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How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

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Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#171

Post by kagamine »

ConnorBoyd wrote: post #27
wavefunction wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of Americans who cannot believe that some adult gets on TV and publicly puts forward these sorts of theories. It's like watching a Fox News anchor have a melt-down on TV regarding the ethnicity of Santa Claus...[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XYlJqf4dLI

I definitely wouldn't consider that to be a "melt-down"

ON the Internet these days having an opinion that differs from that of the person you are commenting after is "having a melt down". It's a 14 year old's way of 'winning' the argument. It is also why reddit is dead to me now. Too many people can read words without understanding sentences.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#172

Post by DanBC »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #134
DanBC wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theories are bizare explanations of events that don't fit reality. Thus, Iran-Contra is not a conspiracy theory because it's true, even though it is a conspiracy.

That's a ridiculously narrow and exclusionary definition of conspiracy theories, one that's set up to only include those theories that are clearly delusional. If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional and your explanation would have been bizarre and unre…

> If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional

A person can still be operating under a conspiracy theory and talk about pervasive government surveillance. Just because it's true doesn't make it not a conspiracy theory.

But also, for your example, anyone paying attention had been saying, pretty loudly, that governments were surveiling their populations. See, for example, the EU parliament report into ECHELON. We know about ECHELON in the early 1990s. Thus, if someone had said "They've done it before, look at ECHELON, they're probably doing it now" -- that's a reasonable bit of evidence and a reasonable conclusion. If someone says "I hear clicks on my phone line and so the government is spying on me" that's a conspiracy theory (because the evidence is bogus) even though it's true (governments do spy on citizens).

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#173

Post by V-2 »

palmer_eldritch wrote: post #125
fluxtemp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's the opposite. The large portion of the population who believes everything the authorities tell them has a mental illness that prevents them from thinking critically and for themselves.

I don't see how that's opposite. Not believing in conspiracy theories doesn't imply not thinking critically. In fact, critical thinking is pretty harmful to most conspiracy theories.

Correct, but some people are rejecting every conspiracy theory on the sole ground that it assumes conspiracy, and this heuristic is not critical thinking.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#174

Post by junto »

damian2000 wrote: post #19
Gustomaximus wrote: post #16

This articles first paragraph says: "There had been no bad weather, no distress call, no wreckage, no eyewitness accounts of a fireball in the sky" Someone did claim to see a fireball. http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/03/oil-rig-worker-says-he...

Also the british woman on a yacht ... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mh370-search-br... Incidentally, the kiwi oil rig worker who claimed he saw MH370 come down in a fireball was sacked for saying that, and hasn't worked since. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obje...

My gut feeling is that the plane was accidentally shot down as part of the continuing tensions in the South China Sea. This article and the included map illustrate the problems quite well:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13748349

There were a large number of different nations involved in various "war games", "search and rescue practices", and general provocative actions at the time. http://tass.ru/en/world/725908

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#175

Post by V-2 »

DanBC wrote: post #172
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ridiculously narrow and exclusionary definition of conspiracy theories, one that's set up to only include those theories that are clearly delusional. If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional and your explanation would have been bizarre and unre…

> If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional A person can still be operating under a conspiracy theory and talk about pervasive government surveillance. Just because it's true doesn't make it not a conspiracy theory. But also, for your example, anyone pay…

I agree.

It's also a typical trait of conspiracy theories (in the negative sense) that they pretend to have figured out more than they possibly could have.

I mean they don't just sell you suspicions (that might even be reasonable), but overdetailed debunkings which are clearly fabricated.

