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That's the genius of our ruling class. They're so brilliant that no one knows they even exist. The political-science professors, perfectly sane men, look at me with wonder when I talk about the ruling class in America.

They say, "You are one of those conspiracy theorists. You think there's a headquarters and they get together at the Bohemian Grove and run the United States."

Well, they DO get together at the Bohemian Grove and do a lot of picking of Secretaries of State, anyway.

But they don't have to conspire. They all think alike. It goes back to the way we're raised, the schools we went to -- after all, I'm a reluctant member of this group. You don't have to give orders to the editor of The New York Times. He is in place because he will respond to a crisis the way you want him to, as will the President, as will the head of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

-Gore Vidal, 1986

http://davidsheff.com/article/gore-vidal/

Having spent time in both the tech world and the politics world, in my experience it is the conspiracy theorists who are naive.

Generally the common denominator in conspiracy theories is that there is a group of people who are secretly in control and are purposefully causing things to happen to further their own particular agendas.

As you point out, it is true that a lot of powerful people really are trying desperately to further their own agendas. But the false part is that there is a small group who is really in control. The truth is, no one is in control.

Sounds scary, right? Which explains the attractiveness of conspiracy theories.

It depends a lot on your definition of 'conspiracy theory'. If you only consider crazy babblings about martians, sure, but...

Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people thought.

"Conspiracy theory" is often a good way to get rid of the pursuit of truth.

A conspiracy theory is merely a theory without corroborating evidence. The reason conspiracy theorists tend to be disbelieved is that, more often than not, their assertions are a matter of faith, and when they're right, they're right in the way a stopped analog clock is right twice a day. If someone's paranoid fantasies happen to correspond to reality, that doesn't make them more trustworthy.

So while conspiracies shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, they also shouldn't be given special credence, either, and skeptics should be assumed to be part of an attempt to suppress the pursuit of truth.

That said, A lot of skepticism is as much an attempt to reinforce confirmation bias as is conspiracy theory - and one could say that conspiracy theory is a form of skepticism about the apparent natural order of things. So both sides tend to suffer from a tendency to not actually care about the truth when that truth could contradict their prejudice.

>A conspiracy theory is merely a theory without corroborating evidence. The reason conspiracy theorists tend to be disbelieved is that, more often than not, their assertions are a matter of faith, and when they're right, they're right in the way a stopped analog clock is right twice a day. If someone's paranoid fantasies happen to correspond to reality, that doesn't make them more trustworthy.

I completely agree with that. But then there are many official truths that don't hold up to that regard. In many shady events, there are state-level interests, and many of parties involved have interests themselves.

For example, many of the anti-conspiracy researchers are trying to debunk everything they perceive could help the right-wing movements. But doing so deviate them from the pursuit of truth much too often... and make them embarass themselves in such ways.

If it wasn't for whistleblowers, we wouldn't have much truth in the news...

I agree with your suggestion that "both sides tend to suffer from a tendency to not actually care about the truth."

Alex Jones jumps on any possible conspiracy, debunkers write off every suggestion as a 'conspiracy theory' so that they don't have to investigate.

> A conspiracy theory is merely a theory without corroborating evidence.

It is interesting that the only term that we had to refer to a "theory about an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage" became a synonym for lunacy, while leaving us with no short way to express the former concept.

A conspiracy theorist might suggest that we can be controlled with language.

To be fair, the more lunatic type of conspiracy theories are the ones most people hear about. The X-Files might be more to blame for that perception than the government.

Assuming of course, the X-Files wasn't secretly a propaganda campaign intended to discredit conspiracy theorists by subconsciously associating certain theories with fiction. But then again, the government has used urban legends and conspiracy theory as a cover for its own operations before, i'm personally certain they planted the Roswell story (and retraction) in order to cover up a more mundane secret project and retrieval, but just never expected it to go as viral as it did.

But even so, conspiracy theorists are half to blame for their own reputation at least.

> If you only consider crazy babblings about martians, sure, but...

Can someone explain me how is "babblings about martians" or lizard men crazier than believing in Shiva, Jehova or any other religion ?

Very few dare consider people who believe in a guy who talked to an "angel" or another one who multiplied fishes and came back to life after death crazies ...

> Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people thought.

What is fascinating is that it didn't really change anything when it comes to relationship between the government and the people. And a lot of people actually consider Snowden a traitor, when the traitors are those who actually spy on the people and covered it up.

No, it's about authority, some believe the authority never lies and is here to protect them so they have a duty of obedience toward that authority and others who know the authority is only here to protect itself and its power, by any means, at the expense of the people if necessary.

Yet there are others with deep wisdom of the nature of authority--that when it gets to a certain size (especially where there is no larger authority to check it), there is always risk for it becoming self-serving. It's the nature of the beast and therefore accept. Accordingly the only solution is decentralization.

It's the difference between bundled and unbundled software. The rising tides of both play their part in a larger a picture, a larger set of lessons which ultimately--I believe--leave with unbundling/decentralization being the final answer. The flip side of the coin, of this lesson, is u need the times of bundling and centralization to learn how to do decentralization properly. In so looking at the broader picture, can we say bundling and centralization of power is a bad thing?

Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea?

I don't think that was the case. Congress voted in the Patriot Act, which could be interpreted to authorize just such mass surveillance. The fact that there hasn't been much political blowback in the country at large indicates that most weren't that surprised (or bothered) by the idea of mass surveillance. Far from a 'tinfoil-hat worthy idea', the real problem is that it had become a commonly accepted fact even before it was verified by Snowden's revelations. I wish it had been tinfoil-hat worthy, then people would've cared a lot more when it was actually revealed.

The problem with the Snowden revelations is that it was public knowledge what was going on years before Snowden, but it was mostly rumors with little evidence. Meanwhile it started around 9/11 so anyone who pointed it out was shouted down by cowards and angry blowhards claiming there wasn't enough evidence.

Then Snowden comes with the evidence but by then people had already made up their minds before having the facts and everybody was tired of hearing about it. So the frog boils.

I remember hearing about echelon in the 90s - back then it was really tin hat stuff - but someone here in Australia was writing about a global surviellance system - not that anyone seemed to care

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy-... is dated 2005.

> Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea?

No, I remember the multiple credible indications of widespread mass surveillance, including both anonymous and on-the-record reports from insiders and including the moves by government to immunize telecoms being sued for assisting in illegal mass surveillance.

Heck, I remember one of the major refrains in response to Snowden being that, while releasing the specific details was harmful to our security, the broad outline was largely already known and thus not newsworthy. (Note: in relating this response, I am not agreeing with it, particularly the first half; but the only reason it could be offered is because the idea that the NSA was engaging in widespread mass surveillance on a scale not officially acknowledged was widely believed and often discussed prior to Snowden, not "tinfoil-hat worthy".)

Indeed, check out the number of lawsuits filed by major privacy organizations before Snowden's first disclosures on June 5, 2013:

http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/surveillance-suits

One of the biggest changes from the disclosures is not that these suits suddenly became mainstream, it's that they finally had a decent chance of showing they had standing to sue in the first place.

There was also the ATT Room 641A which was exposed in 2006 -- Beam splitters / taps on internet fiber backbones, monitored by the NSA. There wasn't really any doubt what was going on. By 2013, there was no question about ubiquitous internet surveillance.

Hell, Frontline aired a documentary about it in early 2007: http://www.pbs.org/video/2365249828/

Yes most people believing in all sorts of weird conspiracies are not very smart. And most conspiracies are completely idiotic. What i try to point out is that the "wholesale dismissal" of conspiracies are naive. Especially after the revelations of the last 10 years.

Your strawman "small amount people in controlling the world" argument is just annoying. Conspiracies comes in many forms. The illuminati type conspiracies are not interesting. What is interesting is the global industrial complexes, their web of PR companies and the political cover ups it entails. And countless examples of this exists already. Lets forget about aliens.

The problem with your argument is that the existence of one conspiracy doesn't prove any others. The Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment, as terrible as it was, doesn't prove that the CIA killed JFK, for example.

The actual history of the Illuminati is more interesting than all conspiracy theories. In fact, the Jesuits in the 18th century in Bavaria existed like people think the Illuminati does today. The oppression is what incited Adam Weishaupt to create a rationalist secret society; based on the Jesuit structure and thanks to Baron Knigge, an improvement of the Unknown Superiors of the Strict Observance. A system that was "impeccable" according to some scholars in terms of its metholodgy and logic; nothing to do with mysticism.

The Illuminati was against the occult, mysticism and the Rosicrucians. And the only two musicians ever actually associated with the Illuminati were Beethoven and Mozart (or at least those around them were Illuminatus).

Generally there is a small number of people that have some level of control over the organization of which the conspiracy is about. In the case of the Catholic abuse scandal, there were a small number of people who were largely in charge of the catholic church. There was also other factors, including some luck, involved in it all. Eventually that luck ran out and we did learn about it, but only after extensive damage was done.

Very few conspiracy theories require some group to be in total control of everything.

> Having spent time in both the tech world and the politics world, in my experience it is the conspiracy theorists who are naive

Businesses in an oligopoly tend to (actively) collude and fix prices all the time. Don't you think those in power are capable of doing that? there is nothing naive about conspiracy theories.

> But the false part is that there is a small group who is really in control.

There are multiple groups that fight each other for power at every level of governance. And yes, sometimes they succeed in furthering their own agendas at the expense of the people.

I generally agree. I happen to know famous conspiracy theorists, people who work in the White House, the Pentagon, the IC and several billionaires.

I forgot who said it recently but the further you get to the top there is less people actually. There is no coordination of interests. I should say David Rockefeller has succeeded in making Balassa's theory of economic integration synonymous with globalization, which to me is a threat to natural rights and classical liberalism. But they are all seem to have good intentions just flawed philosophies.

I also know a variety of super strange things, that as an engineer I could analyze but to me it seems pointless.

