2/3 of Americans Believe in Conspiracy Theories

[saxitoxin]

A Farleigh-Dickinson University poll finds that 2/3 of Americans believe in at least one of four conspiracy theories (below).

The more conspiracy theories a person believes, the fewer current events questions they are likely to answer correctly from a list of 4 questions asked (Who is the Secretary of State?, Has unemployment increased, decreased or stayed the same over the last 12 months?, In what country has the U.S. concentrated the most attacks with unmanned drone aircraft?, What party has the most seats in the U.S. House of Representatives?).

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2013/outthere/

[thegreekdog]

This is pretty depressing.

[BigBallinStalin]

This is pretty depressing.

Probably Not True.

And George Bush don't like Black People. T/F?

[Crazyirishman]

What if I believe in conspiracy theories, but not any of those ones? Do I count?

[Funkyterrance]

The third one is Laughable.

[warmonger1981]

Wast Andy Stern president of SEIU one of the most visited people to the White House.if I'm not mistaken SEIU was in charge of the voting machines.it doesn't matter who votes but who counts the votes. Thats what ive heard if its true is another story.

[warmonger1981]

Jeb Bush was governor of Florida during the recount I think.

[_sabotage_]

the 99% one didn't make the list?

[/]

Why do several of those percentages add up to a 101% total?

[chang50]

Why do several of those percentages add up to a 101% total?

It's part of a conspiracy..

[john9blue]

Why do several of those percentages add up to a 101% total?

and more importantly, why are they all integers??? the plot thickens...

[john9blue]

oh btw, you're dumb if you don't think some conspiracy theories are at least plausible, if not likely.

for example, most americans (over 3/4 at one point) believe that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy rather than a lone gunman

[Funkyterrance]

Dumb da-dumb dumb DUMMMMBBB! Isn't that a wonderfully vague word, dumb?
Of course I believe in the multiple gunmen theory, I watched JFK.

[_sabotage_]

LBJ killed JFK.

[thegreekdog]

Dumb da-dumb dumb DUMMMMBBB! Isn't that a wonderfully vague word, dumb?
Of course I believe in the multiple gunmen theory, I watched JFK.

This reminds me of the utterly disturbing poll that was done when West Wing was on the air. The poll question was whether Martin Sheen (the actor who played the president on the West Wing) would be a better president than whomever the candidates were at the time (Gore and Bush maybe?). A rather large bloc of people voted for Martin Sheen.

In any event, it amazes me how much people take fiction, mostly historic fiction, and use that as the basis of their views of a particular event in history.

[AAFitz]

My only information on the 2004 elections was a documentary with people going around and proving inconsistent results based on actual tallies, and videos of people throwing away ballots which was expressly illegal. Linking that to Bush himself is definitely, impossible....he cant be that dumb, but that election was a disaster.

That one documentary, stripped my faith in this country more than any other Ive ever seen.

The other was watching a video of the owner of the Trade center lease at the time, saying "pull it" and then watching the press gather round to watch the destruction of Building 7 in a classic demo configuration.

I think more realistically, after the previous attempts on the trade center, its possible the buildings were wired as an emergency action plan to prevent the deaths of up to 50000 people, but anyone saying the theory is outright crazy, without actually looking at the information, is no less crazy than a conspiracy theorist, who hasn't looked at all the information.

I have seen crazy conspiracy theorists though. I know someone who believes every single one ever invented as far as I can tell. I think its important to have those people out there vetting any possible conspiracies, but they also give them a bad name, because they are biased to believe them, and have lost any reasonable decision making skills.

I myself have always tried to not form opinions about such things, and keep an open mind about almost everything. Its not easy, because you live in a world of uncertainty, but Ive decided its better than living in a world believing in false things.

[saxitoxin]

oh btw, you're dumb if you don't think some conspiracy theories are at least plausible, if not likely.

for example, most americans (over 3/4 at one point) believe that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy rather than a lone gunman

J9B has a good point. In fairness, the survey wasn't saying that conspiracy theories are all wrong, just that - in general - people who believe the four conspiracy theories surveyed tend to be poorly informed or easily swayed by dramatic, made-for-internet documentaries with spooky music, scary shadow vignetting effects and slow motion scenes with gravely voiced narration. Low information awareness leads to practical disenfranchisement; practical disenfranchisement leads to feelings of powerlessness which humans ascribe to sinister forces beyond their control instead of admitting their own lower intellectual or cognitive abilities.

But, to J9B's point, the U.S. Congress itself has declared the JFK assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy (http://history-matters.com/archive/cont ... report.htm).

[GeneralRisk]

The other was watching a video of the owner of the Trade center lease at the time, saying "pull it" and then watching the press gather round to watch the destruction of Building 7 in a classic demo configuration.

I think more realistically, after the previous attempts on the trade center, its possible the buildings were wired as an emergency action plan to prevent the deaths of up to 50000 people, but anyone saying the theory is outright crazy, without actually looking at the information, is no less crazy than a conspiracy theorist, who hasn't looked at all the information.

I have seen crazy conspiracy theorists though. I know someone who believes every single one ever invented as far as I can tell. I think its important to have those people out there vetting any possible conspiracies, but they also give them a bad name, because they are biased to believe them, and have lost any reasonable decision making skills.

I myself have always tried to not form opinions about such things, and keep an open mind about almost everything. Its not easy, because you live in a world of uncertainty, but Ive decided its better than living in a world believing in false things.

