How conspiracists think
New research helps explain why some see elaborate government plots behind events like 9/11 or the Boston bombingsDid NASA fake the moon landing? Is the government hiding Martians in Area 51? Is global warming a hoax? And what about the Boston Marathon bombing…an “inside job” perhaps?
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These findings are alarming because they show that conspiracy theories sow public mistrust and undermine democratic debate by diverting attention away from important scientific, political and societal issues. There is no question as to whether the public should actively demand truthful and transparent information from their governments and proposed explanations should be met with a healthy amount of scepticism, yet, this is not what conspiracy theories offer. A conspiracy theory is usually defined as an attempt to explain the ultimate cause of an important societal event as part of some sinister plot conjured up by a secret alliance of powerful individuals and organizations. The great philosopher Karl Popper argued that the fallacy of conspiracy theories lies in their tendency to describe every event as ‘intentional’ and ‘planned’ thereby seriously underestimating the random nature and unintended consequences of many political and social actions. In fact, Popper was describing a cognitive bias that psychologists now commonly refer to as the “fundamental attribution error”: the tendency to overestimate the actions of others as being intentional rather than the product of (random) situational circumstances.
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Since a number of studies have shown that belief in conspiracy theories is associated with feelings of powerlessness, uncertainty and a general lack of agency and control, a likely purpose of this bias is to help people “make sense of the world” by providing simple explanations for complex societal events — restoring a sense of control and predictability. A good example is that of climate change: while the most recent international scientific assessment report (receiving input from over 2500 independent scientists from more than a 100 countries) concluded with 90 percent certainty that human-induced global warming is occurring, the severe consequences and implications of climate change are often too distressing and overwhelming for people to deal with, both cognitively as well as emotionally. Resorting to easier explanations that simply discount global warming as a hoax is then of course much more comforting and convenient psychologically. Yet, as Al Gore famously pointed out, unfortunately, the truth is not always convenient.
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/how_conspiracists_think_partner/
= new reply since forum marked as read
everything Bush told are the smart ones. 
I never understood why the word 'truth' is supposed to denigrate people. It's that Orwellian world we are currently living in where 'truth = lies' and 'war = peace'. Of course you have to be susceptible to Orwellian propaganda in order not to see the humor and irony in it, how quickly people will go along with the 'language' they are manipulated into using. Anytime I've seen people repeating what is not their own words, but words provided for them, I wonder why they do it. Talking points always make me wary of those using them. Either they themselves have an agenda to push a perception, or they are happy to have someone make it possible for them not to have to think for themselves. It's fascinating.
If you had said 'liar' I would be insulted, but accusing me of wanting 'truth' is a great compliment, thank you! 
Right? 
since you will explain how WTC 7 defies all the known instances of how a building will hold up in a fire?
Seriously. You can help make the case for the first known example of fires causing the structural collapse of a skyscraper. It might not be a conspiracy. Metal might fatigue enough to make a building completely collapse just from fire even if it's never happened before in ANY skyscrapers that have caught fire.
Perhaps it just happens to buildings that contain offices for the CIA, the DOD, the IRS, the SEC, and the Secret Service. I mean heck those agencies would never demand that a structure be fortified to withstand fire to make sure it is secure would they?
But if you've got points to make please feel to make them here. I won't request you post in the "special" section. Because that would be rude and an unneeded distraction that might cause the flow of the discussion to be lost.
So please go ahead and use things like NIST's own computer model for the simulated collapse of WTC 7 to make your case. And while you are at it please provide the data they used to come to that conclusion. Oh wait. You can't provide that data because NIST refuses to share that data so the data cannot be tested, qualified, or challenged:
http://cryptome.org/nist070709.pdf
In fact NIST's computer model STOPS early in the collapse and only includes the first part of the collapse.
http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/733-faq-11-does-the-nist-wtc-7-computer-animation-of-the-collapse-prove-that-the-skyscraper-came-down-by-fire.html
Here is a side by side comparison of the actual video and NIST's computer model:
Wow. They must have run out of funds to complete the simulation... And of course they can't share the data used to create the simulation out of concern for the safety of the general public.
