The scientific method and conspiracy theory

[ChrisIB]

How do you best evaluate a conspiracy theory?
Do you think is it plausible? what evidence is there? can it be tested, disproved? is it orthogonal with my beliefs?

Say we take the idea that the fingerprint unlock data on mobile phones is being harvested by governments and used in illegal databases.
Yes, it is plausible, given Snowden's disclosures about government but there is no evidence.
So perhaps it is put on hold or expert opinion sought.
But importantly, just being aware of the possibility, may also alter behaviour, just in case.

Take another. Most mobile phones have a notification LED. Iphones never have and Apple have oddly refused to include one. Is this because people are thus required to pick up and check their Iphones many times a day, thus becoming habituated?

This one is less clear, it fits with a distrust of the motives of large corporations but here there are other plausible explanations.

In comparison, the UFO conspiracy is a paradox.
It is attractive because ‎there is strong evidence in that there are 100 trillion worlds out there.
But there is an equally strong conflicting lack of any physical evidence.

So how to weigh these things, what's the best approach?

 

[nivek]

Take another. Most mobile phones have a notification LED. Iphones never have and Apple have oddly refused to include one. Is this because people are thus required to pick up and check their Iphones many times a day, thus becoming habituated?

I don't understand your point on this one or maybe I'm over thinking it...If no Iphones have this, I have had 3 different Samsung phones and none of them had this, if it is not present on the phones how will someone be"habituated"?...I only had on phone that had a blinking light when I received a text or email but I never rushed to it when it blinked, half the time the phone was laying down upside down and I never saw that blinking light...

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[nivek]

In comparison, the UFO conspiracy is a paradox.
It is attractive because ‎there is strong evidence in that there are 100 trillion worlds out there.
But there is an equally strong conflicting lack of any physical evidence.

What's the conspiracy with UFOs?...I thought it has been a poorly understood phenomena because of lack of hard proof of alien visitation and the lack of knowledge of the technology they employ...

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[Castle-Yankee54]

I don't understand your point on this one or maybe I'm over thinking it...If no Iphones have this, I have had 3 different Samsung phones and none of them had this, if it is not present on the phones how will someone be"habituated"?...I only had on phone that had a blinking light when I received a text or email but I never rushed to it when it blinked, half the time the phone was laying down upside down and I never saw that blinking light...

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I don't understand it either......but I'd like to see some conspiracy folks use scientific methods.

Its common knowledge that people can be tracked using their cell phones......but how well isn't known. As for claims by snowden I don't find him credible.

 

[Thomas R. Morrison]

As for claims by snowden I don't find him credible.

What? Snowden didn't make any claims; he just leaked a bunch of genuine secret documents to the public. Those documents proved that the PRISM program existed, which proved that James Clapper had lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about it. Then the Supreme Court got involved, and ruled the PRISM program unconstitutional, and it all started because those documents that he leaked were genuine.

Among the other documents that he leaked was this nasty little ditty:

The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations | Courage Snowden

That's a Powerpoint presentation used to train counterintelligence operatives for conducting PsyOps online, and anyone who reads that and doesn't get seriously creeped out, can't be made of human parts.

 

[ChrisIB]

I don't understand your point on this one or maybe I'm over thinking it...If no Iphones have this, I have had 3 different Samsung phones and none of them had this

We will have to differ on that one, as far as I am aware the notification LED has always been part of the Android specification, implemented by the majority of manufacturers, also Blackberry and Windows phones.

What's the conspiracy with UFOs?...I thought it has been a poorly understood phenomena because of lack of hard proof of alien visitation and the lack of knowledge of the technology they employ

The strong evidence (billions of galaxies) for Ufology and a lack of any straightforward explanation I think sets it apart, and intertwines it with the conspiracy arena, videlicet:
The world's governments have a conspiracy of silence
A shadow group controls world government
Ancient aliens visitation has been obfuscated by organised religion
and so on, with accompanying joys of partial truths and vested misdirection.

I've always overestimated science (perhaps Arthur C was trying to tell us something moving HAL one letter back from IBM) but find it strange that as we are now able to submit a data set to machine learning algorithms in the cloud to identify patterns (a ten minute job) there has still been little progress.

 

[nivek]

We will have to differ on that one, as far as I am aware the notification LED has always been part of the Android specification, implemented by the majority of manufacturers, also Blackberry and Windows phones.

