Comment by vintermann
7 days ago
"Bigfoot" isn't inherently a conspiracy theory. If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. To be a conspiracy theorist, you also have to posit a grand conspiracy to conceal the existence of bigfoot.
If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
> If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong
That not a philosophically supportable statement. "There's insufficient evidence to warrant belief in your claim" is more realistic.
It wasn't meant to be philosophical, it was meant to be practical. As a practical matter, you're wrong if you say that Bigfoot exists, or that the sun won't rise tomorrow.
> If you posit a conspiracy that only involves a few people who could plausibly coordinate to conceal the truth, that's also not a grand conspiracy, and we don't call people conspiracy theorist for believing in regular, everyday criminal conspiracies.
No, but we did call people conspiracy theorists for believing the thing Snowden subsequently showed to be real.
Not me, I didn't. That conspiracy was certainly pretty big, but there was also a ton of smaller leaks as you'd expect on a real conspiracy of that size, so you certainly wouldn't be called nuts for assuming NSA were spying on a lot they weren't supposed to.
Security state loyalists were not nearly as influential in online discourse back then, as they are now. Probably astroturfing, AI and algorithmic amplification plays a part in that.
> so you certainly wouldn't be called nuts for assuming NSA were spying on a lot they weren't supposed to.
You say that like it isn't what happened.
If anything there were more security state loyalists in the first years after 9/11 than there are now.
> If you say that bigfoot exists, you're wrong, but not necessarily a conspiracy theorist.
I’m not sure if “I’m just a cryptozoologist” is much of a vindication.
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