Another person here claimed that structural damage was a key component to the collapse of WTC 7. Of course he provided no links or details as to this damage. So I the had to waste my time to find out NIST's own web site refutes his claim that the structural damage had anything to do with the collapse.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2791267
I don't mind doing my own research but don't expect me to do yours.
You may be correct. But your non supported claims do little to help your case...
news to me 
rather they rationalize, which is altogether a different mental activity, imo.
An important conclusion that the authors draw from their analysis is that people don’t tend to believe in a conspiracy theory because of the specifics, but rather because of higher-order beliefs that support conspiracy-like thinking more generally. A popular example of such higher-order beliefs is a severe “distrust of authority.” The authors go on to suggest that conspiracism is therefore not just about belief in an individual theory, but rather an ideological lens through which we view the world.
I think having a distrust of authority is a good thing.
George Carlin knew it was good to question authority
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blindly and loyally accept everything their government tells them they are CTs. This is scary stuff really. Isn't that how they controlled populations in totalitarian states? Instead of answering legitimate questions, they smeared the questioners and tired to marginalize them. But this isn't working, a majority of people do not believe the official story. That's a whole lot of CTs.
About three years after the death of President John F. Kennedy, it became a matter of official CIA policy to denigrate anyone who disagreed with the Warren Commission conclusion of Oswald as the lone gunman. So, the agency ordered its "media assets" to label anyone who disagreed with the Big Lie as a "conspiracy nut." Ever hear Corporate McPravda say anything nice about Jim Garrison or Oliver Stone?
Here's background:
How the CIA Killed History
by Ace R. Hayes
(May/June 1997 issue)
From the Portland Free Press
Editor's note: Three decades ago (4 January 1967), the CIA produced adocument (#1035-960), "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report." This document was partly declassified under an FOIA, September 1976. It is the blueprint for employing "CIA media assets" to smear critics of the Warren Commission. The justification for this perversion of truth, justice and democracy was clearly stated: "Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society."
CONTINUED…
http://www.redshift.com/~damason/lhreport/flash//ciakillhistory.html
Read this CIA document 1035-960 here:
http://www.discip.crdp.ac-caen.fr/anglais/documents/america2/CIA%20Document%20_1035-960.htm
Countering Criticism of the Warren Report
http://www.jfklancer.com/CIA.html
The term “conspiracy nut” soon evolved into “conspiracy theorist” as code for “psychotic,” “paranoid” or “kook.” Consider how quickly that label, once pinned on a person, prevents any further consideration of the person’s rhetoric, writings or discoveries.
So people who wonder why the “government” doesn’t give two figs for finding out who killed President Kennedy, a Liberal Democrat, who worked every day of his time as President to keep the peace, make life better for ALL Americans, and make the world a better place (which is a lot more than most presidents since have done or even tried) are called “nuts.”
That's what Allen Dulles, J Edgar Hoover, and their stooges and sub-stooges in Congress and the White House worked to do. And to think so many today continue their work, spreading lies. The hell with such people.
Here’s a bit of real work by David Talbot. The editor of Slate.com, Talbot’s a more accomplished journalist, writer, researcher and an all-around better source than Kos ever will be, IMFO.
The Mother of All Cover-Ups
Forty years after the Warren Report, the official verdict on the Kennedy assassination, we now know the country's high and mighty were secretly among its biggest critics
by David Talbot
This article first appeared in the September 15, 2004 issue of Salon.com
EXCERPT…
There is one sanctuary where the Warren Report is still stubbornly upheld and where its manifold critics can expect their own rough treatment: in the towers of the media elite. Fresh from assaulting Oliver Stone, not only for his film but his very character (a media shark-attack in which, I must confess, I too once engaged), the national press rushed to embrace Gerald Posner's bold 1993 defense of the Warren Report, "Case Closed," making it a bestseller. ("The most convincing explanation of the assassination," historian Robert Dallek called it in the Boston Globe.) And the 40th anniversary of JFK's murder last November sparked a new cannonade of anti-conspiracy sound and fury, with ABC's Peter Jennings making yet another network news attempt to silence the report's critics. Most of the press lords and pundits in the 1960s who allowed themselves to be convinced that the Warren Report was the correct version of what happened in Dallas -- whether because they genuinely believed it or because they thought it was for the good of the country -- are now dead or retired. But after buying the official version for so long, it seems the elite media institutions have too much invested in the Warren Report to change their minds now, even if they're under new editorial leadership.
