Usage of the term "Conspiracy Theory"

[Joe Newman]

Sure it does. Indeed the Corps fought against regulations yet in the end acquiesced and now operate under the guidelines put forth by society. Their management and operations now reflect the society in which they operate. .

They acquiesced? How so? They still find every and any way around them and even factor in being fined in their risk ratios. If it's more beneficial to ignore the regs and take the penalty, fine and dandy. You may say that many people will do the same and you would be correct, but many wouldn't because of values that go against such. Corps don't have those values as a rule. That's the part that makes them psychopathic if they were an individual--that mindless pursuit for profit above all. This is just a quick and dirty summation of the same ideas laid out in The Corporation.

BS- thats semantics. People like shiny things. Always have.

No, it isn't just semantics. Sure, people like shiny things. But people haven't always been systematically schemed into mindlessly pursuing them way beyond their means based on manipulative ploys designed to turn the sober and sane notion of living within your means and purchasing things built to last into maxing out your credit cards in a devil may care rush to live the good life as projected into your life by the corps maximizing their profit margin with no care as to how it affected the individuals trapped on the glittering hamster wheel of "gotta have it" and keeping up with the Joneses.

That is consumerism and it didn't come naturally. It was designed and executed from on high via vampiric psychopaths like Eddy Bernays and his ilk.

Wow...that is some serious elitist BS. You got it all figured out but anyone who buys a shiny bauble is a fat, unhappy poor fuck.

I just expanded on the bloated bit you stated initially, only I at least acknowledged that the folks you attribute to having equal part in the dance were instead manipulated and gamed.

Maybe you didn't get the allusions with "slouching towards idiocracy" but they fit right in with what you laid out and I expanded on. And if the "poor unhappy fuck" bit bugs you aim your ire at the manipulative elitist dicks who set up the system instead of some poor fuck pointing at it. You deny things are as they are and then exonerate the folks who made it that way by tossing it off as them just being a reflection of the society they mutated for their own selfish gain.

classic

Yes, as in a tragedy.

 

[Joe Newman]

The term 'conspiracy theorist' describes someone who habitually subscribes to conspiracy theories.

A 'conspiracy theory' is a theory which explains things with no confirmable evidence, just connecting different points to build a picture that is ideologically driven to confirm the idea of dark forces massed against innocent civilians. It is mutually exclusive to a rational evaluation of confirmable evidence.

If a conspiracy theory turns out to be true it becomes the 'official' story, the standard understanding of things. This does not change the fact the original conspiracy theory was *not* based on evidence but only on biased selection of facts - if it were, it would have been part of the general facts under investigation.

I'm sorry, but no. Please don't take offense, but this is wholly irrational and demonstrably so. You throw around this rational evidence and confirmable evidence stuff all the time, but you do not practice what you preach and when confronted with such just slide right by it and repeat the same stuff.

Just because you can't or won't see evidence and are aggressively against the idea that it might be there, doesn't mean that those with a firmer grasp of history and the workings of the Noble Lie and Machiavelli and Sun Tzu and any of a host of other tutorials and precedents and knowledge of secret societies are just pissing in the wind when they point at things you aggressively refuse to see.

If that habitual suspicion and distrust were backed up with verifiable facts, then they would be an investigative journalist.

Again, a wholly irrational statement grounded in no evidence whatsoever. Btw, I don't know if you are following the lastest events, but you just described Netanyahu as a conspiracy theorist or perhaps an investigative journalist.

Irrational behaviour is marginalised, that's not a plot against you or a surprise.
(and people were banned because they demonstrated that irrational behaviour in impolite provocation, not because they were conspiracy theorists. The fact that the two things often coincide may just be a coincidence.)

Heh. Were this sentence true, this post would have you banned in a jiffy.

 

[dunbar]

There is also prediction based on past experience.

What do I learn from the Iran coup turning out to be a UK/US conspiracy? When analysing the coups in Indonesia say?

Don't be silly, there is no such thing as context and history has nothing to teach us.

 

[Mick West]

Thread has drifted off topic.

 

[common-sence]

I think if you bend over backwards to defend the story you have been told by your peers, stick your fingers in your ears and sing loudly when someone trys to open your mind to possibilities of other ideas, beliefs etc, then you are NOT a conspiracy theorist.
Everyone else in the world with other ideas, beliefs etc ARE conspiracy theorists.

This works both ways, depends who your peers are, could be Obama or Alex Jones.

I preferred the term ''Rebel'' although I think it started to sound to cool a word to describe someone you are trying to discredit, and let's be honest that's what the term was invented for.

