3 ms·

I think there are two ends on a diagram of skepticism and scrutiny. On one end you have individuals who will find nearly any conspiracy viable for whatever rea

by rjf72 8y ago

I think there are two ends on a diagram of skepticism and scrutiny. On one end you have individuals who will find nearly any conspiracy viable for whatever reason. That most conspiracy theories are eventually shown to be false doesn't really seem to bother them. On the other end you have individuals that will never believe anything could possibly be true, so long as a government or corporation has plausible deniability. The lengthy list of conspiracy theories that turned out to be true, or other conspiracies that nobody knew of - only revealed decades after due to declassification, don't really seem to bother them. I suppose we could call both ends naive. Naively trusting to naively untrusting. The 'right' degree of scrutiny is somewhere in the middle. In this case you have the largest ad delivery corporation in the world. They've "accidentally" engaged in behavior such as snooping and logging data from unsecured wifi connections with their street view vehicles, continued to track users' locations on Android devices even when tracking was "disabled", and so on. Google is also one of the companies that known is known to be collaborating with intelligence agencies including, but not limited to, the NSA. Most recently they were one of the first companies fined for refusing to abide the GDPR regulations for a variety of actions including lack of legal basis for the information they were collecting, lack of transparency in what/how it was collected, and enrolling users in tracking without their permission. And while not directly related, I think it speaks to the true character and ethos of the company that one of the words they plan/planned to black-list in their tracking enabled censorship driven search engine in China is literally "human rights." [1] And now they "accidentally" forgot to include on the packaging information that an internet connected device installed centrally within homes also had a recording device. I mean given the context of who you're talking about where do you think the idea that this device, and omission might be less the benign, ranks on the scale of 'naively trusting -> naively untrusting' scale? The connotation of conspiracy theory, as in your usage, is implying it's naively untrusting. I do not think this is a logical conclusion. [1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/google-china-censorship-human-rights/ https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/google-china-censorship-...

coldtea 8y ago
>That most conspiracy theories are eventually shown to be false doesn't really seem to bother them. Which "conspiracy theories" are eventually shown to be false? The ones concerning aliens and lizard overloads or illuminati? Because there are plenty corporate, political, and economic conspiracies going on all the time, including tons of "conspiracy to commit fraud/murder/etc" at smaller and larger scales, as acknowledged by courts of justice every single day.
- rjf72 8y ago
  The big ones are things that are shown to have a timeline. For instance one conspiracy theory is that Operation Jade Helm 15 [1], a military training exercise, was really a precursor to imminent declaration of martial law or some sort of a government takeover of Texas. There were lots of derivatives of this including Obama somehow trying to hold onto the presidency beyond his term limits. Needless to say this did not come to pass. Another one I found amusing was people believing that SpaceX's retropulsive landings, when they were first being successfully executed, were actually just launches played back in reverse. This conspiracy died pretty fast after they did it over and over, to say nothing of people being able to freely go and watch the landings. But it could also be shown to be false beyond any doubt by reversing the landing footage which, suffice to say, looked nothing like a takeoff. There were also more technical ways to debunk these things such as by looking at individual phenomena (birds, etc). It wasn't a good conspiracy theory, but there were plenty of people that believed it for a while. But yeah, I'm not really sure what's up with people who seem to think that conspiracies don't happen and on an extremely regular basis. Even some absolutely awful things. Operation Northwoods [2] was very much a real idea that made it way all the way through the intelligence agencies and joint chiefs of staff. It was literally one signature away from being carried out. If we had a president of lesser moral character, not only would it likely have been carried out but we'd probably be none the wiser today. JFK was a great man. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theori... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

by rjf72 8y ago

coldtea 8y ago

>That most conspiracy theories are eventually shown to be false doesn't really seem to bother them. Which "conspiracy theories" are eventually shown to be false? The ones concerning aliens and lizard overloads or illuminati? Because there are plenty corporate, political, and economic conspiracies going on all the time, including tons of "conspiracy to commit fraud/murder/etc" at smaller and larger scales, as acknowledged by courts of justice every single day.

rjf72 8y ago
The big ones are things that are shown to have a timeline. For instance one conspiracy theory is that Operation Jade Helm 15 [1], a military training exercise, was really a precursor to imminent declaration of martial law or some sort of a government takeover of Texas. There were lots of derivatives of this including Obama somehow trying to hold onto the presidency beyond his term limits. Needless to say this did not come to pass. Another one I found amusing was people believing that SpaceX's retropulsive landings, when they were first being successfully executed, were actually just launches played back in reverse. This conspiracy died pretty fast after they did it over and over, to say nothing of people being able to freely go and watch the landings. But it could also be shown to be false beyond any doubt by reversing the landing footage which, suffice to say, looked nothing like a takeoff. There were also more technical ways to debunk these things such as by looking at individual phenomena (birds, etc). It wasn't a good conspiracy theory, but there were plenty of people that believed it for a while. But yeah, I'm not really sure what's up with people who seem to think that conspiracies don't happen and on an extremely regular basis. Even some absolutely awful things. Operation Northwoods [2] was very much a real idea that made it way all the way through the intelligence agencies and joint chiefs of staff. It was literally one signature away from being carried out. If we had a president of lesser moral character, not only would it likely have been carried out but we'd probably be none the wiser today. JFK was a great man. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theori... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods