Dumb Consiracy Theories

[Zarathustra]

Moon hoax.
Flat earth.
Nibiru.
Global warming. (Just kidding!)

I'm very close to someone who is constantly telling me about Nibiru. He says he doesn't really believe it, but I'm not so sure, given the amount of time he spends researching it. As the theory goes, there is either a planet or an entire solar system that is on the verge of crashing into the earth. It's causing earthquakes right now! Oh no! (Silly me, I thought that was plate tectonics.) The only problem is that if there was another planet in our solar system about to crash into earth, we'd see it in the sky.

These wacky Nibiru people think that every time NASA discovers another planet, that it's confirmation of the Nibiru theory. Even planets 22,000 light years away orbiting their own stars! How the heck do they break out of their own orbits to enter our solar system?? How are objects 22,000 light years away causing earthquakes??

As dumb as that idea is, the flat earthers are even dumber. It stuns me that people actually believe this horseshit in the 21st century. One guy argued that the horizon would not look flat if the earth was curved enough to see ships sinking hull-first just a few miles from shore. If we can see ships sinking with the earth's curve, then a view of the horizon (which can be many more miles wide) should show a curve, downwards to either side, right and left. Obviously, he didn't think this through. If the horizon curved downward at the edges, this would mean that the direction in which you're looking is at the "top" of this curve. What does he think would happen, in this scenario, if you turned slightly to the left or right? That "top" would now have to be sloping downward, with a new "top" directly in front of you. How could a part of the horizon that was "higher" now suddenly be lower, just from turning slightly? Furthermore, he said that tall buildings at the edges of your vision should have a noticeable lean, since the horizon itself would be curving down at the edges of your view. But again, as you turn your head, that would mean buildings would go from leaning to straight up. How in the world would that be possible?? A building is either leaning or not. They aren't going to change their alignment just with the turn of your head. Right?

[Vraith]

I have two friends who believe in the Nibiru thing. They threw a party when the possibility of a new planet was revealed not so long ago.

That flat earth argument you quote is a funny one I hadn't heard before.

[Avatar]

I wonder what makes people want to believe stuff like that?

--A

[Zarathustra]

I've been trying to visualize the "curved horizon" thought experiment. The horizon wouldn't seem to curve downward, for the same reason that a ring can be placed on a ball and touch the surface along the ring's entire circumference. Imagine a wedding ring placed on top of a basketball. This flat ring will trace a "flat" circle on the sphere. And this ring would correspond to what we see in all directions as we look at the encircling horizon, if you imagine yourself in the center of that ring. So no dipping horizon, but instead a flat one.

However, if tall buildings on the horizon are far enough away (say, where we see departing ships sink beneath the horizon), then they should "lean" slightly away from us due to curvature. And in that case, buildings to the left and right should seem to lean, I suppose (until we looked directly at them). But we don't see buildings lean because the earth is too big for it to be noticeable.

[Zarathustra]

I wonder what makes people want to believe stuff like that?

--A

It makes uneducated people feel smarter than they are, to claim knowledge that educated people don't have. Instead of a college degree, they have YouTube videos and smug superiority.

Also, there is a certain thrill in believing that you've uncovered a global (or, um, circular?) conspiracy.

[Vraith]

But we don't see buildings lean because the earth is too big for it to be noticeable.

Trying to visualize it myself...I don't think we'd ever be able to naked-eye see the lean-away because of the size, as you say, and the fact that our eyes are too close together to be good at depth perception at the distances necessary.
[[an awful lot of our depth perception isn't so much in the left/right signals comparison, at least not directly, and not at long distances...it's in the processing---putting together large numbers of known scale and distance relationships with other objects in our field, shadow and light angles and such]].

At a great enough distance [at least several hundreds of miles, I'd guesstimate], and with tall enough buildings---heights in several miles range---that were close enough together, we'd see buildings to the left and right of whichever building we centered in our vision leaning left/right.

It's not entirely down to lack of education to believe such, though.
I know a couple people personally, and have seen in media a surprisingly [to me] large number, persons who are both very educated and, in other fields/on other topics, highly intelligent as well. Yet they'll believe some absurd thing.
Some of them, I'm sure, are basically cult-founders. They like the power and the fame and have enough charisma and pseudo-rational/creative propaganda skills to achieve that fame/power.
But there are definitely highly educated AND highly intelligent people that go for the ridiculous.

