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Abducting UFOs and conspiring against conspiracy theorists since 1980.

Where do I go

Been at this since 2002 heard every argument and blew it away. Left many a used husk by the roadside.

Let me at you.

Here is the JREF home site: http://forums.randi.org/

Last year the BAUT forum owners here restricted the Conpiracy section to space-related topics only.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Already enrolled but the chicken livered moderators have to vet everyone.

I took a look at the site and there are no discenting voices on that site, all are of one opinion. Just like the real world eh? No prizes for guessing what goes on there boys and girls.

I don't expect much loose change from them.

actually most 'conspiracy' start with truth at its most basic form.

The problem then arises, of people asking the WRONG questions, and thats when you get obsurd conspiracy theories.

There is a difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory does not start from a nugget of fundamental truth. It starts generally from one of two psychological factors: either the irrational need to portray a designated authority figure as villainous, or an individual's attempt to attain personal recognition by attaching himself in some way to a significant historical event.

I agree that the wrong questions are asked, where "wrong" is defined here as inappropriate to a legitimate investigation of the purported causes and effects pertaining to the theory. That's because the purpose of the "investigation" is to realize one of the goals above, not to arrive at a better understanding of the events. So some questions are motivated by the need to cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt upon the motives of the designated villain. Other questions are asked to make the inquisitor artificially seem important or well-informed.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Until you've had to deal with the spam problems larger boards do, I wouldn't make the assumption that vetting new members has to do with being "chicken-livered."

At any rate, you can also try http://apollohoax.proboards21.com/index.cgi. I don't believe new members are vetted there, but again, if they are, I've given you the reason.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Sudden image of people being pelted with poultry offal.

I really think that using simple principles of critical reasoning and evidence
there are 2 types of CTs: some are valid , some are invalid (looney tunes).

I also think people who engage in the big C's like when people mix up the 2 types of CTs. This way, so much dust is kicked up, that people lump them all together and so that makes it seem that all CTs are looney tunes.

I know this isn't a popular viewpoint on BAUT, but I ask that you think about it any way. Just pretend for a minute that you hadn't heard some of the looniest: like reptilians or moon hoax, then would my argument seem logical?

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"fifty is nifty" , unknown poet

Again, though, that's the difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theorists. It is not illogical or unreasonable to believe that Watergate was a conspiracy. We know it was. We also know about how quickly it fell apart. We know there are people who conspire to raise prices on things. We know there are people who conspire to commit just about any crime you can name. However, none of those fall into the definition of "conspiracy theory." Here, it specifically refers to claims of giant, overreaching conspiracies, which are presented without evidence. It tends to refer to an assumption of a conspiracy as the first-chosen explanation. It also tends to refer to someone who's never looked at the other side's evidence in the first place.

No one here has ever, to my knowledge, disputed that conspiracies exist. (Actually, a recent news item reminds us of another band of conspirators--they've found more human remains, they think, at an old Manson Family hideout.) We've never disputed that governmental conspiracies exist. What we have disputed is that conspiracies that would take the efforts of hundreds, even thousands, of people have remained secret for decades exist. We have disputed that any conspiracy presented here as "the Truth^TM" is real. I think the distinction you are trying to present is valid, but I think your understanding of the terms happens to be faulty.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The principal difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is that a conspiracy becomes more plausible as the investigation proceeds, and there is less need for supposition and inference; they are replaced by circumstantial evidence and testimony. Watergate went from suspicion to conspiracy because digging deeper uncovered facts that could hardly be disputed. Apollo hoaxists simply regurgitate the same, long-debunked claims, and rely on supposition and inference from a very vocal, very small number of entirely unqualified, uninformed people.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

The principal difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is that a conspiracy becomes more plausible as the investigation proceeds...

A specific plot unfolds as well. After years and years of "investigation" by Apollo hoax theorists, they cannot tell us any details about the alleged conspiracy.

Valid in this case means they're actually true, no matter how "looney toons" they might sound. Invalid CTs are untrue, no matter how reasonable-sounding and logical they are.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I have a quote I found in this book I bought at a second hand shop that describes the reason the Bart Sibral's of this world still claim we never walked on the moon. . .
*Ahem*
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair

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The yellow bellied cowards took off my username from JREF. I haven't posted anything on there yet, only been on there two days.

They probably remember the same user name from the loose change forum where I systematically took them apart.

No JREF is a place where no discenting voices are heard.

When the going gets tough the Boxcutter Conspiracy Theorists dive for the nearest rock to crawl under. Just stuck the chicken livered SOBs on the Alex Jones forum exposing them for what they are.

You seem to take rather personal pleasure in winning and gloating over it. I wasn't aware that's what the search for truth was supposed to look like.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

A specific plot unfolds as well.

Yes, good point. Evidence falls into place without having to be force-fit.

After years and years of "investigation" by Apollo hoax theorists, they cannot tell us any details about the alleged conspiracy.

Nor details nor big picture. Conspiracists cannot agree on which missions were faked and why. They cannot agree whether NASA was simply careless, or whether there were whistle-blowers. They can't agree on whether the Russians were in on it or not. After decades of writing books and producing videos they're no closer to a coherent, supported scenario than they were at the beginning. That's a pretty clear sign that an idea persists only because some people refuse to let it go.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Not really. The quality of a claim rests on the evidence supporting it. To accept or reject a claim based on some subset of implausible other claims would be to engage in the Strawman Fallacy. That's sort of antithetical to the desire to call an argument "logical".

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Thank God for magnetism.