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Math Says Conspiracies Are Prone To Unravel (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory? Well, I don't — they're usually annoying daydreams from annoying people. Fortunately, an Oxford mathematician seems to feel the same way. Dr. David Grimes just published research in PLOS One establishing a formula for determining the likelihood of a failed conspiracy — in other words, how likely some of its participants are to spill the beans. There are three main factors: number of conspirators, the amount of time passed since it started, and how often we can expect conspiracies to intrinsically fail (a value he derived by studying actual conspiracies that were exposed). From the article: "He then applied his equation to four famous conspiracy theories: The belief that the Moon landing was faked, the belief that climate change is a fraud, the belief that vaccines cause autism, and the belief that pharmaceutical companies have suppressed a cure for cancer. Dr. Grimes's analysis suggests that if these four conspiracies were real, most are very likely to have been revealed as such by now. Specifically, the Moon landing 'hoax' would have been revealed in 3.7 years, the climate change 'fraud' in 3.7 to 26.8 years, the vaccine-autism 'conspiracy' in 3.2 to 34.8 years, and the cancer 'conspiracy' in 3.2 years."
and deny its effects
Its a fake conspiracy theory when my nephew believes it. 100% accuracy within 5 seconds.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Try to tell us something we don't already know. Okay, math?
That's right, a big fat zero. You know who keeps a secret? Of course not, that person has never told you anything.
A conspiracy's success is diminished inversely proportionate to the number of its' participants and the time of execution.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
What about conspiracies with systematic plausible deniability in the acts of consensus? For example, if pharmaceutical companies have suppressed a cure for cancer would that necessitate an explicit admission of the conspiracy even between conspirators? If not, then how exactly would the conspiracy be vulnerable to leakage?
It's not that simple, is it?
When those who would have revealed a conspiracy have "accidents" which result in their death, then the conspiracy can remain questionable for an indefinite period.
Anyone who doubts such "accidents" occur should search on "Karen Silkwood".
Of course, that's what THEY want you to believe!
You guys ain't foolin' anyone, I know the truth!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
a value he derived by studying actual conspiracies that were exposed
How does he know how many conspiracies were never exposed? That number is by definition unknowable, and so his analysis is garbage.
started talking about some of the fraud in the major AGW stories, I think that conspiracy has already unraveled.
The crucial value he is using how often do conspiracies fail, but then uses failed ones to measure the length of time. Isn't that kinda like asking how long until your car explodes, and only looking at cars that explode as your data. On top of that, looks like he is using only a same size of 3 to determine this metric making it even more questionable. While I applaud the effort, this doesn't seem to convincing.
Not that I think any of those conspiracies are real. But I would have thought another critical factor would be the consequences for those involved. i.e. do they have threats to themselves or family hanging over their silence.
Basically you have to assume a number for undetected conspiracy... There is no information on the far end of the bell curve.
How can they extrapolate characteristics of non-discovered conspiracies from discovered conspiracies?
Couldn't there be characteristics of non-discovered ones that are not present in discovered ones, such as Cadillac cover-up teams? The Yugo's and Chevy's get caught.
I suppose they can extract the reveal rate between Yugo's and Chevy's up to the (unseen) Cadillacs, but maybe it's not linear, but would look linear at a small range and/or small sample.
Table-ized A.I.
What about the one where various three letter agencies are snooping on all of your communications. Who would believe that?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Customs like the thin blue line or country club membership committees or lynching hoods do perpetuate for decades.
Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
Clearly he's in on it. He's just telling us what they want us to believe.
Based on the criteria, which can at best be guesses, this pretty much means nothing. And no, I do not believe in them.
it's just unconfirmed.
more of a confederacy of dunces than a conspiracy.
What about them? What is the theory saying about the connection between interview, interviewer, passed failed, and reality of course :D
Conspiracy theories are so simple.... it would be so much easier. I think I could feel more hopeful as a conspiracy theorist. Because then its just a few bad apples. Sure, a few bad apples do spoil the whole bunch..... but you can toss out a whole bunch, you can scrap a whole years apple harvest.... if you just buck up, check those apples, and don't keep the bad ones.
But, I don't see that. Conspiracies are hard. They do tend to unravel. They only work when of very short duration and scope, when the people involved all have aligned interests. Its unstable. I wont say its rare or never works.... but.... its not one of the driving forces in the world. No.
However, what if you don't need conspiracy or even bad apples to get bad results? This is what I see. I don't think it matters who the president is. Any man will just be a man, with only 24 hours in a day, and thousands of interested parties trying to feed him information to influence his decisions.
