"Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer." - Fazor
Many thanks to Noclevername for having it in the signature.

So what happens when a CT'er stumbles across a 'great truth' like this?

Searching for the truth, yes ... but this is Australia, here there is no government on your back. Perhaps in a nation of thinkers and inventors there would be at least a glimmer of interest ... but certainly not here in Oz.

It really is an exercise in madness, here anyway or at least undeniable frustration. So now that I have 'hit' a number of CT threads am I back to watching the banned posters list patiently?

There really must be so much more to it than a group of ill informed non-conformers. Except for 911 and the moon landing hoax people (they are just plain wrong) there is stuff we just don't want to know or are not allowed to know.

And I know I am right because I posted long ago just watch out when I hit the CT areana.

Right, I like all the members here, the moderators are really nice people and very, very fair and it is only because I am such a suspicious person I am now going to hover around the banned posters log for a while

Why must there "be more to it"? There are a lot of ignorant people in this world.

Well, there's nothing to discuss then, is there.

Seriously, since you mentioned stuff we "are not allowed to know", how about that guy on TV selling the book of "health secrets" that the government "supposedly" doesn't want you to know about.

Do you believe he is telling the truth??...and if so, why??

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

There really must be so much more to it than a group of ill informed non-conformers.

No, there really mustn't. In addition to RAF's observation regarding the extent of ignorance, there are also plenty of people who ironically breathe easier believing that there is some vast evil out there waiting to be blamed for all their own perceived invididual failings.

It's so much easier for some to believe, say, that the government-controlled curriculum is why they can't graduate from college instead of the more likely unwillingness to study hard. Or to believe that the good jobs go to people who schmooze the boss, rather than acknowledge one's own likely inexperience.

"I would have succeeded but for that evil influence," is a mental defense mechanism that helps our ego cope with failure. The more credible the existence of the imagined enemy, the more effective the mechanism. Government is naturally an easy target because of how much it pervades our society.

I'd also like to continue RAF's theme of medical claims "the government doesn't want you to know about." I ran across an advertisement for one of those sticky foot pads that promises to remove "toxins" from your body through the soles of your feet, while you sleep. Their pitch was built around the notion of government suppression. Checking into that particular brand, I found they had been cited previously by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for false advertising. They had cleverly spun that obstacle into conspiracy rhetoric designed to push one of the alternative-medicine hot buttons: that the FDA exists only to promote and defend traditional medicine and its associated industry and business practices.

People do indeed successfully define themselves in terms of opposition, whether it's real opposition or not. And as long as the human brain is wired to do that, conspiracism will thrive. It will simply manifest itself in different ways that appeal to the prevalent culture.

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

Chip Skylark wasn't talking about RCH, but he could have been:
"Hey, Ricky, you're so, so icky
Just they thought of bein' around you makes me so so sicky
Hey, Ricky, would you please explain why you get so much enjoyment out of harmin' our brains?
Ew, ew, ew!
Icky Ricky!
Ew, ew!
Icky Ricky!
Ew, ew!"

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I will admit to being one of them (the ignorant), I just don't know enough. It is not easy inside the mind of this human being. By being as open as I can perhaps there is something to be learned about the terrifying world inside the mind of an ATM'er or CT'er. Perhaps there might be benefit in being able to discuss the motives behind where the ideas are.

I like the smiley. Things we are not allowed to know ... I don't mean the government or Illuminati or whatever, the absolute certainty we have in the firmness of the ground beneath out feet, the arrow of time and connection in thought. These ideas outside ATM are what worry me, determinism. What if it is all just preset and trying to get a better understanding is like eternally trying to roll the great rock up a hill, just to have it slip back before the top.

The 'and I know' bit is my contribution to conspiracy ... meaning if I am impolite or post out of area I could find myself cooling my heels awhile on the banned list. If it was for just being an irritant I would already be there.

I haven't read it but could quite understand that any product launch be it a book or car or even an idea needs its gimmick. I didn't really get into the eleven secret herbs and spices stuff much, just enjoyed the food figuring it must have passed health regulations somehow

"There really must be so much more to it than a group of ill informed non-conformers."

Somehow I wish I was one of them ... I know I have failings and worse ... lack of understandings. I don't breathe easier until something works safely a number of times or has a proven record of not falling out of the sky.

Thank you JayUtah for answering on this and the other thread. NASA to me is one of the crowning achievements of humankind wanting to know more of exactly what it is that we live in. Here in Australia there was a space program back in the 1960's which like so many other innovations failed due to lack of funding and maybe people just let it go due to lack of interest.

