5 ms·

If you're curious about the chemtrail crowd, I'd recommend the "documentary" 'what in the world are they spraying' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA

by halviti 11y ago

If you're curious about the chemtrail crowd, I'd recommend the "documentary" 'what in the world are they spraying' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA It's one of the many conspiracy type videos out there, and I don't endorse the content in any way.. I just find this stuff fascinating

dr_zoidberg 11y ago
What I always found "fascinating" about conspiracy theories is how educated, smart people can be convinced by some of them. It's just something that I can't understand.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  What seems to happen is that you come across a compelling set of evidence. The evidence is faked, or skewed heavily, but it might be hard to know this. And, as presented, the cases are usually pretty good. If you're unable to immediately dispute them, it isn't totally irrational to think they might be real. This is the reason I don't watch documentaries on modern "issues". The story presented is all very manipulated and you're certain to get an incorrect set of evidence. What is boggling is how smart people _stay_ convinced by conspiracies, after contradictions are pointed out. But changing your mind is a hard thing to do, so perhaps it's not that surprising?
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    > This is the reason I don't watch documentaries on modern "issues". The story presented is all very manipulated and you're certain to get an incorrect set of evidence. That's true of essentially any source but I don't know that becoming ignorant of anything that happened during your lifetime is the right answer.
  - jakeogh 11y ago
    An effective tactic to prevent people from looking into something is to promote obviously false information, bonus if it's offensive, and associate it with information that can be verified. Another related tactic is for people who have a long track record of promoting false information promote something that's verifiable. That way people will dismiss real information that has been associated with bs. There is a paper, by a good friend of mine on this "Discrediting By Association: Undermining the Case for Patriots Who Question 9/11", and links to much more info in my profile. And I agree, there are many documentaries on modern issues that are pure junk.
- geomark 11y ago
  Well, after many conspiracy theories turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg of truly heinous government actions it's not hard to understand why previously skeptical people now think twice about immediately dismissing crackpot ideas.
  - batou 11y ago
    Some of us have also worked, through ignorance I will add, for heinous government contractors and sat with people having discussions on how best to kill lots of people efficiently without a thought as to any ethical consequences of their actions. I was out of there like a shot.
- LiweiZ 11y ago
  Sometimes the more you know, the more possibilities could be out there. We are not in a 100% transparent world. A single signal could mean a lot that one is not able to see. So based on some signals we could observe, there come related explanations. We could label a category with different tags. Conspiracy theory is one of them. Though I do believe that conspiracy theories weigh people's motivations more, which is not quite fit to most of mainstream perspectives. Hopefully, I won't get downvoted too much with this comment;p [edit] typo
  - geomark 11y ago
    Yeah, I think you are kind of circling around a central issue. Some evidence emerges of something untoward happening and the conspiracy nuts jump on it. There ends up being a lot of noise on top of a little bit of signal. People who fancy themselves rational dismiss it while the nuts keep amplifying it. Then much later more/most of the story comes out and sometimes it's a lot worse than the nut jobs even speculated.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- TallGuyShort 11y ago
  >> educated, smart people can be convinced by some of them I love this implication that you're probably dumb if you think the government sometimes engages in conspiracy. Like mass surveillance. Or bacterial experiments in San Francisco.
  - dr_zoidberg 11y ago
    No, you're dumb when you turn and twist the available evidence to considerable degrees to get to your crazy conclusion. Snowden is an educated and smart man with the proper evidence to back his claims (mass surveillance). What was exposed in this case is proper evidence (bacterial experiments in SF). What is dumb is seing a few bright pixels in a New Horizons image and saying "that's a swarm of alien space ships", when in fact it's just a cosmic ray distorted by the JPG lossy compression algorithm.
- dr_zoidberg 11y ago
  For my comment I received many downvotes and also many upvotes (net change was downward, but my karma has been jumping around for about 5 hours now), for pointing out a fact that I find baffling, without criticizing anyone in particular. I'd like to understand why this happened, if possible.
- krylon 11y ago
  I have read somewhere that conspiracy theories are the pattern matching algorithms in our brains running wild, seening connections where there aren't any. The thing is, our brains are really good at detecting patterns. So good, that sometimes, in fact, we will see patterns where there aren't any. And that's where paranoia and conspiracies and conspiracy theories come in.
wodzu 11y ago
What I find fascinating about the conspiracy theories is that the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. As if the logic gate in the brain suddenly stopped working.
- freehunter 11y ago
  It's kind of like "what else are they hiding from me". If the government could lie about X, they could like about Y.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Pardon me for this comment, I'm low on coffee this morning. It's going to be mostly rambling, but I'll try to keep it short. I remember reading and hearing that one of the reasons young people get addicted to things like heroin, etc., is due to the fact that schools, parents and government told them that things like beer and marijuana were deadly in any amount - then they would go on to have a few beers at a party, and maybe smoke a joint, and when they wake up the next morning with no negligible negative effects, they reject everything else they've been taught - including warnings about things that are that dangerous.
  - rev_bird 11y ago
    This was certainly my experience to some extent, though I am having trouble connecting it to the conspiracy theory thread. It's a basic credibility problem – if the grown-ups lied to us about weed, why should we believe them about heroin? etc.
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  > ...the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. Maybe what you're seeing is more like belief in the possibility rather than belief in the fact. For instance, after I learned about Operation Northwoods and a half a dozen other cases, I am completely open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job. (edit: And people who are not open to that possibility seem completely illogical to me.)

by halviti 11y ago

dr_zoidberg 11y ago

What I always found "fascinating" about conspiracy theories is how educated, smart people can be convinced by some of them. It's just something that I can't understand.

