So, who's into conspiracy theories?

[Gob Hobblin]

^

I...wasn't talking about his personal life. I'm referring to things he has publicly announced and circulated about his books (sometimes in the forwards!).

Chaddy: Two problems with the sources: the first is that you can include actual historical sources but completely misuse them. this is something that happens all the time in academic history, and is one of the most basic ways of screening out actual historical work from pseudo historical work. Those two books don't pass that basic litmus test.

The second issue is that both works based the lion's share of their theories on documents that were proven to be hoaxes, because in fact the man that planted those documents (a known con man) came forward and admitted they were hoaxes.

Take it from me (my academic training is in history, and I'm 90% the way through a Masters in History): neither of these books have any credibility in the academic world. They are fun to read, but they are truly s*** history.

[ChaddyManPrime]

^
You major in history?

What's up with Flavius Josephus and why can't his word be taken as fact? That's something that's always bothered me.

[Gob Hobblin]

^

you're going to have to be a bit more specific, because that's the first time I've heard of somebody saying Josephus can't be considered reliable. Now, granted, Josephus is not in my area of expertise (military and geopolitical history, as well as security studies: Josephus is Roman and Jewish Antiquity. Asking me about Josephus is kind of like going to a dentist to get your ear canal checked out). that being said, pm me the question (so as not to derail the thread), and I'll see about helping you find an answer.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I...wasn't talking about his personal life. I'm referring to things he has publicly announced and circulated about his books (sometimes in the forwards!).

Unless he's claimed that the things he's saying about the holy grail are true, I'm not sure where the problem is. There's certainly some true history in his books as it pertains to some of the other elements in the story.

[Gob Hobblin]

Nuke, we're going to have a long Skype conversation about this. In the meantime, Google 'Dan Brown inaccuracies.'

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I would be interested to see a side-by-side comparison with what The Da Vinci Code got correct.

[Mr. Tines]

Well, now I really know that Icke is full of it -- everyone knows from the Hill case that those reptoid Greys came from Zeta Reticuli.

Illuminatus. Not exactly a light read, though.

But it's all fluffy pulp writing, with c1970 Playboy style smut. A good introduction to the concept of libertarianism, though.

Foucault's Pendulum is Eco doing Illuminatus! in the same way that The Name of the Rose did Brother Cadfael and his ilk.

[NemZ]

Dan Brown's books

...were generally pretty meh. but I liked Angels and Demons though just because the 'brands' were cool from a graphic design perspective.

Illuminatus! was a fun read (and has some weird eva-ish stuff towards the end) but the length of the damn thing can become a drag and overall it wasn't that memorable.

[StarShaper7]

They got a memo out of a probable thousands on similar threats. The bigger issue is why the respective intelligence agencies weren't communicating, so the FBI could know from the CIA that these men were in the country, and who they were suspected of being. Additionally, the FBI not letting the NSA know when they arrested one of them.

Shockwaves and fluidic debris that traveled down the elevator shafts. If you pay attention to the accounts, many say the "explosion" came out of the elevators.

Yeah, the whole thing really could be an example of poor communication by the US agencies who are supposed to be dealing with this kind of stuff. Otherwise, they could have prevented most if not all of the destruction. Only 4 jets were ready to protect the entire northeastern (?) area because simulations were scheduled for that exact date, so many of the jets where far from the crisis area. The simulation itself lead to major confusion since both a simulation and the actual thing were going on at the same time. There's also the fact that the chain of command was disrupted, with some being indisposed at the time or unsure of what to do/was going on. This confusion may have lead to Cheney passing the order for secret service agents not to shoot down the plane heading for the Pentagon, despite being able to do so, according to the testimony of Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, which was stricken from the 9/11 Commission Report.

It's also considered weird that some people were able to make airphone and cellphone calls from the planes at such high altitudes and when the plane was moving at such high speeds from one cell tower to another. Supposedly, this would lead to distorted audio transmissions but the recordings of their conversations (available to the public) are quite clear.

