I am Proud of Being a Conspiracy Theorist

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120040792#Comment_120040792

Can any of yee lot post anything without some little insult included??

Dont think so...

Anyhoo , how many miles 'off thread' has this been driven ...............................

The Nal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120040868#Comment_120040868

Who is "yee lot"?

This thread is a binfire though yeah. The original post is one of the most cringy things Ive ever read.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120041820#Comment_120041820

If you genuinely think that a respected computer science and math PHD doesn't have the tools to critically evaluate other domains of knowledge

The Discovery Institute is creationist outfit with a religious agenda masquerading as a authentic scientific centre. They are trying hard to get the science of evolution out of the classroom, or at the very least have their rebranded version of creationism taught alongside it. Even if it's members were all evolutionary biologists or in related fields (clue, they aren't), the information they are producing is considered pseudo-science by respected palaeontologists, anthropologists, biologists and wider scientific community.

It's very devious of them, very unchristian too when you think about it.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042070#Comment_120042070

The earth wasn't "created" 6,000 years ago, we knew this in the 18th century.

If you are religious and want to believe something like that, that's fine, but it's scientifically false. These people are charlatans who use their unrelated degrees (many of my friends have comp sci degrees) to bamboozle followers into thinking they are "science-y" and have legitimate scientific criticism of current theories, when they have anything but.

As mentioned the whole thing walks, talks and quacks like a scam, a conspiracy. A right wing creationist think-tank setting up a false scientific front to lend credibility to it's woo and manipulate people into believing that woo. There just an extra level of hypocrisy to it, because they are religious and "thou shalt not lie" and all that.

joeguevara

Catch me up..is someone trying to say that the earth is 6000 years old?

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042151#Comment_120042151

Yep. We have reached the defending creationism and it's proponents on the basis of the high IQ and quality education afforded by religious institutions stage.

Which raises questions as to what qualifies as a conspiracy and as to which religion holds the universal truth. If I subscribe to a non abrahamic religion? One that opines that the universe is 14billion years old? Does that mean my religion is wrong?

The nonsense of relying on faith as a "proof" and a shield against needing to substantiate a position.

That kernel of truth at the heart of every story, that CTs are now allegory and we should be comforted by that kernel of truth that set off the theory. Yet whenever anyone tries to actually query what that kernel is? We are bullies, book burners and god forbid... Iconoclasts.

Funnily enough, we are at least at the stage of this conversation where more than one on the CT side of the aisle are agreeing that CTs are in the main, stories.

So is it a space to tell unsubstantiated stories and criticism free safe spaces that they want? Which is quite ironic given the "anti-woke" stance really.

silliussoddius

Sopping wet with irony, down to the username.

Want to do a pool on the next beliefs to come out. I'll go with the end times and q

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042219#Comment_120042219

So all CTs mentioned have so far found to have some kernel of truth, as discussed. All debunkers have been ' debunked ' as credible rationalists.

Hmmm. A little too much "I decree that everyone is wrong but me because I baselessly say so".

Have been here for years, (so far) I haven't come across any user CT that turned out to be true. During the pandemic is was chock-full of Covid conspiracies, (so far) none of those happened.

Likewise haven't seen any evidence that "populist" conspiracy theories like Sandy hook, moon landing hoax, chem-trails, 911, one-world-government, etc have any truth to them whatsoever.

This is not to say that conspiracies don't happen, they do, on an almost daily basis, just rarely the type that are discussed or hinted at here.

joeguevara

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042225#Comment_120042225

I was wondering when we started hearing about holes in evolution. So the basis of this thread is Conspiracy theorists are proud they are uninformed religious zealots or is the person purporting creationism trying to portray conspiracy theorists in a poor light?

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042365#Comment_120042365

It's actually a fascinating area to study, figuring out the evolution chain for each individual part of an organism, what the "prior art" was, what the missing fossil record looks like (given most of what we have are vertebrates which are a relatively small % of organisms).

It's also (unsuccessfully scientifically) being used by creationists to put doubt on evolution (if that bit doesn't have a full chain, therefore God) and it sounds like it could be true (our friend above is completely sucked in by it).

Also funny to see them try and use maths to prove the existence of an all powerful being.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042314#Comment_120042314

"This is not to say that conspiracies don't happen, they do, on an almost daily basis, just rarely the type that are discussed or hinted at here"

Go ahead - Give an example , Start a thread and we can discuss them.

Might be better than the circle hyperbole going on in here now. 😫

robinph

Go ahead - Give an example , Start a thread and we can discuss them.

Threads will already exist in politics for conspiracies about defrauding elections or PPE contracts, or maybe in motoring regarding conspiracy to fake emission tests for a couple of examples if there is anything to be discussed about the topics.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042923#Comment_120042923

Why arent they moved to CT forum then , if they exist ?

