PROPOSED MEEP: "CONSPIRACY THEORIES" as a NEW FORUM CATEGORY

Exactly, something like

Bigfoot is really an alien.

10 percent of Sasquatches might be gay.

Farmers say Sasquatches occasionally sodomize domestic cows.

are just few examples why it shouldn't  "end up being about the conspiracy that keeps evidence from being revealed."

but rather a theory about it.

Discarding standard definition has a very harmful side effect - it trivializes real discourse about real crimes with real people suffering.

define CORRECT CROWD

Could not find the word "conspiracy" in any of those debates.

Thanks for the support!

If all we’re talking about are instances where two or more individuals conspire to commit a crime then there is nothing there worthy of its own debate forum.

You can’t have it both ways. The idea gets its appeal from promoting discussion on conspiracy theories in the colloquial sense. You can’t use that to push for it and then claim that’s not what’s being promoted.

Intellectually oriented.

While doubts regarding the perceived second attack have been expressed since 1964, it was not until years later that it was shown conclusively never to have happened. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that an attack on the USS Maddox happened on August 2, but the August 4 attack, for which Washington authorized retaliation, never happened.[9]

yes, that's what the classic definition comes down to.

apart from the 'twilight zone' of non-conspiratorial theories

that nobody can define precisely (do you have an actual definition of colloquial conspiracy btw?)  and therefore

leaving it open to pretty much everything that anyone could define as such that would include anything they see fit.

anything. once you have anything, you have nothing.

i think i do get your pov re 'push' for 'appeal'  tho.

When I talk about the colloquial conspiracy theory I am referring to the classic examples (JFK assasination, 9/11 was an inside job, UFO’s, etc.). That is what people think of and that’s where the idea gets it’s appeal.

But then you talk about the technical definition and that makes it sound more reasonable, but if we accept that as the idea of the section being proposed then it loses its appeal. That’s why I’m saying you’re trying to have it both ways. You can’t use the appeal of the colloquial conspiracy theory to push for a forum that’s based in something entirely different.

Well you see, you didn't define it. It's just examples. However. JFK, 9/11 would firmly land within my definition. Except UFOs. I think it would be good to have some idea about the limits - where some theory is not a conspiracy any more. Since JFK, 9/11 are definitely conspiracies, i think we're getting somewhere.

And that's where the 'appeal' should come from. Because you can go to any social media site and discuss  bigfoot, but here, the limits are  defined. When someone creates a discussion about "the ghosts did it", they are kindly directed towards the "supernatural" section instead of conspiracy.

so, you want to sample-bias the topic to ONLY include unfalsifiable and or widely ridiculed hypotheses ?

a mix of proven and unproven seems preferable

Im arguing against the idea being proposed. How did you get from that to me advocating for the most absurd version of it?

I’m saying that I don’t think a website based in the idea of rational dialog should be promoting inherently irrational dialog. You can play the semantic game all day, but when people hear the term “conspiracy theory” the idea it conveys is very clear regardless of what technical definition one can point to.

Regardless of 'conspiracy theory' conveying a very clear message in your own head, where does it end, objectively?

At which point a theory is to be filed under some other category?

Unless you can define it somehow, it could be anything.

Conflating Bigfoot and 9/11 is a problem.

I would not encourage people to think of either suggested category as some sort perfect delineator: most of our categories bleed into other categories and many contributors aren't particularly careful about categorization anyway.  The idea here is that posts tend to to clump up in a few popular categories: religion, politics, etc and when I consider ways to spread out those conversations, it seems that much of the conversation we enjoy could also be categorized as conversations about HISTORY and/or CONSPIRACY THEORIES.  

no worries. it's a thought experiment. and a dream.

At which point is a topic religion vs philosophy? Politics vs world events? There is no objective way to delineate it. I’m just talking about what will actually happen.

The fact that there is no clear line hasn’t stopped many film makers from creating series based on conspiracy theories. If you want to know what people tend to think of when they think of them just Google some of them.

At the agreed point. Any of these subjects can be defined, modeled, compared. It really would be up to people if they'd think it important enough.

Perhaps they don't. imo Hollywood and other propaganda peddlers are actually much to blame - for obfuscating and ridiculing the term that not long ago could have been used in technical terms.

I would love that forum

I think the problem with this is that the conspiracy section would just be me posting shit and people ignoring it. Right now my posts get some engagement and I learn from the engagement.