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> I always find it interesting how when these things get revealed, nobody seems to update their priors on "conspiracy theories" going forward. The problem with

> I always find it interesting how when these things get revealed, nobody seems to update their priors on "conspiracy theories" going forward. The problem with this blend of specious reasoning is that to start off these conspiracy theories do not have any prior whatsoever. These conspiracy loons build their system of belief at best around flimsy conjectures, and reinforce their baseless beliefs on any noise that they manage to overfit around those. A broken clock being right twice a day does not vindicate conspiracies around broken clocks.

Y_Y 4y ago
I always knew there was something going on with broken clocks that we weren't supposed to find out about.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  It certainly feels like the 90th of September sometimes
MrPatan 4y ago
How many of these would you need to update in the direction of "maybe some of them do know some of what they're talking about"? Edit: Read the question again, and try to answer it. Let me rephrase the question: How many times do you need to find out that something the media told you was "misinformation" or "a conspiracy theory" was actually true, to start questioning them a biiiit more?
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Sorry you’re interpreting the release of these documents as evidence that the conspiracists were right? If the conspiracy was correct, these would never be made public, not “they would be made public in a pretty reasonable span of time for our abysmally slow justice system,” which appears to be what’s happening. People filed a legal request to keep them private, that request has been overruled. What’s the conspiracy?
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > What’s the conspiracy? Don't underestimate the ability of these conspiracy loons to fabricate more and more stories. I expect them to react to tasting a big nothing sandwich with more conspiracy theories on how shady imaginary organizations edited out all the smoking guns.
  - snapcaster 4y ago
    The conspiracy i'm referring to was the whole overall scheme, not specifically this this article
    - threatofrain 4y ago
      I think the public at large believes Epstein met with powerful people and trafficked with human sex slaves. The conspiracy narrative is about how Epstein died and whether there’s a powerful guilty people can basically control the justice system.
      - snapcaster 4y ago
        Right, _now_ they believe that. This is my whole point! Previously if you said that a powerful man who became a finance billionaire with nobody in industry knowing him had a secret island where he hosted presidents, royalty, billionaires, intellectuals and they did drugs and raped kids those same people would have dismissed it as "conspiracy theory"
        anonymouse008 4y ago
        There's a new possibility that many of these 'crazy' conspiracies are intentional misdirections. Elon is king of this, as learned through his press releases with Tesla. One could almost back-test many of the crazy, stupid ideas, like the pizza parlor and now this most recent Balagencia deal, as all misdirections for what actually takes place.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        I think what you’re describing is people being skeptical of claims without evidence and then being convinced of those claims by evidence. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Edit: Just to be crystal clear given that surely there was some evidence of his misdeeds prior to the recent blow up (e.g. his Florida arrest and subsequent soft handling by Acosta etc.), what you're seeing is a rough correlation between the % of people who believe a claim and the volume/credibility of the evidence in support of that claim. So yeah, when there was little evidence few people believed it. Now that there's a lot, everyone takes it as fact. The only thing shocking here is how utterly reasonable it is.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > How many of these would you need to update in the direction of "maybe some of them do know some of what they're talking about"? None of them knows anything at all about anything whatsoever. You're talking about morons who abuse conjectures to build up their personal fictional stories with the goal of fooling themselves into believing they are special and smarter than everyone around them. Listening to conspiracy nuts regarding their pet conspiracies makes as much sense as taking investment advice from lottery winners: even if they are right once in their life,their whole rationalization is deeply wrong and has no bearing in reality.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  It's less about the raw quantity and more about the proportion. I can guess the outcome of the S&P 500 perfectly, if you don't count the wrong predictions. All I have to do is predict both directions, and say "see, told you it'd go up/down today".
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Like the "Epstein didn't kill himself" meme/conspiracy theory?
imchillyb 4y ago
Operation Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods Recent enough for you? I’ll update with more federal government conspiracies when I’m not in mobile. Anyone that denies conspiracies exist knows no history…
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  No one denies conspiracies exist. As you note, plenty of conspiracies have demonstrably existed. "Conspiracies exist, therefore my pet conspiracy theory should be treated seriously by default" is the fallacy.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > "Conspiracies exist, therefore my pet conspiracy theory should be treated seriously by default" is the fallacy. I think it is worth mentioning that this fallacy manifests in at least two forms: 1. When a conspiracy theorist actually says it (I have never encountered it despite spending substantial amount of time in various conspiracy theory forums). As a general rule, when a non-conspiracy theorist is describing things that happen in the conspiracy world (where they do not go), it is safe to assume that they have lost control of their imagination, and this is usually extremely obvious from their description. See: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology... 2. When someone other than a conspiracy theorists imagines that a conspiracy theorist (typically also imagined, but not always) has said it or believes it (neither of which is required to true for it to be perceived as true). I don't see anything upthread that "the fallacy" could be referring to in this instance. It is perhaps also worth noting that "should be treated seriously by default" isn't actually all that bizarre (depending on the conspiracy theory, of course) - take something seriously is very different from believe to be necessarily true, though at the perceptual level things that are different can appear to be identical, and vice versa.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  > Kennedy rejected the Northwoods proposal. > Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Sooooo ... your smoking gun is that someone at some point had a plan to do something that conspiracy theorists say happens all the time, and their plan was rejected and they were fired for suggesting it?
