I'm thinking about (bullshit) conspiracy theories, and what makes them so ... appealing / attractive. And what the worst of them share, which is a mindbending and infuriating mix of /actual/ fact, a few dashes of fabrication, and, most of all, a completely misdirecting set of framing, context, connotation, and connection.

There's a particular instance I have in mind -- a 208 minute YouTube video. Which I hesitate strongly to link simply because it's got 4m views and 34k+ : 1k- votes.

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So, without naming it, for a bit, I'd be interested in what others have to say about this:

* What's the attraction?
* Do you recall being sucked into a (bullshit) conspiracy and later realising it?
* Do you know of others who are sucked in and either cannot be drawn out, or have been?

Part of this inspired by Scott Alexander (I believe he's SlateStarCodex as well):
http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html

Via Maciej, Ceglowski, previously discussed.

@dredmorbius Are you aware of this? http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905

I'm always /very/ sceptical when somebody claims to have found a "simple mathematical model" for any social problem, but I like the distinction between real conspiracies (yes, they do occur!) and conspiracy theories that are very likely to be fake.

@dredmorbius "[...] historical examples of exposed conspiracies do exist and it may be difficult for people to differentiate between reasonable and dubious assertions."

"[...] the results of this model suggest that large conspiracies (≥1000 agents) quickly become untenable and prone to failure."

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905

@stefanieschulte There is that, though there's always the possibility of survivor bias -- the /effective/ large conspiracies are hidden for a long time.

Case in point: a friend had a professor who'd been engaged in a deep-sea research project in the Pacific in 1974, spening several weeks aboard the vessel. He returned to his oceanographic research, to read in the newspaper in 1975 that he had been aboard the Glomar Explorer whilst it was recovering a sunken Soviet submarine.
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I'm aware of a few other similar stories and mysteries which make me suspect that at least /some/ conspiracies do manage to go to the grave.

When you're a very small part of a very large project, it's difficult to get the full picture. Especially when that's being deliberately obscured, and close-held by a small number of people.

@stefanieschulte
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@dredmorbius If such a conspiracy had a larger-scale effect (visible to the public), then the people involved would probably understand what happened - and if there were thousands of them, the conspiracy would probably get revealed sooner or later.

@dredmorbius Here is a good example for the kind of conspiracies I had in mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy

It it was real, it would probably be uncovered soon.

(I put this behind a CW because certain people from the north-east of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, rather dislike this story...)