I honestly believe that if you put the Dalai Lama in the commander in chief seat, you would have drone strikes on weddings within a year. The problem isn't conspiracy, it is fundamental design flaws.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The moon landing and cancer-cure suppression would be actual conspiracies, but climate change and vaccine-caused autism are less thought to be malicious conspiracies and more incorrect group-think*. There is no spilling the beans to be done.
* Yes there are those who claim genuine conspiracies, but by far the vast majority of people who, say, believe climate change is not man-made nor catastrophic think it is incorrect science.
The mathematical likelihood that 3 steel-framed skyscrapers would pulverize themselves to dust at the acceleration of gravity: 0.0000000000000 %
His model is way too weak.
So any single person acting alone, of any stature in society, can bust open a conspiracy and get it on CNN?
The problems with this model are many:
1. It ignores authority and credibility of the leaker
2. It ignores the reach of the leaker
3. It does not define when a conspiracy theory has been proven (e.g. a reasonable definition is whether a specified percentage of the population understand the conspiracy to be true)
For example, to use one of the examples of a true conspiracy the author used, the NSA:
That's just factually wrong. It was substantially exposed on PBS in 2007. Why am I quoting PBS? Because I know it is perceived as an authoritative source. Why do most people not know about this? Because PBS lacks the reach.
Both authoratativeness and reach are required to expose a conspiracy. And once these two elements are added into the model, then one is forced to accept a non-trivial definition of conspiracy-proven-true by setting a threshold of population who believes (and not simply saying one leaker implies the whole world instantaneously and fully believes).
No word on the grassy knoll?
Seems like severe selection bias - not one of the examples has yet to reveal a conspiracy.
How well does the theory predict conspiracies that have already been revealed?
For example, the Manhattan project involved hundreds of people, yet remained secret for years, is that what this theory suggests would have happened?
Space Nutters unravel when confronted with math and reality too...
What about the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the government?
They aren't competent enough to orchestrate something like that. They also weren't competent enough to stop it, despite getting plenty of notice about some of the orchestrators. That doesn't make them any less responsible.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Just as paranoia doesn't mean people aren't out to get you, you can be a conspiracy theorists who hits on an idea that is true. Of course there won't be Nazis and Jewish communists in the cabal. (Disclaimer - some of my favorite communists are Jewish).
One problem with this analysis is that it doesn't take into account *successful* conspiracies.
Suppose there are conspiracies which succeeded completely - in that the public was defrauded, suspected nothing, and life went on as normal.
If we are using past performance to predict future trends, shouldn't those conspiracies be counted? There's no realistic way to account for or even detect them.
Take for example the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon.
During that campaign, [incumbent president] Johnson was negotiating with Vietnam to bring an end to the Vietnam war.
Nixon though that this action would ruin his chances of being elected, so he contacted the Vietnamese government and said that if they obstructed talks, they'd get a better deal when he was elected.
(An example of an American interfering with the political process, prolonging a war for 7 more years, with enforced conscription, and causing the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.)
This action was known to Nixon's campaign manager (Mitchell) and several aides. Johnson knew about it (a tape in the Johnson presidential library has Johnson denouncing Nixon for “treason”)
Neither side wanted to push the issue, so it was dropped.
This was a conspiracy, involved several dozen people (including FBI agents), and was monstrously important at the time. It took 50 years for the documents to be released describing the situation. Johnson's tape was released in 2008, and some other files are still hidden.
I don't have a lot of faith in this paper - it doesn't take into account conspiracies that actually succeed.
Proof of concept for the cure of cancer has been patented more than 30 years ago, in 1983.
While many of the readers here are techies, I am bringing your attention to the Cabilly patents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that are key to some of the existing effective FDA approved cancer medications (with the combo treatment cost of $250K or so). If you do not believe, please spend some time researching or ask your friend patent lawyer of biochemistry scientist to comment on Cabilly patents.
Bottom line is that cure for cancer has been discovered before 1983 (the patent date). This is not the only patent, but one of the key inventions that gave the beginning to the current modern cure cancers. Due to the patent restrictions as well as business competitive restrictions, patent owners were not that willing to license and the license fees were very high. This is one of the patents, and typical cancer drug has hundreds of patents (unlike small molecule medications)
Not only the patents. FDA has requirements, bureaucratic and administrative documentation requirement burden, that can only be met by only the largest pharmaceutical companies.
For all practical purposes, cancer drugs were discovered a long time ago, and real working prototypes are usually available about ten years before FDA approval.
As far as conspiracy.... The wording "suppressed" is kooky , because pharma companies are in business to make money by innovating and helping patients, and, as such, do not suppress money making technologies.
