I always fall back on one of Sam Francis's reasons he dislikes conspiracy theories: that they create "the delusion of an invincible enemy that they spawn". Even if they are true, conspiracies seem to only be for the satisfaction of the believer since they usually fail to link them to the larger system they occurred in and don't provide any meaningful strategy to improve our system.
For example with JFK people get so caught up in the minutia of the "conspiracy" aspects and never move beyond that. Of course the CIA killed him, it should be obvious. The important part then is answering how we go about removing unaccountable, undemocratic power from our intelligence state.
I have a lot of "theories" in mind. But as for my favorite one which could be somewhat plausible, it would be the idea that Alexander the Great actually lost to King Porus in India and the Greek historians covered it up by saying that he won then allowed Porus to keep his kingdom. As you might expect, the proponents of this theory are Indians (at least as far as I can tell).
I found theories like that interesting because it shows that ancient history is something that we have to trust the source to an extent. For some reason, people who are hyper-critical about The Bible, going so far as to say that "Jesus don't exist" or "The Exodus never happened" doesn't extend that same level of skepticism to the existence of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.
The Franklin Scandal is often called a conspiracy theory even though it is legal fact and everything in it is in the public record. From my experience, most what is given that title does not fall into the definition. There are a lot of things considered "conspiracy theories" like the Marc Dutroux Affair which, again, don't even contain theories so much as just repeating facts given out in court and the obvious conclusions that come from what they reveal.
There is a large difference between the above and something like Flat Earth Theory or even the JFK assassination, but those don't get nearly the amount of focus. Probably because there isn't any theory involved. Everything is confirmed and happened, but it's unpleasant to think about so it gets tossed off into the pile with generic conspiracy theories.
I think a lot of this contributes to the stigma around the term. It's just used to describe anything the mainstream chooses not to talk about, which means it's not real or important.
My favorite - that is, most entertaining - conspiracy theory right now is the Tartaria/mud flood architecture stuff. Basically, people refuse to believe that huge, beautiful, ornate buildings were made by humans. I'm not talking about the pyramids, but things like European palaces, Gothic cathedrals, and Penn Station. I love it because it shows how aesthetically impoverished modern society is. Ugliness and shoddy architecture is so pervasive that some folks' first instinct on viewing something pretty is to assume it was built by Nephilim.
It's hard to make a list of favorite conspiracy theories because so many of them turned out to be true.
Vox Day mentioned that the conspiracy theory of history was both more explanatory, correct and predictive than what people are taught in schools. Considering that we know for a fact that Pearl Harbor was known well ahead of time, The Lusitania shipwreck did indeed have weapons onboard, there were no WMDs in Iraq, the government did lie about a ship sinking in the Gulf of Tonkin to start the Vietnam war, Isreal did sink the Liberty, most of the people the McCarthy trials grabbed were indeed agents or provocateurs, and so on. Written government sanctioned history is incredibly false, provably so.
Then comes the predictive part. If literally every war since WW1 was a complete fraud to start, what does that mean for 9/11 and Ukraine? If the CIA/FBI did admit to spraying civilian cities with strange chemicals and bacterium and grabbing them off the streets to douse with LSD what does that mean for the covid mandates?
I've fallen into your trap of asking questions so I'll restate them as assertions.
•These groups (government, FBI, CIA) are proven liars. There is actual documentation and occasional public admissions
•They continue to lie to this day. There is no reason to think they stopped, especially because the same people and legacies are in charge and no one has ever been punitively punished for them
•They are saying statements today that are nearly identical to known lies
Conclusion: They are lying.
Induction is preferred to get things done and figured out in a practical and timely manner. On google it lists the typical inductive argument as "All the tigers I saw on my safari trip to South Africa were orange. Conclusion: Therefore, all tigers are orange." Ok, so maybe not all tigers are orange because I didn't literally see all of them. But how long will you demand I search for tigers before I say tigers are orange? What level of surveillance of the planet earth is needed before you are satisfied? What about hypothetical tigers on other planets? Whenever a conspiracy theorist talks with a normie the burden of proof placed on the theorist is usually so high as to be impossible or prohibitively expensive to meet.
Example: JFK Killing.
-"So I believe an organization, likely the government or CIA, killed JFK"
-"Why?"
-"Lots of them had motive, they had the means, people have come out in those groups admitting they participated in it, their peers said they likely did it and the presented lone shooter story is almost physically impossible"
-"So what? Where's the proof? Proof? Proof where?"
