Hat tips: Screw Loose Change and LGF
Conspiracy theorists differ from normal thought and logic, but they tend to follow these general rules.
1. It is only necessary to observe the evidence that you wish to.
If 20 people witness an event and say it happened one way, and a 21st witness says something different, the 21st witness is more interesting.
2. A lack of evidence is only proof of the depth of the cover-up.
A good conspiracy is an unprovable one.
3. Anyone who doesn’t agree with a conspiracy theory is either part of the cover-up (see rule 2) or just a close minded drone of the government.
Conspiracy theorists almost universally start out assuming that ‘THEY/THEM’ have an unlimited ability to falsify evidence and that most of the ‘official version’ of the event is a fabrication.
4. The law of inverse proportionality of authority.The validity of any source is inversely proportional to its authoritativeness .
Anyone who works for the government or a corporation is worthy of suspicion. Conversely, anyone who has no tangible credentials other than having “studied this for years and years” and possibly writing books is the best person to question about what really happened.
5. Occams Corollary: The complexity and difficulty of a conspiracy theory is only proof of the depth and deviousness of the conspiracy.
For the conspiracy theorist, any event in which certain details are even slightly mysterious is another round of a never-ending improvisational game of Mad Libs.
6. The Law of Infinite Permutations: Even in the case that an infinite amount of statements are proven wrong an equally infinite amount of new statements can be made.
A conspiracy theory is never disproven. When the theorist is faced with an inescapable fact, he just alters the theory to weave around it.
(Rules quoted from this article, examples mine)
While a number of generalizations can be made about conspiracy theorists (and 9/11 conspiracy theorists in particular), it is important to remember that sometimes real conspiracies happen. 9/11 was in fact the result of a conspiracy — an Islamic supremacist conspiracy to destroy America. Here are my rules for realistic conspiracy theory.
1. Stupidity is more likely than malice.
Apparently the government had enough information that if it had smart people in the right places, 9/11 could have been stopped. I won’t dispute that. What I will dispute is the notion that they somehow deliberately allowed, or even caused, it to happen. The fact is that anyone with an understanding of the scientific laws governing bureaucracies (Murphy’s Law, the Peter Principle, etc.) would understand that there are thousands of ways the different reports and memoranda could manage to avoid being brought together.
A good, real conspiracy takes advantage of time-tested sources of stupidity to conceal the conspiracy’s goals. For example, not being too secretive, but dividing the not-too-secretive business over multiple locations and counting on people who saw you not to add two and two, is a potentially winning conspiracy strategy. And indeed this is how the 19 hijackers on 9/11/2001 succeeded (for the most part)
2. People are curious but lazy, and will believe you if what you say sounds and feels like it is true (or should be true).
The “Big Lie” model works, but not without limits. People are smart enough to know an obvious propaganda campaign when they see one. However, they are vulnerable to the distributed effect of memetic reinforcement. Expect the average person to do a minor fact-checking spree when he is challenged to believe something new. He will ask a friend or two, do an Internet search, and maybe leaf through a book. However, if all the sources he bothers to check are those that either agree with you or don’t know, you own him, especially if his sources actually reinforce your propaganda. The key is acquiring a monopoly on initial sources. If all the “first places people look” for answers are places you control, it doesn’t matter whether there is more detailed stuff biased against you. That’s why it’s dangerous to have an imbalance of bias in places of education and in repositories of general knowledge.
3. When timing is essential, a little misdirection will get you all the time you need.
And people are surprisingly adept at generating their own misdirections. What do people do when faced with the choice of: One–handling something and being accused of insensitivity or some similar inane pseudo-crime, or two–finding an excuse to do something easier?
So, to sum up, it’s surprising what you can get away with when the people who might catch you are entangled in bureaucracies, it’s surprising what people can be convinced to believe if you just keep the controversy away from them until they have formed a habit of believing you, and it’s surprising what people will ignore if you make the repercussions of paying attention a little difficult.
Real conspiracies
9/11 attacks: Worked because the bureaucratic agencies responsible for handling anything that might have tipped us off were predictably deficient. And because leftist sensibilities are sufficiently ingrained in American society that the notion of any kind of prejudice is unthinkable.
Socialism: Worked because through the ACLU the socialists took control of the education system, and made actual conspiracy unnecessary. Advancing socialist causes is natural for those who are processed through the public school system. The “socialist conspiracy” is perpetuated by normal people passing around their memes.
JFK assassination: I might be a little kooky on this one, but I think Lee Harvey Oswald probably made only one of the shots on the President, and was meant to be the fall guy. Misdirection. One guy who helped is set up to appear to be the sole perpetrator, which people believe because they think an alternative is too complicated, when really in this case it isn’t unrealistic.
