Comment by gridlockd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gridlockd | Hacker News Reader

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To be fair, they admit that a potential "gay bomb project" was real. They didn't report that the "gay frog experiment" was real though.

Most conspiracy theories have some sort of factual basis. What makes them conspiracy theories is the wild exaggerations, unfounded extrapolations and unproven connections to all other conspiracy theories.

I have my own "conspiracy theory", which is that people like Alex Jones are assets to whoever wants to divert attention from the factual basis of all these conspiracy theories. Actual conspiracy theorists usually suffer from paranoid delusions and apophenia, they are incapable of maintaining credibility. The factual basis then becomes less credible by association.

So while all the "clever" people get to have a laugh about that clown and his antics, they forgot asking themselves why the hell taxpayer money might be flowing into gay bomb research, and what other ridiculous secret projects might be underway right now.

From what I can tell, there was never any "gay bomb project" to begin with. While the proposed cost of the project was estimated at about 7 million dollars, no taxpayer money ever flowed into gay bomb research, except maybe the cost of printing a three page proposal. It was one of hundreds of speculative projects deemed too problematic to be workable, and never funded or implemented - which the linked article actually points out.

Unfortunately, people see an article about "the US government once considered a 'gay bomb' but dismissed it as ridiculous" and read "the US government has a secret Manhattan Project for gay bombs" and conclude "Alex Jones wasn't entirely wrong because, you know, the government is building gay bombs like he said. And if they're doing that, maybe they are putting something in the water. "

The entire line of reasoning is specious.

I didn't say the project was undertaken, but it was real enough for someone to come up with the idea, ballpark the cost of it, write up the proposal and have a bunch of presumably high-paid decision-makers read it in order to come to the conclusion that it's just a little bit too ridiculous. That's all on the tax dollar.

Of course, of all the egregious military research that has been undertaken, that one is just a whimsical side note. It could serve as a red herring even without any conspiracy theorist. I'd certainly sleep easier believing that the military is busy researching the gay bomb instead of the doomsday device.

>but it was real enough for someone to come up with the idea, ballpark the cost of it, write up the proposal and have a bunch of presumably high-paid decision-makers read it in order to come to the conclusion that it's just a little bit too ridiculous. That's all on the tax dollar.

A research laboratory speculated about possible areas of nonlethal chemical weapons research, and created a three page proposal, among which was a reference to what would be called the "gay bomb." That's their job.

Here is the proposal[0]. That's how "real" the "gay bomb" was - a single brief paragraph on the second page.

This isn't "egregious military research," it's a step above a doodle scribbled onto a napkin that someone else threw into the wastebasket.

[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20060502201217if_/http://www.sun...

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