We already had a discussion about this, but once again: be it resolved that the definition of âconspiracy theoryâ is a theory about a conspiracy, whether correct or incorrect, and therefore any use of the term in reference to a theory does not necessarily imply anything about the correctness or otherwise of the theory.
To my thinking, the truth of this resolution is blindingly obvious and shouldnât even need to be argued, but apparently some people disagree, so they might as well lay out their arguments here.
Iâm just getting really sick of it being used as an all-purpose dismissal of somebodyâs position. Itâs being used in exactly the same way as âright wingerâ, or âanti-vaxerâ, or any number of similarly fashionable and meaningless epithets. There is a rule as follows:
Please avoid:
Name-calling.
Ad hominem attacks.
Responding to a postâs tone instead of its actual content.
Knee-jerk contradiction.
Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.
In other words the poster doesnât actually believe that either a conspiracy or a theory is being mooted. Itâs just a convenient way of saying âyouâre an idiot and I donât like what you saidâ.
And in any case, nowhere in that particular post did I mention anything about a conspiracy.
Iâm just getting really sick of it being dismissed as a dismissal just because some people use it that way. How is one supposed to refer to a conspiracy theory if one is not permitted to say the term?
Iâm not sure what youâre arguing here, and TBH I donât think you do either. Youâre in dog-with-a-wet-rag mode again. There was no âconspiracyâ and no âtheoryâ in the post being discussed, so there was no âconspiracy theoryâ that the poster legitimately needed to refer to.
If I had been suggesting, for example, that Gates and Tedros were conspiring to drive all the kids mad, that would be one thing. What I was pointing out is that the kids were not all right in 2019, and theyâre even less all right in 2024. This is completely uncontentious. Even government statistics say the same thing. So it was just name-calling in this instance.
You can call it what you like. I mean look, Iâm completely used to the current state of clownworld, where people deal with cognitive dissonance by insulting whoever is making them feel bad. But if anyone wants to use the term âconspiracy theoryâ, letâs at least confine it to conversations where conspiracies are being discussed. Otherwise youâre basically just Justin Trudeau calling everyone misogynists and homophones, or whatever his word-of-the-week is at the moment.
Sometimes when people invoke a âconspiracy theoryâ, they are simply uninformed. Consider point (1) here. The UK had a team of psychologists - SPI-B - whose stated mission was to make people believe things that were not true, in order to get them to do things they would not otherwise do. This is not a âtheoryâ. It was common knowledge. Various documents that they published are easily available online, describing what they did, how they did it, and why. Fear was a principal component of their strategy. They also had other organisations working with SPI-B to silence anyone who might contradict their message - for example, the DCMS and the Counter-Disinformation Unit was tasked with ensuring only SPI-B messaging reached social media, and everything else was taken down. Again, not a secret. The SPI-B Mindspace manual was so damned successful it was sold and used as the basis of similar campaigns worldwide.
Iâm not sure that these are âconspiraciesâ, unless you want to call government a conspiracy, and theyâre certainly not theories. They are simply mundane, verifiable facts. If you find them shocking or hard to believe, well, thatâs understandable. But dismissing them as false because theyâre âconspiracy theoriesâ is just outright denial.
As for point (2), I gave a concrete example of âgovernments making everything worseâ in the Climate Change thread. Obviously, there are various things that have so far escaped their notice and havenât been ruined yet. But to the extent that governments are currently engaged in any kind of active policy, almost all of them seem designed to harm people.
Who are âpeopleâ? Who are âconspiracy theory peopleâ? Iâve attempted to provide reasonable arguments for my positions throughout this clownshow, whereas many of the âpeopleâ who disagree with me have not. All theyâve been able to come up with are accusations of âconspiracy theory!â.
This thread was started by @yyy in reference to a comment in another thread. Iâm not responding to the âtoneâ but to the absence of any actual âconspiracy theoryâ in that thread. Iâm suggesting that the phrase âconspiracy theoryâ is deployed far too frequently as an insult when someone disagrees with something but either canât be bothered to explain why, or knows that there is no valid objection.
Let me be absolutely clear about what I mean by âclownworldâ. Iâm talking about the subversion of once-valued and self-evident axioms (such as âhumans are mostly male and femaleâ), the subversion of cultural values such as the scientific method and human rights, the invention of nonsensical new principles (such as âsocial distancingâ and ânet zeroâ), and the inversion of right and wrong (such as performing dangerous medical experiments on children with the supposed aim of saving granny). âClownworldâ is multifaceted, but itâs an actual thing. Itâs the lunatics taking over the asylum, causing widespread social harm.
I donât think you can accuse me of not explaining my position. I get frequently whinged at for doing it too much.
Uh ⌠yes. Obviously. But as Iâve stated several times already, there was no conspiracy theory involved in the original thread. Clownworld, OTOH, was making its presence felt.
So let me get this straight. Youâre claiming that everything I wrote above - concerning SPI-B and so on - is hogwash? That SPI-B never existed, that the DCMS never instructed social media to self-censor and that the CDU were not monitoring them, that the documents they published recommending fear as a tool of public policy are fictional? Or what?
How about ânet zeroâ as an example of making everything worse?
This is where I start using words like âclownworldâ - when people will quite literally deny documented reality, things that governments have gone on record to confirm as true, simply because of an ideological belief that something canât be true (or must be true).
If you want to suggest that governments are claiming things that arenât true in these matters, Iâd say youâve got yourself an actual conspiracy theory.