[peter]

I don't think you should underestimate in addition, the amount of fun people can get from indulging in a conspiracy theory. There is a frisson of excitement to be had from connecting the facts in a different way from the mundane. Mostly it's harmless - but not always. The Princess Diana conspiracy theory has gained real traction in the UK and has significant undermining effects on the respect in which our royal family is usually held. Some conspiracy theories have so much entered the collective public consciousness as to be virtually established as 'fact' (think the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and JFK - who now does not believe that there was some monkey business going on in both cases).

Yet other conspiracy theories seem to have a genuine grounding in fact, or at least a blurring has occurred where, unlike Z's Nibiru thing, we can no longer be sure it's just bullshit (did MK Ultra exist? Did the CIA screw around with Psy Ops etc?). And yet further conspiracy theories at first denied (foolishly) by 'the State' have been demonstrated to have a basis in fact (Bilderberg and Bohemian Grove do exist) and this in turn lends dubious credence to the more extreme examples of the field. All in all it makes for a complex and interesting field of study.

[Vraith]

I don't think you should underestimate in addition, the amount of fun people can get from indulging in a conspiracy theory. There is a frisson of excitement to be had from connecting the facts in a different way from the mundane.

No doubt. I enjoy building them and/or trying to figure out ways that pre-existing ones COULD be true [what logic and facts/information we don't have or are mislead or mistaken about would make them work].

Hashi plays with them, I know, and I assume for similar reasons.
A sort of mixture of writing fiction and solving puzzles/brainteasers.
But I don't BELIEVE them [[I don't think Hashi believes most of his subject matter in this arena, either]] and don't try to recruit other people to believe them.

And socio/political conspiracies are somewhat different branch---though often on the same family tree...less amenable to pure physical facts and explanations than Flat Earth and Nibiru and such.

[Avatar]

I wonder what makes people want to believe stuff like that?

--A

It makes uneducated people feel smarter than they are, to claim knowledge that educated people don't have. Instead of a college degree, they have YouTube videos and smug superiority.

Also, there is a certain thrill in believing that you've uncovered a global (or, um, circular?) conspiracy.

Well sure, but that can't be all of it. Guess it probably starts with people's need to find patterns / explanations that make sense to them or are relatable or something.

--A

[peter]

I'm always fascinated by these books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail etc. If you read them, their arguments can seem absolutely watertight - fact piled upon fact until a detailed and authoritative sounding thesis is put forward in support of their conjecture. But then you have to remind yourself of what they are doing, which is effectively 'reverse engineering' back from a premise, and cherry picking facts from history to support it. Done well it can be entirely convincing, and one cannot but wonder how much of our 'conventional' history is constructed in the same manner. How much do we really know of our past with any true degree of accuracy?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

What Vraith siad--conspiracy theories are a pet hobby of mine. I like to read about them to see how many dots people can connect but I also like to come up with my own from time to time. The best conspiracy theories have just enough truth in them that they seem to be plausible, even possible, but in general their primary purposes are 1) to give people any sort of explanation for something happening, regardless of how plausible the explanation might be, because our brains are wired to have an answer for every question and 2) they serve to cast doubt on your sociopolitical opponents. A good example of type 1 is "Paul is dead"--all those little clues that got put in to Beatles' songs, some of which were put in to songs *after* the conspiracy got started and were a result of the band poking fun at people who believed in it. We hear type 2 ones all the time--more recent ones include "they dynamited the levees during Katrina" or "Russian collusion to steal the election" but older ones which were just as controversial include "Roosevelt and the military knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, so they let it happen to give us a legitimate reason to go to war".

That being said, I don't actually believe any conspiracy theories. They aren't even really theories, in any event, but hypotheses--explanations which fit the facts available at the time. Unlike most things, though, there is no process by which you can experiment to test whether a conspiracy hypothesis is true; instead, all you can do is gather all the facts and check to see whether the premises and conclusions of the hypothesis are valid. Usually, a conspiracy theory will fail this sort of rigorous examination at the premise level--the initial claim which forms the foundation of the theory is, itself, false.

Peter, the farther back in time we go the less certain our knowledge becomes. Even as far back as Ancient Rome there are enough existing written records remaining that we can pretty accurately piece together a picture of what really happened at what the world was like at the time. Go back far enough (or to any time/place with insufficient written records) and most of what we "know" is speculation.

Back to the original point...yes, Niburu is a particularly stupid conspiracy theory--by the time another planet entered Mars' orbit it would be pulling the Moon out of its orbit, which would have resulted in planet-wide disaster from both earthquakes and extreme tidal surges. If the Anuanaki (I think that's how you spell it--the lizard-people who live on Niburu and who gave us agriculture and engineering over 12,000 years ago) are so advanced they would travel here in ships, not wait for their planet to make a pass-by.