One of the great ironies of history is that while the media elite was busily trying to shore up public confidence in the Warren Report, the political elite was privately confiding among themselves that the report was a travesty, a fairy tale for mass consumption. Presidents, White House aides, intelligence officials, senators, congressmen, even foreign leaders -- they all muttered darkly among themselves that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, a plot that a number of them suspected had roots in the U.S. government itself. (In truth, some high media dignitaries have also quietly shared their doubts about the official version. In 1993, CBS anchorman Dan Rather, who did much along with his network to enforce the party line on Dallas, confessed to Robert Tannenbaum, the former deputy chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, "We really blew it on the Kennedy assassination."
Thanks to tapes of White House conversations that have been released to the public in recent years, we now know that the man who appointed the Warren Commission -- President Lyndon Johnson -- did not believe its conclusions. On September 18, 1964, the last day the panel met, commission member Sen. Richard Russell phoned Johnson, his old political protege, to tell him he did not believe the single bullet theory, the key to the commission's finding that Oswald acted alone. "I don't either," Johnson told him. Johnson's theories about what really happened in Dallas shifted over the years. Soon after the assassination, Johnson was led to believe by the CIA that Kennedy might have been the victim of a Soviet conspiracy. Later his suspicions focused on Castro; during his long-running feud with Robert Kennedy, LBJ leaked a story to Washington columnist Drew Pearson suggesting the Kennedy brothers themselves were responsible JFK's death by triggering a violent reaction from the Cuban leader with their "goddamed Murder Inc." plots to kill him. In 1967, according to a report in the Washington Post, Johnson's suspicious gaze came to rest on the CIA. The newspaper quoted White House aide Marvin Watson as saying that Johnson was "now convinced" Kennedy was the victim of a plot and "that the CIA had something to do with this plot." Max Holland, who has just published a study of LBJ's views on Dallas, "The Kennedy Assassination Tapes," intriguingly concludes that Johnson remained haunted by the murder throughout his tenure in the White House. "It is virtually an article of faith among historians that the war in Vietnam was the overwhelming reason the president left office in 1969, a worn, bitter, and disillusioned man," writes Holland. "Yet the assassination-related tapes paint a more nuanced portrait, one in which Johnson's view of the assassination weighed as heavily on him as did the war."
Critics of the Warren Report's lone-assassin conclusion were often stumped by defenders of the report with the question, "If there was a conspiracy, why didn't President Kennedy's own brother -- the attorney general of the United States, Robert Kennedy -- do anything about it?" It's true that, at least until shortly before his assassination death in June 1968, Bobby Kennedy publicly supported the Warren Report. On March 25, during a presidential campaign rally at San Fernando Valley State College in California, Kennedy was dramatically confronted by a woman heckler, who called out, "We want to know who killed President Kennedy!" Kennedy responded by saying, "I stand by the Warren Commission Report." But at a later campaign appearance, days before his assassination, Bobby Kennedy said the opposite, according to his former press spokesman Frank Mankiewicz. When asked if he would reopen the investigation into his brother's death, he uttered a simple, one-word answer: "Yes." Mankiewicz recalls today, "I remember that I was stunned by the answer. It was either like he was suddenly blurting out the truth, or it was a way to shut down the questioning -- you know, 'Yes, now let's move on.'"