From the common man prospective, however, the conspiracy theory is 100% correct, assuming we do not nitpick wording but look into the essence, namely that the cure was available, but not really available due to the administrative burden. All for the protection of the dying cancer patients. Some very connected patients did get the treatment before everyone else.
Do not blame pharmaceutical companies on this one...
A good conspiracy theory is a belief, not a hypothesis.
See e.g. the "Flat earth" believers ("The earth is flat, you see, but "da gubbamint" hushes it up (with truly amazing efficiency, across several decades)).
And the "rational Pi" crowd ("The number Pi can is a rational number, not an irrational one, but established mathematicians simply refuse to take any proofs to the contrary seriously and conspire against anyone who tries to put such theories forward").
And the "Hollow Earth" crowd ("The earth is hollow and contains some sort of very desirable world inside, you could walk there (entrances coveniently located at the North Pole and the South Pole) if "da gubbamint" didn't suppress this and "disappears" people who catch on or puts them away in lunatic asylums).
And, you'll laugh at this, some crowd who tells (sells at ruinous rates) fairytales about how we're being put upon by invisible aliens that defy any established scientific detection but whom we can only divest ourselves from by purchasing "training" and "tech" from this group at extortionate rates.
Or theories about how "da gubbamint" is "coming to take your guns" in order to effect a UN take-ver of the US (supported of course by copious numbers of black helicopters).
You'll never convince any of the "believers" in any of these little conspiracy theories by pointing out the low likelihood of any such conspiracy surviving longer than a few weeks, but it's a useful way of approaching "live" conspiracy theories for the rest of us.
People and companies and government are very good at secrets. And even when the beans are spilled, you can't tell because of the active disinfo campaigns by government and zombies alike. .. ObamasWeapon.com
Science and truth is denied to the public. No mistake in that
Doctors got cholesterol and heart disease nearly 100% wrong based on junk science. Not a conspiracy, but neither is scientists getting climate change wrong. All it takes is sloppy work and groupthink.
Okay, but suppose there is really good lie-detector tech at Area 51. They scan everybody every six months. If somebody slips, they find out how and where with it, and use the machine to wipe out the trail among the new revealees by adding them on the scan list.
And the climate change claims are perhaps not really a "conspiracy" but more of a mass bias, not unlike what got Germany and W's followers into war. That's (alleged) group-think, and I would NOT classify group-think as a conspiracy any more than an entire population thinking the world is flat a few centuries ago.
Table-ized A.I.
I do not think that any sane person questions landing itself. The world, including arch-competitors Soviets, were monitoring and spying the process. Moreover, the landing vehicle at the first landing location has been photographed. You can't fake the fact of that kind of magnitude.
However there is a reasonable suspicion that the footage of the landing is .... well... a bit of a stretch, and those pesky conspiracy theorists brought dozens of details that did not make sense. Lastly, there is this Stanley Kubrick confession on being the producer of the footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Perhaps the moon landing was real, however the famous video footage was made here at earth.
In nowadays these type sharp-eyed people post their analysis under the "Movie mistakes".
What about MSG? There is a conspiracy of people who think it gives them headaches and shouldn't be used in food, despite all science to the contrary. It's interesting actually. Almost all of the climate changers I know subscribe to the MSG conspiracy. Go figure.
What ticks me off more than crazy theories are instances of skeptics invoking many of the same kinds of errors in judgments into debunking conspiracies as was originally required to invent them in the first place.
All I ask if you feel the need to waste your time debunking a conspiracy theory at least do so with evidence and sound reasoning.
In this case making judgments based on statistical inferences of who would "spill the beans" is pretty lame. First off this kind of analysis does nothing to directly address the underlying assertions made by conspiracy theorist. Who is likely to "talk" is a variable based on conspiracy specific human factors I very much doubt can be captured in a formula. Most importantly believers are not going to be swayed by models from "establishment" mathematicians they neither understand or are likely to be willing to take the time to understand.
If someone makes a non-falsifiable claim going further than demonstrating the claim cannot be falsified is unnecessary and counterproductive. In my view the best way to rescue people from conspiracies is to trick them into discovering for themselves the errors in their positions.
How about UFO's? The CIA spread disinformation about UFO's in the 1950's and 1960's to hide their experimental aircraft program. Another example of a conspiracy that took hold with the general public and survived to this day.
It's not amount of time since the event occurred, or the number of people involved, it's the cover story that makes the conspiracy succeed or fail.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08...
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...
It's the moon landing. An impossible conspiracy because of the number of people involved. The rest though are just exaggerated positions. Climate change is a fraud not because the scientists are conspiring to convince us of something that is not real, but because Jesus would never let that happen so the scientists are just mistaken. See how that works?
