11mo ago

How do conspiracy theorists get all of their coveted secret government information if it's meant to be hidden and the government would never hand it over?

It's a curious thing. I'm not dismissing any of their claims, but I find it a bit interesting that they can so easily uncover everything that the government doesn't want you to know when it's hidden for a reason.

76 comments

Occam's razor answer: They're crackpots that seek out and/or surround themselves with other crackpots. One crackpot makes the stuff up, the others eat it up. Eventually it becomes a positive feedback loop of crackpot theory feeding more crackpot theories.
Did I mention they're crackpots? Because they're crackpots.
- It can be worse than that sometimes. The crackpots see some nuggets of truth, and for whatever reason, they make some leap in interpreting them that leads them to nonsense. They keep finding things that are either true, and add them to their worldview, or made by people who took compatible leaps of logic away from reality. They propagate it to others.
  Taking Kennedy's assassination as a classic example: it's true that a lot of people wanted him dead, some benefited from his death, the CIA has a history of assassinations, and Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist who had once lived in Minsk. I can see why someone with just enough information to feel confident can arrive at a belief that the CIA or USSR killed Kennedy, while missing critical information to realize there's no reason to believe either is true.
  
  There's an episode of Voyager where Seven of Nine goes down conspiracy rabbit holes that's a lot like that.
  Basically, the first one turns out to be correct (although very minor), but it fuels more and more absurd theories. Essentially she goes into a feedback loop, over- and mis-analyzing everything until she's convinced that every encounter she's had with anyone has been part of a conspiracy against her.
  So maybe "crackpot" was a bit harsh, at least in some cases.
- Lazerpig called it a Woozle Hunt, after the Winnie the Pooh story. Pooh and Piglet think they're hunting a woozle, but in reality they're just following their own tracks around and around.
  
  I'll have to remember that. It's much more well put than how I described it.
- MK Ultra
  
  For every real one that is eventually discovered, there's 10,000 flying around in real time that are total bunk.
  Whether the 10,000 bunk ones are deliberately put out as decoys to hide the 1 real one, I will leave that up to the reader.
  
  This is the important difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Once there's actual evidence, it's no longer a conspiracy theory.
  For example, the fact MK Ultra was real does not prove the fact we are ruled by lizards.

depends on the conspiracy theory.
real conspiracies; like MK-Ultra, we find out through leaks, declassification and similar sources.
The loony-bin conspiracy theories like "moon landing hoax" (any one with a ham radio could track the apollo CSM as it went to the moon, there's no way to hide such a trip. there's really no way to fake those signals.) are mostly sourced from bullshit.
another great example of this is the Birds Aren't Real conspiracy. Which... uh... started as satire. there's plenty of ways they get started, but they all boil down to bullshit.
- Hold up. Birds Aren't Real has true believers now?
  
  the people they were making fun of... demonstrated Poe's Law.
  in any case... I give you this...
  
  it's a drone used for wildlife conservation so as to not spook whatever they're trying to track; too much.

They don't
I'm not dismissing any of their claims,
Why not? You should.
- Conspiracy theories can be revealed to be true. They're not all bullshit.
  In the 90s I was in the rabbit hole about Echelon and had a healthy paranoia about my privacy.
  So when Snowden dropped the leaks about mass government surveillance I wasn't surprised at all. I assumed everyone knew. But nope - apparently Echelon was a "conspiracy theory" and so was all the Snowden stuff until - it wasn't.
  That's my personal experience but there's others like MKUltra.
  
  Echelon was not so much a conspiracy theory as a sad game of telephone where increasingly disturbed people projected their increasingly distorted paranoias onto an actual thing.
  Same with HAARP. Yes, it as exists. No, It does not do that. Or that. Or even that.
- He's indicating he's not looking to get in on any particular topic, not stating support or disagreement with anything

Based on World of Tanks I think all you have to do is make a successful game and they'll just hand it over willingly.
- I think that;s WarThunder that gets all the leaks of armour and armament details.
  
  I'll take your word for it. I couldn't remember the name. Just remember the leaks kept being tanks.

People seem to be forgetting that not all conspiracy theories or theorists are crazy.
Sometimes it turns out to be true. Just ask MKULTRA and Iran-contra.
But yeah, 99.997% of them are fake and made up by one or a few people, and get repeated ad nauseum
- Some of them are true, but it's impossible to know which ones until you get actual non-batshit evidence which is why it's not reasonable to believe any of them.
  But if you want to have a favorite one just for fun, I think that's ok.
  
  But if you want to have a favorite one just for fun, I think that’s ok.
  Mine is probably the 'NASA wanted to fake the moon landings, so they got Kubrick in to direct. But he was such a perfectionist, he insisted on filming on location' one.
  
  You have to do some careful research and reasoning. Arrive at your conclusions the hard way.
  But then they call you crazy.
- Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
  Problem is that conspiracy theorists believe that the theories that have actually been proven true are fake and meant to throw people off from the real truth.
- Those weren't conspiracies. The government just covered them up. Truths are never conspiracy...it's kind of the definition.
  