Do the usual crew go poo pooing the conspiracy being talked about there also ? 🤔

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042314#Comment_120042314

Mmmmm.

Where conspiracy believers (they don't deserve the appellation of theoreticians) tend to go wrong is that they usually have a penchant for going big, as it were. Most of the silly conspiracies are of the incredible type (in the true sense of the word), like fake moon landings or 9/11 inside job stuff, and require a slavish devotion to mere contrary alternatives to propagate themselves.

Whereas, in comparison, the average real conspiracy is generally quite a small affair, like the DNC's machinations behind the scenes to oust Bernie Sanders from two Presidential runs, despite huge support for him. Or even MK-Ultra. Or if we go back to 9/11, the real conspiracy there was that the Neo-Cons used that attack to launch an illegal war in Middle East under a mask of propaganda lies about WMD's. That was something that America Inc. had been wanting to do for many years. Although that, in itself, wasn't really a small affair and had devastating worldwide consequences, most of which America didn't see. But it certainly isn't on the scale of the "inside job" narrative that was being put about in the wake of the attacks.

The problem for the conspiracy believers is that actual conspiratorial events usually aren't that amazing. So they have to invent the larger and more alluring picture.

It's also a touch ironic that we are now at the religious stage in the "discussion". Like believers in a religion, conspiracy believers can't have the beliefs questioned. Because under even the slightest investigation they find that what they believe in falls apart like wet tissue paper, and what they believe in is done so simply because they want to believe it.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042894#Comment_120042894

Sure, e.g. I started a thread on one here

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058109958/russian-opposition-member-poisoned-with-novichok

As mentioned before have just finished a book titled "conspiracy". It's about the conspiracy to take down the site Gawker.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043029#Comment_120043029

I've read it before, but, as I said above, the examples often used as proof, end up being consistent with evolutionary theory when investigated, this has happened time and again.

Now, there is lots and lots we don't know (missing fossil records being a big problem) but the maths has only shown apparent problems in areas where there had been little study up to that point, evolutionary biology is massive, like, impossible within many multiple lifetimes to investigate each track fully and prove it correct or incorrect and that allows people to live in a grey area to purport "something else" but they are doing so in the absence of a theory of their own.

Now, this is a good thing (when looked at scientifically) if the person is going out and finding that data to prove or disprove it and build their own theory. A lot of these people aren't doing that.

Myself, I hope we do find more, new protein and molecular interactions that we're missing today as it will expand our knowledge and allow us to seek out new cures and treatments and make everyone's life better as a result.

What I do know is that there has been 0 evidence of intelligence design found (the main counter-theory).

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043029#Comment_120043029

Hmmm, these sound like claims from our friend Meyer again..

He claimed that animals in the Cambrian explosion didn't predecessors. That's not true.

It's directly addressed in the video below (I've even timestamped it)

https://youtu.be/Akv0TZI985U?t=944

Remember, it's one thing for someone to be wrong. This guy and his co-conspirators aren't just wrong, they are deliberately lying and distorting science as part of an agenda to cancel evolution out of schools.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043148#Comment_120043148

Wow... 😲

I didnt think you had a suspicious bone in your body ...... 😜

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042938#Comment_120042938

Because they actually happened and real evidence of the conspiracies exist. No, they won't get "poo pooed", but if someone was to suggest that a politician handed out PPE contracts to their mates because Bill Gates told them to by use of 5G signals, or lizard people were responsible for faked vehicle emissions tests then maybe they would be.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043307#Comment_120043307

They are factual ? So they arent , in fact Conspiracy theories then? 🤔

So why would Dohnjoe use them as an example ???? 😮

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043316#Comment_120043316

So a conspiracy theory, that is evidenced, plausible and likely true?

Isn't in your opinion a conspiracy theory, because it's "factual"?

What is it you think a conspiracy theory actually is? If not the former? A collection of circumstances, evidence, inference and coincidence that form a plausible basis to extrapolate a cause or aim?

Or are they fairy tales for adults, to be discussed without challenge?

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043316#Comment_120043316

Depends on the case. With the Skripal poisonings, there were suspects, evidence, etc, but there hasn't been a court case so it can't be definitively described as solved. Technically it's still a conspiracy theory, albeit a strong one.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043361#Comment_120043361

So its a graduated scale then?

You need a court case to copper fasten the facts?

Or its just not proven ? - Like most Theories? but its a strong one ....

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120042124#Comment_120042124

The earth wasn't "created" 6,000 years ago, we knew this in the 18th century.

