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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4248 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 10, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I'm doing another low-stakes/small scale conspiracy theory thread(I think I'll probably start doing these once a quarter or so in the SSQ thread). What are your minor conspiracy theories? Not things that dramatically change how the world works(eg "the davos group is behind the simultaneous rise in both house prices and interest rates in the United States to eliminate home ownership"), nor that would be too interesting and sexy not to be common knowledge if they were both true and had sufficient evidence(eg "Bush was behind 9/11"). What are your boring, small scale schizo posting?

Bullets from me:

  • General health advice about salt is knowably false to most well-informed people. I think the same thing is probably true about cholesterol, but with the added motivation of public health advisors taking bribes from eg Kellogg and Coca-Cola to understate the effects of sugar, so they blame cholesterol instead.
  • The effects of Freon(R-22) on the atmosphere were drastically overstated to keep dupont's control over the provision of refrigerant at around the time the patent on R-22 was expiring.
  • School districts as a group resist adopting the best pedagogical practices to prevent enough improvement in student outcomes for the public/lawmakers to conclude they don't need more money.
  • The world population is probably massively overstated because officials in corrupt countries routinely inflate population figures in their areas of responsibility to try to seek budget increases/international aid.

I’ve always believed that the US government blamed Oswald because they couldn’t actually solve the crime but were afraid of both the potential for nuclear war with Russia and the crisis of confidence that would result from the case being known to be unsolved. The rapidity of the arrest is pretty weird to me — within hours the man was in custody, there was an official story, and the weren’t looking for accomplices or other potential shooters or co-conspirators. They were firm that there was only one shooter despite witnesses stating that there were shots coming from the grassy knoll.

Aliens are a cover story for advanced weapons.

One of the reasons why I don't find most Kennedy conspiracy theories plausible is that the patsy was the least difficult element of the conspiracy to get right, and Oswald was an almost uniquely poor choice of patsy for any of the plausible conspiracies. Re. your case, if the people doing the cover-up were worried about the potential for nuclear war with the Soviet Union, why pin the blame on someone who had defected there and back again rather than a domestic criminal?

Depending on who actually did it, a patsy who fits the stereotype of "angry black man", "Southern conservative", or "mafia" would have worked a lot better for achieving the aims of the conspiracy.

The main reason I don't find most Kennedy conspiracy theories plausible is that the vast majority of historical Presidential assassination attempts look like the Warren Commission version of the Kennedy assasination - a lone assassin who is either outright crazy (e.g. John Hinkley shooting Reagan) or who is not quite normal and has weird fringe political views. So I have a high prior on "lone nut" and the problems with the Warren Commission's ballistics are not sufficient to override it without evidence of a specific conspiracy.

Re. your case, if the people doing the cover-up were worried about the potential for nuclear war with the Soviet Union, why pin the blame on someone who had defected there and back again rather than a domestic criminal?

I brought this up with my father, who can be something of an arrogant midwit outside of his narrow areas of expertise. When I pointed out that Oswald was a diehard socialist who had previously defected to the Soviet Union, he scoffed and said "if he was such a diehard socialist, why didn't he try to defect to Cuba?"

My response was simple: "He did."

In September 1963, he travelled to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City to apply for a visa... Oswald told the embassy officials that he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to Russia, so the Cubans sent him to the Russian embassy to collect a permit to enter the Soviet Union. When it was denied, Oswald burst into tears and started to wave his revolver in the air.

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