Help
Sign In
conspiracies
October 2009 
Conspiracy theories, credible and incredible
Dale Husband
For any conspiracy to succeed, there are several conditions that may be required:
- The participants must be as few as possible.
- The conspiracy must be of as short a duration as possible.
- The conspiracy must be extremely secretive.
Condition 3 relies on the first two, as indicated in the proverb, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
Thus, the commonly held 9-11 conspiracy theory that many government officials under the Bush Administration were directly involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is far less credible than the idea that a dozen operatives of Al-Qaeda were responsible. Likewise, it is far more credible that Exxon and its operatives have been planting misleading claims about global warming in the popular press and various blogs over the past couple of decades than that thousands of scientists have been misleading people about global warming since 1896, when Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first identified the heat retaining properties of carbon dioxide (called "carbonic acid" in Arrhenius' paper referred to below).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
People make up conspiracy theories to explain what could be responsible for something they happen to dislike. The "theory" could be more properly considered a hypothesis in science. The problem comes when these people do not take the next step in the scientific method, which is to test the idea via observation or experiment. Instead, they proclaim the conspiracy theory as DOGMA and proceed to interpret all evidence according to that dogma, despite never finding any direct evidence to confirm the theory. Then they abandon all willingness to allow the claim to be disproven.
You can't do science that way! Just because a theory explains something doesn't mean it is true. You must ultimately rule out all other possibilities before stating something questionable to be FACT.
Access: Public
Dale writes: “People make up conspiracy theories to explain what could be responsible for something they happen to dislike. The “theory” could be more properly considered a hypothesis in science.”
Dear Dale:
In the case of 9/11, it's clear that you don't like alternative explanations, or even the suggestion that something is amiss with the official explanations.
People conspire all the time and frequently get away with it. Consider the mob, for example.
When murder is involved, participants are generally loathe to talk, for obvious reasons; this was no mere break-in, after all; no Watergate.
If in fact there was more to the event than those explanations offered by major media outlets, additional factors prevent some folks from even imagining such a possibility:
o A tendency for a government obsessed with terrorism and terrorists to classify any and all documents associated with the event;
o The rapid destruction of key evidence; and
o The fact that so many believe as you do; i.e., that if there were some kind of conspiracy, above and beyond that proposed by our government (a government that quite effectively destroyed its own credibility during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq), those involved would very likely feel comfortable knowing that few would believe such a thing possible.
The truth is that neither you nor I actually know what happened, beyond the basic facts, regardless of what we might believe or what we might theorize; any theorizing is more or less useless, then, until or unless solid evidence is presented.
This could include signed confessions corroborated by careful investigation, the declassification of documents, and eyewitness testimony, also corroborated by careful investigation. (Note that a great deal of eyewitness testimony has already been ignored, given little attention by major media outlets.)
Thus those who are convinced that unknown members of the military and/or government conspired in some way are not all that different from those, like you, who appear convinced that no such activities took place and couldn't have taken place.
If you should temporarily put aside your beliefs and consider the possibility that there might be some flaws with the official explanations, then wade through the great deal of available information – some of it spurious, some not – you'll have to admit that the event is more complex than many assume, with a good quantity of anomalies and loose ends.
Even members and the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission have stated as such, if you care to look.
Maintaining a neutral stance while awaiting solid and conclusive evidence is, apparently, too difficult for most – they tend to fall into one of the two primary camps of belief about this event, with various sub-variations; it's much easier to do this.
A related problem is that no such evidence may ever come to light or, if it does, this could be years in the future.
What if Woodward and Bernstein hadn't been nearly as persistent as they were, years ago? Who would now believe that the conspiracy they investigated and brought to light even existed?
Regards
Bill I.
In the case of 9/11, it's clear that you don't like alternative explanations, or even the suggestion that something is amiss with the official explanations.
Why should this be about what I like or dislike? Did I even say anything like that in the blog above? I may not like being related to or descended from apes, but if the evidence says that I am, I accept it anyway.
Likewise, I may WANT to beleive that the Bush Administration was somehow directly involved in 9-11, but no one can prove it. There is no question that Bush Jr and his corrupt gang exploited 9-11 for political gain after the fact and even used the fear of terrorism generated after 9-11 to justify the attack on Iraq in 2003 (for that alone, Bush Jr should have been tossed out of office), but it does not follow that Bush Jr directly planned the terrorist attacks of 9-11.
It is my willingness to make subtle and precise distinctions like that which confuse ideologues. But it also enables me to seek factual accuracy over any dogmas.
People conspire all the time and frequently get away with it. Consider the mob, for example.
When murder is involved, participants are generally loathe to talk, for obvious reasons; this was no mere break-in, after all; no Watergate.
Already known by me. Those do not contradict or refute my blog above.
The truth is that neither you nor I actually know what happened, beyond the basic facts, regardless of what we might believe or what we might theorize; any theorizing is more or less useless, then, until or unless solid evidence is presented.
Exactly. In the absence of clear evidence, all you can do is judge a conspiracy theory by its credibility, which I have done. But saying something is not credible is not the same as denying it. When we get clear evidence, we can put aside the issue of credibility.
Dale: ”Why should this be about what I like or dislike? Did I even say anything like that in the blog above? I may not like being related to or descended from apes, but if the evidence says that I am, I accept it anyway.”
Dear Dale:
Maybe I was reading into your comments, but this seemed implied. (Note how evidence, in the case of descent from apes, has different definitions within different worldviews, but that's a complex subject suitable for a future discussion.)
“Likewise, I may WANT to beleive that the Bush Administration was somehow directly involved in 9-11, but no one can prove it. There is no question that Bush Jr and his corrupt gang exploited 9-11 for political gain after the fact and even used the fear of terrorism generated after 9-11 to justify the attack on Iraq in 2003 (for that alone, Bush Jr should have been tossed out of office), but it does not follow that Bush Jr directly planned the terrorist attacks of 9-11.”
I agree completely (“comment is free but facts are sacred”).
“It is my willingness to make subtle and precise distinctions like that which confuse ideologues. But it also enables me to seek factual accuracy over any dogmas.”
Actually, this would make you an ideologue of factual accuracy, yes? I share some of your ideology, but not all.
” In the absence of clear evidence, all you can do is judge a conspiracy theory by its credibility, which I have done. But saying something is not credible is not the same as denying it. When we get clear evidence, we can put aside the issue of credibility.”
Where we disagree, possibly, is in the credibility of some alternative explanations. I've gradually grown quite suspicious of the official explanations while slowly accumulating quite a bit of material suggestive of something beyond or within those explanations but, as I posted, I await some solid evidence of what remains primarily supposition.
Meanwhile, strictly for your entertainment, I offer this:
The Best Spook for the Job: John O'Neill Investigates 9/11
Regards
Bill I.