-"What would you count as proof?"
-"You need to literally have the CIA come out in a press conference, lay out the weapons they used, admit guilt, produce the plans they used, get corroboration from foreign governments so I know they aren't lying this time either, and have a second video tape showing me the events"
-"How am I going to do that? The people involved are rich enough to kill a president"
-"Heh guess I win again tough luck kid"
On the other hand:
-"A lone shooter killed Kennedy"
-"Do you have any proof?"
-"We have the supposed shooter who's now dead so you can't ask him anything"
You mention inductive and deductive reasoning in this post about working through the mysteries of conspiracy theories, but what about abductive reasoning, which "typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision-making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete." ~Butte College on Abductive Reasoning
Abductive reasoning is great for solving mysteries, diagnosis of medical conditions, troubleshooting technology, and other psychological inner work. Would this not include working through a theory in regards to a possible conspiracy too?
I've been called one, for calling the October Crisis of Quebec a false-flag. Basically what happened was that Quebec was wishing to regain her independence. You had the FLQ, a minor communist movement that was infiltrated by the CIA & KGB, and with their aid kidnapped a number of figures in order to murder them at which point Pierre Turdeau had 4000 people imprisoned (all peaceful secessionists or people who had spoken up in some manner in favour of the idea years before), with the man rolling out the tanks. Quebec was occupied, Turdeau mocked them and their heritage Francais, and the CIA got to make sure that Quebec was secured as a vassal.
The reason for Quebec's renewed desire for freedom was because of a visit in the 60s by Charles De Gaulle who yelled out, 'vive le Quebec libre', and this apparently left the Canadian government in a panicked state and a suspicious one. Turdeau began his career in the 60s, and was part of the committee that decided to change the flag from the proud Red Ensign into the stupid maple leaf to further distance people from their heritage.
So I look at the entirety of Turdeau's career as one long psy-ops, and because Quebec wouldn't fall for it, they had tanks rolled out. I also have a lot of questions about the 1995 Referendum of Quebec and suspect the votes were 'miscounted'.
I'm also firmly of the view that the attempt on Reagan's life was CIA organised.
I always fall back on one of Sam Francis's reasons he dislikes conspiracy theories: that they create "the delusion of an invincible enemy that they spawn". Even if they are true, conspiracies seem to only be for the satisfaction of the believer since they usually fail to link them to the larger system they occurred in and don't provide any meaningful strategy to improve our system.
For example with JFK people get so caught up in the minutia of the "conspiracy" aspects and never move beyond that. Of course the CIA killed him, it should be obvious. The important part then is answering how we go about removing unaccountable, undemocratic power from our intelligence state.
I have a lot of "theories" in mind. But as for my favorite one which could be somewhat plausible, it would be the idea that Alexander the Great actually lost to King Porus in India and the Greek historians covered it up by saying that he won then allowed Porus to keep his kingdom. As you might expect, the proponents of this theory are Indians (at least as far as I can tell).
I found theories like that interesting because it shows that ancient history is something that we have to trust the source to an extent. For some reason, people who are hyper-critical about The Bible, going so far as to say that "Jesus don't exist" or "The Exodus never happened" doesn't extend that same level of skepticism to the existence of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.
The Franklin Scandal is often called a conspiracy theory even though it is legal fact and everything in it is in the public record. From my experience, most what is given that title does not fall into the definition. There are a lot of things considered "conspiracy theories" like the Marc Dutroux Affair which, again, don't even contain theories so much as just repeating facts given out in court and the obvious conclusions that come from what they reveal.
There is a large difference between the above and something like Flat Earth Theory or even the JFK assassination, but those don't get nearly the amount of focus. Probably because there isn't any theory involved. Everything is confirmed and happened, but it's unpleasant to think about so it gets tossed off into the pile with generic conspiracy theories.
I think a lot of this contributes to the stigma around the term. It's just used to describe anything the mainstream chooses not to talk about, which means it's not real or important.
My favorite - that is, most entertaining - conspiracy theory right now is the Tartaria/mud flood architecture stuff. Basically, people refuse to believe that huge, beautiful, ornate buildings were made by humans. I'm not talking about the pyramids, but things like European palaces, Gothic cathedrals, and Penn Station. I love it because it shows how aesthetically impoverished modern society is. Ugliness and shoddy architecture is so pervasive that some folks' first instinct on viewing something pretty is to assume it was built by Nephilim.