MichaelGG 11y ago
What seems to happen is that you come across a compelling set of evidence. The evidence is faked, or skewed heavily, but it might be hard to know this. And, as presented, the cases are usually pretty good. If you're unable to immediately dispute them, it isn't totally irrational to think they might be real. This is the reason I don't watch documentaries on modern "issues". The story presented is all very manipulated and you're certain to get an incorrect set of evidence. What is boggling is how smart people _stay_ convinced by conspiracies, after contradictions are pointed out. But changing your mind is a hard thing to do, so perhaps it's not that surprising?
- emodendroket 11y ago
  > This is the reason I don't watch documentaries on modern "issues". The story presented is all very manipulated and you're certain to get an incorrect set of evidence. That's true of essentially any source but I don't know that becoming ignorant of anything that happened during your lifetime is the right answer.
- jakeogh 11y ago
  An effective tactic to prevent people from looking into something is to promote obviously false information, bonus if it's offensive, and associate it with information that can be verified. Another related tactic is for people who have a long track record of promoting false information promote something that's verifiable. That way people will dismiss real information that has been associated with bs. There is a paper, by a good friend of mine on this "Discrediting By Association: Undermining the Case for Patriots Who Question 9/11", and links to much more info in my profile. And I agree, there are many documentaries on modern issues that are pure junk.
geomark 11y ago
Well, after many conspiracy theories turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg of truly heinous government actions it's not hard to understand why previously skeptical people now think twice about immediately dismissing crackpot ideas.
- batou 11y ago
  Some of us have also worked, through ignorance I will add, for heinous government contractors and sat with people having discussions on how best to kill lots of people efficiently without a thought as to any ethical consequences of their actions. I was out of there like a shot.
LiweiZ 11y ago
Sometimes the more you know, the more possibilities could be out there. We are not in a 100% transparent world. A single signal could mean a lot that one is not able to see. So based on some signals we could observe, there come related explanations. We could label a category with different tags. Conspiracy theory is one of them. Though I do believe that conspiracy theories weigh people's motivations more, which is not quite fit to most of mainstream perspectives. Hopefully, I won't get downvoted too much with this comment;p [edit] typo
- geomark 11y ago
  Yeah, I think you are kind of circling around a central issue. Some evidence emerges of something untoward happening and the conspiracy nuts jump on it. There ends up being a lot of noise on top of a little bit of signal. People who fancy themselves rational dismiss it while the nuts keep amplifying it. Then much later more/most of the story comes out and sometimes it's a lot worse than the nut jobs even speculated.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
TallGuyShort 11y ago
>> educated, smart people can be convinced by some of them I love this implication that you're probably dumb if you think the government sometimes engages in conspiracy. Like mass surveillance. Or bacterial experiments in San Francisco.
- dr_zoidberg 11y ago
  No, you're dumb when you turn and twist the available evidence to considerable degrees to get to your crazy conclusion. Snowden is an educated and smart man with the proper evidence to back his claims (mass surveillance). What was exposed in this case is proper evidence (bacterial experiments in SF). What is dumb is seing a few bright pixels in a New Horizons image and saying "that's a swarm of alien space ships", when in fact it's just a cosmic ray distorted by the JPG lossy compression algorithm.
dr_zoidberg 11y ago
For my comment I received many downvotes and also many upvotes (net change was downward, but my karma has been jumping around for about 5 hours now), for pointing out a fact that I find baffling, without criticizing anyone in particular. I'd like to understand why this happened, if possible.
krylon 11y ago
I have read somewhere that conspiracy theories are the pattern matching algorithms in our brains running wild, seening connections where there aren't any. The thing is, our brains are really good at detecting patterns. So good, that sometimes, in fact, we will see patterns where there aren't any. And that's where paranoia and conspiracies and conspiracy theories come in.

wodzu 11y ago

What I find fascinating about the conspiracy theories is that the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. As if the logic gate in the brain suddenly stopped working.

freehunter 11y ago
It's kind of like "what else are they hiding from me". If the government could lie about X, they could like about Y.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
Pardon me for this comment, I'm low on coffee this morning. It's going to be mostly rambling, but I'll try to keep it short. I remember reading and hearing that one of the reasons young people get addicted to things like heroin, etc., is due to the fact that schools, parents and government told them that things like beer and marijuana were deadly in any amount - then they would go on to have a few beers at a party, and maybe smoke a joint, and when they wake up the next morning with no negligible negative effects, they reject everything else they've been taught - including warnings about things that are that dangerous.
- rev_bird 11y ago
  This was certainly my experience to some extent, though I am having trouble connecting it to the conspiracy theory thread. It's a basic credibility problem – if the grown-ups lied to us about weed, why should we believe them about heroin? etc.
WorldWideWayne 11y ago
> ...the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. Maybe what you're seeing is more like belief in the possibility rather than belief in the fact. For instance, after I learned about Operation Northwoods and a half a dozen other cases, I am completely open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job. (edit: And people who are not open to that possibility seem completely illogical to me.)