[Tontogary]

Just found this on BBC, rather interesting, and certainly tries to explain why some are rather entrenched in their beliefs of TFE and the bconspiracy.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180124-the-enduring-appeal-of-conspiracy-theories

[jcks]

I read a similar article not too long ago that claimed it's because they want to feel special.

https://qz.com/1258198/conspiracy-theorists-believe-wild-ideas-because-they-want-to-feel-special/

They even did a fake conspiracy about fire detectors in Germany as an experiment.

[isaacN]

Just found this on BBC, rather interesting, and certainly tries to explain why some are rather entrenched in their beliefs of TFE and the bconspiracy.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180124-the-enduring-appeal-of-conspiracy-theories

It is indeed a complex one, the whole topic of conspiracies. Some say it makes the believer feel superior in that they know something that the masses dont, and are smart enough to see through they lies that ‘they’ generate. They, flat earth believers, often see themselves as open minded free thinkers, which in reality is quite far from the truth. Their open mindedness that rejects space travel and satellites, requires a conspiracy that spans not only nations but an incerdibly diverse set of people possibly numbering tens it not hundreds of millions who works in all the related industries; space, telecommunications, design and development, aerospace along with the world of academia. It it were true the numbers required to falsify all the infomation generated would be collosal. Yet free thinking flat earth believers are somehow able to gloss over this, their belief transcending all form of logic. Yet has any evidence ever been produced to support their conspiracy? I for one have never seen any.

[AATW]

It's an interesting psychology. To quote REM

If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool

Some people seem to like to think that "they" are up to something and that they're the ones who have discovered "the truth".
Dunno. Maybe it makes them feel more important, maybe they want to think the world is a bit more exciting than it really is.
It's all a bit odd.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Conspiracy theories are silly. Your government would never lie to you, and conspiracy theories have never been proven right.

Anyway I'll just leave these here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakil_Afridi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Organized_crime (See Paragraph 5)

[Tontogary]

Conspiracy theories are silly. Your government would never lie to you, and conspiracy theories have never been proven right.

Anyway I'll just leave these here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SUNSHINE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakil_Afridi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Organized_crime (See Paragraph 5)

And what does TFES home page say about relying on Wikipedia?
It urges one to not rely upon Wikipedia which can be edited by pretty much anyone, but to go out and observe for yourself, or use other resources.
The BBC article i referenced at the start of this article references a number of different studies and sources for its article. Not just Wikipedia.

There are certainly some things governments keep quiet about, for commercial or military, as well as privacy reasons, (which is sometimes a good thing, or ones enemies would be very happy,) but as is also referenced in the OP article, there is a reference to a study which says that the likelihood of a secret being kept is inversely proportional to the number of people who know it.

Now i have heard the Libor scandal bandied about as an example of hiding things that affect us, yes it was a scandal, and yes it was covered up for a while but it was done by a relatively small number of people who colluded for a specific purpose, on an area not well known about by the general public(at that time) it was still discovered and the cover up blown.

Now take that and exponentially expand it to every person involved in a cover up for the space race, earth shape, satellites, physics results and experiments, universities and lecturers, shipping companies, airline staff, etc etc. There is NO WAY that the conspiracies can be kept covered up.

[9 out of 10 doctors agree]

Conspiracy theories are silly. Your government would never lie to you, and conspiracy theories have never been proven right.

So I take it then that the Moon landings are completely true and that the images of Earth from them are indeed irrefutable evidence that the world is round?

Also, my government lies to me on a daily basis. *ahemcoughtrumpahemcough*

[Pete Svarrior]

And what does TFES home page say about relying on Wikipedia?

Nothing at all. The word "Wikipedia" is absent from the home page. I wrote most of the content there, so if you're confused about anything, I'm happy to help.

It urges one to not rely upon Wikipedia which can be edited by pretty much anyone, but to go out and observe for yourself, or use other resources.

No, it doesn't say any of that. You appear to confuse the message of "don't automatically trust something just because it's on the Internet" with "please automatically distrust everything on the Internet". The two are not synonymous.

[isaacN]

And what does TFES home page say about relying on Wikipedia?

Nothing at all. The word "Wikipedia" is absent from the home page. I wrote most of the content there, so if you're confused about anything, I'm happy to help.

It urges one to not rely upon Wikipedia which can be edited by pretty much anyone, but to go out and observe for yourself, or use other resources.

No, it doesn't say any of that. You appear to confuse the message of "don't automatically trust something just because it's on the Internet" with "please automatically distrust everything on the Internet". The two are not synonymous.

Having read your homepage, i have a few questions that perhaps you may answer.
You are fairly scathing of Space X a company who has made numerous launches in its short history and has many more planned. Its launches and landings, while indeed have been streamed live on the internet, something you urge caution on, they have also been witnessed live by many thousands of people. When it came to your steam powered flat earth rockateer you offered no such caution on his story. Why the difference is approach?
Another perplexing question is why do flat earth people such as yourself still refer to the proven charlatan and rouge Rowbottom? The way you still cling like grim death to this character is testimony to the dearth of  ‘evidence’ you actually have. If he managed in 1836 to carry out a pretty rudimentary experiment with a telescope, surely it would not be beyond your means to do something a bit more high tech given how inexpensive laser levelling equipment is these days.