Sorry, the last 3 Samsung phones I've owned and the one I'm typing this post on right now does not have any blinking led light for notifications or anything...Your information is outdated or incorrect...I can turn my phone's flashlight into a strobe light if I wanted...

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[nivek]

The strong evidence (billions of galaxies) for Ufology and a lack of any straightforward explanation I think sets it apart, and intertwines it with the conspiracy arena, videlicet:
The world's governments have a conspiracy of silence
A shadow group controls world government
Ancient aliens visitation has been obfuscated by organised religion
and so on, with accompanying joys of partial truths and vested misdirection.

I've always overestimated science (perhaps Arthur C was trying to tell us something moving HAL one letter back from IBM) but find it strange that as we are now able to submit a data set to machine learning algorithms in the cloud to identify patterns (a ten minute job) there has still been little progress.

Are you implying that there is a worldwide conspiracy to control the flow of information about ufo and aliens with everyone working together across the board to keep the public in the dark?...That could be possible if there were serious implications for disclosure...

How does a shadow group tie in with aliens or ufos?...

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[Gambeir]

How do you best evaluate a conspiracy theory?
Do you think is it plausible? what evidence is there? can it be tested, disproved? is it orthogonal with my beliefs?

In comparison, the UFO conspiracy is a paradox.
It is attractive because ‎there is strong evidence in that there are 100 trillion worlds out there.
But there is an equally strong conflicting lack of any physical evidence.

So how to weigh these things, what's the best approach?

The first thing to understand is the redefining of key words is positive proof of a conspiracy to manipulate and overthrow a society. Whenever you want to overthrow a society you begin by redefining key words. This project to toss civilization in to a confused mass has now been on~going since at least 1963 when JFK was assassinated and is visible all around us. It's visible because people are confused about the meaning of key words and have allowed sources to plant the redefining of key words in to the social context of general discussions and this has then broken the understanding of precise meaning which is critical to knowledge.

Conspiracy Theory was a term coined by the CIA to deal with the people who raised questions over the assassination of JFK. The term plays on peoples general lack of understanding of police science wherein SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) is to formulate a hypothesis of criminal operation; which in layman's terms has morphed to the idea of a theory, so right there that is a redefining of the meaning of a key word and which is critical to Science itself.

Police Science is not what the public thinks it's about. It isn't about the physical trace evidence and the technical lab work which can mathematically and or otherwise demonstrate the statistical odds. It's about a scientific process of formulating a workable hypothesis of operation to a crime, and then testing that hypothesis with a destructive methodology. Only when the investigator thinks they have a hypothesis that cannot be destroyed or explained away do they then say that there is a theory of operation: Understand?

The detective uses a destructive form of science to destroy alternative explanations whenever possible, and or to apply a more rational explanation where two or more explanations are furnished. After all, the policeman must be able to show a jury which of the explanations best fits the evidence and is most rational because the jury decides what the truth is.

Ultimately, all truths are determined by humans which brings us back to the important object of redefining the meaning of key words. Do not underestimate the potential damage the redefining of key words has on any society: There is a vast gulf between a hypothesis of operation, and a theory which is the scientific description of the known truth.

Correctly stated one would say: One hypothesis of a conspiracy is~
It is incorrect to say: Conspiracy theory because that means it's a proven fact.
If you start off calling someone a conspiracy theorist then you've labeled them a nut because it implies they believe this the truth when it hasn't been put to the test. The test being a trial by jury in a court of law.

You might note here, however, that in the JFK case only one person was ever been taken before a judge and jury in a formal prosecution. A rather mind boggling concept don't ya think? This is very likely a critical flaw and in no case should the assassination of sitting president be left to a committee to judge, as was the case there, especially when most all of these committee members were and remain logical prime suspects in a capital offense.


A Theory is, in fact, a proven accepted truth in science. The difference between a hypothesis and a theory is the difference between being a prime suspect, as in a hypothesis of a crime, and being proven guilty and sent to prison, as in convicted of a crime which is the proven theory as judged by a jury. These are important concepts to understand when your butt hangs in the balance.