snapcaster 4y ago
This is a good point and I don't disagree. What i'm referring to though is how this incident, snowden leaks, NSA metadata spying, MKultra, etc. etc. all are described as "nutjob" theories until they're proven. Then we just say "oh yeah everyone knew that" and go back to saying anything that doesn't sound mainstream reasonable is crazy
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  >snowden leaks, NSA metadata spying, MKultra all are described as "nutjob" theories Is this true, in any real numbers?
  - caskethopper 4y ago
    I can definitely say in the early days of Echelon development (mid to late 1990's) any attempt to raise awareness would be dismissed. Some of that is surely due to people not understanding the technology at the time.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Apart from anything else, it seems like the popular theories about politicians running paedophile rings came after the mainstream media revelations about very well connected socialite Jeffrey Epstein, not before. Posting a wild theory about al Qaeda and three letter agencies and US 'neoconservative' foreign policy on September 10th 2001 is at least interesting, if not exactly hard evidence you know anything. Posting one on September 12th 2001 isn't an indication of you having been aware of anything more than the news cycle.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      > Apart from anything else, it seems like the popular theories about politicians running paedophile rings came after the mainstream media revelations about very well connected socialite Jeffrey Epstein, not before. They're hardly new. The QAnon/Pizzagate "adrenochrome" conspiracy theory is just the old Jewish blood libel with a slightly scifi modernization and a touch of the 80s Satanic panic.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
One problem here is that a lot of people don't look at the source of the supposed conspiracy theory. They think "it's a conspiracy theory, it must be like all the rest." There are several so-called conspiracy theorists who are fairly accurate about predicting the shady behavior of the US government. There are a lot more conspiracy theorists who yell about flat earth and chemtrails. As with anything else, it's a good idea to check your sources and see where the theory comes from.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > There are several so-called conspiracy theorists who are fairly accurate about predicting the shady behavior of the US government. Can you name a few so I can see what they have predicted?
  - ecommerceguy 4y ago
    Here's one: certain googlers working with politicized us gov bureaucrats to reduce exposure and remove search results from google for the 2016 presidential campaign. This was and still is meme'd quite often. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Google-Leaks/Zach-Vorhies/9781510767362 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Google-Leaks/Zach-Vor...
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nwatersz 4y ago
The prior is not about an individual theory, but that, e.g., 5% of theories turn out to be correct. Yet people will still believe that 0% of theories are correct. This is precisely the problem of labeling all theories the powerful don't like "conspiracy theories". I'm pretty certain that a substantial percentage of the most ridiculous conspiracies are posted online by paid shills to discredit all theories, so any dissenter can be labeled a "loon". There are many reasonable people who believe the moon landing and reject the theory that "the world is run by satanists" but have many legitimate questions about the Epstein story. For example, the theory that Epstein videotaped his "friends" for future blackmail is not in any way "loony". So the label "conspiracy theory" is entirely useless, we can only talk about individual cases.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > I'm pretty certain that a substantial percentage of the most ridiculous conspiracies are posted online by paid shills to discredit all theories, so any dissenter can be labeled a "loon". So the “elite class” conspire together to craft fake conspiracies and flood the population with it so that they can label people who discover the real conspiracies as crazy?
  - ltopq 4y ago
    You are bringing up the “elite class”. It could be foreign governments to create dissent. It could be Democrats to discredit a Republican forum or vice versa.
    - happytoexplain 4y ago
      This is perfectly plausible. It's also intractable, and doesn't imply that we should believe more things, any more or less than it implies that we should disbelieve more things. No matter how much misdirection and falsehood is put out by whatever organized or unorganized bodies, we still only have what we see and hear and read and experience. It's just one more of a million obvious reasons we already have to be skeptical - skeptical of what we're told by authorities, but also skeptical of what we're told by any given person with any motivation to convince you of something: financial, political, or even just emotional, and that includes conspiracy theorists. But there's a balance - if you're too skeptical, then nothing has any meaning. You might as well not believe any information you receive, in which case you might as well become a hermit who lives off the land (which is fine, but not a realistic expectation for the whole world). Or, in the case of many conspiracy theorists, arbitrarily choose something to believe (arbitrary because their sources are not any more reliable than other sources), which really isn't any better. So, we want to avoid falling off any given edge (becoming a hermit or a person with no opinions on anything, becoming a truly nutty conspiracy theorist, or becoming a mindless loyalist to some social/political group). A key tool for avoiding this is understanding a few things: 1. There is a bigger space than you think between having no opinion and having a full-blown conviction. I can believe or disbelieve something without making it into part of my identity or taking any kind of serious concrete action based on it or trying to convince everybody to go in the same direction as me. 2. It follows from #1 that it is OK to be wrong. 3. It follows from #1 that it is good to change opinions based on new information - it is not hypocritical.