His public statements on the Warren Report were obviously freighted with political and emotional -- and perhaps even security -- concerns for Bobby Kennedy. But we have no doubt what his private opinion of the report was -- as his biographer Evan Thomas wrote, Kennedy "regarded the Warren Commission as a public relations exercise to reassure the public." According to a variety of reports, Kennedy immediately suspected a plot as soon as he heard his brother had been shot in Dallas. And as he made calls and inquiries in the hours and days after the assassination, he came to an ominous conclusion: JFK was the victim of a domestic political conspiracy. In a remarkable passage in "One Hell of a Gamble," a widely praised 1997 history of the Cuban missile crisis based on declassified Soviet and U.S. government documents, historians Alexksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali wrote that on November 29, one week after the assassination, Bobby Kennedy dispatched a close family friend named William Walton to Moscow with a remarkable message for Georgi Bolshakov, the KGB agent he had come to trust during the nerve-wracking back-channel discussions sparked by the missile crisis. According to the historians, Walton told Bolshakov that Bobby and Jacqueline Kennedy believed "there was a large political conspiracy behind Oswald's rifle" and "that Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime." The Kennedys also sought to reassure the Soviets that despite Oswald's apparent connections to the communist world, they believed President Kennedy had been killed by American enemies. This is a stunning account -- with the fallen president's brother and widow communicating their chilling suspicions to the preeminent world rival of the U.S. -- and it has not received nearly the public attention it deserves.
CONTINUED…
http://home.earthlink.net/~jkelin1/talbot.html
Why is it that some people make the “koo-koo” signal circling their forefinger around their temple and rolling their eyes whenever the subject is something that may be outside their understanding?
People who advance or doubt “conspiracy theories” when they are disagreeing with the “official story” are not nuts. They are not even “theorists.” They are Truth Seekers.
George Herbert Walker Bush was in Dallas that day, phoning in a tip about a threat to President Kennedy he hadn't bothered to phone in before the assassination, when it nightlife prevented the treason. Don't take my word for it, here's the doc from the FBI:
Here's a transcript of the text:
TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63
FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL
SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY
At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.
BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.
BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.
BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.
Which, of course, makes me wonder about this memo, from a week later:
Here's a transcript of the above:
Date: November 29, 1963
To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State
From: John Edgar Hoover, Director
Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963
Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.
Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.
An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.
The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.
# # #
Professor Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. has more on Milteer:
"Everything ran true to form. I guess you thought I was kidding you when I said he (Kennedy) would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle."
http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/jfk_4did.html
> Sure looks that way.
You've been shown that it surely does not "look that way" if you look closely, nor is it physically possible for the back-and-to-the-left to have been the result of momentum from the bullet, but after clinging to your Truth (tm) for so many decades, you just can't let it go even in the face of fact and reason.
> Nowhere do I deny (truth) or those who speak or write it.
You just did. Or did you mean to say, "Nowhere do I deny what I accept as Truth (tm) or those who agree with me."
> And what do you think Poppy was doing in Dallas when JFK died?
From your first memo, it appears that Poppy was in Tyler when JFK died, not Dallas, but if you have some Creative Speculation about why he then went to Dallas, there is a group devoted to that sort of thing. Likewise, the mention of "George Bush" in the FBI memo: Other than claiming "the" George Bush was secretly working for the CIA, I've never understood the point of that concerning any alleged conspiracy, so what's your Creative Speculation to make some sense of that?
And that reason baffles you, O Truth Seeker Octafish?
According to a recent PPP poll, 51% of Americans believe there was conspiracy to assassinate JFK. But how many of them believe that because of the "back and to the left" nonsense? How many of them believe that because they've been told the "single bullet theory" is "impossible?" But that's okay with Truth Seeker Octafish 'cause, whatever, they're in the cult now, so the end justifies the means.
> There are lots more, but you get the point.
Actually, no, like much of what you post, I don't get the point beyond vague insinuations of something nefarious. If and when you have a point, it would help if you state it.
> One thing else I noticed: how many of the posters who reply to you ended up banned. What a coincence.
One thing I've noticed is that the article in the OP barely scratches the surface of "how conspiracists think."
... it's a critical point that conspiracists have completely wrong, but they use it as a major point to bring new converts into the cult. It illustrates three things: "how conspiracists think"; the speciousness of their arguments when they seek nothing but rationalization of their conclusions; and their abject refusal to re-think even in the face of facts and reason. In order to protect your grassy knoll fantasies, you've apparently convinced yourself that physics are a matter of subjective opinion. Then, you want to represent yourself as a very special Truth Seeker bravely opposing the Forces of Darkness.
... it was innuendo? I always get those confused.