I am in a line of work where one is paid to do and not to think. In some ways that is a break from the flood of thinking, but why is a mystery to me

This is quite likely the largest reason. We see it a lot in this world...

• I can't get a job because of the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO)!
• I don't have any money because of the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO)!
• I only have drug convictions because the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO) made it illegal!
• I'd be able to run the world my way if the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO) weren't already doing it!
• Everything that is wrong in this world is the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO)!
• The (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO) just want to keep me down and be a slave to them!

They near once stop to consider that the reason they have no job and thus no money and no perceived power is because of the chip the size of alaska that is resting on their shoulder.

They wake up in the morning and procede to then blame the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO) for everything that happens to them. If the traffic light stops them, it was the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO) fault. If a guy cuts them off as they are driving then he is working for the (Jews/Catholics/Freemasons/Blacks/Man/Whites/Government/NWO) and so on and so forth. I think that on the whole it seems so common that it might be part of human nature, just some people seem to take it to the extreme. It's a persecution complex, everyone is out to get you, to deliberately slightly you or put you down.

It also rears it's head in the "if I wasn't a (Jew/Christian/Buddist/Black/White/Man/Woman) then they wouldn't have done that to me" form as well. In the end it is more comformtable to believe that you as a person are perfect in your personality, intelligence, knowledge, and being, and thus anyone that disagrees with you, or does anything you can perceive as a slight must be doing so because they hate you due to your politics/race/sex/religion/hairstyle rather then accept that you may not be perfect, or worse, that you might actually be wrong in your own beliefs and assumptions. And if anyone dares to tell you this, well they just don't understand what it is to be a (Jew/Christian/Buddist/Black/White/Man/Woman)!

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Somehow I wish I was one of them ... I know I have failings and worse ... lack of understandings.

We all do. Failure and disappointment is part of life. There has to be something in our brains that squirts a little endorphin out there, pats us on the back, and gives us the drive to try again. Making believe that failure is only a misfortune is part of that.

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

Perhaps the Apollo hoax believers tend to be underachievers that blame their failures on the covert actions of a higher authority, but in the JFK conspiracy community, there are many people with Phds, MD's, and at least one with both. These are full-blown conspiracy theorists, not just folks who think we haven't been told all the details.

I haven't been able to discern a common cause, only a common behavior.

Probably because there isn't one common reason for a CT to be a CT. In the case of your Phd/MDs possibly because they want to play a little like they are Sherlock Holmes in their off time, to add a little mystery to their lives. (And for those may I recommend Ripperology.) Perhaps they want life to be a little bit less mundane than it is. Who knows but I like to think/hope the majority of HBs are younger types, like I was when I believed in such stuff, and who will grow out of it. People (or 'peeps', as the youth of today like to say) who in the past would have been patted on the head and sent away but now have an equal footing with the likes of Hoagland because of the cesspool that is the internet.

It is an interesting subject for study but the conspiracies are so varied that there can really be no one reason for CTs to want to believe in NWO/Illuminati/Hoagland/etc.... And who knows, they coluld be right.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

But even most of those JFK conspiracists with higher degrees probably don't actually know that much about the case. Vince Bugliosi tells the story of speaking to a group of lawyers, none of whom believed that the evidence favours Oswald having done it. He then asked how many of them had actually read the Warren Report; not one had.

Still, I do tend to distinguish JFK conspiracism from Apollo Hoax conspiracism. Because there was only one man involved, and he died shortly after, there simply isn't the same weight of evidence. True, there's a lot of evidence, but it's piddling compared to how much there is that, say, Apollo was real.

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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!"

Michael Shermer's book "Why People Believe Weird Things" has a chapter "Why Smart People Believe Weird Things". His answer is basically that belief is not correlated with intelligence, and smart believers are good at coming up with reasons to ignore evidence against their beliefs.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

Good jobs go to people who work hard and develop their skills. But the best (paying) jobs do indeed go to those whose primary skill is schmoozing the boss, in other words those who are best at playing the game of company politics. Dilbert's Pointy Haired Boss is a real phenomenon.

It's not a conspiracy, just the way things are.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

My contribution to the definition of humanity; "Man is the rationalizing animal."

Although cats seem to do it too...("No, I didn't miss my jump. Why would I want to explore the top of the dresser? No, really, this bit of floor I just landed on is really fascinating...")

