Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people thought.
"Conspiracy theory" is often a good way to get rid of the pursuit of truth.
No, I remember the multiple credible indications of widespread mass surveillance, including both anonymous and on-the-record reports from insiders and including the moves by government to immunize telecoms being sued for assisting in illegal mass surveillance.
Heck, I remember one of the major refrains in response to Snowden being that, while releasing the specific details was harmful to our security, the broad outline was largely already known and thus not newsworthy. (Note: in relating this response, I am not agreeing with it, particularly the first half; but the only reason it could be offered is because the idea that the NSA was engaging in widespread mass surveillance on a scale not officially acknowledged was widely believed and often discussed prior to Snowden, not "tinfoil-hat worthy".)
http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/surveillance-suits
One of the biggest changes from the disclosures is not that these suits suddenly became mainstream, it's that they finally had a decent chance of showing they had standing to sue in the first place.
Hell, Frontline aired a documentary about it in early 2007: http://www.pbs.org/video/2365249828/
Can someone explain me how is "babblings about martians" or lizard men crazier than believing in Shiva, Jehova or any other religion ?
Very few dare consider people who believe in a guy who talked to an "angel" or another one who multiplied fishes and came back to life after death crazies ...
> Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people thought.
What is fascinating is that it didn't really change anything when it comes to relationship between the government and the people. And a lot of people actually consider Snowden a traitor, when the traitors are those who actually spy on the people and covered it up.
No, it's about authority, some believe the authority never lies and is here to protect them so they have a duty of obedience toward that authority and others who know the authority is only here to protect itself and its power, by any means, at the expense of the people if necessary.
It's the difference between bundled and unbundled software. The rising tides of both play their part in a larger a picture, a larger set of lessons which ultimately--I believe--leave with unbundling/decentralization being the final answer. The flip side of the coin, of this lesson, is u need the times of bundling and centralization to learn how to do decentralization properly. In so looking at the broader picture, can we say bundling and centralization of power is a bad thing?
So while conspiracies shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, they also shouldn't be given special credence, either, and skeptics should be assumed to be part of an attempt to suppress the pursuit of truth.
That said, A lot of skepticism is as much an attempt to reinforce confirmation bias as is conspiracy theory - and one could say that conspiracy theory is a form of skepticism about the apparent natural order of things. So both sides tend to suffer from a tendency to not actually care about the truth when that truth could contradict their prejudice.
It is interesting that the only term that we had to refer to a "theory about an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage" became a synonym for lunacy, while leaving us with no short way to express the former concept.
A conspiracy theorist might suggest that we can be controlled with language.
Assuming of course, the X-Files wasn't secretly a propaganda campaign intended to discredit conspiracy theorists by subconsciously associating certain theories with fiction. But then again, the government has used urban legends and conspiracy theory as a cover for its own operations before, i'm personally certain they planted the Roswell story (and retraction) in order to cover up a more mundane secret project and retrieval, but just never expected it to go as viral as it did.
But even so, conspiracy theorists are half to blame for their own reputation at least.
I completely agree with that. But then there are many official truths that don't hold up to that regard. In many shady events, there are state-level interests, and many of parties involved have interests themselves.
For example, many of the anti-conspiracy researchers are trying to debunk everything they perceive could help the right-wing movements. But doing so deviate them from the pursuit of truth much too often... and make them embarass themselves in such ways.
If it wasn't for whistleblowers, we wouldn't have much truth in the news...
Alex Jones jumps on any possible conspiracy, debunkers write off every suggestion as a 'conspiracy theory' so that they don't have to investigate.
I don't think that was the case. Congress voted in the Patriot Act, which could be interpreted to authorize just such mass surveillance. The fact that there hasn't been much political blowback in the country at large indicates that most weren't that surprised (or bothered) by the idea of mass surveillance. Far from a 'tinfoil-hat worthy idea', the real problem is that it had become a commonly accepted fact even before it was verified by Snowden's revelations. I wish it had been tinfoil-hat worthy, then people would've cared a lot more when it was actually revealed.
Then Snowden comes with the evidence but by then people had already made up their minds before having the facts and everybody was tired of hearing about it. So the frog boils.