are still a few people here who can think logically

RR98 - those are some great quotes

Here is one of my favs, but don't blame him, he's from China so he might have been brainwashed by the comys

Originally posted by zcheng
SARS was the biological attack of a nation to disrupt Chinese economy and kill as many Chinese as possible, in its preparation of Iraq War. My fellow Chinese will remember those atrocities.

of course this "nation" was the US in his mind

Only the odd few conspiracies are true.

The rest are disinformation distributed through the masses to confuse and deter from the truth. Which in itself is a conspiracy. Lol.

Use my simple way of making your mind up on conspiracies - Consider everything, accept everything is possible, and deny you ever thought so when it turns out the conspiracy was bull#.

Hohoho

what you fail to recognise, in this school of thought, is the subtle manipulation of the onus of responsibility. huh?
basically, people don't care about it if it's not in their contract or job description. if someone dies, but procedure was followed, it's nobody's fault. if an ecosystem is trashed by a corporation, no HUMAN is liable. if someone slips on ice on your property, they can sue you. forget that's it's THEM who can't walk outside in the winter, it's YOUR fault.
so, they turn on the TV and are told what they think. it's so much easier than thinking for yourself. people conditioned in this manner are blind to patterns in their own heads. they don't even realise, or care, what happens outside their box. not unless the TV tells them to be scared, or brave, or to spend, or save do they act. not unless there is a show on chemtrails or imploding towers do they believe such a thing could happen for real. these types(the vast majority) would forget they saw a ghost doing river dance on a UFO, because they already KNOW it's impossible, and therefore the mind rejects things that are not possible.

as far as the pentagon goes, looks like a plane, but it's just pictures from the web. i say it was photoshopped. fake. (i don't believe that, but it's possible. anything is. maybe they planted a few tires and some scrap green primer pieces in the wreckage caused by the earlier cesna crashing into the building)

occam's razor doesn't apply to the complex world of consciously manipulated enviroments. it is not a sociological principal.

Originally posted by heelstone
Chemtrails. Who would believe in such a silly thing as that?

indeed? and where, pray tell, is there any mention of the word "Chemtrails" in this article?

NASA scientists have found that cirrus clouds, formed by contrails from aircraft engine exhaust, are capable of increasing average surface temperatures enough to account for a warming trend in the United States that occurred between 1975 and 1994. According to Patrick Minnis, a senior research scientist at NASA�s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., there has been a one percent per decade increase in cirrus cloud cover over the United States, likely due to air traffic. Cirrus clouds exert a warming influence on the surface by allowing most of the Sun�s rays to pass through but then trapping some of the resulting heat emitted by the surface and lower atmosphere. Using a general circulation model, Minnis estimates that cirrus clouds from contrails increased the temperatures of the lower atmosphere by anywhere from 0.36 to 0.54�F per decade. Minnis�s results show good agreement with weather service data, which reveal that the temperature of the surface and lower atmosphere rose by almost 0.5�F per decade between 1975 and 1994.

This enhanced infrared image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), aboard NASA�s Terra satellite, shows widespread contrails over the southeastern United States during the morning of January 29, 2004. Such satellite data are critical for studying the effects of contrails. The crisscrossing white lines are contrails that form from planes flying in different directions at different altitudes. Each contrail spreads and moves with the wind. Contrails often form over large areas during winter and spring.

I suggest you try to contact Patrick Minnis yourself. He used to frequest the chemtrail message baoards, but he got tired of arguing with the kooks.

No one is suggesting that contrails don't exist, or that they don't have an effect on the climate.

Chemtrails as the result of a deliberate spray program, on the other hand, is just a bunch of hooey.

From the Pentagon 757 thread:*

Originally posted by Damned

Originally posted by SpittinCobra
Maybe if the goverment wasnt so shady in the ways they clean up. We could believe the truths that are presented.

Then we have people that would rather believe what is told to them, and have the case closed. What ever......................

Exactly! You wonder why I think there's a conspiracy? Ask our shady, secretive government. If everything wasn't kept from us, as if there's really some big reason for it, maybe I'd accept what they tell us.

It's truly sad that so many people can't trust the government. They have very good reason not to, though.

