conspiracy theories
The History Channel here in Israel had a “conspiracy theory weekend.” I’ve seen the ones on the assassination of Napoleon in St. Helen’s, Al-Qaeda and/or neo-nazi ties to Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing and the mind control of Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Robert Kennedy (search Google for more info.) A few days ago someone sent me a flash trailer for a new book claiming that not a plane hit the pentagon on 9/11, but a missile and describes the massive cover-up that ensued.
Conspircacy theories have charm because they are mysterious and appeal to our developed paranoia sense. For understandable reasons people are attracted to theories about government cover-ups. It is also hard for people to believe official — government sponsored — reasoning because they seem too simple. For example, Napoleon dying like a regular person from cancer, two unsophisticated southerners able to make a bomb out of acquirable chemicals to topple a 9 story building on its inhabitants and that JFK/RFK was killed by a lone gunman. Most defenders of the official story use this argument to debunk other theories; and sometimes they are pretty convincing.
I’d like to apply Occam’s Razor, but often, the contrary evidence make me believe the conspiracy theorists. I guess each theory needs to be evaluated on its own and we need to decide how plausible they seem. I learned long ago, from personal experience, that I will never know the truth, and what I know is very small portion of the truth. I’m not going to fight it or let it bother me as long as it doesn’t concern me directly.
September 25th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
I am not a fan of Conspiracy Theories, and sometimes get into unfriendly conversations with the people who advocate them (whom I call Conspircrats) . If you listen carefully to the Conspiracy theories, they always lack one or two important elements. I often point out these “if”s and “it is a well known fact”s to the Conspircrats and ask, “What is your source for that?” The answer usually is “I don’t remember†or “Big brother doesn’t want us to know†or other wacky answers.
Let put aside the political Conspiracies for a second. We have the same issue in the scientific community. There are many uninformed people that believe some settled laws/theories of mathematics or physics are wrong. One of the best examples can be found in an episode of NPR’s “This American Life†about an electrician who believes he’s discovered a flaw in Einstein’s theory of relativity and sets out to prove to the world that he’s right. Here is the link to the story (the story starts about the 31st minute of the program)
http://kcrw.com/cgi-bin/ram_wrap.cgi?/ta/ta050723A_Little_Bit_of_Know
In my opinion, there is not much difference between the person who believes Einstein theory of relativity is flawed or the one that believes a missile has hit the Pentagon, or my favorite one “All Jews were evacuated from the WTC, 5 minutes before the planes crash into it”. Both of them suffer from partial blindness to the truth.
I believe most of the time (not always) we can get to the heart of the matter and find the truth (relative truth of course). We are living in the age of information, and all we need is to spend enough time (much less than our fathers thanks to the internet) and process the information (from multiple sources) without prejudice.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Many conspiracy theories ask us to ignore obvious evidence (such as the fact that many Jews were killed in the towers on 9/11) and instead assume that an incredible number of people agreed:
(1) not to speak the truth that they saw, and
(2) all talk a consistent false story instead.
Clearly some people are so paranoid they can believe hundreds or thousands of people will do (1) and (2) above, but the rest of us should know better - that’s just not human nature! don’t most of us realize that conspiracies are rarely kept secret when more than one person knows about them? (Washington’s ‘Deep Throat’ kept his secret until he started shoppin gfor a book deal.)
One of the places to apply Occam’s razor is to the alternative theory. How do we know the pentagon wasn’t hit by a terrible brief plague of locusts? How do we know it wasn’t the victim of some aspect if Intelligent Design? Could there be a volcano underneath the pentagon they’re not telling us about? These are just as reasonable as a missile under the circumstances.
Oh, and I’m sure you noticed that no wiccans, and no members of the Irish Republican Army died in the towers on 9/11; very suspicious …
- The Precision Blogger
http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
September 26th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
In his later years my father believed FDR had prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor and did nothing to protect the island or the fleet because he saw it as the only way to get the nation behind him to enter WWII. Whole books have been written about this. It is actually a relatively widely held belief. (Never by me.)
You have probably also heard of the similar idea that W conspired to allow 9/11 to happen in order to solidify the nation behind him and give him the excuse he needed to send troops over there. We shall see if whole books are written about this. (Though I have little or no respect for W’s administration, I don’t hold this view either.)
Books have also been written saying the moon walk I actually watched on TV was staged in a TV studio. I don’t know what motive the doubters ascribe for this fake moon walk. And that the Holocaust is a fiction created by Jewish conspiracy in order to garner sympathy and support for the future creation of the state of Israel. Just nuts.
I can’t help but wonder if I am also subject to a conspiracy theory regarding the assassination of JFK/RFK. I don’t think we know yet all there is no know about who or what was behind these killings.
I also wonder if there is undue Haliburton influence out and about in the world today - more even than we generally believe.
I don’t think these are necessarily irrational thoughts. On the other hand, there are some who probably think they are.
October 3rd, 2005 at 8:25 am
The fundamental flaw that conspiracy theorists often fall into is one that was actually pointed out by my mom :-) In her words: ” They (theorists) assume the government has a level of competence that does not actually exist.”
That pretty much said it all for me. Instead of conspiracy theories which ultimately lead a citizen to passive inaction because we are all powerless against the combined might of the evil empire X,Y, & Z I would like to see really investigative journalism into actual corrupt government practices. Things like the executive branch undermining the congress a la Iran-Contra, etc.
I would agree with freeman in that crackpot scientific theories are a pointless waste of time. However we should always encourage people to investigate accepted scientific theories because you never know when somebody of major brainpower is going to see a flaw or an improvement. Einstein being the canonical example.
-M