Conspiracy Theories and 5GW

R, Adam. 2007. The death of conspiracies. The Metropolis Times. April 24, 2007. Available online: http://themetropolistimes.blogspirit.com/archive/2007/04/24/the-death-of-conspiracies.html.

Jumping straight to the conclusion:

The result is that important conspiracies are getting next to impossible to keep secret. No country would dare fake a terrorist attack nowadays - they know that millions of people trying to blame it on Jews or the President would review and overanalyze every frame of video, every word of testimony and every stray shadow until proof was found.

medium_shooting.jpgAttempts to suppress the truth by stigmatizing conspiracy theorists don’t work. When the evidence is shaky or non-existent, as it usually is in conspiracy theories, the theory stays marginalized (Moon landing, 9/11 attacks). When the evidence leads to a plausible scenario, it is adopted by the mainstream (JFK assassination), and when the evidence is overwhelming, the “conspiracy” unravels. (1919 World Series, Plamegate). There’s little danger of false-negatives, but of false-positives. (Holocaust, strict creationism)

We’ll have a new Conspiracy Week at The Metropolis Times in May. But if elaborate conspiracies, which some scholars see as the “fifth generation” of warfare, are so easily foiled in the Information Age, does this mean they are a thing of the past? Or will conspirators just have to be more clever?

Subadei, from Soob, has already commented.