The Big Picture: Conspiracy Weary

[rddj623]

I like your opinions Bob, I may not always agree with them, but they are always put forth in a well thought out manner. You provide evidence where it's due and state plainly that these things are your opinion.

I think I'll start a conspiracy where we try to hook you up with Kelly Brook.

 

[Lonan]

Shit does happen all the time, I agree with a lot that is said. Only a couple of things poke at me. One of the big things is that Global Warming is something that can happen, and possibly is.... Scientists on both sides are fucking with the data to the point we will never know what is going on. Man-made Global Warming the theory that we will destroy our planet in less then a hundred years.... With the 'Hockey Stick' chart proven a fraud, and that being the smoking gun as it wore, I have to put in serious doubt that Man is the primary cause....

From what it seems, that GIANT ball of gas in the center of our little corner of the Cosmos of the Sol System is looking more and more like the Primary cause. Not to say humans don't rank i the top 20 as reason shit can suck..... but far from the NUMBER ONE reason....

That's all....

The hockey stick is not a fraud. Here's a real science source. It also has the 10 most common arguments made by denialists. There's also this for any others.
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

 

[Eric the Orange]

Bob is dead wrong, again.

I think you missed the bit where it said this is an opinion show.

 

[Burningsok]

The JFK Conspiracy theory is the only one that I still haven't figured out yet. In high school, we had an entire day devoted to this theory. Some of the info made me question a little bit on the assassination only being Lee Oswald's doing. The amount of time to reload, aim, and fire the rifle would have taken a lot longer then what was shown on video (video had the sounds of the gun shot). Lee bought the gun for cheap, only 20$ which was still considered cheap back then for a rifle.

I learned about his assassination just last year, and my teacher showed us a video that presented so much evidence supporting the theory that Oswald did not act alone, I'm convinced it was a conspiracy. They explained the whole magic bullet theory, how Jack Ruby met with Oswald previously, how the president's body was denied viewing to many people, etc.

I've always wanted to know the truth, but things turned out not too shabby at the end of the cold war, so politically speaking, I suppose his death wasn't "such a big deal" for lack of better words. That is of course, not acknowledging the emotional toll it took on the country.

But I still want to know: Why? Why was a young man, with kids and a loving wife, a burgeoning leader bringing a country towards prosperity, murdered? It's just not fair, you know? But hey.......shit happens.

Random: oh how it would be funny to see JFK rise as a zombie lol. Not only will he be moaning like a normal zombie, but he might even mutter something like "those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." or "It's just a storm Dick, sit down.".... "Zombies."

 

[niceguy191]

Holy crap! Hero Quest??? I got that game for Christmas back when I was 7, and at first I thought it was some lame board game but then I played it and had a blast. (at that age I really liked the little figurines and the artwork as well)

 

[TOGSolid]

Scientists on both sides are fucking with the data to the point we will never know what is going on.

Bingo.

Climate change is happening, there's no arguing that fact, and our presence has invariably altered the world's climate. After all, we've been cutting down trees, we've wrecked an eco system here and there.

However the green movement is complete and total bullshit. Yes, we need to conserve and all that good stuff, but all these feel good solutions are mostly garbage. Electric cars? That's nice, too bad you refuse to allow nuclear power and a ton of cars would overload the electrical grid. Oh, and where are you going to get all that lithium from? Oh right, mining and chemical processing to get the lithium out.

Anyway, most conspiracy theories are pretty much bullshit, but there are some out there that have a certain amount of weight to them and when you see companies like..oh say...Halliburton constantly showing up, you can't help but wonder at least a little bit. I enjoy contemplating connections as a mental exercise but in the end, I really don't care either way.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I think the conspiracy theories stem less from a fear of the chaotic, but a need to maintain the perception of perfection. Notice how many in modern day always seem to have some deep seeded persecution in them. The "liberal media" exists expressly by the will of the few to keep conservitave values down, not because there are just as many people that have liberal values as conservitave. The the stuff's all made up because there's no way what conservatives have down could have any negitive side effects. There's vast corporate enterprises intentionally inflating gas prices because we can't legitimately be in short supply of oil (and that we'd be doing the same in their position). We lost an election so either the supreme court was bought off and voters were denied, or someone forgot to probely check the paperwork for a birth certificate (depending on political stripe) so we really won right? All those government actions really aren't necessary and are all about being unfair to me. And of course our sloppy ways can't be hurting the planet, it'sjust all a bunch of eco wackos being mean to me. Hell, the Daily Show just aired a fresh "I am Sarah Palin, professional victem of the left" clip.

I think it's easier (and probably more desirable) to beleive in some vast evil overlord out to get you than to admit the world doesn't revolve around you and your idea of right and wrong. It's a sign of how little we've grwon up as it reminds me of kids thinking their parents are punishing them because "they're mean" and teachers flunk them because "they hate me".

 

[Logic 0]

What's the difference between our new reptilian overlords and our old Illuminati?

 

[Souplex]

The moon landing was faked in a studio on the moon.
Nixon assassinated Kennedy to get rid of his competition for the election so he could start the hippie movement that will destroy America.
Soylent Green is people, but only the people who nobody liked.
You socks are just clinging to the wall of the dryer.
PETA's true goal is to make animal rights look stupid to advance their true goal of Carnivorism.
Tetris was an incomplete Soviet Superweapon designed to cripple America's economy through addiction. The remnants of the project were obtained by the radical terrorist cell "PopCap".

 

[NeoShinGundam]

I read a Spider Robinson story that was similar to David Icke's stuff, and it upset me. No, that's not why. Robinson admitted it was a work of fiction.

