I don’t mean to insult anyone who believes in conspiracies. Some very bright people feel that it is important to get to the truth. And who can argue with that? Still, it is very frustrating to argue with CT's on the facts. This is because their facts are selective and out of context. Great weight is given to inconsistencies in the official story. They do not understand how fallible human memory and perception are. And that goes for arguments on both sides of the debate.
Given that all stories will have unknowns and problems, one then must go with the theory that is more persuasive, based on the totality of evidence and circumstances.
For Ct's, anecdotes and stories are taken either as gospel truth, or given far more credence than they deserve. "How could this trained police officer be wrong?!" "So and so said this, or that." "It is FACT that such and such."
When checked out, all of these turn out to be flat out wrong, innocent mistakes or not consequential. The other thing we hear over and over: "It doesn't add up!" It doesn’t make sense!" "I have never heard of or seen (fill in the blank)"
The one thing I have found to be true is that the overwhelming majority of people who study the assassination (or any other CT generating event) do not understand the weight to be given various bits of evidence. So, we could argue all day long that the magic bullet could do what it did, that there is no other location from where the shots could have come, until we are blue in the face. And I do sometimes get into that.
But I think the key is to really understand why people believe in conspiracy and how they develop.
Another interesting list of attributes of CT's someone compiled:
(long read...sorry! All are good points, 5 & 10 in particular, IMHO)
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Allegations exhibiting several of the following features are candidates for classification as conspiracy theories. Confidence in such classification improves the more such features are exhibited:
1. Initiated on the basis of limited, partial or circumstantial evidence;
Conceived in reaction to media reports and images, as opposed to, for example, thorough knowledge of the relevant forensic evidence.
2. Addresses an event or process that has broad historical or emotional impact;
Seeks to interpret a phenomenon which has near-universal interest and emotional significance, a story that may thus be of some compelling interest to a wide audience.
3. Reduces morally complex social phenomena to simple, immoral actions;
Impersonal, institutional processes, especially errors and oversights, interpreted as malign, consciously intended and designed by immoral individuals.
4. Personifies complex social phenomena as powerful individual conspirators;
Related to (3) but distinct from it, deduces the existence of powerful individual conspirators from the 'impossibility' that a chain of events lacked direction by a person.
5. Allots superhuman talents or resources to conspirators;
May require conspirators to possess unique discipline, unrepentant resolve, advanced or unknown technology, uncommon psychological insight, historical foresight, unlimited resources, etc.
6. Key steps in argument rely on inductive, not deductive reasoning*;
Inductive steps are mistaken to bear as much confidence as deductive ones.
7. Appeals to 'common sense';
Common sense steps substitute for the more robust, academically respectable methodologies available for investigating sociological and scientific phenomena.
8. Exhibits well-established logical and methodological fallacies;
Formal and informal logical fallacies are readily identifiable among the key steps of the argument.
9. Is produced and circulated by 'outsiders', often anonymous, and generally lacking peer review;
Story originates with a person who lacks any insider contact or knowledge, and enjoys popularity among persons who lack critical (especially technical) knowledge.
10. Is upheld by persons with demonstrably false conceptions of relevant science;
At least some of the story's believers believe it on the basis of a mistaken grasp of elementary scientific facts.
11. Enjoys zero credibility in expert communities;
Academics and professionals tend to ignore the story, treating it as too frivolous to invest their time and risk their personal authority in disproving.
12. Rebuttals provided by experts are ignored or accommodated through elaborate new twists in the narrative;
When experts do respond to the story with critical new evidence, the conspiracy is elaborated (sometimes to a spectacular degree) to discount the new evidence, often incorporating the rebuttal as a part of the conspiracy.'
*Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
For deductive reasoning to be sound, the original hypothesis or generalization also must be correct. A “logical” deduction can be made from any generalization, even if it is not true. If the generalization is wrong, though, the specific conclusion can be logical and valid but still can be incorrect. One can better understand deductive reasoning by looking at examples. A generalization might be something such as, "All wasps have stingers." The logical conclusion of a specific instance would then be, "That is a wasp, so it has a stinger." This is a valid
Inductive reasoning would work in the opposite order. The specific observation would be that a particular wasp has a stinger. One could then induce that all wasps have stingers. Many scientific tests involve proving whether a deduction or induction is, in fact, true. Inducing that all cats have orange fur because one cat has orange fur, for example, could be easily disproved by observing cats that do not have orange fur.
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