Conspiracy theories are never allowed to be true, because once proven, those formerly referring to it as "crazy conspiracy theories" swiftly change their stance to it being common knowledge all along.
As a conspiracy theorist (or to use a different phrase; someone who believes that organisations sometimes collaborate to withhold or falsify information) for 15 years, I was there to see how rapidly it happens.
Conspiracy theorist in 2012: I think US government agencies are gathering all our data, recording all our phone calls, have access to all our communication, and got secret deals with every major computer manufacturer to build in backdoor access to guarantee that the information can always be gathered and collected. Indeed, mass surveillance. Hell, they've even sent satellites to space just to spy on us!
All is well and exactly what it looks like theorist in 2012: lololol you David Icke tinfoil hat idiot how could they POSSIBLY get all these corporations to collaborate lolol and keeping it secret for years lololol bet you read that on a source that doesnt even have a dot com domain, facepalm
Edward Snowden in 2013: *reveals that US government agencies are gathering all our data, recording all our phone calls, have access to all our communication, and got secret deals with every major computer manufacturer to build in backdoor access to guarantee that the information can always be gathered and collected. Indeed, mass surveillance. Hell, they've even sent satellites to space just to spy on us!*
Conspiracy theorist in 2013: So...
All is well and exactly what it looks like theorist in 2012: *coughs* Well... we all knew it all along
Snowden. An unstable pro-gun man who was given far too much access to information he didn't understand. His biggest supporters? Trump (for a while) and currently Putin.
If America was so clever, and so powerful, and had all our data all the time, they would have stopped Snowden, one of their own. Unless allowing him to release all these 'facts' was part of the conspiracy run by the Power Elite!
My main worry about America is they don't know enough, are blinkered in their outlook, don't learn quickly enough from mistakes, and spend too much time and effort playing to their own crowd.
It is also clear that the surge of support among noisy and active young people for the likes of Snowden, Assange and Trump simply degrades the message, the important message that has been pivotal throughout the ages, that we should be scrutinizing our leaders and systems more closely.
It is quite clear that anything supported by Trump or Putin is something that will distract the world from what Trump and Putin are working towards - which is primarily a limitless supply of the materials that feed their greed and addictions - money, steroids, hookers.....and more money.
It is a shame that so much of the middle of our populace is now fatigued, bored and disillusioned by not just the showmen/liars like Johnson, but also the honest decent and dull people who want to make the world a better place, thanks to the shameless and ruthless power grabbing by the likes of Trump and Putin, and the support given to this, intentionally and unintentionally, by iconoclasts like Snowden and Assange (and David Ike if you want to rope him in). It is not a conspiracy, just opportunism by the carpet-bagging charlatans we have voted into power. With lubrication from tin-foilers gobbing off all over the internet including here on a football forum.
A proper investigation using material that, yet again, you will say you have special access to, information sources that you cannot and will not share? If the reader does not have access to the source material sufficiently that he/she can measure its provenance, the information is valueless.
Before you whatbout all the stuff in the mainstream media that I presumably accept without checking, well, just like in engineering, if you take some ideas and use them to make a machine, if the machine works the ideas may well be correct. My tacit acceptance of millions of pieces of information maps to predictions and outcomes that suggest that my acceptance is generally appropriate.
There is a chance, of course, that I will wake up tomorrow to find that my house is in fact made of marzipan, my car has rusted away, and that I have been hallucinating my job and family owing to the LSD that has been slipped into my drinking water for the last 64 years. It is possible.
So we have the possible and the probable. I prefer to operate based on assumptions that best fit my assessment of probable. My assumptions are not always correct (one elephant in the room - the difference in my welfare under a labour versus tory government has not been as monumentally huge as I sometimes like to imagine). However....there is no evidence that I would be able to function better in this world by accepting - and acting upon - an argument that everything I hold to be true is a lie, all politicians are part of a global conspiracy, etc. etc. In 64 years, as a trained scientist, I have simply not been presented with remotely anywhere near enough evidence to explore this systematically.
But yes, I do have confirmation bias. I have seen and done thousands, hundred of thousands of things, and they map quite well (not perfectly, but quite well) to my understanding of how the world appears to work, the goals of people and organizations, etc. Occam's razor is a very useful tool.
It is fun to believe in conspiracies, though. Likewise the supernatural. And extraterrestrial life. Especially when listening to certain music and taking certain drugs. I loved all that when I was a much younger man. It is great fun. But it isn't.........real