[Zarathustra]

Not every conspiracy theory is dumb. The moon hoax, flat earth, and Nibiru are particularly stupid because we have so much counter evidence. These theories can only be maintained if you don't know much about physics and astronomy. The people who believe them think that their "truth" is being hidden by NASA, but NASA can't change the laws of physics. Some planet 20,000 light years away is *not* causing earthquakes! For godsake, you can fly or sail all the way around the earth.

All these people have as evidence are cheesy YouTube videos. Apparently, video of the Moon landing could be faked, but not some batshit crazy video some guy on the Internet made! All the images of a round earth seen from space are all CGI ... but not the videos that prove a flat earth!

The guy who brought all this to my attention constantly talks about how earthquakes are increasing. I point out that they're not, according to reputable sources online, and he responds, "You can read anything on the Internet." Yeah, you can! So why do you only believe the crackpot sources?

[Avatar]

Well, some conspiracy theories obviously are true, because people do conspire in order to do things.

And yes, history (even relatively recent history) should always be a little suspect. Written records etc. carry the biases and prejudices of their authors after all.

--A

[peter]

Absolutely Av. My point exactly. There is an intimate relationship between History and Conspiracy Theory that I find fascinating. I saw two programs yesterday that blurred the lines highly effectively - one claiming UK involvement in the murder of Rasputin, the other claiming to have unmasked Jack the Ripper (and giving a highly convincing argument to boot). The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are another example - a conspiracy within a conspiracy that had the world fooled and pretty much started a chain of events that ended in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Conspiracy theories can alter both the future and the past, and when the methodology of conventional history becomes conflated with that used by deliberately mischievous conspiracy theory construction the picture becomes even more complex.

(Hashi, you must have read Fouccaults Pendulum on where the playful messing around with conspiracy theory construction can get you! )

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Sadly, no--I always meant to read that book but never got around to it. I have no one to blame for that but myself. Fortunately, since both I and the book still exist I can correct that situation.

For anyone interested in diving into conspiracy theories I recommend "Everything is Under Control" by Robert Anton Wilson (of the Illuminatus Trilogy fame). The book is a little dated--first published in 1998--so it misses some very important, more recent conspiracy theories such as 9-11 but it is a great starting point to give yourself a history of them.

Avatar is correct--some conspiracy theories aren't theories because they are true.

[Zarathustra]

Theories involving events which actually could have happened aren't necessarily dumb. This usually involves historical events like the JFK shooting, instead of the nature of reality. But some historical events--like the 9/11 conspiracy theory--are almost as dumb as flat earth. "Fire can't melt steal." "Planes can't take down the towers." "The buildings fell at a freefall consistent with demolition." These are statements of physical facts that are easily debunked.

In order to believe dumb shit like a missile hitting the Pentagon instead of a plane, you'd have to believe that every single bystander who witnessed a plane, and the people on the scene who saw pieces of the plane (including body parts of passengers) are all part of this vast conspiracy. That kind of thinking is just dumb. People sitting at their computers think they know more about reality than the people who actually witnessed the events.

[peter]

But if anyone had told me that the POTUS and diverse other world leaders/statesmen gathered in a woodland defeat to drink, urinate against trees and ultimately do homage to a giant wooden owl I'd had said they were nuts, but .......

(For further info on this and other extreme adventures at the fringes of our society read respected UK journalist (yes - there are still a few of them) Jon Ronson's book Them: Adventures With Extremists or watch the subsequent TV series episodes on YouTube.)

[Avatar]

Sadly, no--I always meant to read that book but never got around to it. I have no one to blame for that but myself. Fortunately, since both I and the book still exist I can correct that situation.

Is a good book.

--A

[Ur Dead]

Just saw an video on the Discovery channel. Astronomers are beginning to
believe that there is another large planet out beyond Pluto. They are currently
looking for it. They speculate that it is a mini Neptune, a gas giant.
All current simulations of our solar system formation fail without that planet.
What they don't know is if it formed within the inner part of the system and
was push out by Jupiter or if in the systems early moments it stole
one from another star.
But as far as Nibiru is concern they don't even consider the possibility.

[Skyweir]

Sadly, no--I always meant to read that book but never got around to it. I have no one to blame for that but myself. Fortunately, since both I and the book still exist I can correct that situation.

Is a good book.

--A

Of course YOU've read it!! I believe we might need to rename you the "Oracle" or the "Depository" or "Archive Av"