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How is this not an appeal to authority hidden behind a strawman? Of course many people have wild beliefs about people wanting to harm them; many times they are

How is this not an appeal to authority hidden behind a strawman? Of course many people have wild beliefs about people wanting to harm them; many times they are wrong, sometimes they are right. It is the nature of fear to overcompensate. Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no accountability exists?

krapp 9y ago
>Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no accountability exists? No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting it. You're the one building the strawman.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  Does the author discern anywhere in the article on plausible theories/historical examples vs. the outlandish theories? If so I must have skimmed over it. If not, then how is it not implied?
  - Jtsummers 9y ago
    Conspiracy theories and conspiracies are separate things when people are discussing them like this. Someone claiming the moon landing is a hoax, conspiracy theory. Someone saying that Jack, Jim, and Bob conspired to rob a bank (perhaps without real evidence), is also technically a conspiracy theory, but it's more easily verified or dismissed. And depending on the people, may or may not be as outlandish as claiming that Kubrick filmed the Lunar Landing on a sound stage.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Do they need to? Why assume that, unless the author explicitly mentions the existence of plausible theories and add a caveat that not all conspiracy theories are absurd, they must be arguing for the condemnation of anyone who believes in a conspiracy? Why not discern the authors' intent from their actual words? Actual, verifiable conspiracies do exist, meanwhile everything the article claims about the nature of conspiracy theory is also true.
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      Yes, we should be specific in our definitions, otherwise the default would be the dictionary definition, which would have included the previously "absurd" theory (before Snowden) that the US government is performing dragnet surveillance on it's own citizens.
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  > No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting it. Yes, the article certainly does suggest that we need to "change [the] minds" of anyone who "believes" in conspiracy theories. (And if I'm not outright denying the possibility of a conspiracy the author considers me a "believer".) It's right there in the title and in the story of the moon landing. If you read the article, the author links to a study that allegedly proves that people who are open to conspiracy theories aren't being analytical enough and apparently that's somehow a problem for everybody and it needs to be stopped. It's as if the author thinks that they are able to accurately analyze every situation even though they weren't there (on the moon, etc) and that they have accounted for every possibility. He assumes that he has all the information. Clearly this is not the case. People who deal in hard sciences often behave like this. Perhaps the author should try analyzing their own propensity to be incorrect despite applying every analytical power that they possess because if one thing is certainly true, it's that humans generally have no idea how wrong they are - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA
Bartweiss 9y ago
At some point "conspiracy theory" just ends up meaning "wild claim, and also you turned out to be wrong". If I said that: - The US Navy tested bioweapons on San Francisco without notice, causing hospitalizations - The US Army sprayed a cadmium compound on the city of Winnipeg, Canada without notice - The CIA attempted to develop a mind control formula, which they preferentially tested on gay men and racial minorities - The US government built a secret bunker hidden in a mountain, designed for the US Congress to hide out there while broadcasting to the nation as though nothing was wrong - The CIA recruited mafia support in an attempt to assassinate a foreign leader Well... all of that might sound a little kooky. If you said any of those things at the times they happened, you would almost certainly have been dismissed as an insane conspiracy theorist. And yet everything on that list is a matter of public record, openly acknowledged by the US government - after the fact. So... when I hear someone say "the CIA used the mafia to kill Kennedy!", I can't judge them as a fool. I can disbelieve them, I can say they have no decent evidence, but given that "the CIA uses the mafia for an assassination attempt" is a matter of public record, do I really get to say it fails the laugh test? There are theories far more absurd than that - lizard people or hollow Earth theories, for instance. But when things like Project Echelon were called conspiracies theories well after hard evidence for them emerged, I start to wonder if the reason we can't change people's minds is that too many people cried wolf for too long. (My examples,respectively: Operation Sea-Spray, Chemical Corps project, Projects Mkultra/Bluebird, Project Greek Island, CIA Family Jewels.)

krapp 9y ago

>Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no accountability exists? No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting it. You're the one building the strawman.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
Does the author discern anywhere in the article on plausible theories/historical examples vs. the outlandish theories? If so I must have skimmed over it. If not, then how is it not implied?
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  Conspiracy theories and conspiracies are separate things when people are discussing them like this. Someone claiming the moon landing is a hoax, conspiracy theory. Someone saying that Jack, Jim, and Bob conspired to rob a bank (perhaps without real evidence), is also technically a conspiracy theory, but it's more easily verified or dismissed. And depending on the people, may or may not be as outlandish as claiming that Kubrick filmed the Lunar Landing on a sound stage.
- krapp 9y ago
  Do they need to? Why assume that, unless the author explicitly mentions the existence of plausible theories and add a caveat that not all conspiracy theories are absurd, they must be arguing for the condemnation of anyone who believes in a conspiracy? Why not discern the authors' intent from their actual words? Actual, verifiable conspiracies do exist, meanwhile everything the article claims about the nature of conspiracy theory is also true.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    Yes, we should be specific in our definitions, otherwise the default would be the dictionary definition, which would have included the previously "absurd" theory (before Snowden) that the US government is performing dragnet surveillance on it's own citizens.
hungerstrike 9y ago
> No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting it. Yes, the article certainly does suggest that we need to "change [the] minds" of anyone who "believes" in conspiracy theories. (And if I'm not outright denying the possibility of a conspiracy the author considers me a "believer".) It's right there in the title and in the story of the moon landing. If you read the article, the author links to a study that allegedly proves that people who are open to conspiracy theories aren't being analytical enough and apparently that's somehow a problem for everybody and it needs to be stopped. It's as if the author thinks that they are able to accurately analyze every situation even though they weren't there (on the moon, etc) and that they have accounted for every possibility. He assumes that he has all the information. Clearly this is not the case. People who deal in hard sciences often behave like this. Perhaps the author should try analyzing their own propensity to be incorrect despite applying every analytical power that they possess because if one thing is certainly true, it's that humans generally have no idea how wrong they are - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA

Bartweiss 9y ago

At some point "conspiracy theory" just ends up meaning "wild claim, and also you turned out to be wrong". If I said that: - The US Navy tested bioweapons on San Francisco without notice, causing hospitalizations - The US Army sprayed a cadmium compound on the city of Winnipeg, Canada without notice - The CIA attempted to develop a mind control formula, which they preferentially tested on gay men and racial minorities - The US government built a secret bunker hidden in a mountain, designed for the US Congress to hide out there while broadcasting to the nation as though nothing was wrong - The CIA recruited mafia support in an attempt to assassinate a foreign leader Well... all of that might sound a little kooky. If you said any of those things at the times they happened, you would almost certainly have been dismissed as an insane conspiracy theorist. And yet everything on that list is a matter of public record, openly acknowledged by the US government - after the fact. So... when I hear someone say "the CIA used the mafia to kill Kennedy!", I can't judge them as a fool. I can disbelieve them, I can say they have no decent evidence, but given that "the CIA uses the mafia for an assassination attempt" is a matter of public record, do I really get to say it fails the laugh test? There are theories far more absurd than that - lizard people or hollow Earth theories, for instance. But when things like Project Echelon were called conspiracies theories well after hard evidence for them emerged, I start to wonder if the reason we can't change people's minds is that too many people cried wolf for too long. (My examples,respectively: Operation Sea-Spray, Chemical Corps project, Projects Mkultra/Bluebird, Project Greek Island, CIA Family Jewels.)