Ask HN: Favorite conspiracy theories? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Favorite conspiracy theories?

27 pointsgerminalphrase25 comments

Have a favorite conspiracy theory (they doesn’t pertain to recent electoral/political shenanigans)?

I’ll offer the Phantom Time Hypothesis: “The phantom time hypothesis is a historical conspiracy theory asserted by Heribert Illig. First published in 1991, it hypothesizes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retrospectively, in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history[1] to legitimize Otto's claim to the Holy Roman Empire. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.[2] According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a fabrication, with a "phantom time" of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the Early Middle Ages.”

And - of course - “The proposal has been universally rejected by mainstream historians.”

Not my favorite conspiracy theory, but I have an affinity for the "Face on Mars". I worked on image processing software for Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey. I was probably the first person to see some of the images taken. I foolishly got into a few debates with conspiracy nuts about the "face," while showing them the location at higher resolution, from different angles, etc. I learned that one should just back away from them slowly until it's safe to run.

I had a similar experience working on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the "we never landed on the moon" nutjobs, but the Mars people are far crazier.

Not a big believer in traditional conspiracy theories. But, there's a lot of evidence that the US military has a lot more than they let on.

I mean, GPS, the internet, strong encryption (look up history of DES). Much of what we take for granted came from black or semi-black US military projects. Leaked out I guess, sometimes literally.

God knows what's out there now, but UFO sightings are a reasonable place to start. Hypersonic transport. Plasma stealth. Nuclear engines. EMP, railguns and laser weapons.

What's made public is a tiny fraction of what's already out there. Terrifying but fascinating at the same time.

Funny that we already have weapons powerful enough to end the species but advancement continues.

Most people don't realize, but patents important enough are, and always have been, immediately been appropriated secret. A little known purpose of the patent office is to keep the lid on anything truly ground shaking.

And that's where my conspiracy theories start. There's so much out there kept from the rest of the world. I guess in 20 years or so we'll know what they've got now

Here in the Pacific Northwest there's secret project that I estimate thousands of people know about by now based on the scope of it - I found out because I'm doing the IT work for one of the subcontractors. The project is almost done.

There's nothing about it on the internet. Absolutely nothing. Not even a hint.

Not surprised, but you might want to delete this. If there's nothing on the internet but this post I would keep quiet.

I use long lasting throwaways but it's trivial to find me. If nobody has heard about something you haven't either. As much as I don't like mysterious technomagic I understand the reasons, I'm just really curious

Edit: just for the luls I'll guess that it's a giant radar/bunker complex. Russian/asian nukes tend to come from the Northwest amiright. Probably in Oregon or maybe Alaska. Either missle defence or early warning

Sorry, I'm not going to spill the beans. I haven't even told my wife. My main point is that there are secrets that can be kept by large groups of people - I'm am frankly surprised myself, but I guess I shouldn't be.

Have Blue was kept well hidden for a long time for example - it's hard to imagine for me this was flying around during the Disco era:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue

Exactly why I said 20 years! The hopeless diamond. I would still delete this if real. Even though you didn't give away anything of substance it's enough to be marked a traitor

I heard someone (jokingly) propose that we really did go to the Moon, but the public video footage was nevertheless faked, because the real footage was just too crappy. It's really too much to expect astronauts to be skilled videographers on top of everything else... Maybe not a "real" conspiracy theory, since no one believes it, but my favorite nonetheless.

This is one of those relatively benign conspiracy theories that's easy to believe, based on what we know about the period, the costs in lives/treasure, the stakes involved, and the people running the world at the time. They needed this win and they needed it to be broadcast on television.

Why not believe this conspiracy now?

Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... or some evidence, at least.

The truth about that is ironically enough exactly the opposite. I can't find a link to it right now, but there was a great story in the science news about a month ago, about how many of the images from the Apollo era were intentionally low-resolution and grainy, because the US didn't want to reveal to the Soviets just how advanced their remote sensing technology was. NASA had access to the best military-grade satellite surveillance technology, and the government didn't want to tip off our cold-war adversaries.

