posted on Nov, 7 2009 @ 10:03 PM
I'd hold off on the self-congratulations for now. ATS people have no greater claim to the truth than anyone else. At best, we consider non-standard
sources of information, entertain ideas that the vast majority of people never even hear about, or reject out of hand. However, most of these ideas
are crap.
Before you flame me, understand that I'm not saying they're *all* crap. If I thought that, I wouldn't even bother coming here. But since we're
open to possibilities, we encounter far more than our share of nonsense, wishful thinking, fraud, trolling, self-deception, disinformation, and so
on.
The reason I know that most of this stuff is crap is because if some is true, the rest can't be. Take 9/11. If the official explanation is true,
the others aren't. If the no-plane version is true, then the rest aren't. And so on. Most of the 9/11 theories are wrong; but which, if any, is
right? I don't know.
The same reasoning applies to all our theories. If one's true, that means all the rest about that topic aren't true. Since we've got dozens of
theories for just about everything, most of them are wrong.
Sounds hopeless, but I don't think it is. No, we can't reliably tell what's true and what's not. We're constantly finding out that one of our
pet theories or facts has been thoroughly and conclusively debunked. Hell, I once thought Bushman (famous Chicago gorilla) played baseball. We all
have our bitter disappointments.
The one advantage we do have is that we *question* things. We don't just swallow the standard explanation. We ask questions, we listen to the
oddballs and so-called "lunatic fringe", hear the ideas of those dismissed by most people. Many of those we listen to are, indeed, crackpots or con
artists or hoaxers. Often we'll be misled. But at least we're thinking and questioning.