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Comment by MrZongle2 | Hacker News Reader

When I read something like this, I always think back to when I would see some tinfoil-hat type ranting on Usenet 20 years ago about the growing surveillance/police state in America. It was generally eye-rolling or unintentionally hilarious stuff.

What's depressing is that it's starting to look like they were right.

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The real tinfoil types believe that the government cloud research facility in Alaska controls the weather globally and can cause earthquakes and tsunamis on command. We don't have any indication to believe that's true yet.

True; there are the tinfoil hat types that believe that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll, and then there are those that believe Bigfoot killed Kennedy with the mind powers he learned from the Lizard People of Zeta Reticuli B.

Edit: from the downvotes, I can only assume that I've offended the Bigfoot fans.

"from the downvotes, I can only assume"

Separately, as a karma strategy, it makes sense to upvote something that you reply to (regardless of whether you agree or disagree) as it tends to make your reply higher up (because the parent comment is higher up) and get more visibility which in theory should result in more karma.

I do this, but I justify it by thinking that the thread was important enough to me to reply to, so I should vote. I don't care about karma, but I'm more likely to get replies, or so I hope.

The funny thing is that we're probably just a few decades away from doing that, too.

well, as long as your thermonuclear nuke's seismic wave signature looks like tremor(s) of an earthquake, planting/burying it near continental plate dividers deep in the ocean should do the trick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale#Example...

Oh yes, we will surely get there eventually. But it probably won't be the giant sky-laser in Alaska that does it. Honestly I don't even understand how people came up with that one. I mean, what is the link between "sky-laser" and "earthquakes", other than "God is mad because we're shining the laser in His eye".

Great, looks like that's done, so that's it for old business. Any new business?

"I would see some tinfoil-hat type ranting on Usenet 20 years ago"

Ok then so how many "tinfoil-hat type rantings" have not come true?

It's easy to say "I had a feeling I should have bought that stock" without acknowledging all the stocks that you didn't buy that didn't go up in price. Or the ones you did that didn't go up in price.

Ok then so how many "tinfoil-hat type rantings" have not come true?

A safe bet would be: many, many more.

But does that make the ones that have any less troubling?

That's not the point. If something that would be dismissed as the mutterings of a lunatic 20 years ago is now taken as true, perhaps we live in a world of lunacy (even if other things that were also dismissed as the mutterings of a lunatic aren't true).

It always cracks me up when people are so confident that they are right, simply because they believe the "official" version of a given story.

I think, "wow, this person is literally dupable without limit."

How about watching a re-run of the X-files? Apart from the little green men and the reoccurring monster, it seems rather tame in this day and age.

Secret courts, secret prisons, bit of wiretapping, all part of everyday life.

Nowhere Man (TV) was more scary, by far.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112104/

Sure, X-Files had boogie men, big baddies, conspiracies. In Nowhere Man the evil was ubiquitous, bureaucratic, banal, and terrifying.

The problem is that when the batshit-crazy people are crazy, they're really batshit, and the official story is a more comfortable option for anyone. Most people do not utilize true, rational thought, so to them the world is a false dichotomy: either the government is telling the truth, or the first person to formulate a new, completely-unproven conspiracy is correct. It's really just herd-like behaviour. Many of those assholes on Usenet you're referencing were really just spewing mindless garbage with no evidence, just like the lovely pro-Government trolls that infest this site do now.

It shines that people now assume the 'nuts' just happened to be right. It time to bring back anti-authoritative thinking.

Exactly.

People have been well conditioned to believe that their governments are benevolent, do good deeds and that misconduct can be alleviated by stricter law enforcement and electing better leaders.

Anyone who doubts this is a "conspiracy theorist".

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