  Truths are never conspiracy...it's kind of the definition.
  No, it's not.
  conspiracy
  noun
  a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful
  
  No, a conspiracy is when people get together and conspire, i.e. they develop a secret plan of action for nefarious purposes. In the strictest sense, the term “conspiracy theory” just means that you’re theorizing that some people have secretly planned to do something. If you theorize that some wrongdoers have developed or enacted a secret plan, and it later turns out your suspicion was correct, then by definition you had a true conspiracy theory.

Heavy misinterpretation of publicly available information is one.
Another reason is more social. I find a lot of these people want to feel important or smart by "knowing" something that others don't.
A lot of these people will jump on the bandwagon of whatever is said by fellow conspricists they're watching on YouTube.
They also learn the "gotcha" questions which allow them to fall into the rabbit hole in the first place.
Yes, Kent Hovind, a dog will only produce another dog, but that doesn't disprove evolution!
No, Eric Dubay, I can't see the curvature of the Earth from an aeroplane, but that doesn't mean the Earth is a fucking pancake!
Another curious thing is how a disproportionate number of conspricists are religious. I can't speak for other religions, but so many Christians will invoke the Bible into their arguments.
Maybe it's partly a sunk cost fallacy on their part. Spending so much of their youth believing complete fiction that it's easier to deny reality than accept their Bible isn't an accurate depiction of historical events.
- Believing in conspiracy and religion requires superstitious thinking instead of thinking scientifically and skeptically.
  We've all seen popular entertainment.where the protagonist connects seemingly unrelated clues to uncover the conspiracy (of course they're always proven to be right by the end of the show 🙄)
  These unrelated clues could potentially be explained by a wild conspiracy. But they can always be explained in a hundred other, simpler, more plausible ways.
  Superstitious thinking aims to seek out any data to prove a theory... while throws away any data that doesn't.
  Scientific thinking looks for the best theory to explain all the data and throws away those that don't fit well.

As a listener of Knowledge Fight, and thus Alex Jones Infowars, part of his explanation has something to do with god and the literal devil and (I swear) intergalactic contract law. Something about the globalists can only get away with their depopulation plans if they provide warning first, and thus we all accept the contract or something, so that's why the globalists leave clues in plain site. Cause they have to, cause intergalactic contract law.
People who meme "the frogs are gay" are truly only scratching the surface of how insane and dangerous that guy and his followers are.
- https://piped.video/watch?v=i5uSbp0YDhc&t=0
  Great watch about the gay frogs from a sensible view or at least a view more aligned with mine

One thing Alex Jones does is parrot things a caller said several episodes ago. He'll vaguely talk about sources, shuffle some paper around for dramatic effect and claim that nobody died at Sandy Hook.
Lots of other folks do a similar thing. They will say something innocuous that some of their audience will construe to be rightwing or part of a conspiracy and praise them for it. From there they get pulled more and more into whatever ideology as their audience pills them harder and harder.
Plenty of Q anon folks claim movies and TV have secret messages in them. There are a bunch of theories about why fiction is partially true. One is, all these stories are priming the population for social control. Cultiral programming of some sort.
Another is the Bible. The flat earth conspiracy theory is based on a particularly literal reading of the Bible. The writers of the Torah probably believed in a flat earth. This isn't surprising given their lack of sea faring history, most folks with large boats realize the earth isn't flat because the bottom of the boat disappears first. Plenty of flat earthers believe that society is trying to hide that fact so we don't realize we live in a divinely created snow globe. From there they concoct theories on how such a world could exist.
- *isn't :)
  
  Thanks took me 3 rereads to find the typo 😅

As a dude with conspiracy theorist parents:
From "trusted sources".
Basically what that means is:
Any video or article that writes about stuff that they generally already believe in. My mom and dad already believe Bill Gates is evil and there exists a shadow state, so anything that so much as mentions these things are trusted almost immediately, regardless of how stupid it sounds.
Any video or article that is essentially against anything written in any news source. You can make a good prediction about what my parents will believe in by following global events and thinking the exact opposite.
Any video or article that claims to have evidence through loosely connected statements, often no connection at all, and bonus if it features basic, publicly available financial records (follow the money).

Because the big bad is always all too powerful and all too weak at the same time. Turns out werewolfs are brought down by silver bullets, vampires have to sleep in a coffin and can get stabbed, demons can't go past a ring of power, aliens invaders with bacteria. No other arrangement will work. If the enemy is all powerful they just take over. If they are all weak no one cares about them. Only the exact combination of threatening but easy to defeat allows drama to exist.
So of course the government is smart enough to pull off incredible fears of social manipulation but not smart enough to hide it from some podcaster "just asking questions". No other arrangement will work. If the government is always dumb they can't do a conspiracy, if they are always smart they can pull it off and no one will know. Non-working arrangements don't get propagated and their lines die off, the working arrangements infect new hosts and spreads.