Actually there were rumblings against the 6000 year old earth before that. Leonardo DaVinci discussed it in his notebooks. While working in Milan on diffeerent projects, many never finished, as was too usual with him, oul Leo was fond of taking walks in the hills observing the topography and geology to both make better paintings and to sate his constant hunger for direct observation. When he was working in Milan one day a local farmer had brought him seashells from the mountains thinking this would interest him. They did and he investigated further. One day he found a fossil of a "great fish"(likely an eocene whale) in a cave high in the mountains and he wasn't just interested in the "fancy" stuff, he also observed trace fossils, the burrows of animals in the rock.

He came to the conclusion these animals and traces were "petrified". That the flood tale couldn't begin to adequately explain the layer after layer after layer of such things found nearly everywhere he looked. That water was one of the strongest driver of landscape change but was mostly impossibly slow. That all these layers couldn't be explained by a sudden biblical flood, or there had been uncountable floods over time. Therefore the time this all took was far longer than believed.

Sadly Leo never published his stuff so his ideas(and not jus this) didn't transmit until centuries later. Oddly too as he was smack bang in the middle of the printing revolution. He did do a frontispiece for a mate's book as a favour, but printing itself didn't interest him. It would be like he was living today and didn't have an internet connection.

And long before Leo, Aristotle had written about how big geological processes were too slow for a human lifetime, or many lifetimes. In Roman times Pliny had figured out that amber was fossilised tree sap. In the Middle Ages Persian and Chinese thinkers thought similarly about the slow processes of geology and that it had taken a very very long time.

This 6000 year old stuff is entirely down to branch of literalist Judeo-Christian commentators and took off mostly post Reformation in the face of increasing science of the Enlightenment.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043355#Comment_120043355

You and the few others are the ones bleating on about "FACTS" .....

I havent harped on about CT's as being definitive proof. As i have stated in the CT forum MANY times, i just read what people thought/felt happened. Im not expecting anyone in there to find a second shooter, or the cameraman that filmed the moon set , or the man the detonated the Twin Towers - i read them as entertainment.

The ones that are laughable , i laughed at . The ones with some substance , i read through.

i never engaged until the threads were disrupted continually and became unreadable .... and then they were unbearable.

"conspiracy theory, an attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as the result of the actions of a small powerful group. Such explanations reject the accepted narrative surrounding those events; indeed, the official version may be seen as further proof of the conspiracy."

https://www.britannica.com/topic/conspiracy-theory

I dont get offended/triggered that people dont have factual evidence, i just read them for what they are - A persons OPINION.

They DONT HAVE to provide the facts , evidence etc ... They really dont, even if being bullied and ridiculed.

and if people dont like that, they really dont have to engage/return/say anything....... But......... They will.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043233#Comment_120043233

It's very very strange that we're being told that creationism is a good example of conspiracy theorist thinking. And that we are being told that we have to accept it without question because "experts" with "high IQs" have decreed it so with math. We aren't allowed to doubt them or ask questions.

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043428#Comment_120043428

You are the one who bemoaned an actual Conspiracy as not being a CT because of facts.

For something to be a theory, rather than an idea. It requires an evidential basis, it needs as cognitive dissident describes it a "kernel of truth".

Yet, in over 15 years of popping in and out of the CT forum? That kernel of truth has yet to be provided,never.

So, I ask you plainly. What is the purpose of the CT forum you'd prefer to see if you had your way?

A repository of urban legends and trust me bro stories, a safe space to share "you won't believe this BS?

Or would you prefer to actually engage in discussion to test the strength of a theory?

I note that Cognitive Dissident has made a very clear delineation between what is crackpot, 9/11, Sandyhook and so on, and creationism/intelligent design supporting theory. That is at least an effort I can appreciate even while I disagree with his core belief in intelligent design.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043394#Comment_120043394

It's subjective. Information also evolves and comes to light.

For example if I say, the government secretly gave a guy cancer to punish him - sounds like a conspiracy theory

However that happened with Litvinenko, but it just hasn't been proven in any formal sense.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043428#Comment_120043428

You can read them as entertainment and laugh at them, but the people spreading them can believe they are facts, as we often see here.

That can have consequences. Imagine losing a kid to a tragedy, then having to move house multiple and never being able to visit your child's grave because online conspiracy theorists claimed you were an actor and systematically harassed you and your family.

Would you find it entertaining then? No. That's harmful.

There's never anything wrong with exposing lies.

greenspurs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043316#Comment_120043316

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120043485#Comment_120043485

"You are the one who bemoaned an actual Conspiracy as not being a CT because of facts."

No i didnt , i meant if something is a FACT - would that stop it being a theory then??

Wouldnt a theory contain one or more/numerous facts but a fact would not contain a theory.?

A theory never becomes a fact?. It is an explanation of one or more facts.

Do you believe the theory that "an old dog cant learn new tricks" ? - I dont.