And so we got to talking. But not, as it turned out, about science. He wanted to talk about frozen extraterrestrials languishing in an Air Force base near San Antonio, “channeling” (a way to hear what’s on the minds of dead people—not much, it turns out), crystals, the prophecies of Nostradamus, astrology, the shroud of Turin … He introduced each portentous subject with buoyant enthusiasm. Each time I had to disappoint him: “The evidence is crummy,” I kept saying. “There’s a much simpler explanation.”
…
And yet there’s so much in real science that’s equally exciting, more mysterious, a greater intellectual challenge—as well as being a lot closer to the truth. Did he know about the molecular building blocks of life sitting out there in the cold, tenuous gas between the stars? Had he heard of the footprints of our ancestors found in 4-million-year-old volcanic ash? What about the raising of the Himalayas when India went crashing into Asia? Or how viruses, built like hypodermic syringes, slip their DNA past the host organism’s defenses and subvert the reproductive machinery of cells; or the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence; or the newly discovered ancient civilization of Ebla that advertised the virtues of Ebla beer? No, he hadn’t heard. Nor did he know, even vaguely, about quantum indeterminacy, and he recognized DNA only as three frequently linked capital letters.
And that’s just science; think of all the actual conspiracies that actually happened. MKULTRA is perfect conspiracy theorist material and actually real, but that second part means it’s boring
Mkultra is almost always used to justify all conspiracies, as if the government can do that, there is no limit to what they can do. That and the tuskegee experiments, the main reason black antivaxxers are likely to hold their beliefs.
The part I don’t get is that there are so many cool, real conspiracies out there to be explored
This is so Carl Sagan.
A candle in the dark?
And that’s just science; think of all the actual conspiracies that actually happened. MKULTRA is perfect conspiracy theorist material and actually real, but that second part means it’s boring
Mkultra is almost always used to justify all conspiracies, as if the government can do that, there is no limit to what they can do. That and the tuskegee experiments, the main reason black antivaxxers are likely to hold their beliefs.
They don’t have as large a marketing budget.
But how are you going to feel smarter than everyone else, if everyone gets convinced by your conspiracy theory?
Any time you have information about the market that everyone else doesn’t have, that should be a money making opportunity.