Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> More interestingly, it explains *why* people want to believe such 
>> ludicrous claims: for the personal glory.
> 
>   Yeah. If what that article claims is true, the author of the Loose Change
> "documentary" originally didn't even believe in the conspiracy, but simply
> did the first version of the film just for fun and experiment, by deliberately
> picking up certain material and ignoring the rest, just to see how it would
> turn out. Only after he was offered glory and cash was it that he started
> making it a serious attempt at a convincing (and outright deceiving) movie.
> 
>   I suppose he succeeded big time. He got his fame, followers, TV time and
> money.

I wasn't there, I didn't see what happened, but it seems like a 
plausible story to me.

Of course, making up nonesense to get attention isn't new. (How many 
forgers and con artists have claimed to have telekenesis?) The 
interesting question is why the followers want to believe this stuff. 
And again, it comes down to glory: Of all the sheeple here, only *I* and 
my elite friends know The Truth. We are the modern Illunimati.

http://www.xkcd.com/610/

I wonder if that's why all the Editor Wars happened?

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Invisible wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>   It's not a debunking article per se, but more of an opinion of why the
>> conspiracy theorists are nuts. Especially the second page makes good 
>> points
>> about why keeping a huge conspiracy like that is basically impossible: 
>> There
>> simply are way too many people involved and too many witnesses who could
>> blow up the whole thing with simple evidence (eg. by showing a 
>> paycheck by
>> the government to keep them quiet).
>>
>>   The conspiracy theorists claim that all the people involved, who would
>> could blow up the whole conspiracy, were paid by the government to keep
>> quiet. As the article aptly puts it, how much money would *you* take in
>> order to keep quiet about the murder of your family, friends or 
>> co-workers?
> 
> More interestingly, it explains *why* people want to believe such 
> ludicrous claims: for the personal glory.
Well, its not just that. I don't have a link, but someone pointed out 
that "most" conspiracy theories all have a common thread of ideas. In 
essence, if you fall for one, you are more open to falling for the next, 
and since that has thread into others, you can fall for it easier, and 
so on. Once you start accepting certain patterns as feasible, you start 
finding that all conspiracies have similar patterns. For believers, this 
reinforces the patterns, for skeptics, it just makes them wonder who the 
frak people can believe the BS, including, in some cases, 3-4 different 
conspiracies that can't logically be happening at the same time, run by 
the same people, without undermining all of them in the process.

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> More interestingly, it explains *why* people want to believe such 
>> ludicrous claims: for the personal glory.
> 
>   Yeah. If what that article claims is true, the author of the Loose Change
> "documentary" originally didn't even believe in the conspiracy, but simply
> did the first version of the film just for fun and experiment, by deliberately
> picking up certain material and ignoring the rest, just to see how it would
> turn out. Only after he was offered glory and cash was it that he started
> making it a serious attempt at a convincing (and outright deceiving) movie.
> 
>   I suppose he succeeded big time. He got his fame, followers, TV time and
> money.
> 
Example of the "professionals" that do this:

http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/05/ghostbusters-ed-and-lorraine-warren.html
http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/05/ghostbusters-ed-and-lorraine-warren_29.html
http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/06/ghostbusters-part-iii-bs-in-connecticut.html
http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/07/ghostbusters-part-iv-ed-and-lorraine.html

Guys site is dedicated to digging these wackos up, and, when possible, 
dissecting the facts. Got to love this one too, from there (The must be 
putting something in the water, I am sure, but its not the rainbows I am 
worried about. lol):

http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/07/conspiracy-monday-beware-sprinkler.html

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   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Well, its not just that. I don't have a link, but someone pointed out 
> that "most" conspiracy theories all have a common thread of ideas. In 
> essence, if you fall for one, you are more open to falling for the next, 
> and since that has thread into others, you can fall for it easier, and 
> so on.

  That seems to be true. I have yet to meet the person who is, for example,
a strong believer in the Moon landing hoax theories, but does not believe
for a second that there was a conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks, or the other
way around. For some reason these two conspiracy theories seem to go hand
in hand: If someone believes in one, there's an almost 100% probability that
he believes in the other too.

  And this is not just the nutjobs in their basements who believe in black
helicopters, Roswell UFOs and the Kennedy assasination conspiracies. These
are just regular, normal people.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Guys site is dedicated to digging these wackos up, and, when possible, 
> dissecting the facts. Got to love this one too, from there (The must be 
> putting something in the water, I am sure, but its not the rainbows I am 
> worried about. lol):

It's the fluoride.