Understand? There are no conspiracy theories unless they are, in fact, the accepted truth.
Now of course, no one understands this any longer see, because the ones that did are all dead or closing in on death. So the meaning has now been re~defined and significantly so because anyone who now objects to the official version of reality is branded a quote "conspiracy theoriest" when in fact they may only actually be pointing to critical flaws in the supposed truth. This has now lead to legions of imbeciles gulping down the most implausible official explanations whenever anyone is called a conspiracy theorist.

 

[Gambeir]

In discussions where in the true purpose is to find the truth you must understand the fundamental difference between a hypothesis and theory. Define that first so that it's clear what they mean.

The theory is end goal of a trial. The cases presented by the defense and by the prosecution are the hypothetical's presented to the jury: Understand?

DNA, fingerprints, ect are all trace evidence collected from a crime scene. They are proof of nothing no matter what unless these traces have been fully documented, tagged, protected, and accounted for at all times. Otherwise they are corrupted and not worth anything at all. The scientific method is not one of supposed proofs given by data which are easily enough falsified.

Whatever evidence a policeman collects at any crime scene must follow a chain of possession of evidence. All viable evidence must be accounted for. Where is it, who has handled it and when, and so on and so forth. Even so, all evidence can be falsified, planted, corrupted and all physical evidence is subject to cross examination for collusion and corruption.

All evidence can be manipulated and falsified. All physical trace evidence is questionable in a court of law and if improperly handled will be dismissed as invalid or corrupted. In the public forum you have to be the one to judge this for yourself.

 

[Gambeir]

Is any of that at all useful in how you yourself examine a topic?

Ultimately you're the juror but you're playing a juror without any judge safeguarding you from abuses of the law. So you're working in a public forum without any laws about the rules of evidence, and so what you end up deciding is really a matter of how well you understand some of the fundamental of police science. Such as that there are laws which rule what constitutes evidence, and which govern what's acceptable evidence, one of which includes chains of custody. It includes you knowing the difference between what constitutes an accepted truth as in a theory, between a "notion" as in a hypothesis.

You have to become both the Juror and the policeman/detective in the public forum and the better you understand the real processes used by a detective to find a workable hypothesis, and then how that's applied in a court of law, supposedly to find the truth, then the more likely it will be that you will really understand the world around you, but I fear I am becoming boring and I'm certainly no expert but at least I hope this may give some insights.

 

[Gambeir]

Here's one story where we can try to apply a scientific methodology of inquiry.

PUBLISHED: 13:58 EDT, 27 April 2013 | UPDATED: 17:06 EDT, 27 April 2013
Was 9/11 landing gear found beside mosque lowered there by opponents of development? Extraordinary claims following stunning find

Was 9/11 landing gear found beside mosque lowered there by opponents of development? Extraordinary claims following stunning find | Daily Mail Online

In this article alone, it's truly mind boggling the number of coincidence's, but it's truly tries the senses to take just the numbers of coincidences involving numbers associated with the event and known to be associated with the occult. Warning Check your Gullibility Index on this version of reality.

The first thing is to assume the improbable is improbable, but to also verify as much of the improbable as is humanly possible. However I'm very skeptical that any evidence supportive of the assumed fact that this piece of landing gear ended up lodged between two buildings in one of the most populated pieces of real estate in the entire world remained hidden for 11 years, or that other supposed pieces of evidence also just happen to show up from time to time many years after the event, and also all found in the most densely populated place in the entire United States: A most unlikely probability I am quite sure.

Why Aircraft Part Numbers don't constitute evidence.

Can any of this evidence can be trusted as authentic? Cross referencing to part numbers does not validate the part actually belonged to the Boeing 767 in question because the logs maintaining the parts numbers do not meet the criteria for custody of evidence.

All supposed evidence involving numbers relating aircraft parts are corrupted because there is no proof that the log books contain parts numbers are authentic and un~tampered with. There is no unbroken chain of custody of evidence which has been maintained in a secure location. This supposed evidence has all been in private hands, mostly in computers, and cannot be considered viable proof.

If you disagree that is you playing the role of judge. Here the prosecution is saying this is the evidence, and I'm playing the role of the defense and objecting to the evidence on the grounds that the prosecution cannot prove the evidence is real on the basis of serial numbers because there's no proof that record isn't tapered with because there is no chain of custody to the records. In other words, anyone could have added that part number to the record so it proves nothing.


*Note:
I am by no means an expert or anything like one on the occult or numerology but there are probably people here who are. If so I'd love to see what they make out of just this article all alone.