Comment by klagermkii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klagermkii | Hacker News Reader

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There is plenty of evidence that would put the US as the "bad guy" from a Muslim perspective, it doesn't need one to play logic games in a vacuum to create a conspiracy. The support of "friendly" dictators, oppressive monarchies, and military coups that align with US interests, and the absolute backing the US gives Israel over any other Middle Eastern country. The last thing you want is people getting educated about that. There's no crazy conspiracy needed to show that the US does not have the best interests of the Arab world citizenry at heart.

And that figure of 10 000 people can't keep a conspiracy secret is predicated on the idea that it's some kind of active plot, when just having conflicting ideals and values can produce all the hallmarks of a conspiracy without any of the members necessarily being consciously aware. Cf studies on name blind hiring and diversity, where none of the recruiters would feel that they were racist/sexist/etc, but the end result would look very similar to there being a recruiter wide conspiracy against certain groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-t...

This is true, but that's not what I call "conspiracy theory". To see the difference, take Chomsky (or Assange, to an extent) as a good example. They are very critical to U.S. foreign policy, yet they never claim something without evidence (they don't claim for example that 9/11 was inside job), and as such they are not conspiracy theorists.

The problem with people that have conspiracy theories is that they ultimately defend same or worse atrocities, but done by some other party or even themselves.

> And that figure of 10 000 people can't keep a conspiracy secret is predicated on the idea that it's some kind of active plot

It's just a rule of thumb, where you should set a canary and deeply rethink your beliefs and evidence you have for them. You see, in order to maintain belief in conspiracy theory, you have to categorize all contradicting evidence as coming from either co-conspirators, or people who are "naive" and somehow manipulated. This means that over time, number of people that have to be involved in conspiracy will grow.

Of course there can be conspiracies of 10k people or more (e.g. NSA), but they are very difficult to keep secret in practice (there was on average one whistle-blower per 2 years on NSA spy programs). There can also be situations that look like conspiracies on the surface, as you correctly state, but those don't have the property that they can actively suppress dissent (which is required to sustain belief in conspiracy theory, to reject the contradictory evidence).

Yep. Unfortunately, in some respects, we are the bad guys, our foreign policy is unjust and evil, and billions of people, including a tiny fraction who turn to terrorism, do have quite understandable grievances. Is there a peaceful way for them to get us to change what we're doing? Not that I'm aware of.

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