A good conspiracy theory, like "911 inside job", can be pulled off with just a few guys. But maybe then it's no longer a conspiracy?
When people believe obvious lies or are content with being ripped off in life. ISIS - Fear mongering, who really believes the US can't get rid of these camal fuckers in a matter of hours? Productivity shooting up while wages staying stagnant - corporate greed, just give me my flat screen tv, almost no time off, work till I'm 70 and die of a heart attack two days after my retirement party while the CEO is laughing all the way to the bank. What a life.
He's totally wrong in assuming you need secrecy to maintain a conspiracy. Everyone knows that global warming is a hoax and that vaccines are harmful. They've both been revealed many times. You can find information about them all over the internet. But everyone keeps believing the conspirators lies anyway. You don't need secrecy, you just need most people to be really gullible and believe whatever they read, instead of questioning it and checking the facts. You know, the way any smart conspiracy theorist would do.
(In case you can't tell, yes I'm being sarcastic here. But I'm also being serious: you can't cite the difficulty of keeping a secret as an argument against a belief that, according to its adherents, isn't secret anymore.)
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Even if a conspiracy theory would get unraveled, it would be completely coincidental since most popular conspiracy theories by their very nature are based on made-up conjecture and outright falsehoods in order to get around the inconvenient data that is known.
Cryptome has an interesting list https://cryptome.org/2013-info...
Note the backgrounds to Daniel Ellsberg, Sibel Edmonds, John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Edward Snowden.
As to the ".. rendering such Byzantine cover-ups far more likely to fail."
What has failed for the CIA?
United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States in the mid 1970's went fine even after the MKUltra news https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Doctors and medics get to stay in their professions
CIA medics monitored brutal interrogation tactics (December 12, 2014)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
The public will even take in a policy of "Hacked federal files couldn't be encrypted because government computers are too old" (2015/06/16)
http://www.latimes.com/nation/...
As far as passible the US seems able to close ranks around its medical, nuclear, chemical, biological contractors and workers but seems to allow issues about signals intelligence, digital files and the policy of torture to exist in the wider press.
Or the results of Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So the US Byzantine cover-ups works. The US press only seems to find a few people every generation on a limited set of topics.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I don't see how this analysis could possibly be conservative as conservative as the author believes. He estimates a lower bound on a failure parameter based on exposed conspiracies, except this can't possibly be convincing if one believes there exist long-term conspiracies that have yet to be revealed. Such nascent conspiracies would totally skew that parameter estimate, and not in the author's favour.
In other words, conspiracy theorists would simply see exposed conspiracies as outliers, and not representative. This still makes conspiracy less plausible due to needing to accept even more, but I don't think that would be a problem for conspiracy theorists.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Conveniently, the algorithm has been tweaked so that none of these predicted time periods are in the past. Now all we have to do is wait 4 years to see if any of the theories are true!
Ask me about repetitive DNA
The public is notoriously bad at math. They can't check Dr. Grimes work. He is in on them (ALL of the conspiracies!)
He is just trying to placate us.
He might as well have said; "There are no conspiracies, because, MATH! Bam!!!"
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Math like this is dumb because it's based on assumptions in human affairs that are non-repeatable. It makes a bunch of other grounded assumptions too.
Mathematics can measure concepts but are not very good a describing them. Oversimplifications are rampant.
Suppose I want to knock your teeth in, how would you make a mathematical formula for that?
Math geeks, go sit in the corner.
That diddles interns and stains dresses. Remember that one?
This is nothing but a rhetoric to support Climate Change because the data won't. Lump in a theory with contradicting data with moon-bat crazy stuff and criticize it by association... the association that they made.
Satellite measurements of average global atmospheric temperatures haven't gone up in decades while measurements of that trace amount of CO2 have. Anecdotal evidence like the rapid increase of Antarctic Ice Mass is also hard to ignore.
Good try.
Gee. Can anyone who actually understands statistics explain the problem with this sampling method?
Even annoying people deserve daydreams!
It took close to 70 years before anyone knew Coventry was allowed to be bombed so the Nazis wouldn't know Enigma had been cracked. This formula is pure garbage.
I didn't need math to tell me that conspiracies are prone to unravel, after all, doesn't the old saying go "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
nobody yet has mentioned the darth jar jar conspiracy. when will this one be revealed to be confirmed? what does the math say on that?
To the extent that i kinda thought this was part of the joke about conspiracy theories.
-_-
How can "the belief that climate change is a fraud" a conspiracy theory when climate change has yet to be proven? Climate change can be proven to be false just by going threw all the research, we already know there are many things that are wrong and edited data to make it look real
I highly doubt this is even close to accurate. It should be tested on actual conspiracies, let's take the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or a myriad of others that have become public knowledge, and compare the paper's estimates to what really transpired. Then you have a gauge as to the accuracy of the author's "formulas".