[edit on 16-9-2004 by Damned]

So who exactly are you talking about when you refer to �the Government?�

Are you including all of the rescue workers, the contractors, the engineers who inspected, cleaned up and rebuilt the Pentagon?

What about the mid level bureaucrats, there are thousands of them? Are they in on the �conspiracy?��

Let�s say that you start at the top. You have Bush and his cabinet. But you know that those guys aren�t going to go out into the field and get their hands dirty by cleaning up debris. So somewhere you have to have a mid level manager who can get the job done. This person needs to know what the job is. Furthermore, in order to cover your tracks for such a huge and widespread conspiracy, you would need more than one manager, you would need hundreds. Then there are the ones who are actually doing the work. Not only do they have to know what is going on to �do the deed� (whatever it happens to be), but they have to be able to operate around those people who have a legitimate reasons to be there. They have to do it in a way that does not raise suspicions. Where are these people? Are they all totally evil?






*posted over here to avoid TopicShift (TM) on that thread.

People should analyse conspiracies and look if that's work for them that's it. I beleived in a lot of conspiracies recently, I was freakin out...I investigated and now I have a better view of all this.

But you have to consider that we are nothing, we are just slaves working for governments, multinationals and economy. It's normal to wake up and ask yourself some questions.
There SO MANY things we don't know, we try not to be ignorant....Maybe you laugh at me, but maybe it's something to much difficult to understand when u stay in your confy bubble all the time, without questionning yourself on why the world is like this today!

Love ya
Ameliaxxxx

You are absolutely correct.

What's even worse are the ones who deny a certain type of ignorance and repalce it with their own (It really bugs me when the staff does this. They're supposed to be the responsible ones! :lol

I mean, look at heelstone, he uses a link to something about contrails to prove that chemtrails are spraying us with crazy purple mind-control gas. Talk about a leap in association. He believes it because he wants to because for some reason he needs to prove that "They" are after us (and undoubtedly attacks those who disagree as "Wanting to believe the lie').

Or maybe he's just crazy

Originally posted by HowardRoark
So who exactly are you talking about when you refer to �the Government?�

Are you including all of the rescue workers, the contractors, the engineers who inspected, cleaned up and rebuilt the Pentagon?

No, why would they be included? Do you still think Oswald killed JFK? If everything is as simple as you say, why is that still a mystery? Was the entire secret service in on it? No, they were excluded, right? Someone knew (and possibly knows) what really happened that day.

What about the mid level bureaucrats, there are thousands of them? Are they in on the �conspiracy?��

They're all thrown into the confusion, as is everyone else. I won't be so bold as to say any conspiracy goes beyond the top dogs. Deceit is a complex web, isn't it? It requires a plan with many, many backup plans, to cover all the bases. "Let's see...if they say this, then we say that...etc."

Let�s say that you start at the top. You have Bush and his cabinet. But you know that those guys aren�t going to go out into the field and get their hands dirty by cleaning up debris. So somewhere you have to have a mid level manager who can get the job done. This person needs to know what the job is.

Sure, if indeed Bldg 7 was wired, someone had to do it. Is it so tough to believe that the CIA (or maybe an even more secret service...one we may not even be aware of) couldn't place people in the right places at the right time? Under normal circumstances, nobody would even suspect anything. I'll bet you I could plant a bomb in a building today, if I cared to...probably several, even with the "heightened awareness" we supposedly have going on. As far as cleaning up the mess, that's done by people who just take orders and are kept far too busy to think about what they're doing. Besides, someone already told them a plane hit the building. They're not going to question anything during all the confusion.

Furthermore, in order to cover your tracks for such a huge and widespread conspiracy, you would need more than one manager, you would need hundreds.

Obviously, it doesn't take much to get people believing the "official story". Everything after that is labeled "conspiracy theories". The upper execs have the most powerful tool for spreading propaganda...the media. Anyone else is labeled a kook, or something, right? Once the original story comes out, that's what people are going to believe the most. After all, their TV's never lie, right? But, where do the official stories come from? Why, officials, of course!

Then there are the ones who are actually doing the work. Not only do they have to know what is going on to �do the deed� (whatever it happens to be), but they have to be able to operate around those people who have a legitimate reasons to be there. They have to do it in a way that does not raise suspicions. Where are these people? Are they all totally evil?