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I don't know how it is in all fields, particularly the more professional ones. Down where the technical people don't need advanced degrees (although they often have them anyhow) there is a distinct difference between salaries, benefits, and sheer hireability of management versus technical staff.

Managers hire managers; people who can walk that walk. They also hire people who walk that same walk around them and put them down on the shop floor (where they walk right into the band saw).

I wonder what the workplace would be like if technical people used their skill sets and attitude as a litmus, and evaluated and hired management through the methods they use to find competent technicians? I have a sneaky feeling you'd get more competent and efficient management. But also quite possibly more abrasive, abusive, and just plain crazy management as well.

At least it would save from getting glib liars with padded resumes instead of actual welders down on the floor...

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I would say that it may be because they remember JFK and thought he was a very good president and thus want to "avenge" him.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

You can't paint conspiracism with so singular a color. There are indeed those for whom a paranoid worldview is most comfortable, but that doesn't explain all the behavior. We've also discussed elsewhere the notion of importance: that everyone wants to be "great." We each define greatness in a different way, but all humans are united in our pursuit for what we think it is.

In that vein, a highly-educated individual may not necessarily meet his own standard of greatness through the ordinary practice of his profession. As a PhD he may consider himself only one among many. As a PhD arguing the JFK assassination conspiracy theory, he may achieve a greater degree of recognition in a small circle of believers. The big fish, small pond statement comes to mind.

I tend to think that may be Steven Jones' motivation. As an ordinary physics professor he was not likely to get much recognition, especially after his involvement with cold fusion. As a physicist "investigating" 9/11, he gets much more attention, even if it's not strictly the kind of attention one would normally want.

David Percy may be a small-time photographer and filmmaker -- just one among many. But as a leading proponent of the Moon hoax theory, he gets exposure far beyond that which would normally accompany a journeyman photographer.

And here we start drawing a distinction between those who promote conspiracy theories and those who believe them. They aren't necessarily the same people.

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

I tend to think that may be Steven Jones' motivation. As an ordinary physics professor he was not likely to get much recognition, especially after his involvement with cold fusion. As a physicist "investigating" 9/11, he gets much more attention, even if it's not strictly the kind of attention one would normally want.

Well, I certainly recognize him - as the "expert" who identified as molten metal slag a hunk of concrete with rebar sticking out.

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"Slapping a guy on the head is just as funny now as it was eighty years ago."

But even most of those JFK conspiracists with higher degrees probably don't actually know that much about the case.

I had in mind Dr. David Mantik, Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Joe Riley, Dr. Robert Livingston, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, Dr. John Costella, and Dr. James Fetzer. Except for perhaps Fetzer, who doesn't seem to bother himself with the details of the case, all probably know the case rather well. Crenshaw was one of the doctors at Parkland who participated in treating JFK.

Vince Bugliosi tells the story of speaking to a group of lawyers, none of whom believed that the evidence favours Oswald having done it. He then asked how many of them had actually read the Warren Report; not one had.

Most conspiracy theorists haven't come within 20 paces of the report, it seems, but there are plenty who wade through the evidence looking for their daily dose of anomalies. For most people, however, a little evidence goes along away for dispelling conspiracy theories.

Still, I do tend to distinguish JFK conspiracism from Apollo Hoax conspiracism.

It is fully understandable why most people might think that there was a conspiracy. Political conspiracies are not uncommon and it is a suitable default position to hold. However, when I first read about Apollo conspiracies on these forums, I was surprised that the argument forms were virtually indistinguishable from the JFK ones. In some cases, this is because the same person, Jack White, works both fields. Conspiracy theorists, and creationists, I suppose, do tend to gravitate toward anomaly hunting.

There was a skyscraper in NYC that, it was found, had been poorly, and inadequately engineered. There was genuine concern about the possibility of collapse, or toppling, after it was constructed. The local area was canvassed re: residents in buildings, numbers, etc, under the guise of some sort of poll or census or something. They were not told of the situation.
The building's structure was quietly reinforced with none of the locals any the wiser until some time later.
I saw this on a TV show some time back. It was a true "conspiracy" that was indeed a well kept secret at the time. So, such things do occur.
Anyone remember the building? I recollect it was cruciform in floor plan, that's about it.

We've also discussed elsewhere the notion of importance: that everyone wants to be "great."

