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Comment by btmorex | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather not waste an hour of my life listening to a conspiracy theorist.

It's not good to be dismissing unpopular ideas, a very popular idea before Iraq invasion was ....(you know the story). I'm just saying listening to both sides of the argument before conclusive making up ones mind is a good idea. I have not seen the said video and am not endorsing it, just commenting on the idea of openness, with all due respect. :-)

This particular dumb theory can be easily disproved: if the US government really were involved in some dumb-ass scheme to kill Bin Laden in 2001 and then not bother to tell anyone about it for nearly ten years (even, say, circa 2004 when Mr Bush really would have liked to have that for his re-election campaign) then they'd also be supervillainish enough to kill this guy for talking about it.

Sometimes it's not good to dismiss "unpopular" ideas, but it usually is a good idea to (provisionally) dismiss dumbass ideas which don't appear to make sense and for which there isn't any damn evidence.

Think you missed my point my man, you are talking about analyzing and then dismissing the idea (totally agree and cool), I am speaking of people who dismiss prior to analysis just because the idea is unpopular and not a part of the mainstream ideology. Hope this makes sense.

Well for a start it's not about "ideology". Ideology is about the way the world should be, and it's a matter on which the reasonable people of the world can and should disagree.

The date of bin Laden's death (if indeed he is dead, if indeed he ever existed) is a fact-of-the-matter thing; it's either one way or it's another way, and there shouldn't be much room for reasonable people to disagree at all. Reasonable people may be uncertain on such matters, but they should all share similar degrees of uncertainty.

I am not sure why you insist on missing my point repeatedly when I have clearly stated right from that start that "I have not seen the said video and am not endorsing it". My point was about attitude not the video, again in even simpler language:

Dismiss because everybody says so without giving any thought = Bad. Dismiss after thinking about it and looking into it = Good.

Ironically, I should dismiss your response because you’re repeatedly beating the same dead horse. ;)

Dismiss because everybody says so without giving any thought = Bad. Dismiss after thinking about it and looking into it = Good.

So whom, exactly, are you accusing of dismissing it without giving it any thought?

I am happy you finally get what I've been trying to say Mr.3. And no, I'm not getting into it again with you :-) (it's a public forum, look it up). It's not that serious anyway. Happy Cinco! :)

Instead of dismissing one idea or the other, it would be more interesting to ask why someone with Pieczenik's credentials and connections would say that when he did.

Generally speaking, people don't dismiss conspiracy theories merely because they are minority viewpoints. The dismiss conspiracy theories because it is obvious the fail the logic sniff-test.

If you gave equal time to every theory, no matter how basicly logically flawed, you would end up spending all your time just watching poorly edited videos on youtube. Dismissing something as a conspiracy theory isn't closeminded, it's a basic defensive mechanism.

Popular beliefs are barely ever logically qualified by every single person who believes them (most folks are blind followers - they'd rather take your word for it than go through the trouble, I understand), and secondly you are saying that alternate theories fail a test, that is my point, test before disqualifying, don't just disqualify.

Curious to know about your username "burgerbrain"? ;)

People from the State Department are now conspiracy theorists?

Anyone who propagates conspiracy theories are conspiracy theorists. Who they works for is completely irrelevant.

How should someone from the government or Council on Foreign Relations (http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html?letter=P) speak up if something is BS? -- it's not often that they do.

Council Shmouncil. It's self-claimed "nonpartisan resource for information and analysis". Which means they can BS as much as anyone on internet.

What's the State Department?

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