As if they believed that the winner is whoever provides more details, wherever these would come from.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#176

Post by gjm11 »

DanBC wrote: post #129
Klinky wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large portion of the conspiracy theorist population probably has a mental illness that makes them susceptible to delusional thinking. Delusional people can lead very normal fully functioning lives, but mix a certain topic that offers patterns which make their brain go down a certain path, and they suddenly become very adamant about believing something that is illogical and irrational. There is probably litt…

What's the prevelance of conspiracy theories? About half of Americans claim creationism explains the existance of man; only about 20% say humans evolved without God. 50% of Americans think there was a wider conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK. About 35% of Americans think that global warming is a hoax. What you're doing is probably the conjunction fallacy. You see people with odd beliefs. You then have a choic…

> conjunction fallacy [...] you pick ii, even though we know it's less likely

We know that "mental illness and odd beliefs" is less likely than "odd beliefs". That doesn't mean we know that "mental illness and odd beliefs" is less likely than "no mental illness and odd beliefs", which is the relevant comparison here.

(But, for what it's worth, I think most people who embrace conspiracy theories don't do so as a result of anything that would be diagnosed as a mental illness.)

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#177

Post by frevd »

bobmoretti wrote: post #140
raverbashing wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" but there is still a massive risk that one of these countries might notice the plane on military or other radar" And radar coverage is much bigger in the northern arc. China/Russia/India/Pakistan, etc

Yep, and as someone else mentioned, flying right over one of the more heavily militarized areas of the planet (Kashmir). Also, why would Russia choose to hijack a plane full of Chinese citizens for this? The last thing they want right now is to compromise their relationship with China. It just doesn't make any sense.

Well, at that time the worlds media attention was on the Ukraine conflict, involving Russia. What better way to get media attention away from your plans than to create a mystery about which most of the western world happily cares much more than about watching eversame news about war and invasion.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#178

Post by palmer_eldritch »

V-2 wrote: post #173
palmer_eldritch wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that's opposite. Not believing in conspiracy theories doesn't imply not thinking critically. In fact, critical thinking is pretty harmful to most conspiracy theories.

Correct, but some people are rejecting every conspiracy theory on the sole ground that it assumes conspiracy, and this heuristic is not critical thinking.

Given the amount of signal vs noise, I think it's pretty reasonable to ignore the crazies until they can back up their claims with hard evidence.

If they can't do that, their "theory" isn't worth my time. Now if one of the crazies keeps bugging me with his theory, I might apply critical thinking to shut him up, if I don't lose patience and punch him in the face first.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#179

Post by jakub- »

jpatokal wrote: post #164
prawn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia took down another Malaysian Airlines plane and virtually nothing has come of that.

Full of Dutch nationals, not Chinese. Also, it's unlikely that "Russia" took it down, they merely supplied the weaponry to a bunch of incompetent hotheads who accidentally shot it down.

According to a report by the Berlin-based Correctiv & Der Spiegel [0], it was Russia's 53rd Air Defence Brigade that was directly operating the missile launcher.

[0] https://mh17.correctiv.org/english/

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#180

Post by laumars »

Klinky wrote: post #97
tbabb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the average reader is going to interpret this as subtle irony, and I have doubts that it was intended to be taken that way. I think an average reader going to see that an airplane expert smells something fishy and has a bunch of technical "knowledge" to back it up. This is how conspiracy theories get started, and if this guy really understands how unlikely all this is, it is arguably irresponsible of hi…

I think a large portion of the conspiracy theorist population probably has a mental illness that makes them susceptible to delusional thinking. Delusional people can lead very normal fully functioning lives, but mix a certain topic that offers patterns which make their brain go down a certain path, and they suddenly become very adamant about believing something that is illogical and irrational. There is probably litt…

I consider peoples need for a conspiracy theory to be the same as peoples need for religion or superstition. It's about a need to believe in some higher order to seemingly uncontrollable chaos.

I don't think it's fair to call this evolutionary trait as a "mental illness" either, since correlating cause and effect is what helped us learn to farm and such like. The hard part is separating linked events from coincidences - which is where the scientific method comes in of using larger sample groups, control groups and peer reviews. However lets also remember that this is an extremely recent development in our evolution.

As a footnote, it's also worth noting that these traits have also been observed in other species such as pigeons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstition_in_t...

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