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Comment by texaswhizzle | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this is who is the arbiter on what is, or isn’t, a conspiracy theory. The main stream media in the US seem to innately believe certain claims, without evidence, while also portraying other claims as “conspiracy theories.”

In the case of covid there seemed to be universal belief in the media that covid originated in animals. There was no proof of this claim.

It’s one thing to just simply pick a claim and believe in it. It’s quite another to attack people who are providing an alternative claim.

The same thing rings true with regard to what is a “correct” thing to say. “China Virus” is apparently repugnant. However, naming the country of origin for variants is not. South African Variant is fine.

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You are the arbiter. Does the theory hold water? Is there evidence to support it? Is it self-consistent? Conspiracy theories often times fail under scrutiny because for example the amount of people they would involve. Think about the flat earth conspiracy: it would require that every airline pilot, every sailor, every satellite image processor, etc. all be in on the theory. It would only take one of them to show us photo/video/etc. evidence that the earth is in fact flat. And this isn’t just today but over thousands of years. Someone would have come forward by now. I believe there is even a formula for how much time it takes for someone to blow the whistle based on the size of the conspiracy. I think it estimated that the fake moon landing would have become public knowledge within four years.

As for origins of COVID, I personally believe there is a good chance it came from bats, but also a good chance that it came from a lab experiment that had accidentally escaped. The theory that it was deliberately developed as a bio weapon or that it was released on purpose does not seem to hold water as there are no clear plausible beneficiaries of that action.

> The main stream media in the US seem to innately believe certain claims, without evidence, while also portraying other claims as “conspiracy theories.”

You can replace "main stream media" with any other group as well. (for example, the group that think masks and vaccines are part of a "plandemic" to undermine our economy and track everyone via 5g towers controlled by lizard people, while giving credence to medications recommended by politicians rather than medical professionals)

Other “groups” don’t have national broadcasts and major websites.

The vast majority of English media is published by 2-3 countries, whatever they believe or are incentivized by their governments/capital-class to publish usually become the mainstream narratives.

This centralized system of information dissemination has tremendous flaws.

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