My problem was ultimately that it scapegoated the "evil aliens" for all the bad stuff human beings did to one another. And THAT was what I couldn't stand. Face it, human beings SUCK!!!

We do really bad things to each other for stupid reasons. I can't wait for the day that we can upload our brains into computers so that I can volunteer to be sent as a deep space probe to the other end of the galaxy. 100,000 light years of peace and quiet ^_^

 

[FishSama909]

Conspiracy theories overlap and mutate so much it's hard to figure out where one ends and the other begins. It's hard to discern if there is any difference between conspiracy theories because they turn into giant blobs of insanity.

It's kind of like looking at Alex Jones.

 

[Zer0Saber]

Shit happens has long been the motto to which I live my life.

 

[wolfchylde]

The moon landing was faked in a studio on the moon.
Nixon assassinated Kennedy to get rid of his competition for the election so he could start the hippie movement that will destroy America.
Soylent Green is people, but only the people who nobody liked.
You socks are just clinging to the wall of the dryer.
PETA's true goal is to make animal rights look stupid to advance their true goal of Carnivorism.
Tetris was an incomplete Soviet Superweapon designed to cripple America's economy through addiction. The remnants of the project were obtained by the radical terrorist cell "PopCap".

I'm in agreement with you about the Tetris conspiracy, most assuredly!

(and I always thought Soylent Green was a way to make people more palatable... )

 

[ManInRed]

Conspiracies do happen. More than one person does act together to do the improbable. Unless you think it's a coincidence that two of the four planes highjack on the same day happened to crash into adjacent identical buildings, 9/11 was a conspiracy. And if you don't think there was a conspiracy of people trying to convince those in power to go to war with Iraq, I can't imagine how you think politics works.

I don't know why conspiracies became fashionable as iconic ramblings of nuts, as they happen all the time. I think people forget: conspiracies fail too. There was a conspiracy of agents trying to prevent 9/11. And there was a conspiracy of people trying to convince the powers that be to not to go to war with Iraq. But they failed, even working together or in secret, conspiracies to do good or evil fail all the time.

Now people come up with radical fantasies and use the hard to prove or disprove mechanic of conspiracies to defend them, the same way gods and magic have been used in the past. And the reason these arguments are so convincing is because human beings are design to see patterns and see how the web of the universe fits together.

Still, I feel cheated whenever anyone looking for connections is labeled a crazy conspiracy theorist trying to escape reality, when so often people search for these connections to get better in touch with reality. When an unbelievable event occurs you should ask questions, even if they are stupid, because it's the unknown that truly scares us. Though I'd like to remind conspiracy theorist to not have a bias when investigating, accept every connection you try to make could be wrong, otherwise you're not looking for the truth you're looking for a fantasy.

Do we see the patterns because we are looking for them, or have humans evolved to look for patterns because they are actually there? It is impossible say, but rather than debate order versus chaos, let me quote a wiser man, who was just celebrated in America this last Monday.

"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated."
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
"For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." ? Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

[p1ne]

The comments thread on this one is bound to be hilarious. I think Bob might be tilting at windmills a little bit here but his basic point is important and very true. Shit does not happen for a reason, but most people would rather believe in willful evil than pure chaos because the latter is scarier.

 

[Ashoten]

Just when I'm ready to write you off as a hack Bob you go and make something brilliant like this. Except that part about global warming. Which is more likely? A bunch of oil conglomorates all setting aside their competition with each other to mastermind a global dominance of the energy market to make themselves rich while purposefully misleading the public with falsified scientific findings? Or a bunch of different conman doom saying to a gullible public willing to give them cash to stop an immanent threat that they can nether prove or disprove?

Actually Ash, we can prove Global Warming. That is all he said. We can prove the temperature is going up steadily. He didn't so much as whisper a word about it definitely being Anthropogenic (based on how most people have accepted it and started working on it I really hope it is anthropogenic) just that it is definitely occurring. Besides which, even if it isn't caused by us, at worst we are now finally cleaning our environment. I don't see the loss.

You know what? I'm just too confused about all this scientific mumbo jumbo surrounding global warming. I just want some experts to tell me what to think cause it hurts my head to think about it too much. I don't want to burn in the fires of global warming for not being a good earth citizen. We should totally get all the best scientists together with different opinions on the subject and tell them to come up with a unified belief that everyone can follow. It will be called the "Copenhagen Creed" and then no one will have to be upset at each other about it.

Of course we will need officials to interpret the Creed for us in case any confusion rises in the future. They will need to wear special cloths to identify them separate from the common rabble so we can give them all our attention and respect. Since they are devoting all their time to spreading the word of Green for us we will need to support them with donations. We will also need to establish a permanent building for them to operate out of so we know where to send are questions and money too. The building should be really big and impressive too so that the Earth really knows that we are seriously about respecting it properly.

That's all I'm asking for.

 

[lyfeindeyth]

I have a BIG conspiracy theorist as a friend, and it tries me out to hear him all the time. This video really informative, and REALLY gives me a good angle to think about these things

 

[LazyAza]

Great vid bob, I've always loved it when my friends bring up conspiracy theories and its so simple to explain to them why its stupid and unrealistic. To believe a conspiracy you have to ignore a substantial amount of logic and reason which is just crazy.

 

[BrownGaijin]

The easiest way to debunk a conspiracy theory:
1. Think about how many people are involved in the conspiracy (the government, all Americans, etc.)
2. Imagine a toilet bowl large enough where all said conspirators can take a dump at the same time.