Munin posted:

My favourite *conspiracy connections* thing I saw recently was this one:


Simply because I have not a clue about what should spring to the eye at that point.

It is linked to this kind of conspiratorial thinking:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/26566406/The-3-City-States
http://xi4.com/2012/08/04/the-hidde...wns-us-and-how/

duz posted:

With cigarettes, what else? Do you even pay attention to the surgeon general?

Tias posted:

Yo Chupe, we miss you in the psych ward thread!

Seventh Arrow posted:

Out of amusement, I've been watching a show on Netflix called "Unsealed: Conspiracy Files" or something like that. I'm quite amazed (maybe I shouldn't be) that the conspiracy crowd thinks that government weather control is a thing. I mean, I'm no scientist, but it seems like if you wanted to engineer something like a tornado or a tsunami, it would take a crazy amount of energy.

But then again, I guess if you've taken a dive into the conspiracy pool you could just say that they've been harnessing the power of red mercury or something.

Seventh Arrow posted:

Out of amusement, I've been watching a show on Netflix called "Unsealed: Conspiracy Files" or something like that. I'm quite amazed (maybe I shouldn't be) that the conspiracy crowd thinks that government weather control is a thing. I mean, I'm no scientist, but it seems like if you wanted to engineer something like a tornado or a tsunami, it would take a crazy amount of energy.

Lightning Jim posted:

proof that radar is a microwave/high energy device to do...something.

Seventh Arrow posted:

Shbobdb posted:

It is an instrumental component of the chemtrail program.

GrumpyDoctor posted:

um

SocketWrench posted:

I honestly wonder if they would make up a conspiracy claiming cigarettes are healthy because the government says they're bad? Hell, I'm almost tempted to spend some time making one up just to troll
I can definitely see one based around the SG's warning being the reason people are swapping to E-cigs or something that are secret government CIA tools

Sir Tonk posted:

Maybe Obama's anti-smoking campaign should've been for him to just keep smoking. If Michelle encouraging people to drink more water turns into the right running stories about the danger of drinking water, imagine how much it would help curb smoking!

Begemot posted:

Fluoride is highly poisonous, but only in quantities vastly larger than are in water/toothpaste. But that is why you're not supposed to swallow your toothpaste.

Chupe Raho Aurat posted:

I miss that thread too! I've been placed permanently in the "old and very very bonkers ward" have been tempted to necro the thread with a witty new tittle, I was thinking "dawn of the nearly dead"

Tias posted:

If it's poisonous in high quantities, will it gently caress me up somehow in lower doses? I feel like I should be too smart to worry about this stuff, but I have chronic gum sores and worry it will mess with me.

Tias posted:

If it's poisonous in high quantities, will it gently caress me up somehow in lower doses? I feel like I should be too smart to worry about this stuff, but I have chronic gum sores and worry it will mess with me.

Fake edit: I really don't know why flouride would be bad for me, I blame my parents generation sperging over stuff that didn't matter.

Tias posted:

If it's poisonous in high quantities, will it gently caress me up somehow in lower doses? I feel like I should be too smart to worry about this stuff, but I have chronic gum sores and worry it will mess with me.

Fake edit: I really don't know why flouride would be bad for me, I blame my parents generation sperging over stuff that didn't matter.

Michael Shermer at Scientific American posted:

On Wednesday, May 16, I spent several hours on a hot bus in a neon desert called Las Vegas with a merry band of British conspiracists during their journey around the Southwest in search of UFOs, aliens, Area 51 and government cover-ups, all for a BBC documentary. One woman regaled me with a tale about orange balls of energy hovering around her car on Interstate 405 in California, which were subsequently chased away by black ops helicopters. A man challenged me to explain the source of a green laser beam that followed him around the English countryside one evening.

Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience. A recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary that I participated in called Conspiracy Rising, for example, featured theories behind the deaths of JFK and Princess Diana, UFOs, Area 51 and 9/11, as if there were a common thread running throughout. According to radio host and conspiracy monger Alex Jones, also appearing in the film, “The military-industrial complex killed John F. Kennedy” and “I can prove that there's a private banking cartel setting up a world government because they admit they are” and “No matter how you look at 9/11 there was no Islamic terrorist connection—the hijackers were clearly U.S. government assets who were set up as patsies like Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Such examples, along with others in my years on the conspiracy beat, are emblematic of a trend I have detected that people who believe in one such theory tend to believe in many other equally improbable and often contradictory cabals. This observation has recently been confirmed empirically by University of Kent psychologists Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton in a paper entitled “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science this past January. The authors begin by defining a conspiracy theory as “a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal” that is “notoriously resistant to falsification … with new layers of conspiracy being added to rationalize each new piece of disconfirming evidence.” Once you believe that “one massive, sinister conspiracy could be successfully executed in near-perfect secrecy, [it] suggests that many such plots are possible.” With this cabalistic paradigm in place, conspiracies can become “the default explanation for any given event—a unitary, closed-off worldview in which beliefs come together in a mutually supportive network known as a monological belief system.”

