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Conspiracies and conspiracy theories are two very different things. The reason people scoff at conspiracy theories is because they are often times wrong and/or vague. How many *verified conspiracies actually started as a 'conspiracy theory'.
Edit: * added for clarification
before snowden is was a conspiracy theory that the government is always listening to you
well there's a reason for that -- feeling like someone is reading your thoughts or that your will is controlled by someone else and so on are common presentations of schizophreniform disorders. they just made it fucking true!
How many verified conspiracies actually started as a 'conspiracy theory'.
All of them? If you're questioning the official narrative you're "just a conspiracy theorist" until proven right
Actually 🤓 they rather start as undiscovered conspiracies until they leak enough to make people suspicious and form a theory
You know, I can’t stand dealing with a conspiracy theorist.
I understand why they’re crazy though.
Tuskegee syphilis experiment. MK Uktra. Snowden leaks. Various governments overthrown by the CIA.
I mean, people are crazy and evil knows no bounds.
That said, I prefer to look for the best in the world. I can understand getting lost in all that crap though. People are fucked up.
With Tuskegee, the conspiratorial claim is often made that the men were deliberately infected. They were “just” not informed of their infected status and discouraged from seeking medical care elsewhere. This meant that they often ended up infecting their families.
I understand Black conspiracy theorists who have elaborate claims about Tuskegee - it was such a monstrous action and violation of trust that it is difficult to balance not minimizing it with being clear about what did/did not happen.
No. It's not a REAL conspiracy until the 4th Estate says so! They are the ones we should trust without question! They have NEVER proven themselves to be just another part of the control system!!
is there a convinient list somewhere of all the times this has happened?
Wikipedia CIA
People still don't believe their tax dollars are being spent to hurt them after being shown these documents.
Proverbs for Paranoids
—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Issue being, a large number of conspiracy theories are just utter bonkers (moon nazis theory, etc.), would be really ineffective in practice (chemtrails, etc.), or tries to blame capitalism's problem on a small number of people within the system (International Jewry, etc.). In fact I kind of have a theory that the more "skizo" stuff was put out to make the real stuff look impallatable for people believing the institutions are serving them.
I know at least some opportunistic far-right people that use conspiracy theories to make their ideology look better, met at least one Holocaust denier that just wanted to whitewash the third reich for newbies until they prove they're ready for the truth through proof of loyalty, and one denies the CIA's involvement in toppling the Salvador Allende governance to make Pinochet look even more badass.
I get why memes like this are popular—they’re funny and make you think. But honestly, I think they can be a bit dangerous too. Sure, some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, but way more often than not, they’re just nonsense.
The problem with stuff like this is that it makes it seem like most conspiracy theories are worth taking seriously, which can lead to some real issues. People start distrusting everything—governments, science, journalists—even when there’s no good reason to. It can also give way too much credibility to wild ideas that just aren’t backed up by facts.
Healthy skepticism is important, but it needs to come with critical thinking. Just saying, "What if it's true?" doesn’t really help—it just feeds into the chaos. I feel like we need more “let’s look at the evidence” and less “trust no one.”
I read a mainstream biography about Aristotle Onassis recently - something that was on the NY Times bestseller list back when it was published in 2004 - and near the beginning it casually comes up that the Secretary of State or head of the CIA (they were brothers at the time) was having an affair with the Queen of Greece. It wasn't even the point of the chapter. Instead, it was just a element in the US governments behind the scene manipulations as they used private intelligence firms to sink a deal between Onassis and the Saudis to fund their own shipping fleet.
Theres enough conspiracies that 1 in a million have to be true.
Don't use the one as evidence of the million.
Every fucking time.
It's easy to recognise some super convenient propaganda, or follow the money, but sometimes it's not that simple.
MK Ultra moment
And you're a fool if you think they ever stopped.
The reason why reality and what people believe about reality diverge so heavily is because reality is based on mathematics while people's belief about reality is based on their experiences of the past. And past experiences fail to predict things like exponential growth or new theories or developments in technology.
The government wouldn't do that!
this is unrelated, but do any Lemmy clients have a tool or option to show what a hyperlink is linking too? just had an unexpected YouTube video blast full volume and feeling very foolish rn
You can long press the link and the pop-up will show the address. Or hit reply and it will show the source text.
I personally use Voyager, it shows all embedded links individually
On Jerboa, you can long press the hypertext and it'll show you the link
Sync shows contents of links(can see the youtube video above) and will give you a warning if it links to rickroll
If 1 in 20 conspiracy theories are correct then you'll be 95% correct if you disbelieve all of them.
If you pick one to believe in you'll be about 90% correct on average.
If you pick 10 you'll be about 50% correct.
I don't get the middle statement. If you pick just one, the chance is 5%
Looks like Big Math got to you