Who funded this study?
There is still some difference between negligence and offense. (I like the sound of this sentence).
What about the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the government?
They aren't competent enough to orchestrate something like that. They also weren't competent enough to stop it, despite getting plenty of notice about some of the orchestrators. That doesn't make them any less responsible.
It's hard to believe that the same government that built the SR71 blackbird and operated it in secret convincing many "useful idiots" that 'they aren't UFO's' is so incompetent that they couldn't stop a bunch of extremists from flying a plane into the largest buildings of the largest US city. How can any other security theatre be justified as effective in the wake of such a bungle.
Rather than theorize I ask if it is possible that the US military could develop drone aircraft technology in 2001 and deploy it onto a tanker aircraft? Is it possible to order remote crews to participate in an exercise that they will run from the pentagon as the bad guys flying a simulated plane into a building. Is it possible to order a missile crew to launch a missile as part of their exercise, who don't know it is aimed at a drone crew in the pentagon. Is it possible to use a hitman to take out the missile crew so there are no leaks.
OR
Is it possible to convince a few loonies to get on a plane and fly it into buildings so there are no leaks.
Of course not, it's all just speculation. Usually the simplest explanation fits which is really appealing to the dogmatic skeptic masses who want to believe they are just a little too smart to be deceived. No one would ever do such a thing because it would provide the justification is to clamp down on *your* freedoms to protect you from the extremists who hate you having those freedoms. You would somehow have to convince everyone that brainwashing a population is impossible, which of course it is because now we have a simple mathematical model to prove it.
There certainly are plenty of conspiracy theories about other things however I've never seen a forensic investigation of the crime scene that was 9/11 so I doubt that we will ever know for sure on this one.
What I do know is that in the wake of "the conspiracy that wasn't" several laws that clamp down on *your* freedoms to protect you from the extremists who hate you having those freedoms reshape democracy into autocracy. Perhaps the conspiracy was "what if we could steal democracy from the people, how would we do that?".
Freedom, democracy, accountability have been demonstrated as the ultimate weapons against *any* terrorism because you might not have anything to hide, but you sure have got a lot to loose.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I think this paper is a conspiracy to make you think conspiracies don't exist or are prone to unravel.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
> how likely some of its participants are to spill the beans
Likeliness equal zero when the participants are gunned down to keep the secret... That's why the gold-silver-iron triple coffin of Attila the Hun was never found. The cohort sent to bury him under a re-routed river brach were awarded with arrows to the back.
That guy is part of the conspiracy.
It's hard to believe that the same government that built the SR71 blackbird and operated it in secret convincing many "useful idiots" that 'they aren't UFO's' is so incompetent that they couldn't stop a bunch of extremists from flying a plane into the largest buildings of the largest US city. How can any other security theatre be justified as effective in the wake of such a bungle.
The people building the SR71 blackbird aren't the people staring at the civilian radar, nor are they they people listening to air traffic control, nor are they analyzing terrorist tactics and assuming the planes will be flown to Cuba or another country and the passengers held for ransom.
I think it's a big mistake to treat the federal government as a monolithic organization with each part as competent as the other, or even that each part communicates in any way with the others.
Each person knows only what they need to know which is a microcosim of the whole
Here we are at the intersection of statistical mathematics, psychology, anthropology and crass bigotry. A series of arbitrary assumptions has collided at high speed and everything is burning. They are counting the puffs of smoke with precision instruments. This is a real win for everybody.
Mathematicians will debate one another to judge the specific methods used and how they were applied, but none would ever question whether it was ever appropriate to use statistics to come to actionable conclusions on anything considered a 'conspiracy'. It will be yet another (bold, innovative) application where the amount of error in in the calculations is an estimated value. Job security.
Psychologists will hail the new Drake Equation of Conspiracy Longevity because it adds a new chapter to their entry level textbooks. On the graduate level every term in the equation is another chapter. All will attempt to approach the fabled Singularity where methods used to ascribe attributes to groups can be (disingenuously, politically, diagnostically) applied to ascribe symptoms of syndromes to individuals, at which point oblique references like 'Conspiracy Tools' will begin to appear in the DSM.
Anthropologists were attracted to the scene because they hardly ever get called into court to testify about anything, and this incursion might bring some of that terror-stuff into their realm and bridge the history-future gap. Unless you have helped put someone behind bars, you cannot consider yourself a true scientist.
