I saw a Facebook post recently that I really liked:

"Nobody who believes in conspiracy theories has ever been a project manager."

If you've experienced how difficult it can be to cat-herd 10-20 people on some web migration project, you know how impossible it would be to have a huge group of people engaged in some goal that nearly everyone would find objectionable, be effective, and somehow manage to keep it all a secret.

Ah yes, but you see the lizard people are different...

I know I've made it when people think I'm part of a reptilian race masquerading as human.

That can only mean that I've obtained a mythical level of financial success and access.

I enjoyed learning that everyone is skeptical… about different things.

It helped add a lot of clarity and understanding for different viewpoints, because you can begin an information exchange by first trying to parse what someone is skeptical about.

One person’s skepticism is another person’s conspiracy theory.

honestly, it's not the worst pattern match; because a lot of conspiracy theories actually were conspiracy theories. E.G. CIA testing LSD, Tuskeegee siphilis study, Polio Vaccines used as a spy operation to catch Osama Bin Laden...

I think this is more an illustration and reminder that "conspiracy theory" was a term that was workshopped to dismiss criticism (about the JFK assassination investigations.) None of those were conspiracy theories, and were trivially verifiable shortly after they happened. They were just aggressively dismissed and ignored by anybody who had the authority to punish someone responsible. This goes on until everyone responsible is dead, or legal clocks have run down.

Sometimes the rustle in the bushes actually is a tiger. But I think some people live in a world haunted by tigers. The internet has given these individuals an unprecedented ability to connect with others who see things in a similar way.

People suffering from something like this may feel totally isolated from regular people around them and so meeting fellow sufferers online must be a great relief and comfort. Unfortunately, from their perspective, the affliction is external rather than internal.

To many people, the malicious, or at least "counter to their interests but with forced participation" action they have to deal with every day might as well be a world haunted by tigers. I have Adtech clients, and the lengths that are gone to to track conversions are astounding - Sometimes when I'm explaining the pipelines to myself I'm convinced I'm talking about a crazy conspiracy.

Quite a lot of conspiracy theories are "exactly wrong"; that is, they resemble something that happened or is happening, but the persons involved are wrong and the motives are wrong. Even weirder, the conspiracists don't cite the true events as support of their theories.

"big pharma" => see Purdue

"pizzagate" => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Nolan_(politician) "is an American registered sex offender and former state district court judge, a former leader in the Republican Party and a former chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in Campbell County, Kentucky. On February 9, 2018, he pleaded guilty to 19 counts of child sex trafficking and human trafficking; on February 11, 2018 he was sentenced to serve 20 years in prison"

and so on.

> Tuskeegee siphilis study

And a lot of conspiracy theories are "what if this thing the US did to black people it also did to white people"

> Even weirder, the conspiracists don't cite the true events as support of their theories.

There's so much bad stuff going on, everywhere, why do people feel compelled to make stuff up?

> pizzagate

Both parties and beyond, everyone must stop the partisan squabbling.

No, I don't care about the psyop you read on reddit.

I was using it as an example of a conspiracy theory.

> Both parties and beyond, everyone must stop the partisan squabbling

Prisoner's dilemma: the first person to stop being partisan loses. And demonstrably hyper-partisanship is working for at least one party.

Non D or R here: I'm the prisoner.

I'm losing.

You all suck.

Abolish First Past the Post.

> Abolish First Past the Post

I'm not even in the same prison, I'm a Brit, and I strongly agree with this. I actually get to vote in a non-FPTP election as well and, surprise surprise, it produces much better results.

Really? San Francisco ended up with a relatively unknown hack as District Attorney due to a ranked choice system.

Seems like just trade one problem for another.

By definition, the "relatively unknown hack" in question was preferred to all the alternatives by the majority of the voters, so what's the problem?

If the "problem" is "people actually have to pay attention to their governance", then...?

Huh? That’s true either way.

The issue with the ranked choice was the rules, the runoff resulted in some random person with fewer votes winning.

Chesa Boudin isn't a hack.

I mean, that's a pretty interesting choice for pizzagate, you could easily have dropped it on Jeffery Epstein, to be charitable to the conspiracy theorists, is known to be associated with Bill Clinton.

edit: removed joke about "epstein not killing himself" because it distracted from the main point by introducing a second conspiracy theory.

The story that Epstein killed himself and it just happened that nobody was watching and the camera was broken is completely implausible. Something is suspicious there.

That doesn't prove any particular course of events did happen, though. In the meantime the next excitement will be Prince Andrew.

The stated person was just the first hit for a republican actually convicted of child sex offences.

Epstein not killing himself was a great moment, a tremendous moment.

For a brief, beautiful period of time, we were united. Far left, far right, normies and the fringes of cyberculture alike; united in thinking “so the cameras magically broke and the guards fell asleep… yea right!!!”

That moment is not over.

The narrative my mind generated (and it is just a narrative) is that some entirely normal person whose job or circumstances gave them access to Epstein, looked at him, decided he was guilty and that a billionaire like him would never face justice, turned the camera(s) off, and took justice into their own hands.

I have no evidence for this, and don’t want to even imply it’s more than my imagination.

The thing is, high profile prisoners have a whole system set up to prevent a single individual getting in close like that. (Or were supposed to. You'd think they learned after Oswald!)

Sure, but it’s not like software is supposed to be hackable either, and if physical security is like digital security the guards probably have a long list of issues they told their bosses about years ago and about which nothing has been done.