Main Paineframe posted:

I think it's important to keep the conclusion-drawing part of it reined in, because drawing conclusions can easily become wild conjecture if you go too far. Even the most bizarre conspiracy theories usually start from facts and evidence, and then take giant leaps when drawing conclusions which ultimately bring their claims well beyond what the evidence actually supports.

For example, Bush's intel agencies failed to detect the activities of the 9/11 hijackers, and Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq. Put those two together and add in a couple of logical leaps, and you get "Bush allowed 9/11 to happen" or even "Bush did 9/11". But even though adherents of those theories will claim they're just drawing conclusions from facts and evidence, a major aspect of their theories is completely unsupported. They're jumping well beyond what there's actually evidence for, filling in the holes with their own imagination - and often so effectively that they don't even realize they're doing it.

It's not a matter of labels or social consensus. It's a matter of how far the conclusions get from the evidence, and how much conjecture has to be jammed into the holes in the theory to shore up the unsupported pieces.