Bigots were the last to arrive because they had spotted in the smoke and flame the distinctive hues of particular topics which excite them. Once again researchers have failed to 'blind' test their topics and has cherry-picked a mix of ludicrous (moon hoax) and merely controversial (climate blah) topics on which to base their laughingly un-blind research. A sedate line of interested persons converged, concerned and alarmed some issues are being labelled for judgement were soon overtaken by speeding bigots whose prime motivation is to dis others, they have triggered a secondary conflagration that sends everyone scattering.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the new look of science. /sarc
Function in disaster, finish in style.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Cars that run on beer
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The people that designed and built the SR-71 weren't even part of the government. Skunk Works did the design and construction of that aircraft.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I realize there's a very big gap in this explanation:
Denial
Until you've been around someone that will continue to lie when the proof is presented, discredit the authenticity of the truth, and is in a position of power (as government actors often are) with people backing them you've never experienced the logic shattering reality that can exist when people operate under obvious falsehoods while the truth is staring them in the face.
Having been around a sociopath for an extended period of time I've learned to spot the traits in action. Some of these conspiracies in the headline mimic those traits. Climate science has been "exposed" as a fraud from the start, but those pushing it are in a position of power and they hire yes-men to produce studies that back their claims.
Rather it's real or not it follows the M.O. of a sociopath.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
2) Tooth Fairy: 6 years - Note this means SOME kids realized you lied to them about the tooth fairy, but still believe in Santa for a year.
3) The Business Plot (attempted coup against the US): 4 months till the newspapers reported the plot.
4) The Tuskegee Syphilis Crime/experiment. It took 40 years to reveal that they had infected black men with Syphilis and intentionally given a placebo instead of penicillin which was known to cure it.
5) Operation Snow White (Scientologists illegally infiltrating, bugging, copying, and destroying evidence against them possessed by the IRS, the DEA, the Coast Guard, NIMH and ) the AMA) Three years from plot initiation till the FBI caught them.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The people building the SR71 blackbird aren't the people staring at the civilian radar, nor are they they people listening to air traffic control
That is not what I am saying. Ask yourself, as a theoretical possibility, would the technical skills exist in the US in 2001 to create such a device in a large aircraft that makes it drone "pilot-able". Are sufficient organizational skills available?
Back then would it be an impossible scenario, organizing for a jet to do something expected because the air traffic controllers are busy, as opposed to being incompetent?
What about an availability of competence that takes advantage of complacency and chaos being as possible as a bunch of brainwashed hokey human rights abusers in kaftans - except more reliable. What's possible or simplest explanation don't matter because it's one thing to detect a lie, but that doesn't mean you know why it exists, only that it's possible.
That's why a formal forensic investigation, no matter how large, was warranted.
I think it's a big mistake to treat the federal government as a monolithic organization with each part as competent as the other, or even that each part communicates in any way with the others.
I wholeheartedly agree. I would suggest that it would be as great a mistake to treat the federal government as equally devoted to truth, justice and freedom or understand their motivations. We've certainly seen our share of criminal actions come from government departments. My experience of most American's I've met is that they are good people, but I would be a fool to think there are some who would not put their interests above everybody else's.
The "Good Soviets" brought the USSR down from within with their corruption and this is the very thing that America's founding fathers warned were flaws in the constitution that would lead to despotism.
IIRC, " A despotic government fit to rule a despotic people " was how Franklin described his fear of the consequences.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
He's the guy I really want to know about.
He developed real technology. How much of it do we know about and/or can replicate?
Was much of his technology hidden away by purchasers with other interests (AC electricity)?
The original definition of "conspiracy" circa 1300s, was simply "acting as one" derived from the Latin root "breath together" or to be "acting in the same spirit" depending on the sense of "sprre" (which was also the origin of "spire" in the sense of a cathedral's architectural "spire").
Therefore the original definition does not denotate conscious intent to act in coordination with others of the same "spirit", as does the modern definition. Somewhere along the line, the connotation of deliberately coordinated action became denotative.
I am going to argue below that this more restrictive denotation of "conspiracy" was a result of a "conspiracy" in the original sense of the word -- a "conspiracy" which did not require any deliberate, consciously intended coordination of action but was, nevertheless, the work of a group (or groups) for whom that restriction of definition was an evolutionary advantage to their selfish genes.
Group selection produces unconscious coordinated action between members of the group -- and humans have been under group selection since our common ancestor to chimpanzees (see E. O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth"). This has the same quality of coordinated action that occurs in the eusocial organisms -- organisms that also engage in group, as opposed to individual, combat aka "war". Indeed, the world's foremost authority on eusocial organisms, E. O. Wilson, argues persuasively that human society -- particularly "civilization" -- is evolving in that direction, which ends in the reification of the group, itself, as meta-organism -- a group of organisms "acting as one" on behalf of selfish genes expressing in the group's behavior patterns.