-- 
~Mike

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Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
>> Well, its not just that. I don't have a link, but someone pointed out 
>> that "most" conspiracy theories all have a common thread of ideas. In 
>> essence, if you fall for one, you are more open to falling for the next, 
>> and since that has thread into others, you can fall for it easier, and 
>> so on.
> 
>   That seems to be true. I have yet to meet the person who is, for example,
> a strong believer in the Moon landing hoax theories, but does not believe
> for a second that there was a conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks, or the other
> way around. For some reason these two conspiracy theories seem to go hand
> in hand: If someone believes in one, there's an almost 100% probability that
> he believes in the other too.
> 
>   And this is not just the nutjobs in their basements who believe in black
> helicopters, Roswell UFOs and the Kennedy assasination conspiracies. These
> are just regular, normal people.
> 
Yeah. The regular "normal" people like the nut that wrote how he hated 
what the left did to Palin, who was a nice wack.. uh, normal person like 
him, but he doesn't trust the right either, so he feels he has been left 
out in the middle. Well.. the regular "normal" people like this are 
precisely what scared the hell out of me that she *might* actually end 
up as VP. lol Like living in a world where everyone is Forest Gump, only 
none of them sound like it, until they start talking about some aspect 
of politics, education, etc., at which point you can see their brains 
dribbling out their ears.

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Warp wrote:
>   I found this article at cracked.com a good read. It's a bit long and uses
> a bit vulgar style in some parts, but I warmly recommend you to read it.
> 
> http://www.cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html
> 
>   It's not a debunking article per se, but more of an opinion of why the
> conspiracy theorists are nuts. Especially the second page makes good points
> about why keeping a huge conspiracy like that is basically impossible: There
> simply are way too many people involved and too many witnesses who could
> blow up the whole thing with simple evidence (eg. by showing a paycheck by
> the government to keep them quiet).
> 
>   The conspiracy theorists claim that all the people involved, who would
> could blow up the whole conspiracy, were paid by the government to keep
> quiet. As the article aptly puts it, how much money would *you* take in
> order to keep quiet about the murder of your family, friends or co-workers?

Aside from a handful of people who think that our federal government is 
always up to something evil, no matter who is in office, a small number 
of people were afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome to such a degree 
that they believe him capable of anything evil.  In all fairness, 
conspiracy theories about Clinton abounded during his time in office as 
well.

Regards,
John

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> I found this article at cracked.com a good read. It's a bit long and uses
> a bit vulgar style in some parts, but I warmly recommend you to read it.
>
> http://www.cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html
>
>   It's not a debunking article per se, but more of an opinion of why the
> conspiracy theorists are nuts. Especially the second page makes good points
> about why keeping a huge conspiracy like that is basically impossible: There
> simply are way too many people involved and too many witnesses who could
> blow up the whole thing with simple evidence (eg. by showing a paycheck by
> the government to keep them quiet).
>
>   The conspiracy theorists claim that all the people involved, who would
> could blow up the whole conspiracy, were paid by the government to keep
> quiet. As the article aptly puts it, how much money would *you* take in
> order to keep quiet about the murder of your family, friends or co-workers?
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp


True statement: There are plenty of bona fide wackos out there alleging all
sorts of crazy conspiracies.

False statement: Anyone proposing that one or more persons in authority might be
abusing that authority and misusing the sometimes legitimate need for government
secrecy to obscure their misdeeds is automatically just one of those wackos.

Best Regards,
Mike C.

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On 30-7-2009 13:56, John VanSickle wrote:
> Aside from a handful of people who think that our federal government is 
> always up to something evil, no matter who is in office, a small number 
> of people were afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome to such a degree 
> that they believe him capable of anything evil.  In all fairness, 
> conspiracy theories about Clinton abounded during his time in office as 
> well.

IIRC there was a clear hatred in the republican party when Clinton came 
in office right from the start. At least from where I live it seemed as 
if they could not admit they had been defeated in the election and every 
means to correct that was justified. With Bush you had the same problem, 
but now in reverse. So I assumed that was the normal state of US 
government presumably because if they would stop fighting they might 
have to take decisions. US policy never seems to amaze because I have 
not seen much hatred or personals attacks on Obama yet. The only 
exception may be Dick Cheney, but he is desperately trying to stay out 
of prison, so he does not count that much in my opinion.

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> US policy never seems to amaze because I have 
> not seen much hatred or personals attacks on Obama yet.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/50lies.asp
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

etc.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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