This monological belief system explains the significant correlations between different conspiracy theories in the study. For example, “a belief that a rogue cell of MI6 was responsible for [Princess] Diana's death was correlated with belief in theories that HIV was created in a laboratory … that the moon landing was a hoax … and that governments are covering up the existence of aliens.” The effect continues even when the conspiracies contradict one another: the more participants believed that Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.

The authors suggest there is a higher-order process at work that they call global coherence that overrules local contradictions: “Someone who believes in a significant number of conspiracy theories would naturally begin to see authorities as fundamentally deceptive, and new conspiracy theories would seem more plausible in light of that belief.” Moreover, “conspiracy advocates' distrust of official narratives may be so strong that many alternative theories are simultaneously endorsed in spite of any contradictions between them.” Thus, they assert, “the more that participants believe that a person at the centre of a death-related conspiracy theory, such as Princess Diana or Osama [bin] Laden, is still alive, the more they also tend to believe that the same person was killed, so long as the alleged manner of death involves deception by officialdom.

As Alex Jones proclaimed in Conspiracy Rising: “No one is safe, do you understand that? Pure evil is running wild everywhere at the highest levels.”

On his Infowars.com Web site, Jones headlines his page with “Because There Is a War on for Your Mind.” True enough, which is why science and reason must always prevail over fear and irrationality, and conspiracy mongering traffics in the latter at the expense of the former.

Seventh Arrow posted:

Out of amusement, I've been watching a show on Netflix called "Unsealed: Conspiracy Files" or something like that. I'm quite amazed (maybe I shouldn't be) that the conspiracy crowd thinks that government weather control is a thing. I mean, I'm no scientist, but it seems like if you wanted to engineer something like a tornado or a tsunami, it would take a crazy amount of energy.

But then again, I guess if you've taken a dive into the conspiracy pool you could just say that they've been harnessing the power of red mercury or something.

Shbobdb posted:

It is an instrumental component of the chemtrail program.

Evil Fluffy posted:

e: ^^^^ Some types of liver (bear?) can make you sick due to high concentrations of things like iron.

quote:

There was once a customer at my store who would constantly ask if we were going to order a special item for her. It usually went like this:

Old lady: "So I heard that bear livers have a high amount of vitamin E in them, is that true?"

Store: "Yes, a toxic amount."

Old lady: "Well I need lots of vitamin E, could I just eat a little bit of the liver?"

Store: "No, you will die."

Old lady: "I'll be careful, can you order it for me?"

Store: "We won't sell you bear liver."



We had a hundred other ways of getting her the proper amount of vitamin E but she wanted bear liver for some reason.

ReidRansom posted:

Vitamin A, actually. And it's not bear liver in general, it's polar bear liver specifically. And some seals and arctic foxes and the like. Carnivorous arctic mammals, basically. Liver from other bears (black, brown, panda, etc) is generally fine.

e: not that I'd recommend it, mind. Just, you know, if you had to

babies havin rabies posted:

Husky liver too. I read about some guys dyin' because they said "Hey let's eat our sled dogs, dog liver's OK right?".

ReidRansom posted:

Now I'm wondering about Inuit liver. I mean, I'm not a biologist and don't know the mechanism involved, but they tick all the boxes. Arctic, mammal, carnivore.

RagnarokAngel posted:

I don't think it's elaborate as you think. Nerds in particular are threatened by girls who move in on their space. Guy who might have known her posts "proof" shes a total slut and they use it as ammo against her. I mean he knew her personally what else could you need to question her character?

platedlizard posted:

It's a fandom thing, I think. I've seen similar behavior amount Supernatural fans who believe the two male leads in the show are lovers but the evil network is keeping them in the closet. Elaborate theories about how is he wears one color and the other guy wears a matching color they're totes together, etc. before Supernatural there similar theories about the main actors in the Harry Potter series and before that Lord of the Rings. Elaborate charts and photos and horrible bashing of opposing fan groups and the actual significant others of the actors. The LotR conspiracy theorists got called the Tinhatters for a reason.

watho posted:

Conspiracy theorists basically believe that the more people there are who try to disprove their their theories, the more merit it has because "shills" are being more aggressive or something.

platedlizard posted:

So I guess FYAD is the equivalent of the Illuminati in the Zoe Quinn thing

http://pastebin.com/rFX1pTfX