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I've always been amused by the conspiracy that flat earth is a smoke cloud put up to make all conspiracy theories look bad.
by zcid 7y ago
I've always been amused by the conspiracy that flat earth is a smoke cloud put up to make all conspiracy theories look bad.
- defen 7y agoThis isn't really a conspiracy, this is the "cognitive infiltration" technique advocated by Cass Sunstein. Basically, even if the government doesn't like conspiracy theories (especially ones around purported government action/inaction like 9/11 truthers, JFK assassination, etc) they can't ban it or punish people due to the First Amendment. Therefore the best approach for discrediting them is infiltrating the movements and pushing them to even more bizarre extremes, so that "normies" will not become interested in what they're peddling. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
- zcid 7y agoThanks for the link. I hadn't heard of Sunstein before. I hadn't realized this was openly talked about by people in his station.