Now here's the key:
Because of the great diaspora of the human genotype out of Africa into a wide variety of environments, there has arisen biodiversity in the human genome adapting to a wide variety of population densities. In the areas with higher population density, there has been stronger group selection than in areas with lower population density. Over the tens of millenia, and in particular over the last ten millenia with the rise of agriculture, this has led to a substantial increase in the gradient of genetically adapted group cohesion between groups. Because these groups were not mixing, due to limitations in transport and barriers of language, natural adaptation to climate, as well as "xenophobia", this didn't immediately result in the destruction of the more individualistic populations.
However, with the rise of empires and resulting mixing of widely dispersed populations, it became a decisive factor in human evolution.
The original definition of "conspire" allowed more individualistic populations to talk about perceived patterns of behavior that were of vital interest to them, without taking on the burden of proof that there was some sort of conscious, secret Cabal behind the pattern. This burden of proof was advantageous to the unconsciously coordinated group organisms since it was, of course, impossible for the individualistic populations to bear in their attempts to come to grips with what was happening to them.
The most recent and stark example of this is in the mass rapes occurring in Germany where there is a "conspiracy theory" that the refugees acted in a conspiratorial manner to have some of them creating diversions while others engaged in rape of German women. There is no need to posit conscious intent on the part of the "rapefugees" and there is reason to believe they may be from populations more adept at group conflict -- unconscious warfare -- than others.
Seastead this.
No government would be competent enough to pull off a conspiracy of that magnitude (except maybe DPRK), and not many would be that callous as to kill to their own people in cold blood either, nor do that much damage to their own infrastructure. There's no real gain from something like that, even with increased government oversight. Neither Bush nor Cheney were planning on being in power the rest of their lives, unlike, say, Kim Jung Il. (Though shorter/fewer term limits for Congress would help to prevent such a conspiracy too). But the "truthers" will keep going on with their incredibly ignorant "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" strawman.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Open your eyes! Obviously mathematicians are in on it, too...
Occam's razor. This indicates that the most simple answer is usually the correct one, and often those conspiracy theories are the easiest answer.
It's only a conspiracy theory until it becomes a conspiracy fact. This entire study indicates the fallacy of the conspiracy theory because of how the stories are spread from person to person, yet they completely ignore that when talking about their own. For example, global warming has lots of propaganda, and a lot of people will just believe whatever they are told, so the "global warming" theory results in lots of propaganda and lots of people spreading the story around.
On a football team, the entire defensive line are conspiracy theorist; they all think the ball is coming by them but clearly a majority are always wrong.
We know rich and powerful people try to get more rich and powerful. This is called the Pareto Principle. 20% of the carpet gets 80% of the traffic. things that are big get bigger, rich get richer and so on.
To identify a true conspiracy versus a false one, you need only assume it's now in the future, and the conspiracy came true, then work it backwards. Asking each step along the way, "what would they have to do in order to get to this point". Eventually, the theory breaks down, and you know that one is false.
"Aliens are running the world." Okay, so now it's 5 years in the future and it's a complete fact. So what did the Aliens have to do in order to get final control over everything? Threatening people with being wiped out? If they were prepared to do that, then when is the point of trying to run the planet? See, it breaks down.
On the other hand, the theory that Rich and Powerful people have formed an oligarchy that wants to establish a one world government with a one world currency and all under the control of a few; well, that one works even if you go back two hundred years.
What about the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the government?
They aren't competent enough to orchestrate something like that. They also weren't competent enough to stop it, despite getting plenty of notice about some of the orchestrators. That doesn't make them any less responsible.
It's hard to believe that the same government that built the SR71 blackbird and operated it in secret convincing many "useful idiots" that 'they aren't UFO's' is so incompetent that they couldn't stop a bunch of extremists from flying a plane into the largest buildings of the largest US city. How can any other security theatre be justified as effective in the wake of such a bungle.
Come on now.
Number one, the Blackbird was actually quite well known within a few years of it's debut. People didn't know or what it did precisely, but they knew what they looked like, what it was called, and who owned it. Revell even had a model on the market by the late 60s
Number two, since it's operations were classified revealing anything actually interesting about it would have gotten you arrested, and jeopardized a mission you probably supported because you'd worked on it. Instead of getting a pay-day, and attaboys form an adoring public; you get prison time and your friends refuse to talk to you again.
On the other hand, as far as we can tell nobody who actually knows anything about the relevant agencies thinks they created S11. Anybody who came forward with evidence would be lauded as a big damn hero. And thousands would probably have to be in on it one way or the other.
Bill Warrick asavetmd@gmail.com
the '60s assassinations, Iran Contra, 911, Antrax attack 7/7, all succeded and were discovered. All required a relatively low # of people. Many participants in conspiracies have no idea that they are part of a conspiracy.
A failure of government security doesn't mean they should be destroying the freedoms that our democracies are built on so that more security theatre is put in place. Democracy isn't a choice between a police state and a terror state. Security theatre is a parody of freedom.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
On 9/11 dozens of people "spilled the beans" by reporting underground explosions and 5 Israelis were arrested by the police and quietly released later on. Practically all news networks reported underground explosions.
Did it matter?
No. It's still considered a "conspiracy theory". Why should it matter when somebody "spills the beans" if the media and public just ignore it?
I don't disagree with that, but the OP was implying quite strongly that it's ambiguous whether the government actually set up the 9-11 attacks:
"Is it possible to convince a few loonies to get on a plane and fly it into buildings so there are no leaks"
"I've never seen a forensic investigation of the crime scene that was 9/11 so I doubt that we will ever know for sure on this one."
His first couple paragraphs (which I didn't quote for length reasons) are actually a variety of scenarios by which he claims the US government could have taken down the buildings "with no leaks." One of the scenarios involved specifically designing a new class of drone with a huge fuel tank (and nobody would have noticed that they weren't passenger aircraft with hundreds of people aboard), another was that we could have used a missile battery and then killed the entire crew (without anyone noticing a missile crew was dead).
Bad shit happens. Generally the government uses the bad shit to try to justify more powers. That does not mean the government actually directs 100% of the bad shit.
Religion/Sect/Caste has been a conspiracy for past ~2000 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
I don't disagree with that, but the OP was implying quite strongly that it's ambiguous whether the government actually set up the 9-11 attacks: "Is it possible to convince a few loonies to get on a plane and fly it into buildings so there are no leaks" "I've never seen a forensic investigation of the crime scene that was 9/11 so I doubt that we will ever know for sure on this one."
The OP was saying that the US Government is competent enough to set up such a scenario. Since there has been no forensic investigation everyone is welcome to make up their own theory about what happened and it is no less valid than anyone else's.
His first couple paragraphs (which I didn't quote for length reasons) are actually a variety of scenarios by which he claims the US government could have taken down the buildings "with no leaks."
The US Government could do what it wanted. Insert scenario here. It's irrelevant how it happened, that doesn't even matter. You only need one piece of evidence for a conspiracy: NO FORENSIC INVESTIGATION
One of the scenarios involved specifically designing a new class of drone with a huge fuel tank (and nobody would have noticed that they weren't passenger aircraft with hundreds of people aboard), another was that we could have used a missile battery and then killed the entire crew (without anyone noticing a missile crew was dead).
No one said anything about designing a tanker drone, just deploying the control systems to an existing tanker aircraft. Such a situation is plausible if you think those capabilities existed in 2001.
Bad shit happens. Generally the government uses the bad shit to try to justify more powers. That does not mean the government actually directs 100% of the bad shit.
So how much% do you think they control? Geeks with knowledge of how telephony systems and computers worked told us back in the 90's how modern surveillance had evolved from Stalin's era. They were told they were being paranoid and wore tin foil hats by people who didn't even know what Echelon, SIGINT or five eyes was even called. Turns out it worked how they said it did, but was a lot larger than anyone thought.
Thinking the US Government is incompetent, is incompetent because it generalises something that has many highly competent and motivated entities. Ask yourself if the US population is controlling it, answer, no one gives a shit.
After NO FORENSIC INVESTIGATION, due process was removed with the stroke of a pen and nobody even batted an eyelid turning the US constitution into a parody of all democracies everywhere so yeah, we can agree, bad shit happens. It's happening, remain glued to the TV for further updates about a sale at Macy's.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Each person views and understands the world based on their own beliefs (personal truths). In my case for example, while I understand that there's lots of evidence suggesting it, I don't believe there was a big bang. I also believe the CDC covered up research findings about vaccines (but I don't know the details). I also believe the wealthiest people in the world aren't on the Forbes list. Is the moon landing fake? Probably not, but the video sure seems to be. But it would be arrogant of me to tell you that I'm absolutely right and you're not. It would also be foolish, because you view the world through the prism of your beliefs, too.
It's open-minded to understand that language is imperfect, and perspective is always biased, too. Know-it-all-ness is a very adolescent trait. (Yes, that is a demeaning remark. Don't take it personally.) Be kind, and more importantly, be humble, because whether you're right or wrong, life is a gift meant to be enjoyed.
I'll end the newage hippie woowoo here. Peace