"I know a guy who knows a guy."
- I do know a lot of guys who knows guys.
  Most of them are useless though. (especially the Feebs.)

Because "I'm the smart one that can see through the lies" - conspiracy theorists almost always have delusions of grandeur.
- Then and Now did a good pease on this

In Qanons case, Q gave them the info and was leaking it.
Allegedly anyway. It's not very hard to say you have an inside man.
- Started on 4chan iirc

One of the important aspects that I haven't seen mentioned yet is a sense of community. I'm currently in a online censorship country so can't link it, but the ABC in Australia had a good podcast around QAnon.
Effectively there's people who feel a lack of community/companionship locally and seek this out online.

Gematria
- I just put "bush did 9/11" and "Wendy's 5 for 5 dollar meal is back" into a gematria calculator and they equal each other. I don't know what this means but it's fucking HUGE!!

the government would never hand it over
The gov't is many people, not just one, and they have all kinds of funny humans there :)
Read here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/27/sean-kirkpatrick-pentagon-ufo-conspiracy-theory-myths?ref=upstract.com

Leaks?
Or NSA beaming info into your brain as you are a subject of a top secret test and can now directly commune with aliens
- turns out all those 5G vaccine chips were good for something after all.
  thanks bill gates!
  
  Bill Gates chips? Bad.
  Elon Musk chips? Good!
  Take that, liberals!

"Q" hands it over to them in form of riddles.

Pretty much like most other leakers of information be that film or TV shows - most don't know anything and either keep it so vague that they can claim anything as a win (a recent leak about Moon Knight season 2 said it was in development about would have at least 6 episodes - anyone could have made that up) or go so far into the deep end that it's impossible to come up with evidence to contradict it (like being part of an "away team" in an extraterrestrial exchange program where you spent a decade on another planet while a doppelganger filled in for you back on Earth).
Somewhere in there may be legitimate leakers but they get drowned out by the grifters and the mentally ill. In fact, some leakers are likely to be spreading disinformation to cover up secret goings-on or to test how leaky an organisation is.
Good luck trying to pick through that tangled mess looking for "the truth". Although I am sure it's out there, it's usually well guarded.

I would imagine that to hide the truth that leaked they would feed nonsense on purpose so they can either find a leak and/or fill the world with so much false data that the truth is harder to find. I'm sure there is some truth in the middle of all this.

Declassified documents and vetted leaks/ information like the Panama papers. You can also track the stock lawmakers are trading.

There's good money in "based on a true story". Conspiracy theories sell books, get eyeballs on web ads, make fame, and boost political campaigns. When a person is rewarded for turning their speculations or outright lies into "nonfiction" form, they're likely to persist in doing it.

All human thoughts are collected into a sorta zeitgeist that we all unknowingly tap into. Take for example- when you have a truely original idea, that is then uploaded to the collective human zeitgeist, which thus allows other humans to be able to tap into and have the exact same idea. Some people know how to dive deep and collect this information, and spread it out into the public sphere of knowledge.
- /s

Theres classified data leaks all the time. Hell, warthunder has had like 7 leaks now? Its not a small number.
Plus, its not like MKUltra didnt happen.
- Hell, warthunder has had like 7 leaks now?
  It's double digits now- like 12 or 13. It's absolutely hilarious.

YouTube, Facebook, forums and pretty much any echo chamber. Pretty much anything that has replaced AM radio and shitty newsletters. In the 2020's also parroting politicians -- I'm sure I don't need to go over the last 4 years of examples, so how about the Bowling Green massacre that never happened?

Like you said, it's a theory you can look at available data and draw conclusions. The term "conspiracy theory" is used to make anybody they want look less credible.
We know that the government was aware of something that was going to happen in 9/11 but they say they didn't have enough information. We also know that the government allowed perl harbor to happen so they could have an excuse to join the war. Did the government know what was going to happen on 9/11 and intentionally allowed it to happen? I'm sure I found dig up compelling information. We already know what happened in response to 9/11.

In the example of 9/11, there were MOUNTAINS of video footage, news articles, and documents stored in a large array of community archives that started as community efforts to find Osama Bin Laden and as it dawned on all of us, slowly morphed into trying to put together a solid fully documented and supported narrative of what actually occurred on that day.
Community leaders disappeared under mysterious circumstances and then all of those digital archives disappeared.
People who were in those communities and helped to compile those archives saw it with their own 2 eyes and remember what was discovered.
People who were not in those communities don't believe they ever existed.
Edit: Looking at these comments, its just precious.
Question "If the government is hiding information, how did you guys have this information."
"I am older than you, or was more aware than you, and I saw the information before the government hid it and turned a historical record into a conspiracy theory."
"ANOTHER PERSON CONVENIENTLY SAYING THERE WAS INFORMATION AND NOW THERE ISN'T!!! DON'T LISTEN!!!"
Basically the prompt is "explain to me what makes a conspiracy theory", and the comments are saying "IT'S A CONSPIRACY THEORY!!!" in response to people sharing what makes a conspiracy theory...

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