I've read about how the destruction of the towers seem to have evidence of controlled explosions taking place and that the fluid from the plane wouldn't have been enough to cause such powerful secondary explosions (not my research, of course) before, during and after the collapses. The fuel that would spill out form the aircraft and into the elevator shaft and down to the base would not be enough to cause such devastation. Survivors reported that the lobby had been blown up when they escaped. There's this group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth that question and poke holes in the official forensic evidence investigation by whoever was in charge of doing that. The details of the destruction have been documented and questioned by these professionals. I'm not really an authority on this (obviously) so I'd recommend for those who are interested to look this up. I really wouldn't have a proper response for you.

There's also the fact that the real estate owner of the WTC and Building 7, Larry Silverstein, took out insurance policies that lead him to obtaining around $4.5 billion, of course most of it when towards construction. The guy was scheduled to have breakfast in the tower and most likely die, but fortunately his wife had scheduled a meeting with a dermatologist. This seems to me like it really could just have been a coincidence, but it does fuel many conspiracies.

Disclaimer: I'm not a crazy conspiracist claiming 9/11 was planned by secret satanist jew alien lizard dudes or that the US government was actually directly responsible for it. I'm pretty skeptical about the claims being made from any side, so I'm not really a die hard believer in any of what's being said about the event. I just think the official story (i.e. The 9/11 Commission Report and other such documentations) could use some adjustments. But I'm not really qualified to confirm anything, especially when it comes to the forensic investigation. And I probably don't want to feel like I wasted time watching a 5-hour documentary about it (not the one my teacher showed, that one was pretty short). Though it was pretty interesting and I watched it with breaks in-between.

[Gob Hobblin]

The thing about Truthers, though (and this is coming from a guy exceedingly critical of the last Administration) is that when you take every piece of odd and off evidence together...you still don't have a whole pie. You just have a bunch of crumbs.

It's like with the Kennedy Assassination theories: so many of them are tantalizing, and interesting, and COULD have happened. But all it boiled down to was one guy with really bad wiring and just the right conditions to make those shots.

It's why we see so many conspiracy theories: the human brain cannot conceptualize and rationalize certain things as meaningless or without reason. We spin narratives around events that are too big for us to break down and understand. 9/11 was an awful, awful day, but that doesn't change the fact that it was the result of a group of lunatics who got lucky, combined with a government bureaucracy that was at loggerheads well-before 9/11 occurred, and just basic structural physics behaving in just the right way.

I mean, in terms of the engineering arguments, you have plenty of engineers (the vast majority, actually) who can point out why every argument in favor of the controlled demolition of the buildings (or every argument that somehow discounts the sheer destructive capacity of a fuel-laden jetliner slamming into something at full speed) is just bad physics. It sounds good...it LOOKS good. But when you scrape off the veneer, you get a whole lot of nothing.

We don't want that to be the end of it. We don't want this last, decades long mess of bad politics and bloodshed and paranoia and fear to be the result of something so trivial as lunatics with an agenda. And that's where you see conspiracy theories creep out: to try and make something that was so shockingly basic, with such wide-sweeping catastrophe, into something planned, actualized, organized, and set into motion by forces behind the curtains. We don't want a world that's chaotic: we actually find COMFORT in a world that is controlled by dark, manipulative forces...because then, that means things at least happen with a reason.

I mean, here, one of the biggest arguments against the 9/11 was in an insider conspiracy: in a world where we learn EVERYONE's dark little secrets, why is it no one has come forward about being involved in something as big as 9/11 would be? The math is just impossible to counter: you would require a huge network of people doing this and that in order to pull it off. Even if you were somehow able to handle the logistical improbability of manipulating hundreds of people to keep them in the dark as they trundled through a conspiracy, the odds are one of them would realize what's happening, and one of them would come forward.