[Tontogary]

And what does TFES home page say about relying on Wikipedia?

Nothing at all. The word "Wikipedia" is absent from the home page. I wrote most of the content there, so if you're confused about anything, I'm happy to help.

It urges one to not rely upon Wikipedia which can be edited by pretty much anyone, but to go out and observe for yourself, or use other resources.

No, it doesn't say any of that. You appear to confuse the message of "don't automatically trust something just because it's on the Internet" with "please automatically distrust everything on the Internet". The two are not synonymous.

You are correct, Wikipedia is not mentioned on the home page, i was confusing it with something else.

I am glad that Wikipedia is an accepted reference source, as i have tried hard to look for references outside of it.
I personally trust very little i read there unless i can Cross check with other sources.

Glad to have been corrected on this point on this occasion

[Jura-Glenlivet]

No, it doesn't say any of that. You appear to confuse the message of "don't automatically trust something just because it's on the Internet" with "please automatically distrust everything on the Internet". The two are not synonymous.

Likewise, with Benny’s list.
I don’t think any sane person would believe all that is put before them, especially by people whose wish is to rule them, but to then extrapolate by insinuation that ergo, we are right in our delusion, frankly against both the run of probability (See Tonto’s post) and evidence to the contrary, is perverse. Indeed, it is this sort of correlation that conspiracies thrive on.

[Tom Bishop]

The people who created NASA were also caught conducting a secret war. Why should we trust a word from them?

[ElTrancy]

The people who created NASA were also caught conducting a secret war. Why should we trust a word from them?

Is that real? Like actually because if so, wow.

[Tom Bishop]

The people who created NASA were also caught conducting a secret war. Why should we trust a word from them?

Is that real? Like actually because if so, wow.

Yes. Look into the Pentagon Papers which exposed the secret war of the Vietnam era in which the public and Congress were systematically lied to about the scale of the war and reckless disregard for civilian casualties for over 20 years between 1945 to 1967. The Secret War was administrated by the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administration, the same people who were in charge around the time when NASA started making all of its fantastic claims.

From the wiki link --

President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign,[8] including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.

Those same legislators also put Nazi war criminals in the NASA administration.

[ElTrancy]

The people who created NASA were also caught conducting a secret war. Why should we trust a word from them?

Is that real? Like actually because if so, wow.

Yes. Look into the Pentagon Papers which exposed the secret war of the Vietnam era in which the public and Congress were systematically lied to about the scale of the war and reckless disregard for civilian casualties for over 20 years between 1945 to 1967. The Secret War was administrated by the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administration, the same people who were in charge around the time when NASA started making all of its fantastic claims.

From the wiki link --

President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign,[8] including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.

Those same legislators also put Nazi war criminals in the NASA administration.

Let me read those, and I thought we did the Nazi thing because the Germans had superior rocket science...

Edit: (Wikipedia is banned by the internet I use for some ungodly reason, so I'll have to read them later. Fullest apologizes.)

[Tom Bishop]

Let me read those, and I thought we did the Nazi thing because the Germans had superior rocket science...

It was more than that. They put the Nazis in control of NASA. Wernher Von Braun, a notorious war criminal and SS Officer, was made into a NASA director.

[ElTrancy]

Let me read those, and I thought we did the Nazi thing because the Germans had superior rocket science...

It was more than that. They put the Nazis in control of NASA. Wernher Von Braun, a notorious war criminal and SS Officer, was made into a NASA director.

Huh, that was an interesting choice. Although, from what I'm reading right now, he was following his childhood dream of rockets, and the German's were just a way he could get to that. And then again, we do have a horrible history of putting the wrong people in high positions.

[9 out of 10 doctors agree]

Let me read those, and I thought we did the Nazi thing because the Germans had superior rocket science...

It was more than that. They put the Nazis in control of NASA. Wernher Von Braun, a notorious war criminal and SS Officer, was made into a NASA director.

The Soviets were the enemy at the time, not former Nazis.

Given that von Braun didn't start a second Holocaust in the US, I don't think any mistakes were made.

[Tom Bishop]

Von Braun freely used slavery, torture, and murder to achieve his ends. He was a Colonel in the SS! And yet some argue that he was an innocent rocket scientist?

Are we supposed to believe in NASA, which was created by liars, who harbored the most evil criminals on earth within their ranks, appointed them to high positions in their governance, and then take their word of scientific achievements without question?

[ElTrancy]

Von Braun used slavery, torture, and murder to achieve his ends. He was a Colonel in the SS!

Are we supposed to believe that NASA harbored the most evil criminals on earth within their ranks, appointed them to high positions in their governance, and then take their word of scientific achievements without question?

 Before the civil war, the South had appointed governors who encouraged slavery, and treated African American's like they weren't human. Yet, after the war and during Reconstruction, we allowed these governors to return to power, and take away African American rights. Is this not similarly related?