Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

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Conspiracy theorists don't think that way. They want things that validate their paranoia, so they look for symbols that are obvious to them, but discarded by others because they're too obvious and stupid. They want buildings that look like Hollywood evil lairs. They want barcodes and IC cards that spell out 666[0] if you squint at them funny. They see Linux error screens with the words "kill process or sacrifice child" in them and think their Fire Stick is extracting adrenochrome at the basement of Comet Ping-Pong[1].

They aren't entirely insane, they are onto something. But, ironically, they have been programmed by business interests to ignore their own malfeasance. So the story can't just be "the government suspended monopoly laws and let everyone buy everyone and that's why everything sucks now, join a union". After all, a lot of these people were born and raised to oppose regulation and unions. So they instead have to construct a new framework for opposing business to get rid of that cognitive dissonance, and it invariably becomes this over-dramatized nonsense.

[0] A codeword referring to Nero, a politically unpopular Roman emperor that has been dead for over a thousand years

[1] A pizza place that does not have a basement, but that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from shooting them up and holding them hostage anyway

And what about all of the “conspiracy theories” that have turned out to be partially or totally true? Were those just lucky guesses?

A conspiracy theory proven true is no longer a conspiracy theory, it is a boring fact. Conspiracy theorists aren't going out on the streets protesting the gradual erosion of civil liberties. They're calling that a limited hangout and demanding the real juicy shit, even if it doesn't exist.

I can't fathom how you could read the Church Committee report and describe the facts in it as "boring".

The definition of "conspiracy theorist" seems either pejorative or not, depending on who you ask. Why do you prefer to use it as a pejorative?

Abuses of government power are generally boring facts, like civil asset forfeiture. “A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy by powerful and sinister groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

So, when cops rob an armored car via civil asset forfeiture it’s just something that happened no conspiracy theory required because there isn’t some other example that fits. But, the moon landing was fake fits because there’s another explanation.

Occasionally what once was a conspiracy theory is now considered factual, but at that moment it stops being a conspiracy theory because it’s no longer fringe. As such this isn’t a pejorative definition as it doesn’t directly imply such theories are incorrect.

> Conspiracy theorists aren't going out on the streets protesting the gradual erosion of civil liberties.

I love a good No true Scotsman mixed with a twist of ad hominem.

In my experience, conspiracy theorists don't have a lot of interest in these. Unprovable conspiracy theories are more interesting because it affirms their sense of paranoia, identity, feeling special, entitlement to the truth.

Conspiracy theorists might go on and on about JFK or 9/11 or Pizzagate, but how often do you hear the conspiracy type obsess about Jan. 6, an actual proven conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States? The "proven" conspiracy theories they do care about, like MKUltra, are generally cast as far more consequential than most people would say they actually are.

> but how often do you hear the conspiracy type obsess about Jan. 6, an actual proven conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States?

Actually, they do. There are a lot of claims online saying it an FBI false flag operation, going so far as to name a specific person as an FBI plant.

That is technically an example, but I think it also proves OP's point. Faced with a clear, public, and well-understood conspiracy, the theorists can't accept the demonstrated facts. For the surface truth to be the actual truth is intensely unsatisfying and disempowering. There must be something more and deeper to it, always.

In many cases, yes. You'll often find the actual conspiracy that turned out to be true only had a tangential relation to (and few if any specific details in common with) what conspiracy theorists were talking about. Although the conspiracy theorists will always take credit for "being right all along."

And invariably, the actual conspiracy gets revealed by parties other than conspiracy theorists themselves, because the conspiracy theorists don't actually have insider knowledge, they're just doing the strings and thumbtacks thing and making guesses.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean there's no conspiracy. ;-)

(with "you" I'm not referring to any poster here. Just generic paranoid person)

No group of people thinks any way. Groups can’t think - only individuals can. Any statement like “group does X” is categorically incorrect.

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