Money buys alot of things. I guarantee that there are alot of airport security guards that can be bribed quite easily. Others, firemen, police, etc. are never clued in on a major conspiracy. Why would they be? If you remember, there were even a few firemen that claimed to have heard explosions that they thought could've been bombs. There are building demolition experts that swear Bldg 7 was rigged. But, as we all know, the official story is the only one that really matters, since anyone else who has anything to say is obviously a fool, or crazy.


I'm just an inquisitive person. I don't take things at face value, until I decide there's reason to. People are constantly trying to fool you, in case you hadn't noticed. Everything from advertising to politics...everyone is trying to trick you into believing something. Why, you may ask? So they can take advantage of you, of course. Only a real fool believes there are no conspiracies.


BTW, if you'll notice, I never commit to these theories. I only ask questions.

[edit on 16-9-2004 by Damned]

What really, really, really buge me is when someone links to a geocities website with a dancing alien gif, and says "PROOF ALIENS ARE VISITING EARTH", or takes a picture of a barbed wire fence and says "IMAGES OF FREEMASON NWO CONCENTRATION CAMPS!"

The actual research projects here are top-notch, mind you. But the average thread have dismally low standards as to what is 'proof'. And people aroudn here eat it up. I still love ATS, but I don't blindly believe everything that's posted here.

Libertad says:

"Which of the following people is most likely to discover the truth?

a) one who mistrusts the mainstream press, and performs independent research before accepting mainstream (or conspiracy) ideas and theories, or

b) one who trusts the mainstream press, and labels people who mistrust the mainstream press as "conspiracy theorists"

The answer, of course, is (a).

But most conspiracy theorists don't believe in performing independent research -- at least most of the people I've known on the conspiracy forums with which I've been acquainted.

Most of the "chem-trail" believers, for example, quote the same sites over and over again, and use A's quote of B's quoting C who, in turn, quotes A as being evidence of independent verification -- which, of course, it is not.

Also, most of these True Believers ignore any evidence which does not fit their particular weltanschauung and get involved in strange logical constructs, including a demand that their colleagues prove a negative (which, of course, can't be done). Further, they tend to engage in a wide range of logical fallacies in their debates.

Also, when I think of "independent research", I think that it (in addition to looking at all sides of the story), requires the investigator to have at least enough specialized knowledge to understand the significance of that data.

For example, some of the most enthusiastic of the "missile blowing up the Pentagon" people don't even know F=ma.

I can understand that, if people dislike the government and its intrusiveness (and I certainly am one of those people), it is a comforting thing to blame all different kinds of stuff on them.

But when you leave logic and Occam's Razor behind in a mad rush to blame them no-good Gummint Sumb1+chz for everything, you lose all credibility with everyone else.


[edit on 16-9-2004 by Off_The_Street]

A very reasonable point, Off_The_Street
Conspiracy research is not always open-minded.
However..
Mine is :-) and I want genuine research to be respected -
which was the motivation behind my post.

Kind regards
--libertad

Originally posted by Off_The_Street

But when you leave logic and Occam's Razor behind in a mad rush to blame them no good Gummint Sumb1+chz for everything, you lose all credibility with everyone else.

[edit on 16-9-2004 by Off_The_Street]

once again, ...occam's razor does not apply to manipulated events. nobody says leave logic behind. it is logic that causes people to formulate conspiracy theories.
and another thing, it is only a theory as long is there is no evidence. when there is supporting evidence, it becomes a possibility, and should not be ignored with the wave of a tinfoil hat and some meds. maybe YOU, dear reader, are the crazy one. crazy people don't know they're crazy. fish don't know they live in the water. and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Originally posted by billybob

and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything

For example, we can say that people in Star Trek do not use toilets, because we never see them. However, we know ahead of time that all people need to use the toilet, so it is inferred. There is no direct evidence, but that's only because no evidence is really needed.

