Conspiracies

The new episode of LUEE just came out, and they're talking about Moon Landing conspiracy theories. It owes a pretty big debt to the Mythbusters episode, which they acknowledge a few times. But it's well worth listening to even if you've already seen the Mythbusters cover it.

Besides the usual suspects, they address a conspiracy theory I hadn't heard of before... the "That's No Moon" theory, from David Icke, he of the reptilian overlords fame.

And there's a fascinating discussion at the start covering conspiracy theories more generally. In particular, why some people believe them despite the lack of evidence. They did a great job of covering all the bases... confirmation bias, the feeling of superiority, that sort of thing.

But there's one obvious reason for believing in conspiracies that they didn't mention. Perhaps of was too obvious to mention.

Sometimes the conspiracy theories are right.

Oh, not reptiloids, and not the moon landing hoax. Nearly all conspiracy theories are untrue. But there are also a few things that were conspiracy theories until they turned out to be true.

Take this list, for example: 10 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True. It crossed my Facebook feed this morning... that's convenient. A little too convenient, perhaps...

I can't personally verify that all of those really did turn out to be true, of course. And for some of the well established ones, like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, I don't know if there were rumours circulating before the facts became public.

The last one though, the mass surveillance, that hits home. Because back in the early 2000s I really did think that those people talking about emails and phone calls being intercepted were just conspiracy theorists. It turned out to be true... not just a little bit true, but more than anyone had imagined.

And there are others not mentioned in this article, that have come out in court cases or declassified documents. Like Reagan arming the Contras, or Nixon sabotaging the Paris Peace Accords, or Stalin spying in embassies. Or so many others... things that are never considered conspiracy theories anymore because they are just a part of history, as obvious in hindsight as anything done openly.

There's a risk of coming off endorsing the conspiracy theorists here... "They Laughed at Galileo, but he was proved right in the end!" But I think it's important to remember that behind all the wacky conspiracy theories you can sometimes find some reasonable conspiracy hypotheses.

And the wacky theories can feed off of reality. There would probably be a lot fewer 9-11 truthers if a staged Casus Belli wasn't one of the oldest tricks in the book.