Conspiracy Theories

[InbetweenDreams]

Alright folks get ready...



I don't have a problem with conspiracy theories. Some are harmless, some are entertaining, some of them actually have some merit. Then there are some that can be debunked by a 5th grader, some that can be harmful. For instance the people who think you get COVID-19 from wearing masks, it doesn't even make sense and you have to wonder where do they get the idea that something like that could be true. A lot of people are getting these idea from social media but again you wonder how do they conclude this could be true. There's no point in trying to explain that they're wrong and that people wear masks everyday.

The responses I usually get from people who argue that their conspiracy theory are something along the lines that people can believe what they want or that I'm a sheep. Sure people can believe what they want, I suppose people can believe what they want but when it is something like believing the Earth is flat or you get COVID-19 from wearing a mask, or they're making chem trails, do we have have the duty to try to explain to these people that they're wrong and here's why?

People should ask questions but people aren't willing to do the research to find the answer. I don't know who spreads these untested theories or why the flourish the way they do, although that would be the psychology part. Perhaps it is a coping mechanism. Then you do have those people who spread it knowing it's nonsense.

The more recent encounter I had was someone going on about why haven't we seen any chem trails lately? One being of course that chem trails aren't real and two due to the travel restrictions there have been way less planes flying. Going back to the fact that chem trails aren't real. People don't know or realize that burning jet fuel one of the by-products in the exhaust is in fact water. The other thing people don't know or realize that at 40,000 ft (about 12,000 meters) it is usually very cold. What happens when you have hot and humid air come into contact with cold air? It condensates, making water vapor and that is the trail that you see left behind jets and planes. This is true with car exhaust on cold mornings, the burning of gasoline in conjunction with catalytic converters water is a by-product of car exhaust. I suppose one could make the argument that they're putting the "chemicals" in the fuel as a means to spread the poison. Firstly, the whole idea that people would spread poison is insane, why poison the people who are trying to poison the people...you're exposing everyone. Secondly, even if you filled a plane up to its maximum payload with whatever stuff you believe is being used, at 40,000 ft nearly all of it would be dispersed and mixed with the air at level that would be nearly undetectable. Let's dig deeper. The common belief is that chem trails have "barium and aluminum salts, polymer fibers, thorium, or silicon carbide" in them. Let's pick on barium. The safe limit of exposure of barium (oral exposure) is 0.5 mg/cubic meter. That's not the lethal dose, but anything over that would likely cause GI issues and so on. So how much barium would someone need to load on a plane flying at 40,000 ft to poison you? Understand that winds, the speed in which the plane is traveling will greatly increase the area in which you would hypothetically cover. While inverse square law and the fourth square law don't exactly apply here the same principle would apply. You would need an astronomical amount of barium or whatever it is to be more than just barely detectable on the ground. The other thing to consider is running this stuff through a jet engine probably isn't very good for the jet engines. Barium can be kind of corrosive and I don't know about you but if I were a pilot I sure as heck wouldn't want to be flying that plane.

Ok, so now that I got done with that little rant. I'm not sure what the psychology is behind people believing in things that can be debunked. It is both kind of scary and infuriating to see so many people incapable and unwilling to think. Even for Buzz Aldrin....



He should have got another lick in...

Again, not sure what the psychology is behind this. I have read that it is stress induced and people seeking attention. It's all fun and games when it is just that, but when you have massive numbers of people buying into this stuff and aren't either willing or capable of critical thinking I really wonder if we're headed back to the caves. We have got to educate people better. I don't know what the situation is in other countries, but in the US it really is a problem. I went to high school with someone who apparently couldn't point out North American on an atlas. I don't know if they were just trying to get attention but either way that's not a good way to go about getting it.

I'll leave it at that for now.