That's the nature of probability, and it hasn't happened yet. 9/11 the way the Truthers argue it is something that is even more vast an undertaking than what happened in real life, and it just breaks down under the weight of too many things going just right...more, in fact, than what actually happened.

[TheAdmiral]

The 2 books that Chaddy listed claim to be actual history: they are non fiction books. As for Dan Brown, I will admit to reading and sometimes even enjoying his books, but he offends me on a very personal level as a historian. He has outright claim that his books are based on fact, which they REALLY aren't. In terms of this discussion, there are much better books, including fiction, that a person can go to for the occult.

Now, if you're including Dan Brown's books in terms of just plain old conspiracy theories, Nuke, then I can back you on that: he does weave intriguing conspiracies. It's just...he pisses me off so much!

Thank you for emphasizing that. So many people have developed "Dan Brown Syndrome" ever since his novels were made into movies and constantly try to twist facts to conform to his pseudo-history, and I appreciate your more rational and objective approach to his writings. That being said, the thread certainly has gone in many different directions since last night.

[InstrumentalityOne]

Do you guys want to know what REALLY happened to Kizumonogatari?

SPOILER: Show

/*//TOP SECKRIT DARK WEB MAIL ADDRESS START
[email protected]
//TOP SECKRIT DEEP WEB STUFF NOT KIDDING GUYS STOP*/

00 print google.com
10 print is watching you
20 goto 00

I accept bitcoins, avenged sevenfold merchandise and prepaid steam store credit from gamestop as payment.

THE QUESTION IS NOT WHOS GOING TO LET ME; ITS WHOS GOING TO STOP ME

[Chuckman]

The Kennedy assassination and 9/11 are perfect examples of complexity/chaos theory in action.

[Merridian]

Anyone ITT who hasn't read some of Val Valarian's Matrix books needs to. I've read the first two and most of the third volume, but I need to get the fifth. It's apparently his opus and written with regards to the preordained massive shift in consciousness, apocalypse, and possible destruction that was sure to come in 2012. Jury's still out as to whether this shift in consciousness, apocalypse, and destruction actually came, obviously...

This guy seems to legitimately believe that the simplicity of an explanation is a clear indicator of its falsity.

[Chuckman]

The simplicity of an explanation is generally an indicator of falsity. Look at the example I stated above.

Crichton's Jurassic Park is an excellent example. The book, not the movie. In the movie, "Chaos Theory" means "A cheap guy will screw a fat asshole who will ruin everything". In the book it means,

An employee will go rogue at the wrong time, and
A critical flaw in the computer system will present itself, and
The park's game warden will put one of the only weapons on the island in a jeep, and
The corrupt employee will happen to pick that one, and
The cars will happen to stop in front of the T-Rex paddock when all this transpires, and
The corrupt employee will disable the electric fences, and
Because he did a venomous dinosaur that will kill him will escape, and
The chief engineer of the park will reset everything and,
Due to an oversight in the system's design, the security systems will appear to function but won't work and,
A cyclone will hit the island and,
The only other jeep will already be out because a dinosaur got sick, and...

The real world is a lengthy combination of random events that somehow stick together into a totally unpredictable order. As has been mentioned above, when these chains of events result in a significant event we ascribe that significance to the entire chain. JFK's death was significant, so all the random weird improbably shit that happened that day must be significant too. Even totally predictable things that happened that day must also be significant.

A number of highly improbable things had to happen for 9/11 to happen the way it did, or for a narcissistic sociopath to be in just the right place to shoot a rifle at JFK, but those chains of events are no more remarkable than the ones that lead to you picking one flavor of gum over another which leads you to having a conversation that leads you to meet your future wife or walk by five minutes late and never know her or trip and sprain your ankle and because you're late to work you're not there when the building burns down.

If Hurricane Gloria hadn't destroyed my grandparent's house in 1956, I would never have been born. My parents met because that happened. If they'd picked a different street or a different house or the wind was a little different or the house faced a different direction I wouldn't exist. Tiny changes in weather currents sixty years ago determined my entire existence.