Y_Y 4y ago

I always knew there was something going on with broken clocks that we weren't supposed to find out about.

raverbashing 4y ago
It certainly feels like the 90th of September sometimes

MrPatan 4y ago

How many of these would you need to update in the direction of "maybe some of them do know some of what they're talking about"? Edit: Read the question again, and try to answer it. Let me rephrase the question: How many times do you need to find out that something the media told you was "misinformation" or "a conspiracy theory" was actually true, to start questioning them a biiiit more?

ethanbond 4y ago
Sorry you’re interpreting the release of these documents as evidence that the conspiracists were right? If the conspiracy was correct, these would never be made public, not “they would be made public in a pretty reasonable span of time for our abysmally slow justice system,” which appears to be what’s happening. People filed a legal request to keep them private, that request has been overruled. What’s the conspiracy?
- simplotek 4y ago
  > What’s the conspiracy? Don't underestimate the ability of these conspiracy loons to fabricate more and more stories. I expect them to react to tasting a big nothing sandwich with more conspiracy theories on how shady imaginary organizations edited out all the smoking guns.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  The conspiracy i'm referring to was the whole overall scheme, not specifically this this article
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    I think the public at large believes Epstein met with powerful people and trafficked with human sex slaves. The conspiracy narrative is about how Epstein died and whether there’s a powerful guilty people can basically control the justice system.
    - snapcaster 4y ago
      Right, _now_ they believe that. This is my whole point! Previously if you said that a powerful man who became a finance billionaire with nobody in industry knowing him had a secret island where he hosted presidents, royalty, billionaires, intellectuals and they did drugs and raped kids those same people would have dismissed it as "conspiracy theory"
      - anonymouse008 4y ago
        There's a new possibility that many of these 'crazy' conspiracies are intentional misdirections. Elon is king of this, as learned through his press releases with Tesla. One could almost back-test many of the crazy, stupid ideas, like the pizza parlor and now this most recent Balagencia deal, as all misdirections for what actually takes place.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        I think what you’re describing is people being skeptical of claims without evidence and then being convinced of those claims by evidence. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Edit: Just to be crystal clear given that surely there was some evidence of his misdeeds prior to the recent blow up (e.g. his Florida arrest and subsequent soft handling by Acosta etc.), what you're seeing is a rough correlation between the % of people who believe a claim and the volume/credibility of the evidence in support of that claim. So yeah, when there was little evidence few people believed it. Now that there's a lot, everyone takes it as fact. The only thing shocking here is how utterly reasonable it is.
simplotek 4y ago
> How many of these would you need to update in the direction of "maybe some of them do know some of what they're talking about"? None of them knows anything at all about anything whatsoever. You're talking about morons who abuse conjectures to build up their personal fictional stories with the goal of fooling themselves into believing they are special and smarter than everyone around them. Listening to conspiracy nuts regarding their pet conspiracies makes as much sense as taking investment advice from lottery winners: even if they are right once in their life,their whole rationalization is deeply wrong and has no bearing in reality.
ceejayoz 4y ago
It's less about the raw quantity and more about the proportion. I can guess the outcome of the S&P 500 perfectly, if you don't count the wrong predictions. All I have to do is predict both directions, and say "see, told you it'd go up/down today".

