Thursday, January 10, 2013

Conspiracy Nuts

From reader Rob, a couple of years ago (!), an old xkcd cartoon.

Now that hardly anybody takes the 9/11 truthers seriously, it's time for them to move on to the claim that the Sandy Hook school shootings were a government plot.

The depths of insanity lurking inside the minds of crackpots is a terrifying thing.

8 comments:

Steve Watson said...

Oh god. I think I'm going to throw up.

Missileman said...

Now here's one conspiracy theory that has some legs: The explosion of Flight 800.
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8726602

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Except that no missile was seen on any radar, and we know that eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable.

Missileman said...

A. You'd also have to address what appears to be a cover-up, as explained in the video.
B. Are you sure radar didn't pick up anything? A google search seems to indicate otherwise.
C. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable when their number is low, but when they get over a hundred...

"The NTSB had compiled a statistical analysis of the eyewitness evidence in the Witness Group Factual Report: Exhibit 4A, which included the following findings:

"102 [eyewitnesses] gave information about the origin of the streak. Six said the streak originated from the air, and 96 said that it originated from the surface."

Missileman said...

I know I wrote "any"thing instead of what you wrote: "missile". I wasn't intending to quote you, or even worse, misquote you. I'm even willing to posit that no missile took down the plane. What I'm more interested in is what appears to be a cover-up.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

but when they get over a hundred...

Read about Medugorje. There you have thousands of witnesses claiming they saw something, but almost certainly they didn't.

Missileman said...

And who says the Virgin Mary didn't appear... Heh, just kidding. People want to see evidence of their faith (but this bias doesn't seem to apply in the case of TWA 800.) Also, I suppose some statistics are needed before we can use the adjective "notoriously."

Unknown said...

I strongly suspect Dr Shallit will disagree with me, but, I actually really do like 911 Truthers. Yes, I disagree with their non-theory: I have never once seen them give a cohesive unified theory to explain 911.

Nevertheless, 911 Truthers have a hell of a lot of courage to oppose the government and a lot of actual government abuses: most notably, bankster bailouts to financial terrorists like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs.

I'd rather put a thousand 911Truthers into power any day over a Tea Party socialist-blaming asshole or an unpatriotic treasonous Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)-denying piece of scum (like the terrorist Fartland Institute).