I’ll offer the Phantom Time Hypothesis: “...According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a fabrication, with a "phantom time" of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the Early Middle Ages.”

I’ve heard an additional bit.

We call those roughly three centuries The Dark Ages. Very little was recorded as happening throughout them, when compared to the time period that came before and the time period that came after. They are “dark” - as in unknown.

According to this conspiracy theory, the reason that so little happened is because the time period that we call The Dark Ages never actually existed.

The true cause of the Mandela Effect isn't false or inaccurate memories, it's the fact that time isn't a line, causality doesn't really exist and the past constantly changes and alters the present. People are really correctly remembering details from former versions of reality. You're not getting old, It really was Berenstein!

Also, the reason this is the case is that CERN discovered the universe is a simulation and broke time trying to hack it.

Another:

The true cause of the Mandela Effect isn't false or inaccurate memories, it's the fact that time isn't a single, straight line. Rather, there are multiple timelines that have converged on what we all think of as the current moment.

Everyone is remembering their origin timeline correctly... it’s just that some people came from the timeline where it was The Berenstein Bears, and others where it was The Berenstain Bears.

Another..similarily... when you die, you jump into 'you' in a different timeline at the exact moment you died, but that 'you' didn't die and lives on, till the 'new' you dies' and you 'jump' into another timeline at the same age, and continue till the oldest 'you' and 'last' you dies at which your progression ends.

This could tie in, because your 'mandela' effect could be memories from your 'other' lives that you've lived while 'jumping' through the multiverse.

Humpty Dumpty was pushed.

(EDIT: Can't claim credit for this one. It was the top prizewinner in an OMNI Magazine contest for joke conspiracy theories.)

If the total US national deficit keeps getting bigger and bigger as a percentage of GDP, at some point, lenders (bond buyers) will decide it's too much and demand higher interest rates. This will start a downward death spiral as the US needs to borrow more and more just to pay off interest. The only choice will be to shoot out more money causing massive inflation inside the US. The price of anything imported will skyrocket. The US will drastically cut social security payments and other spending, leading to riots.

All politicians have told us that since the US is the global fiat currency, this will never happen here. It has happened to many other countries which have borrowed too much, but it will never happen to the US. So it's OK for the US to keep spending, and cutting taxes at the same time.

My conspiracy theory is that all the politicians are deliberately lying, and this is a possible scenario.

Flat Earth [1] which gets funnier the more you research about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies

I there was a news story where a reporter recounted his time with flat earth people. It was interesting how there were distinct ties to Christian identity stuff, but most of all it seemed like many of those people just wanted to belong to something and at the same time these conspiracy theories make the madness of the world.... understandable.

I don't really believe in any conspiracy theories..... except to say that I get how all those Lee Harvey Oswald theories pop up because if you made up that guy's life story people would say you made it too absurd to be believed.....

Rick isn't an alcoholic, it's a side effect of the mega seeds.

Agartha and inner earth and general Byrd's Arctic flight to find it. I don't see it as a physical dimension like most hallow earthers, it's more of a gravitational existence.

The universe was created by God five minutes ago. He implanted memories in everyone along with all the evidence.

http://drjudywood.com/towers/

This is easily the most intriguing site on the 9/11 conspiracy.

911 was an inside job

U.S. Representative Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at Obama’s first state of the union address.

Seven months later, Kanye West interrupts Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV VMAs to say Beyoncé had the best video of all time.

A few days later Obama calls West a jackass in an “accidentally” recorded interview.

The theory is that Kanye West and Obama were in on finding a very roundabout way to condemn Wilson.

My starting point is this...

Take the minutes of the last business meeting you had.

Without even asking your boss, publish them on the open web.

Here on Hacker News for example.

After a day or so point this out to your CEO, telling him you will be doing this with _all_ future meetings.

Report back to us what was the result of your happy chat with your CEO.

I think you will find that, sadly, most of us do, indeed, conspire in secret against the interests of the general public at large.

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