I think Elon Musk is right when he says reality seems like a simulation. Conspiracy theories are the least interesting thing in context with certain experiences I have had. Which are largely centered around quantum synchronicity, spontaneity and randomness. But also DMT and a Kabbalistic text known as Sefer Yetzirah.

I am atheist and skeptic but there's something to the fine-structure constant and 1371233. And surely I am not the only one to have discovered this but I have asked people who should know, and they don't seem to.

---

Also, Carol Quigley agreed with you according to Terrence J. Boyle-

>Unfortunately, many people interested in Carroll Quigley take entirely out of context the references he made in his book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time about a high-level Anglophile conspiracy that, he said, flourished before World War II. It seems that many people believe Quigley thought this vast conspiracy somehow continues to operate right up to our own day.

>But as Dr. Quigley once told me, the reality is much scarier. Instead of a secret cabal now being in charge, there's no one in charge.

http://www.tboyle.net/Catholicism/Carroll_Quigley.html

> They simply do not fathom the ruthlessness of the political or business world.

You can be as ruthless as you want, you're not going to be able to fake the Apollo landings without the Soviets calling you on your bullshit.

Conspiracy theories tend to have massive logical and/or logistical holes. For example, how exactly would you wire the WTC to collapse with nobody noticing? How would you keep everyone quiet? At some point, you're adding epicycles to epicycles, which should tell people something, but never seems to...

> "Proves religion wrong", completely disregarding any psychological or anthropological explanations for such a phenomenon.

Nobody's out to prove religion doesn't exist (which is the only kind of sense I can make out of what you typed), but certain religious claims can be proven wrong, which is the only kind of disproofs I've actually seen.

> Go to any of the hippest (and most expensive) night clubs in a european city and you will meet these kinds of people everywhere, earning huge amounts of money doing dubious business deals or polishing the images of morally questionable partners.

None of this proves the Jew-luminatti are running the world. (Antisemitism is about a millimeter beneath the surface of most of the really interesting conspiracy theories.)

>For example, how exactly would you wire the WTC to collapse with nobody noticing?

Now, I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job or anything, but there is actually some strange historical context for this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_c...

>It is reported that LeMessurier agonized over how to deal with the problem. If he made it known publicly, he risked ruining his professional reputation. He approached the architect (Hugh Stubbins) first, and then Citicorp. He advised them to take swift remedial action. Ultimately he persuaded Citicorp to repair the building without informing the public, a task made easier by the press strike at that time.[3]

and

>Because nothing happened as a result of the engineering gaffe, the danger was kept hidden from the public for almost 20 years. It was publicized in a lengthy article in The New Yorker in 1995.[4]

The thing that is weird to me about conspiracy theorists is that they all seem to be reductionists. As in, they believe that in order for these strange highly complex phenomena to exist, that there must be powerful people in place at every nexus of the system, with their thumbs on switches and valves to ensure that things work exactly that way. When in reality, complex systems can work under their own power even while the people in that system can be few and unaware.

Many people who claim to be skeptics are pseudoskeptics: people who arrive at skeptical positions by nonskeptical means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism#Truzzi

> A good chunk of the highly educated people from the economic fields, Law, Public Relations and business world are much more manipulative and opportunistic than most "science people" understands.

Maybe so, but conspiracies generally require that they all act in concert with no one defecting. If even one of them decides to change allegiance (which should be somewhat likely if we are describing these people as "opportunistic") the conspiracy ceases to be pure speculation. For example, look at the sequence of events that eventually outed Lance Armstrong.

> They simply do not fathom the ruthlessness of the political or business world.

"Ruthlessness" is a spectrum. I'm sure there are lots of shady things that happen in Washington. I'm also pretty sure that no one in Washington is both as powerful and ruthless as Frank Underwood from House of Cards, for example.

And yet we do see conspiracies that lasted decades before someone was outed. Or cases where the information was public knowledge but just never put together well enough for the big picture to be seen (Catholic priest abuse scandal).

I think part of the problem is that people vastly underestimate the ability of 'good' people to do nothing in the face of evil.

Here's a useful book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1862073279

It's a history of CIA manipulation of politics and culture across Europe and the US during the Cold War.

Projects like this don't have whistleblowers, because the people on the inside don't believe they're doing anything shady. And some of them don't have much time for the common public anyway.

Historically the extent of the manipulation - through overt violence, and covert forms of persuasion of all kinds, including bought-and-paid-for media influence - has been huge.

This is the kind of bullshit conspiracy theories are made of.

I can't comment on the religion bit, because it's not even false.

But the bit about manipulative, successful people and how jaded one has to be to "see the truth" is complete hogwash. Just because people go to expensive nightclubs, seem sleazy, and claim they made some hugely profitable deals doesn't mean they aren't full of shit. One is only wealthy, when their wealth is stable through time. Consider for example Kweku Adaboli: a trader at UBS who committed massive fraud. The guy lead a super luxurious life, earned 400k GBP + bonus p.a. and still had to take out payday loans. Now he's in jail. Was he to luxurious night clubs? Sure. Illuminati confirmed? No.

Just because you dislike a certain crowd, doesn't mean that that crowd is part of some conspiracy. Most of them are probably massive morons.