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Successful "conspiracy theories" work on unprovable grounds. The obvious ones like faking the moon landing are based on the principle that you can't prove some

Successful "conspiracy theories" work on unprovable grounds. The obvious ones like faking the moon landing are based on the principle that you can't prove some past event wasn't fake, as it is proving a negative and there is no need to shift anything: the possibilities are infinite from the start. Now, not being provable doesn't mean either that it's a just conspiracy theory, as any successful conspiracy will have enough plausible deniability. To me, the whole endeavour of trying to prove or disprove a conspiracy is a fools errand. You either believe it or not, and can have adiscussion about it, but there's no point in bringing in a scientific process for something that is not science at its core.

acdha 4y ago
> To me, the whole endeavour of trying to prove or disprove a conspiracy is a fools errand. You either believe it or not, and can have adiscussion about it, but there's no point in bringing in a scientific process for something that is not science at its core. Yes, my thought is mostly that it's important to explicitly recognize that it's basically the god of the gaps argument because conspiracy theorists like to sound science-y and, especially, to leave as many blanks as possible for the reader to fill in so they have as much wiggle-room as possible for the future.