Now, talking about the Illuminati/Reptilians plot to ressurect Hitler in order to bring about the NWO...has absolutely no precedent, so there is ZERO evidence of it. It's a theory, but not a valid theory, since it's obviously been pulled straight out of someone donkey. If we allowed stuff like that to be accepted, I could easily say that John Kerry is actually a holographic projection by the mass consciousness of the Moon Men. If you disagree, you've obviosuly been brainwashed or wasnt to futiley cling to the lie. After all, absence of evidecne is not evidene of absence. Ignore the little detail that I lack any evidence whatsoever

Originally posted by Esoterica
Ignore the little detail that I lack any evidence whatsoever

excellent. exactly. John Kerry is actually a holographic projection by the mass consciousness of the Moon Men.

i'm thinking more specifically of foreknowledge, insider trading, eyewiteness accounts of bombs going off, the bin laden express, etc. that is evidence. it is the filling in the blanks that causes sheeple and conspiracy buffs to disagree. you say it's all a coincidence. i say there is a blueprint followed by the oligarchs.
p.s. trekkies have transporters implanted in their butts. i thought everyone knew that.

Billybob says:

"once again, ...occam's razor does not apply to manipulated events..."

Billybob, I do not understand your reasoning. Occam's razor says that the simplest explanation is the one to usually go for, because the simplest explanations are usually right.

And it's not that they're right because William of Occam or Howard Roark or Off-the-Street says they are, but because when you get into really complicated explanations, they tend to fall apart under their own weight. This is why the "aether" and the "phlogiston" and the "geocentric" hypotheses failed, because in order to take into account all the demonstrated ways that the universe acted, the theory had to have more and more exceptions and special cases that finally it started contradicting itself.

You can see this in the "geocentric" theory and the huge number of concentric crystal spheres that had to be added to explain things like moons orbiting Jupiter, Mars' apparent retrograde motion, etc.

"...nobody says leave logic behind. it is logic that causes people to formulate conspiracy theories...."

I disagree, If you define "logic" as a coherent and simple set of rules to define thought processes, I'd say that the 'logic' behind things like "planet X" or "chem-trails" or Immanuel Velikovsky's novels are very convoluted. In order to believe any of those assertions, you'd have to take on faith a whole bunch of different things, the failure of any one of which would pretty much wipe out the hypothesis in its entirety.

"...and another thing, it is only a theory as long is there is no evidence. when there is supporting evidence, it becomes a possibility, and should not be ignored ..."

No. That is not true. There is a tremendous difference among assertions, hypotheses, theories, and laws:

When you try to explain the way a particular piece of the universe operates, you may say something like: "Persistent aircraft contrails are there because they're part of a government plot to spray us with Bad Juju and poison us all". That would be a hypothesis.

You could also say "persistent aircraft contrails are there, becaue the ambient temperature is below minus 40 deg and the relative humidity is saturated (100%) for that temperature" That would be another hypothesis

You could atempt to prove the first by getting pictures of people loading Bad Juju into the airplane, or having a video of the pilot squirting Bad Juju, or having a pilot come out and say that he was doing it and then taking the local tv and news reporters to the airplane, etc., etc.

You could attempt to prove the second by showing in the laboratory that ice crystals do not sublime below the envelope, but they do sublime above the envelope -- every single time; and anyone can repeat the experiment. You can attempt to prove the second hypothesis by showing that, given radiosonde records over a 50-year period, the temperature at the same time and altitude of the persistent contrails is below the sublimation limit of ice crystals.

You could also try to prove either one or the other by showing that the competing hypothesis was full of holes.

But sooner or later, you will have a hypothesis that can be used to actually predict future occurrences. For example, a person who believed the second hypothesis could say, "Radiosonde data shows that the atmosphere at 31,000 feet is -43 deg and 100% RH. Any plane flying through that particular piece of air now will leave a persistent contrail." -- and then see how often your prediction comes true.

So that's the difference. A hypothesis is an idea which you try to find evidence and data to back up. If your evidence and data are good enough so that they account for all the variables of an observed phenomenon -- and you can use that hypothesis to predict future happenstance -- then (and only then) is it a theory.

"... absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Correct. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Just because I don't have any evidence that I am really the Long-Lost King of France doesn't mean I'm not, right? And just because there's no evidence that that the mushrooms in my front yard were planted there by The Llittle Fairies of the Moonlight, doesn't mean that they weren't, right?

I mean, hey! They could be!!

Can you prove that they're not ?

Well, Billybob, you can't.

But most people aren't going to believe that I'm the Long Lost King of France or that airplane contrails are really a Huge Secret Plot or that the Tooth Fairy comes and takes away my kid's teeth ...

...because there's no coherent evidence that any of those things are true.