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Not really. No one needs a label for things that are false. Conspiracy theories are things that could actually be true but are designated as ridiculous by some

Not really. No one needs a label for things that are false. Conspiracy theories are things that could actually be true but are designated as ridiculous by someone who perceives discussion as a threat. But lo and behold, "conspiracy theories" sometimes are true despite our efforts to write them off as quackery. My favorite example is Mark Klein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Klein who was derided and written off as a conspiracy nutjob until his allegations surrounding the diversion of telecommunications traffic ended up being true. We see it and participate in this every day. If you suggest there is life somewhere across the galaxy, they call you an astronomer. If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference?

krapp 8y ago
>If you suggest there is life somewhere across the galaxy, they call you an astronomer. No, that has nothing to do with being an astronomer. >If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference? The "astronomer" claims there is likely life somewhere across the galaxy, but doesn't state with absolute certainty that it exists, where it exists, what it looks like, etc. Whereas "you" claim, explicitly, to have seen it in a photo, and that it is a flying saucer, and that anyone who says otherwise "perceives discussion as a threat." Given the size of the known universe, the laws of physics forbidding, so far as we know, any form of FTL travel, the lack of any widespread corroborating evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life or technology in our solar system, and the tendency of the human brain to see things that aren't there (paredolia, false memories, etc.) the likelihood of what "you" believe to be a flying saucer being a flying saucer which just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be caught on camera is very, very, very low. The fundamental difference between "nutjob" and "not a nutjob" is that the "nutjob" refuses to believe it can't be a flying saucer, regardless of the statistics or evidence to the contrary, whereas "not a nutjob" accepts that it almost certainly isn't. The axiom that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" exists for a reason - not because the people requiring proof can't handle discussion, but because those claims inevitably require revising known science to be true, and "ordinary proof" is never sufficient to prove their case.

krapp 8y ago

>If you suggest there is life somewhere across the galaxy, they call you an astronomer. No, that has nothing to do with being an astronomer. >If you say you say a flying saucer in a photo of our own solar system, you are a nutjob. What is the fundamental difference? The "astronomer" claims there is likely life somewhere across the galaxy, but doesn't state with absolute certainty that it exists, where it exists, what it looks like, etc. Whereas "you" claim, explicitly, to have seen it in a photo, and that it is a flying saucer, and that anyone who says otherwise "perceives discussion as a threat." Given the size of the known universe, the laws of physics forbidding, so far as we know, any form of FTL travel, the lack of any widespread corroborating evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life or technology in our solar system, and the tendency of the human brain to see things that aren't there (paredolia, false memories, etc.) the likelihood of what "you" believe to be a flying saucer being a flying saucer which just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be caught on camera is very, very, very low. The fundamental difference between "nutjob" and "not a nutjob" is that the "nutjob" refuses to believe it can't be a flying saucer, regardless of the statistics or evidence to the contrary, whereas "not a nutjob" accepts that it almost certainly isn't. The axiom that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" exists for a reason - not because the people requiring proof can't handle discussion, but because those claims inevitably require revising known science to be true, and "ordinary proof" is never sufficient to prove their case.