This is understandable. One finds reinforcing those situations in which others are looking up to you or grateful to you for something you have said or done. However, one can also be "great" by, say, finding a web forum where the Apollo Hoax discussion has come up, finding the answers on Clavius, and then being the hero by answering the conspiracy theorist. I once found myself in an informal social situation where somebody was strongly arguing the 9/11 conspiracy theory, going on about how the buildings collapsed too fast. I thought, "Oh, heck, what did Windley say about that? I wish I paid more attention to the 9/11 stuff. Something about dynamic loads and static loads..." Anyway, I was able to answer well enough to quiet things down, for which everyone was thankful and for which, I suppose, I derived some small, momentary sense of "greatness."

Conspiracy theorist rarely catch on to the fact that if they listened to you folks, they could just as well play the bigshot shooting down conspiracy theories, and for once, actually having the facts on their sides. That puzzles me about the notion of greatness as a motivator for conspiracy theorists.

In that vein, a highly-educated individual may not necessarily meet his own standard of greatness through the ordinary practice of his profession. As a PhD he may consider himself only one among many. As a PhD arguing the JFK assassination conspiracy theory, he may achieve a greater degree of recognition in a small circle of believers. The big fish, small pond statement comes to mind.

You may find it hard to believe, but John Costella was not always a conspiracy theorist, at least not publicly. I knew him for about a year beforehand. He always thought the Zapruder Hoax claims were ridiculous, etc. At that time, he was working on de-blurring algorithms and wondered if they could be put to use on the Zapruder film. I helped with the project in whatever minor ways I could. One day, I get a note from him saying that he discovered the JFK Research Forum and that he couldn't associate with us anymore. He was hostile after that with the usual accusations of disinformation. As someone noted, it was like he just decided one day to be a crackpot.

For reference, it would be something like if Jay himself turned up one day arguing for this or that conspiracy. My impression at the time was that I was seeing something similar to that depicted to John Nash in The Beautiful Mind.

Perhaps Costella never achieved what his PhD should have earned him, and perhaps his conspiracism was a reaction to that. He certainly became a big fish in a small pond at JFK Research, but man, there's some recognition one would rather not have. On the other hand, perhaps he was a closet conspiracist all along whose shortcomings followed from that and who found kindred spirits on the Internet.

Isn't this discussion moving outside of board rules? It's for discussion of space related conspiracies.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Yes, though he has greatly exaggerated his role.

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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!"

sn't this discussion moving outside of board rules? It's for discussion of space related conspiracies.

Perhaps. It can be finished at www.apollohoax.net, if anyone cares. I just wanted to point out that the Apollo conspiracy theorist is not the only type of CT. Some CTs are academically well-accomplished. I'll delete my posts if they present problems.

Well, that would be a whole different kind of problem--it's against board rules!

I don't think any of us would dispute that there are CTs with academic credentials. To pick another example, I know someone with both a BA and a BS who's unsure about 9/11, and I know someone with a BS who believes only 100,000 people died in the Holocaust. I went to college with both of them, and I know they didn't get those beliefs there! (Well, I'm pretty sure the first one graduated in my class, in June of '01. So you'd figure.) And again, most people who believe in CTs do so outside their own field. Even a doctor isn't really qualified to judge Kennedy as much as a law enforcement official, someone whose whole job is looking at evidence toward guilt or innocence. Very few Apollo HBs know much of anything about rockets--or photographic analysis, if that's their thing. They think they do, but of course, that's different.

There are educated people a-plenty who believe in conspiracy theories. What's more important, I think, is the relevance of their education. My acquaintance's BS in fisheries doesn't qualify her as a historian.

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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!"

That was the Citicorp building. It had an unusual foundation due to having to accommodate a church that shared its site. The reinforcements were done ASAP to try to ready it for hurricane season but were only partly done when a hurricane was headed for NYC, and could have toppled the building.

BTW, BOT, I always wondered how much energy that angled roof saves/creates. Or is it a beacon for signaling alien spacecraft?

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

I don't think any of us would dispute that there are CTs with academic credentials. To pick another example, I know someone with both a BA and a BS who's unsure about 9/11, and I know someone with a BS who believes only 100,000 people died in the Holocaust.

Hence, we haven't really been successful yet in figuring out why conspiracy theorists behave as they do. Are they simply blaming an occult entity for their failures? Are they simply in the grips of an errant belief? Is there a screw loose, and if so, what does this screw do when tightened normally?

There are educated people a-plenty who believe in conspiracy theories. What's more important, I think, is the relevance of their education. My acquaintance's BS in fisheries doesn't qualify her as a historian.