 

[common-sence]

http://www.zengardner.com/new-studies-conspiracy-theorists-sane-government-dupes-crazy-hostile/

Great little read

 

[JRBids]

I think if you bend over backwards to defend the story you have been told by your peers, stick your fingers in your ears and sing loudly when someone trys to open your mind to possibilities of other ideas, beliefs etc, then you are NOT a conspiracy theorist.
Everyone else in the world with other ideas, beliefs etc ARE conspiracy theorists.

This works both ways, depends who your peers are, could be Obama or Alex Jones.

I preferred the term ''Rebel'' although I think it started to sound to cool a word to describe someone you are trying to discredit, and let's be honest that's what the term was invented for.

There is the theory that we did not land on the moon. That it was a bunch of people who got together to fool us into thinking we had.

There is the theory that Muslim terrorists did not attack on 9/11. That it was [insert theory here] in order to fool us into thinking they had.

The people who believe those things: how do we refer to them then, common-sen[c]e?

 

[Trigger Hippie]

Great little read

PressTV largely misrepresents the study and sometimes even makes insinuations and draws conclusions that are the exact opposite of those found in the study. Basically, the study says that the two camps use different persuasive techniques to argue their positions. That's it.

See for yourself...

PressTV: New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile

Actual Study: "What about building 7?" A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

 

[Alhazred The Sane]

http://www.zengardner.com/new-studies-conspiracy-theorists-sane-government-dupes-crazy-hostile/

Great little read

No, it wasn't.

 

[Bill]

http://www.zengardner.com/new-studies-conspiracy-theorists-sane-government-dupes-crazy-hostile/

Great little read

I've read the original paper a couple of times. The article you referenced picks and chooses from the paper to spin an agenda rather than making an accurate report.

 

[Pete Tar]

I've read the original paper a couple of times. The article you referenced picks and chooses from the paper to spin an agenda rather than making an accurate report.

Which tends to reinforce the finding of the study about the differences in the way conspiracist's regard evidence.

 

[Will]

Regarding that PressTV article http://cartesianproduct.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/what-presstv-doesnt-tell-you/

 

[deirdre]

"Conspiracy theory" has become a derogatory term because people believe that their theory actually IS conspiracy fact. There would be no problem if they said "it's just a theory", but they don't - they say things like "it's obvious that WTC2 was brought down with explosives".

They are not really conspiracy theorists, they are conspiracy assertionists.

Hmm, conspiracy assertionists. I might start using that.

Then you'll have to start spelling out your whole state name in Metabunk too!

 

[Jazzah]

Mickey my man, making some argument about there being a long history of people ascribing their woes to powerful colluding forces and then linking Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" ... reallly. Reading through this entire thread I have to say I was initially convinced you were open to debate, an impression which gradually subsided, but after seeing you link that article I just couldn't stop laughing. Sure, the article has been very influential in that it has framed the much of the debate but about anything said in there has been subsequently refuted. Hofstadter uses conspiracy theory and paranoia as synonyms. It doesn't get more obvious than that does it... However that doesn't make your statement untrue. As joe said, there also is a long history of powerful people colluding, so theorising that these activities might have affected you is nothing but sane. Ofcourse that doesn't make the theories true. Each and every conspiracy theory has to be investigated on it's own merits. And as for the fact that history is an 'emergence', the result of plenty of factors, no one is denying that, however, a conspiracy theory doesn't have to clame that a certain event was planned for. Only that it was directly/indirectly brought about by the success/partial succes/or failure of a conspiracy...
You are so violently trying to fight off the cognitive dissonance that it becomes laughable. Accept it, the world is never what you think or are told it is and you will constantly have to revise your model

 

[Mick West]

Mickey my man, making some argument about there being a long history of people ascribing their woes to powerful colluding forces and then linking Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" ... reallly. Reading through this entire thread I have to say I was initially convinced you were open to debate, an impression which gradually subsided, but after seeing you link that article I just couldn't stop laughing. Sure, the article has been very influential in that it has framed the much of the debate but about anything said in there has been subsequently refuted. Hofstadter uses conspiracy theory and paranoia as synonyms. It doesn't get more obvious than that does it... However that doesn't make your statement untrue. As joe said, there also is a long history of powerful people colluding, so theorising that these activities might have affected you is nothing but sane. Ofcourse that doesn't make the theories true. Each and every conspiracy theory has to be investigated on it's own merits. And as for the fact that history is an 'emergence', the result of plenty of factors, no one is denying that, however, a conspiracy theory doesn't have to clame that a certain event was planned for. Only that it was directly/indirectly brought about by the success/partial succes/or failure of a conspiracy...
You are so violently trying to fight off the cognitive dissonance that it becomes laughable. Accept it, the world is never what you think or are told it is and you will constantly have to revise your model

This thread is about the history of the term "conspiracy theory". Are you disagreeing with something I wrote? Could you maybe quote what it was?