Friday 20 June 2008

A conspiracy of Truth

In recent years, I have encountered a massive array of conspiracy theories doing the rounds on the internet, as they seem to have done so for longer than the internet has been popular.

Some of these are quite down-to-earth, involving the US-British invasion of Iraq and the questionable and unfulfilled Iraq Dossier. However, most of them make claims that are either simple regurgitations of cold-war paranoia, or entirely new musings of some very creative but rationally challenged minds. These theories make claims from proclaiming that your tap water is poisoned, that they didn’t land on the moon, to the government is the corporate face of an alien mind control regime – and they’re out to get you. They’re all out to get you.


image courtesy of www.chrismadden.co.uk

Quite often, once one has brought a handful of these theories, they’re in the “free you mind” mindset to subscribe to the others simply on the merit that they’re also conspiracy theories, and resembling beliefs already established, therefore must be true. This involves grouping 9/10 of the theories circulating into a massive world-view, involving a group or plan named the New World Order, the Illuminati, or the Bilderberg group, or Rothchild family. This larger, world-view theory involves a universal distrust for any government agency and its every employee, and the idea that they are out to get you, the little man.

These groups will –so the theory goes – go every mile, spare no expense, to control your mind, and kill you, and quite often (although this doesn’t make any financial sense); both. They will do this because apparently by spending billions in all these schemes – which as of yet don’t seem to be making much progress; my mind is clear, and so is my health, for the most part - spending all this money on schemes that after decades still aren’t working, they will make more money on an expensive and long planned global genocide than they will investing that money in normal enterprises. Of course, Nazi Germany made an astounding profit on genocide of only a few million (the New World Order is speculated to be of the absurd order of around 6 billion) however; this was because Nazi Germany put their target population to slave labour. No such slavery exists in the modern world. The theories of such money-making schemes make no sense; it would cost more to implement than profit made from a population that isn’t even put to slavery. The conspiracy theorists, while busily imagining every worst-case scenario, clearly didn’t think this one through.


I have encountered many who believe these things, even in person, and have found myself going over the same stupid claims, most of which lack quantifiable evidence, and even if something is mentioned, it’s quite possible that you won’t be given directions to find it, due to some impossible scheme only the stressed Eric Feeble could achieve, involving a government raid of their living room, or some paranoia that they’re being watched. At any rate, you’ll be hard pressed to find any evidence, mostly because the evidence either doesn’t exist, or exists of nothing more than photographs, anonymous stories and wild unjustified claims. To add to this lack of evidence, the argument holding these weak claims together is a flimsy web of false logic, of which I shall point out in every issue covered.

There are a great many problems in the modern world, but a looming big-brother style global genocide is not one of them, and most of these theories are fabricated from insufficient evidence and weak arguments holding these pieces together, or at least, pretending to.

To this end, I am creating this blog to document every tardified claim that’s thrown in my face, how it is argued, and then; how it is bogus. I do this so I need only go through the process of deconstructing a bad argument once, and may refer anyone back to the related post, and you are free do the same. I am also creating this to kill time on days I have nothing to do, am bored of my guitar, have no girl in my life, and want to rant at someone's expense. Might aswell be honest eh?

Welcome to the zone of reason. Welcome to The Skeptic’s Helpdesk.

1 comment:

Eugene said...

Sounds great! Hope the next post comes real soon.

On an internet full of crackpot conspiracy theories we need all the sense we can get!