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Like the "Epstein didn't kill himself" meme/conspiracy theory?

imchillyb 4y ago

Operation Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods Recent enough for you? I’ll update with more federal government conspiracies when I’m not in mobile. Anyone that denies conspiracies exist knows no history…

ceejayoz 4y ago
No one denies conspiracies exist. As you note, plenty of conspiracies have demonstrably existed. "Conspiracies exist, therefore my pet conspiracy theory should be treated seriously by default" is the fallacy.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > "Conspiracies exist, therefore my pet conspiracy theory should be treated seriously by default" is the fallacy. I think it is worth mentioning that this fallacy manifests in at least two forms: 1. When a conspiracy theorist actually says it (I have never encountered it despite spending substantial amount of time in various conspiracy theory forums). As a general rule, when a non-conspiracy theorist is describing things that happen in the conspiracy world (where they do not go), it is safe to assume that they have lost control of their imagination, and this is usually extremely obvious from their description. See: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology... 2. When someone other than a conspiracy theorists imagines that a conspiracy theorist (typically also imagined, but not always) has said it or believes it (neither of which is required to true for it to be perceived as true). I don't see anything upthread that "the fallacy" could be referring to in this instance. It is perhaps also worth noting that "should be treated seriously by default" isn't actually all that bizarre (depending on the conspiracy theory, of course) - take something seriously is very different from believe to be necessarily true, though at the perceptual level things that are different can appear to be identical, and vice versa.
saalweachter 4y ago
> Kennedy rejected the Northwoods proposal. > Following presentation of the Northwoods plan, Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Sooooo ... your smoking gun is that someone at some point had a plan to do something that conspiracy theorists say happens all the time, and their plan was rejected and they were fired for suggesting it?

snapcaster 4y ago

This is a good point and I don't disagree. What i'm referring to though is how this incident, snowden leaks, NSA metadata spying, MKultra, etc. etc. all are described as "nutjob" theories until they're proven. Then we just say "oh yeah everyone knew that" and go back to saying anything that doesn't sound mainstream reasonable is crazy

happytoexplain 4y ago
>snowden leaks, NSA metadata spying, MKultra all are described as "nutjob" theories Is this true, in any real numbers?
- caskethopper 4y ago
  I can definitely say in the early days of Echelon development (mid to late 1990's) any attempt to raise awareness would be dismissed. Some of that is surely due to people not understanding the technology at the time.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Apart from anything else, it seems like the popular theories about politicians running paedophile rings came after the mainstream media revelations about very well connected socialite Jeffrey Epstein, not before. Posting a wild theory about al Qaeda and three letter agencies and US 'neoconservative' foreign policy on September 10th 2001 is at least interesting, if not exactly hard evidence you know anything. Posting one on September 12th 2001 isn't an indication of you having been aware of anything more than the news cycle.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Apart from anything else, it seems like the popular theories about politicians running paedophile rings came after the mainstream media revelations about very well connected socialite Jeffrey Epstein, not before. They're hardly new. The QAnon/Pizzagate "adrenochrome" conspiracy theory is just the old Jewish blood libel with a slightly scifi modernization and a touch of the 80s Satanic panic.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