[Chase]

I remember my first encounter with a flat earther. He was a 7 foot tall macho man, so after a few back and forths, all I could do was tell him anything is possible and slowly back away. He was a family friend, well ex family friend now (the a-hole kicked one of my dogs). I'm kind of glad I didn't try debating him, because my big brother said at the end of his conspiracy theory, the Jews are behind it all. I'm not religiously Jewish, but my grandfather was, making my 1/4 Ashkenazi/Hebrew, so I don't want to know what he would have done if I brought that up.

Whenever I hear conspiracies that say one group of people control the world, my first thought is always - so what do I have to do to join them? Often times, the conspiracy theories aren't even that bad. For example:
The one world order conspiracy - cool, one world order, that means no more wars, easier trade. What's most interesting about the one world order conspiracy nuts is that it's usually believed by people who would identify as capitalists and conservatives - one world order would be good for that, because tariffs are against Laizzes Faire.
Then we have the beautiful demon and alien conspiracies - I'm on board. Let's join the intergalactic union. I don't care being part of some alien cast system where the Reptilians are our overlords if the Reptilians can give us spaceships capable of taking us to other star systems.

I can never talk about the David Icke reptilian alien conspiracy with a straight face. The idea that the world's elites are shape shifting lizard aliens is so freaking hilariously absurd, a lot of people actually think David Icke is just "dog whistling" and is actually referring to the Jews. No people, no - David Icke is more crazy than anti-semite. He and all of his followers LITERALLY believe in the shape shifting reptillian aliens.

Why people believe such things, I suppose there is always more than one reason. I've read both Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World and Michael Shermer's Why people Believe Weird Things. Carl Sagan's book remains my favorite nonfiction book.

To be fair to the conspiracy nuts, we all believe things that aren't true. We also have beliefs we only "fancy" and don't take seriously. I love to binge watch paranormal shows, but I'd never bet my money on them. Of course, sometimes these fancies can be downright offensive to some people - believing we didn't go to the moon can offend scientists and lovers of science, and I'll just say it - believing aliens built the pyramids is racist as Hell. I suppose to be fair, "ancient astronaut theorists" also believe Stone Henge was built by aliens, but for crying out loud people, when scientists say they don't know how ancient people built ancient structures, they don't mean they don't know how they could have, they mean they know a number of different ways they could have, but don't know which.

Education certainly helps. However, even educating the masses won't make conspiracy theories go away. There is such a thing as a stupid smart person. The author of Sherlock Holmes believed in fairies (I'm not talking vague spirits, I'm talking small winged humans like Tinker Bell), and Isaac Newton wasted much of his genius on alchemy. Even in academia, conspiracies abound. I had a history professor who was a 9/11 "truther" (and this was at an accredited institution). Classes are also divided in their model of the world. Take a sociology class and then take an economics class, and you'll be surprised at the night and day difference in how the professors and textbooks present the world. At the end of the day, you just have to hope the truth fights its own battles.

Usually when I'm presented with conspiracies, my first filter is whether or not they affect the elite or not. Chemtrails poison the same air that rich people breath, so that's BS. Of course, I'm sure someday that Matt Damon Elysium movie will become a reality, and once rich people are living on space stations, we're fcked. I work with rich people though, as a housekeeper. They're humans, like us. The truly rich are a lot more careful with their money than most people think (they got rich that way, after all). If they want something about society to change, they'll stop being cheap and throw their money at it, usually at a politician or an organization - they don't meet in smoke filled rooms and rub their hands together, laughing. Sure, there are things like the "Bohemian Grove" where the elites meet in Northern California and burn an effigy of a human in front of a giant pagan owl statue - but let's be real here, it's just a freaking barbecue and a crappy theater performance.

Thomas Jefferson had a clever quote: "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
(this is by no means my endorsement of all of Thomas Jefferson's views and actions. I shouldn't have to say that, but in 2020, I apparently do)

With that said, enjoy some ridicule. I present to you an Alex Jones remix:

[InbetweenDreams]

@Chase Love the gay frogs video, hilarious. That flat earther though sounds like a nutcase...one for thinking the earth is flat and kicking your dog? What a piece of shit.

