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It’s a straw man against critical thinking. I don’t mind their example, global warming caused by people. What I do mind is them trying to dismiss conspiracy theorists because of it.

I remember pre-Snowden everyone called you a headcase if you said NSA is monitoring everything and everyone.

After Snowden, everyone mysteriously shut up about it.

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And then there was Epstein, even if the details were fuzzy...something nefarious was happening.

And famously Martin Luther King Jr, even Hemingway.

TL;DR: His friends were disturbed by his paranoia that the FBI was following him. But years later it turned out to be based on fact: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html

> a straw man against critical thinking

I like your summary. It has seemed like calling something 'conspiracy theory' has been, for many people, a comfortable dismissal. It's so much easier to believe the conspiracy theorist "needs help" than to accept that the NSA is monitoring everyone.

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