One problem here is that a lot of people don't look at the source of the supposed conspiracy theory. They think "it's a conspiracy theory, it must be like all the rest." There are several so-called conspiracy theorists who are fairly accurate about predicting the shady behavior of the US government. There are a lot more conspiracy theorists who yell about flat earth and chemtrails. As with anything else, it's a good idea to check your sources and see where the theory comes from.

andsoitis 4y ago
> There are several so-called conspiracy theorists who are fairly accurate about predicting the shady behavior of the US government. Can you name a few so I can see what they have predicted?
- ecommerceguy 4y ago
  Here's one: certain googlers working with politicized us gov bureaucrats to reduce exposure and remove search results from google for the 2016 presidential campaign. This was and still is meme'd quite often. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Google-Leaks/Zach-Vorhies/9781510767362 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Google-Leaks/Zach-Vor...

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nwatersz 4y ago

The prior is not about an individual theory, but that, e.g., 5% of theories turn out to be correct. Yet people will still believe that 0% of theories are correct. This is precisely the problem of labeling all theories the powerful don't like "conspiracy theories". I'm pretty certain that a substantial percentage of the most ridiculous conspiracies are posted online by paid shills to discredit all theories, so any dissenter can be labeled a "loon". There are many reasonable people who believe the moon landing and reject the theory that "the world is run by satanists" but have many legitimate questions about the Epstein story. For example, the theory that Epstein videotaped his "friends" for future blackmail is not in any way "loony". So the label "conspiracy theory" is entirely useless, we can only talk about individual cases.

andsoitis 4y ago
> I'm pretty certain that a substantial percentage of the most ridiculous conspiracies are posted online by paid shills to discredit all theories, so any dissenter can be labeled a "loon". So the “elite class” conspire together to craft fake conspiracies and flood the population with it so that they can label people who discover the real conspiracies as crazy?
- ltopq 4y ago
  You are bringing up the “elite class”. It could be foreign governments to create dissent. It could be Democrats to discredit a Republican forum or vice versa.
  - happytoexplain 4y ago
    This is perfectly plausible. It's also intractable, and doesn't imply that we should believe more things, any more or less than it implies that we should disbelieve more things. No matter how much misdirection and falsehood is put out by whatever organized or unorganized bodies, we still only have what we see and hear and read and experience. It's just one more of a million obvious reasons we already have to be skeptical - skeptical of what we're told by authorities, but also skeptical of what we're told by any given person with any motivation to convince you of something: financial, political, or even just emotional, and that includes conspiracy theorists. But there's a balance - if you're too skeptical, then nothing has any meaning. You might as well not believe any information you receive, in which case you might as well become a hermit who lives off the land (which is fine, but not a realistic expectation for the whole world). Or, in the case of many conspiracy theorists, arbitrarily choose something to believe (arbitrary because their sources are not any more reliable than other sources), which really isn't any better. So, we want to avoid falling off any given edge (becoming a hermit or a person with no opinions on anything, becoming a truly nutty conspiracy theorist, or becoming a mindless loyalist to some social/political group). A key tool for avoiding this is understanding a few things: 1. There is a bigger space than you think between having no opinion and having a full-blown conviction. I can believe or disbelieve something without making it into part of my identity or taking any kind of serious concrete action based on it or trying to convince everybody to go in the same direction as me. 2. It follows from #1 that it is OK to be wrong. 3. It follows from #1 that it is good to change opinions based on new information - it is not hypocritical.