It's hard to make a list of favorite conspiracy theories because so many of them turned out to be true.
Vox Day mentioned that the conspiracy theory of history was both more explanatory, correct and predictive than what people are taught in schools. Considering that we know for a fact that Pearl Harbor was known well ahead of time, The Lusitania shipwreck did indeed have weapons onboard, there were no WMDs in Iraq, the government did lie about a ship sinking in the Gulf of Tonkin to start the Vietnam war, Isreal did sink the Liberty, most of the people the McCarthy trials grabbed were indeed agents or provocateurs, and so on. Written government sanctioned history is incredibly false, provably so.
Then comes the predictive part. If literally every war since WW1 was a complete fraud to start, what does that mean for 9/11 and Ukraine? If the CIA/FBI did admit to spraying civilian cities with strange chemicals and bacterium and grabbing them off the streets to douse with LSD what does that mean for the covid mandates?
I've fallen into your trap of asking questions so I'll restate them as assertions.
•These groups (government, FBI, CIA) are proven liars. There is actual documentation and occasional public admissions
•They continue to lie to this day. There is no reason to think they stopped, especially because the same people and legacies are in charge and no one has ever been punitively punished for them
•They are saying statements today that are nearly identical to known lies
Conclusion: They are lying.
Induction is preferred to get things done and figured out in a practical and timely manner. On google it lists the typical inductive argument as "All the tigers I saw on my safari trip to South Africa were orange. Conclusion: Therefore, all tigers are orange." Ok, so maybe not all tigers are orange because I didn't literally see all of them. But how long will you demand I search for tigers before I say tigers are orange? What level of surveillance of the planet earth is needed before you are satisfied? What about hypothetical tigers on other planets? Whenever a conspiracy theorist talks with a normie the burden of proof placed on the theorist is usually so high as to be impossible or prohibitively expensive to meet.
Example: JFK Killing.
-"So I believe an organization, likely the government or CIA, killed JFK"
-"Why?"
-"Lots of them had motive, they had the means, people have come out in those groups admitting they participated in it, their peers said they likely did it and the presented lone shooter story is almost physically impossible"
-"So what? Where's the proof? Proof? Proof where?"
-"What would you count as proof?"
-"You need to literally have the CIA come out in a press conference, lay out the weapons they used, admit guilt, produce the plans they used, get corroboration from foreign governments so I know they aren't lying this time either, and have a second video tape showing me the events"
-"How am I going to do that? The people involved are rich enough to kill a president"
-"Heh guess I win again tough luck kid"
On the other hand:
-"A lone shooter killed Kennedy"
-"Do you have any proof?"
-"We have the supposed shooter who's now dead so you can't ask him anything"
-"Can I see the investigation notes?"
-"No"
-"Wa-oh! I love my government!"
You mention inductive and deductive reasoning in this post about working through the mysteries of conspiracy theories, but what about abductive reasoning, which "typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision-making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete." ~Butte College on Abductive Reasoning
Abductive reasoning is great for solving mysteries, diagnosis of medical conditions, troubleshooting technology, and other psychological inner work. Would this not include working through a theory in regards to a possible conspiracy too?
I've been called one, for calling the October Crisis of Quebec a false-flag. Basically what happened was that Quebec was wishing to regain her independence. You had the FLQ, a minor communist movement that was infiltrated by the CIA & KGB, and with their aid kidnapped a number of figures in order to murder them at which point Pierre Turdeau had 4000 people imprisoned (all peaceful secessionists or people who had spoken up in some manner in favour of the idea years before), with the man rolling out the tanks. Quebec was occupied, Turdeau mocked them and their heritage Francais, and the CIA got to make sure that Quebec was secured as a vassal.
The reason for Quebec's renewed desire for freedom was because of a visit in the 60s by Charles De Gaulle who yelled out, 'vive le Quebec libre', and this apparently left the Canadian government in a panicked state and a suspicious one. Turdeau began his career in the 60s, and was part of the committee that decided to change the flag from the proud Red Ensign into the stupid maple leaf to further distance people from their heritage.
So I look at the entirety of Turdeau's career as one long psy-ops, and because Quebec wouldn't fall for it, they had tanks rolled out. I also have a lot of questions about the 1995 Referendum of Quebec and suspect the votes were 'miscounted'.
I'm also firmly of the view that the attempt on Reagan's life was CIA organised.