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Conspiracy Theorists

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Lugnuts, Jan 15, 2013.

Page 2 of 18
  1. Walt_Disney

    Walt_Disney Guest

    There are college professors (not the conspiracy studies ones) who believe 9/11 was staged. If people really want to believe, evidence doesn't matter.
     
    Walt_Disney, Jan 15, 2013
    #13
  2. Lugnuts

    Lugnuts Well-Known Member

    There you go. You've hit on several things there, not the least of which is that the Internet is making us fucking lazy.
     
    Lugnuts, Jan 15, 2013
    #14
  3. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    No, the Aurora conspirists ARE that nutty

    http://www.naturalnews.com/036536_James_Holmes_shooting_false_flag.html
     
    poindexter, Jan 15, 2013
    #15
  4. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    Also, there are certainly organizations that benefit by, well, not exactly tamping down conspiracy theories. I'll pick on the NRA just because this article lays out exactly how the organization benefits by stoking fears that They're Coming For Your Guns.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2013/01/13/nra-history-the-making-of-the-gun-lobby/

    On the opposite side, I believe ACLU membership also tends to go up during Republican administrations.

    Plenty of organizations (and politicians) have realized telling their constituents they are constantly some unseen, or unknowable, and definitely unlikely threat is good for business.
     
    Bob Cook, Jan 15, 2013
    #16
  5. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    It's one thing to say the available evidence leaves some questions in an existing narrative. An obvious example is the Kennedy assassination. But it's another to take those holes in the story and blow them up into What THEY Don't Want You To Know with no evidence to support it.

    In some ways, you think of conspiracy theorists as nutballs wearing tinfoil hats in their mothers' basements, but there are plenty of theories that grab a hold of people you think of as normally intelligent and productive. The vaccine conspiracy theories, for example.
     
    Bob Cook, Jan 15, 2013
    #17
  6. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I'm still wondering where 12 million people disappeared to in Germany in the 1940s.
     
    Baron Scicluna, Jan 15, 2013
    #18
  7. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I don't think it is the Internet making us lazy. It's how information technology has made people aware of things they otherwise wouldn't have been aware of that quickly, and can create enough sensationalism to keep it in the "news" for days or weeks or longer.

    What I realized with the 9/11 stuff is that for most people it wasn't quite as real as it was for people who lived through it. It was something abstract -- that they watched on TV. Too many people think of it pretty much the way they think of CGI effects movies they have seen, instead of the real buildings that came down and killed real people.

    I posted about this at the time. I realized this when we were walking past a storefront a few years ago that was a temporary 9/11 museum, and it was filled with tourists buying trinket souvenirs.
     
    The Big Ragu, Jan 15, 2013
    #19
  8. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    David Stern gave Pat Ewing to The Knicks
     
    Boom_70, Jan 15, 2013
    #20
  9. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Was he trying to help them or hurt them?
     
    The Big Ragu, Jan 15, 2013
    #21
  10. Walt_Disney

    Walt_Disney Guest

    "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" by Michael Shermer.

    http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0805070893/
     
    Walt_Disney, Jan 15, 2013
    #22
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Yup. It's the paradox of information technology. It has put a ton of shit at our fingertips. It also makes it so you have to be way more discerning about what you are reading. Google is not the paper version of Encyclopedia Britanica we used to consult for our third grade book reports.
     
    The Big Ragu, Jan 15, 2013
    #23
  12. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Well, I don't think he was questioning whether the plane you saw hit the tower really hit the tower.

    It was more along the lines of the towers' collapse and the timing of it and the temperature of jet fuel and the melting point of steel and all that other junk.
     
    BTExpress, Jan 15, 2013
    #24
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