James Burke's Connections series and book are a great resource for this, also, showing how far flung and sometimes tiny historical events can cause a vastly improbably chain reaction that dramatically sets the course of history.

Conspiracies are a historical fact- they do happen. 9/11 was in fact a conspiracy- it was the act of a group of men acting covertly to achieve a sinister end. That is a conspiracy. So was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the founding of the United States, the Gunpowder Plot, the assassination of Caesar, all kinds of things.

I would urge anyone to approach conspiracy theories and the occult the way that I do, with critical thinking first. Have an open mind, but not so far open your brains fall out. Don't begin from a place of presumption of either truth or falsehood but let the evidence speak for itself and evaluate people's arguments. Conspiracy theorists often like to use concrete facts but misrepresent them or rely on less useful information while concealing other information. Yes, eyewitnesses reported hearing explosions during the 9/11 attacks but there are reasonable explanations for the phenomenon and eyewitness testimony is unreliable. People forget things, they hear things after the fact, they unconsciously alter their testimony to please a questioner or they outright lie for their own ends.

The simplest answer usually isn't the correct one. The simplest answer is usually an incredible series of coincidences that could never happen twice and only become significant when you bother to start looking at them and picking them out for special attention.

[heavytread]

Are there any good aliens? Like every theory that exists only talk about how evil the aliens are. There has to be good guys,.

Firstly I'm sure this was answered long ago however I feel I have to give my two cents. There is no such thing as "Good" and "Evil" they are matters of perception. They very from person to person. That said if you've only herd stories that say extraterrestrials are "evil" then you haven't heard it all. There are stories of alien abductions where the aliens show the abductee(s) warnings of the future.

Secondly I find it very hard to believe that Oswald acted completely of his own accord. I don't necessarily believe that there was a second shooter, just that it wasn't Oswald who came up with the plan.

[Gob Hobblin]

^

By all accounts, it wasn't really much of a plan to begin with: the route was well known, there were plenty of places for a shooter to get to, and it was clear Oswald had been planning something like this for awhile (in fact, he had attempted to assassinate a retired general some time earlier). I mean, don't get me wrong: I used to be STEEPED in Kennedy assassination theories, and I believe that there had to be more to it.

Maybe there is, but, frankly...it's unlikely. It's not complicated for a lone lunatic like Oswald to pull of what he did.

Also, on the aliens, there is a lot of talk about righteous and upright 'Nordic' aliens...because, of course, white skinned, blonde-haired humans are the best, apparently.

[ChaddyManPrime]

@ Heavy

I think rape and murder are pretty evil, especially when it comes to babies. You'd have to have some fucked up perception not to think so.

@ Gob

I've heard about those type before, are they supposed to be good? I've always thought they had ties to the perfect aryan race Hitler was talking about.

[Chuckman]

The alleged Nordic aliens are from the Contactee movement/phenomenon which predates the abductee/abduction phenomenon. The abduction of Barney and Betty Hill set the pattern for accounts of tiny alien grays pulling people out of their houses for weird experiments. Prior to that, aliens were reportedly of a wide variety of appearances. The Nordics are basically a taller, prettier version of Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

These phenomena tend to reflect the fears, hopes, and social anxieties of the time.

If you want to hear some weird shit, google UMMO.

[Gob Hobblin]

There's a whole pantheon out there.

The Nordic aliens continue to persist even today (through the Contactee movement, which refuses to go away). It's evolved with the influx of contemporary science-fiction (so now they represent a 'Federation'). Personally, I love the stuff with Grays.

I heard the interesting observation that, when one looks at the Grays as a mental projection (hallucination), they would appear very much as an adult human would to an infant. Thus, they could be mental birdshot, in a way: flash memories that pop up out of random events like strokes or seizures.

Personally, though...God, wouldn't it be cool if they were something actual and tangible? I am skeptical of it...but I really, really hope to be wrong.