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gimboarretino t1_ixc3anv wrote

I have always thought that, statistically, out of 1000 conspiracy theories, it is simply impossible for all 1000 of them to be totally wrong.

Almost certainly a couple are 100% correct and another couple come closer to the truth than the official version.

We will never know which ones they are but we will have to keep this statistical element in mind.

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TheRoadsMustRoll t1_ixe1kje wrote

>statistically, out of 1000 conspiracy theories, it is simply impossible for all 1000 of them to be totally wrong.

what specific statistics support that view? because a person could make up millions of imaginary scenarios and none of them might be true.

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gimboarretino t1_ixgpg0x wrote

because they are not imaginary scenarios. They are scenarios based on known facts, however distorted and misinterpreted.

Exactly like in a criminal trial, whare you have to put together pieces, fragments of facts: no matter how hard you try to do it in the most rational and methodical way possible, there will always be the suspect for whom 90% of the evidence seems to lean towards his innocence, who is actually guilty, and vice versa.

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slickwombat t1_ixhs86s wrote

I think /u/TheRoadsMustRoll's point is that there's a potentially infinite number of patently false claims one could make. Like, I could say "housecats did 9/11," "your great-great-grandma did 9/11," "marine gastropod molluscs did 9/11," and so on forever; given enough time we could easily make 1000 such claims. The sheer volume of claims or the fact that they reference known events doesn't confer likelihood that any of them are true.

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gimboarretino t1_ixhyjxq wrote

but I'm talking about actual, main-stream theories, with at least a vague verisimilitude, clues and evidence, however potentially misleading and misinterpreted.The US government did 9/11, Covid is a lab virus, the government knows about UFOs, moon landing is fake etc.

Not "every high-fantasy/sci-fi setting that you might imagine"

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Capital_Net_6438 t1_ixh3ukk wrote

Why isn’t this like: statistically it’s just not possible for all 1000 men in a sample to be less than 100 feet tall? What are the odds? At least one of them surely is 100 feet tall or more.

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gimboarretino t1_ixhcq8a wrote

Mmm no, because no man above 100 feet tall has ever been observed. While on the other hand, many times in history it emerged that the official, authority-approved version of the facts was false. And the alternative, unofficial, "conspiratory" version was true. For example, the German Reichstag was indeed burn down by the nazi Government, and not (as the German goverment and mass media claimed) by the commies. Or the Tonkin incident... or the fact that tobacco companies were indeed aware of the harms of smoking and wrestling plotting against anti-smoking legislation and scientific evidences... etc.

So there is nothing absurd/unlikely to assume that a little % of the current "official versions of the facts" are not true or not entirely true.

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Capital_Net_6438 t1_ixi9gbd wrote

I’m sure you’re right that many conspiracy theories are true. I just find your argument specious. Aren’t you saying:

Some Fs are Gs. These 1000 things are Fs. Therefore, some of those 1000 things are G.

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gimboarretino t1_ixicijr wrote

I'm saying that out of 100 past "official versions of facts", X (where X is a number > 0) turned out to be false. So it's very likely that out of 100 contemporary "official version of facts", X (where X is > 0) will turn out to be false.

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