It is equally as interesting that many, perhaps most everybody, has an explanation for why conspiracy theorists behave as they do. The CT is thought to be compensating for personal failure or seeking greatness. The CT is said to act as he does because he has a distrust of the government. Presumably, if he disabused himself of this distrust, he would see the fallacy of the conspiracy theory he clings to. Or, the CT lacks the facts and the skills required to understand the matter. We think that if he studied appropriately, he would think differently. Or, he is in it for the money, etc.

We seem to be have the same loss explaining conspiracy theorists as they do explaining the world around them. And we both insist on positing this or that mechanism in an attempt to make sense of the matter.

More useful perhaps to think of a conspiracy belief as a mechanism. However it first arrives in the brain, it contains tools (as does a virus) to protect itself.

Our minds are very, very good at making a determination, even unconsciously, that then becomes invisible to the conscious mind.

(Just reminded of this once more...just spent an eleven-hour day trying to fit a 14-piece band and 40-member choir into a sixteen-channel snake with one bad channel. This morning I woke up and realized; the bad channel was on the sound board. I could have used the snake channel and repatched it!)

Terry Bradford, if anyone cares. Think of it as a torch singer backed by a fusion group padded with a bunch of talented kids (including a string quartet).

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I've always considered CT to be a sort of religion for an irreligious age. I mean, it's just less stressful to believe that somebody, somewhere, is in control of what's going on, even it that somebody is evil, than the alternative. Which is that we're all screaming headlong into the future at 60 seconds per minute & nobody, but nobody, knows what happens next.

More useful perhaps to think of a conspiracy belief as a mechanism. However it first arrives in the brain, it contains tools (as does a virus) to protect itself.
Our minds are very, very good at making a determination, even unconsciously, that then becomes invisible to the conscious mind.

What we see is the conspiracy theorist himself acting protectively. He may verbally defend ideas, or typically, display aggressive hostility towards those who express disagreement. In an attempt to explain the conspiracy theorist's behavior, we may do as done here. We take what we see, the protective behavior, and ascribe it to an inner mechanism, in this case a belief in the brain. Our explanation effectively is: the conspiracy theorist acts protectively because a belief in his brain acts protectively (or causes the protective behavior).

That is not really an explanation, but we make explanations like that all the time. These forms of explanations are sometimes called Folk Psychology, or more humorously, Virtus Dormitiva.

This illustrates my point rather well. The conspiracy theorist imagines all sorts of hidden or behind-the-scenes agents or mechanisms that cause the behavior that he directly sees even though he has no evidence of such hidden agents. We, ironically, do the same when trying to explain the behavior of the conspiracy theorist. We have no qualms about ascribing particular brain mechanisms, even though most of us know very little if anything about brains.

The brain offers the same advantage that the secret government agent does for the conspiracy theorist: It is not visible, not open for inspection, and hence, one can posit just about anything without being immediately disproved.

Again, just to remain clear on this, I am not being critical of anyone's explanations. I'm just trying to point out similarities between our typical attempts to explain and the conspiracy theorists'. If anything, it may provide a sense of what it feels like to be a conspiracy theorist.

I think it's valid to point out the tendency to model human thought in terms of block diagrams with arrows going here and there, and to point out the danger of taking such interpretations too literally. We talk about "mechanisms" in the brain as if it were something that could be taken out, tinkered with, and put back in place like a stubborn caburetor.

Fundamentally any model that provides a framework for understanding how we can modify the stimulus and predict the outcome has some value, but only through stimulus-response mapping, not by means of causation within the cognitive processes.

However, I will say one thing: Many years ago I sustained an injury that led to nerve damage in my left shoulder. The process by which neurologists diagnosed that injury was exactly the same as the process I as and engineer used to diagnose transmission errors in cable harnesses. The theory and equipment were the same -- a process by which to isolate and analyze the characteristics of a waveform as certain variables were manipulated. While the three-inch needle embedded in my shoulder was definitely uncomfortable, I was perfectly comfortable watching the neurologist's spectrum analyzer (er, um, cough, electromyograph) lock onto the ~800 Hz waveform of the human nervous system and point to peaks and valleys that just weren't right. They were as well-versed in what that that form should look like as I would be in the waveform of the sensor harness of some mechanism I had designed.

While I understand the huge difference between neurology and cognitive psychology, I will say that some models are awfully predictive, even if they do sound presumptive bunkum.

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