That does make me think that the more outlandish someone's beliefs are the more unstable they are? It's probably a coincidence though thinking more into it.

We all probably do believe in something that isn't true. The question is whether or not the things we believe can be verified false. I'm not talking History Channel, Ancient Aliens "It might be possible that..." I mean it is unlikely that aliens built the pyramids and one could argue that it is a bit racist thinking that ancient cultures weren't capable of the engineering, skills and ability to build such things. The existence of a God, or some sort of deity can't be proved or vice versa for instance, many people believe that. There's a wide gamut of ways to interpret deity. In the book Paganism: A Guide to Earth Based Religions has a whole section about deity and what they called "The God Map." Ranging from an old bearded guy sitting in the clouds to an ambiguous interconnecting energy of some sort that everything is a part of.

Trying to identify something I believe in that isn't true, perhaps that a trick question...perhaps I ought to be unaware of such things. I always had a hard time in believing in things like faeries for instance. My sister (kind of) believes in them, I don't. Then again people believe in ghosts because they claim they have seen them. Did they see a ghost? Did they experience a paranormal experience.

I often listen to a podcast by Bernard Alvarez, "The Just Bernard Show." Most of the content I like, I can get on board with but often enough the ones I don't are the ones he has guests on. They might talk about a paranormal experience, claims of where perhaps a family member who they lost is making a presence in their home, knocking over things and appearing on cassette recordings. I know it's false, they're almost always selling a book and have all these outlandish claims. Perhaps it is very real to them but from my perspective they're trying to sell a book by pedaling nonsense. I can't think of this guys name but he was a medium and briefly had a show where he would pick someone in the audience and claim to have made contact with a loved one who had passed. He was a total fraud, even had camera footage where people would look up information about these people who they would "randomly" pick to find out the answers to some of the questions and he would be right often enough to fool most people.

But yeah I have a hard time with that sort of stuff but I also like to think we do live in a world where there are things that we cannot see, smell, taste, hear or touch...and yeah I get we can't see infrared and x-rays, but you know what I'm getting at.

I'll have to come back and post more in response to your post. Anyway, it is a sigh of relief to have intelligent conversation...I live in the southern US...so yeah...add Facebook to the mix.

[Chase]

Anyway, it is a sigh of relief to have intelligent conversation...I live in the southern US...so yeah

lol we got our own nuts up north, too.

BTW, I know I said elites don't meet in smoke filled rooms and laugh about how they control the world - I take that back. I forgot about this gem:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

The tl;dr - there's a Wall ST club where the Wall ST elites literally dress up their pledges in drag, crack offensive jokes, and laugh about how much richer they are than everybody else. If you don't have time, I recommend you at least check out the pics.

[InbetweenDreams]

@Chase I skimmed through the article. It is certainly more than enough to raise your eyebrows at for sure. I do think there is a conspiracy but it probably isn't what you think. I think if anything these elites only want to keep the status quo and if anything to stay wealthy and push any policy that keeps it that way.

[Genersis]

Hmm.
Just something to note, but pretty sure flat earth theory came back as an internet joke initially, but now it seems to be growing in legitimate believers around the globe. 

It's kinda hard to tell which theories will do damage without hindsight. 

[InbetweenDreams]

Hmm.
Just something to note, but pretty sure flat earth theory came back as an internet joke initially, but now it seems to be growing in legitimate believers around the globe. 

It's kinda hard to tell which theories will do damage without hindsight. 

Right, and you can't tell which people actually believe it or are just trolling....and that's the problem.

[Chase]

@Chase I skimmed through the article. It is certainly more than enough to raise your eyebrows at for sure. I do think there is a conspiracy but it probably isn't what you think. I think if anything these elites only want to keep the status quo and if anything to stay wealthy and push any policy that keeps it that way.

Yeah, I don't think it's anything demonic, but exactly that.

