4 ms·

this is too simplistic. There are LOTS of conspiracy theories where the 'conspiracy' is not at all hidden, but out in the open and it's an open question of whe

this is too simplistic. There are LOTS of conspiracy theories where the 'conspiracy' is not at all hidden, but out in the open and it's an open question of whether it's a coincidence or actually coordinated action. Based on common sense discernment, some of these range from "almost certainly true" to "probably nonsense". There are also conspiracy theories where there is no longer evidence of conspiracy, but lots of evidence of deliberate data destruction. One can only infer the motive behind the data destruction, but I wouldn't call this type 1 or type 2. It's not inherently unfalsifiable by design, but extremely hard to falsify. If you mark such a conspiracy theory with the label, you risk discouraging people from trying to uncover what actually happened, and converting a "maybe successful conspiracy" to an "actually successful conspiracy" (if indeed it is a conspiracy).

lisper 3y ago
> lots of evidence of deliberate data destruction But evidence of deliberate data destruction is evidence. It might be an open question of what it is evidence of -- for example, maybe someone is just clearing out old records. But if someone is trying to destroy -- oh, I dunno, just spitballing here -- surveillance footage of someone moving boxes of classified materials after a subpoena has been issued for those materials, it's hard to explain that as anything other than a cover-up.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  They might be trying to cover up something else that isn't the conspiracy theory. Suppose there's a theory that some person got suicided in jail. And a lot of security footage got deleted. It could be that the prison guards were torturing the person in the cell for information that they could use to blackmail important people, and covering that up and there was not (yet) a higher level call for the person to be suicided. Not saying that's the case in any particular incident, just conjuring a hypothetical example.

lisper 3y ago

> lots of evidence of deliberate data destruction But evidence of deliberate data destruction is evidence. It might be an open question of what it is evidence of -- for example, maybe someone is just clearing out old records. But if someone is trying to destroy -- oh, I dunno, just spitballing here -- surveillance footage of someone moving boxes of classified materials after a subpoena has been issued for those materials, it's hard to explain that as anything other than a cover-up.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
They might be trying to cover up something else that isn't the conspiracy theory. Suppose there's a theory that some person got suicided in jail. And a lot of security footage got deleted. It could be that the prison guards were torturing the person in the cell for information that they could use to blackmail important people, and covering that up and there was not (yet) a higher level call for the person to be suicided. Not saying that's the case in any particular incident, just conjuring a hypothetical example.