memes

People still don't believe their tax dollars are being spent to hurt them after being shown these documents.

Issue being, a large number of conspiracy theories are just utter bonkers (moon nazis theory, etc.), would be really ineffective in practice (chemtrails, etc.), or tries to blame capitalism's problem on a small number of people within the system (International Jewry, etc.). In fact I kind of have a theory that the more "skizo" stuff was put out to make the real stuff look impallatable for people believing the institutions are serving them.

I know at least some opportunistic far-right people that use conspiracy theories to make their ideology look better, met at least one Holocaust denier that just wanted to whitewash the third reich for newbies until they prove they're ready for the truth through proof of loyalty, and one denies the CIA's involvement in toppling the Salvador Allende governance to make Pinochet look even more badass.

Proverbs for Paranoids

1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
4. You hide, they seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

I get why memes like this are popular—they’re funny and make you think. But honestly, I think they can be a bit dangerous too. Sure, some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, but way more often than not, they’re just nonsense.

The problem with stuff like this is that it makes it seem like most conspiracy theories are worth taking seriously, which can lead to some real issues. People start distrusting everything—governments, science, journalists—even when there’s no good reason to. It can also give way too much credibility to wild ideas that just aren’t backed up by facts.

Healthy skepticism is important, but it needs to come with critical thinking. Just saying, "What if it's true?" doesn’t really help—it just feeds into the chaos. I feel like we need more “let’s look at the evidence” and less “trust no one.”

I read a mainstream biography about Aristotle Onassis recently - something that was on the NY Times bestseller list back when it was published in 2004 - and near the beginning it casually comes up that the Secretary of State or head of the CIA (they were brothers at the time) was having an affair with the Queen of Greece. It wasn't even the point of the chapter. Instead, it was just a element in the US governments behind the scene manipulations as they used private intelligence firms to sink a deal between Onassis and the Saudis to fund their own shipping fleet.

Theres enough conspiracies that 1 in a million have to be true.

Don't use the one as evidence of the million.

Every fucking time.

It's easy to recognise some super convenient propaganda, or follow the money, but sometimes it's not that simple.

MK Ultra moment

And you're a fool if you think they ever stopped.

The government wouldn't do that!

Oh yes they would

The reason why reality and what people believe about reality diverge so heavily is because reality is based on mathematics while people's belief about reality is based on their experiences of the past. And past experiences fail to predict things like exponential growth or new theories or developments in technology.

If 1 in 20 conspiracy theories are correct then you'll be 95% correct if you disbelieve all of them.

If you pick one to believe in you'll be about 90% correct on average.

If you pick 10 you'll be about 50% correct.