I guess a thread on conspiracy theories shouldn't devolve into a discussion on what is good and evil. But really, I think it's integral to the antithesis of conspiracy theories. The world is clearly corrupt and filled with suffering, and the premise of all conspiracy theories is that there is a secret, malevolent reason why it is. But, what one man calls corruption, another calls success.

To quote John D. Rockefeller, "You call it monopoly, I call it enterprise."

[InbetweenDreams]

Years ago, especially around the 2012 stuff, there was all these conspiracy theories about world war and just total destruction. Very entertaining at the time and for a moment me being in my early 20's almost bought into it. So questioning things you ask yourself, what benefit does it serve to destroy everything and kill billion of people serve? There is no benefit and therefore a global nuclear war is unlikely to happen. Proxy wars, though, yeah that stuff is going to go on, there's unfortunately money to be made there. Anyway, don't want to make this into a gross political thread.

But yes, those folks, Alex Jones and David Icke they love to jazz things up, after all just as the media likes to make headlines that are reactionary and dramatic, it's all for views and exposure.

Speaking of politics. I do feel that the political division we see in this country being so polarized, it's almost fake and intentional. Like the abortion issue. I thought this was settled long ago? Yet this has slowly creeped back into the discussion in the last 20 years it seems. The psychology of the masses is easily manipulated and I think a lot of politicians, elites know that. So it would seem that something divisive and are often social issues are used to snooker us, pointing fingers at each other while they squander taxpayer's out of billions in stock buy backs, bombing other countries and maybe a little insider trading on the side. Yes, there are things that we, the US in our case, have to figure out and take seriously like gun control and why after 60 years are we still unable to snuff out racism of all things.

Perhaps the reality is that everything is complicated and perhaps being so the mind wants to how shall I say compartmentalize things to make it easier to understand or make sense of why things are the way they are. There are odd things that happen, like have you ever watched the news or noticed in the news that many media outlets will start talking about something that just seems a little off or out of place? Like for example, would it seem odd if the news were to start putting out stories about safety concerns at theme parks.... Which really right now, no is going to them so why talk about it? I can't think of a recent example to be honest, so perhaps these occasions are coincidences but often makes you wonder if the media is wanting you to shift your focus from one to something else. Frank Zappa was one who thought this was the case, that the media outlets would change topics to manipulate the public in order to either steer people away from some current event or towards another.

As far as ranting. I don't see your post being a rant. I do rant...sometimes I ramble... Sometimes I just write out whatever pops in my mind. I really ought to check out those books you mentioned.

[Pix]

If it helps, conspiracy theorists probably aggravate each other far more than anyone else, because they usually seek each other out and find others have alternative interpretations (some think the Greys are our friends, others that they're our secret overlords in which our governments have sold us out to, for example, or that JFK was killed for very different reasons, and so on). Of course they accuse each other with a variant conspiracy theory of disinformation (that is part of the conspiracy).

More than once I came across a conspiracy theory that made me think, "How can I join the conspiracy?"

I think there's a lot of symbolism involved. Some find that it complements their political and/or religious tribal identities very well, and also gives them an excuse to act in horrid ways to protect their tribe. (Even the Nazis mostly saw themselves as victims fighting back against conspiracies.) Others...I don't know.

There is also the more simple aspect that we humans see patterns. When we first evolved, that was a powerful survival trait even though the patterns weren't always right. But now it can easily lead us to believe in conspiracy theories.

Of course it gets muddled in that there really is corruption, insider trading, meetings that are completely closed off the press that have ramifications for global policies, and things like MK-ULTRA (and other vile experiments) actually did happen...though I'd guesstimate that 99% of what you'd find online about much of this is BS (the actual facts, as far as we can know them, are depressing enough in of themselves, of course, and people will speculate).

ETA: it's been YEARS since I so much as glanced at the works of either Davide Icke or Alex Jones (though of course I hear things), but my impression is that David Icke actually believes himself while Alex Jones is just a con-artist who makes a lot of money from his show and selling his own products.