Fires Have Never Caused Skyscrapers to Collapse

Excepting the three 9-11 collapses, no fire, however severe, has ever caused a steel-framed high-rise building to collapse. Following are examples of high-rise fires that were far more severe than those in WTC 1 and 2, and Building 7. In these precedents, the fires consumed multiple floors, produced extensive window breakage, exhibited large areas of emergent flames, and went on for several hours. The fires in the WTC towers did none of these things.
The One Meridian Plaza Fire

One Meridian Plaza is a 38-floor skyscraper in Philadelphia that suffered a severe fire on February 23, 1991. The fire started on the 22nd floor and raged for 18 hours, gutting eight floors and causing an estimated $100 million in direct property loss. It was later described by Philadelphia officials as "the most significant fire in this century".

The fire caused window breakage, cracking of granite, and failures of spandrel panel connections. Despite the severity and duration of the fire, as evidenced by the damage the building sustained, no part of the building collapsed.


The First Interstate Bank Building is a 62-story skyscraper in Los Angeles that suffered the worst high-rise fire in the city's history. From the late evening of May 4, 1988 through the early morning of the next day, 64 fire companies battled the blaze, which lasted for 3 1/2 hours. The fire caused extensive window breakage, which complicated firefighting efforts. Large flames jutted out of the building during the blaze. Firefighting efforts resulted in massive water damage to floors below the fire, and the fire gutted offices from the 12th to the 16th floor, and caused extensive smoke damage to floors above. The fire caused an estimated $200 million in direct property loss.

A report by Iklim Ltd. describes the structural damage from the fire:
In spite of the total burnout of four and a half floors, there was no damage to the main structural members and only minor damage to one secondary beam and a small number of floor pans.


1 New York Plaza is a 50-story office tower less than a mile from the World Trade Center site. It suffered a severe fire and explosion on August 5, 1970. The fire started around 6 PM, and burned for more than 6 hours. 7
Caracas Tower Fire

The tallest skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela experienced a severe fire on October 17, 2004. The blaze began before midnight on the 34th floor, spread to more than 26 floors, and burned for more than 17 hours. Heat from the fires prevented firefighters from reaching the upper floors, and smoke injured 40 firefighters.

Lax enforcement of fire codes in Venezuela was blamed for the malfunctioning of water pumps and a lack of fire extinguishers inside of the building. Because the building was empty when the fire broke out, no civilians were killed or injured.


A more recent case of a severe high-rise fire is the one that destroyed the Windsor Building in Madrid, Spain on February 12, 2005. The Windsor fire was more severe than any of the fires described above, and the incident has been widely publicized, with comparisons to the fires in the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11/01. However, the Windsor Building, unlike all the buildings mentioned above, was framed in steel-reinforced concrete rather than steel. Hence it is described on a separate page, which notes differences between the response of these different types of structures to fires.



The most recent example of a spectacular skyscraper fire was the burning of the Hotel Mandarin Oriental starting on February 9, 2009. The nearly completed 520-foot-tall skyscraper in Beijing caught fire around 8:00 pm, was engulfed within 20 minutes, and burned for at least 3 hours until midnight. Despite the fact that the fire extended across all of the floors for a period of time and burned out of control for hours, no large portion of the structure collapsed.

It is tempting to draw parallels between this spectacle and the destruction of WTC 1, 2, and 7 because of the stark opposites: on 9/11/01, three skyscrapers were transformed into piles of rubble primarily as a consequence, supposedly, of fires -- fires spanning small fractions of each building; and on 2/09/09, a skyscraper remained intact after burning like a torch for hours. However such parallels may be limited by major structural differences between the buildings in the two cases -- one being that the Hotel Mandarin Oriental, designed by the famous Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, had a full-height interior atrium, and thus had the hollowness that the 9-11 Commission deceptively attempted to attribute to the Twin Towers.

Perhaps the relevance of the Mandarin fire to the events of 9/11/2001 is more symbolic than forensic.

[AndyDufresne]

I am behind every conspiracy theory.




--Andy

[_sabotage_]

The other was watching a video of the owner of the Trade center lease at the time, saying "pull it" and then watching the press gather round to watch the destruction of Building 7 in a classic demo configuration.

I think more realistically, after the previous attempts on the trade center, its possible the buildings were wired as an emergency action plan to prevent the deaths of up to 50000 people, but anyone saying the theory is outright crazy, without actually looking at the information, is no less crazy than a conspiracy theorist, who hasn't looked at all the information.

That's fine, they pre-wired the buildings. This would take weeks, when was it done?

Why have the only 3 videos released, out of 85, at the pentagon not show a plane, but show what appears to be a missile? The hole was too small for a plane and no major plane parts were retrieved.

How did flight 93 disappear into a hole?

Black boxes disintegrated, but a terrorist's passport survived.

Whatever, it doesn't matter, the people are dead either way, but why do we continue to allow wire-tapping, strip away due process, have secret prisons, torture, refuse to submit to war crimes tribunals and basically make ourselves hated internationally and impoverished domestically.

As for conspiracies, this is from last year:

The poll, constructed by Dartmouth government professor Benjamin Valentino and conducted by YouGov from April 26 to May 2, found that fully 63 percent of Republican respondents still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded in 2003. By contrast, 27 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats shared that view.

What you may notice is that people believe what they are told.

[GeneralRisk]

The other was watching a video of the owner of the Trade center lease at the time, saying "pull it" and then watching the press gather round to watch the destruction of Building 7 in a classic demo configuration.

I think more realistically, after the previous attempts on the trade center, its possible the buildings were wired as an emergency action plan to prevent the deaths of up to 50000 people, but anyone saying the theory is outright crazy, without actually looking at the information, is no less crazy than a conspiracy theorist, who hasn't looked at all the information.

That's fine, they pre-wired the buildings. This would take weeks, when was it done?

Why have the only 3 videos released, out of 85, at the pentagon not show a plane, but show what appears to be a missile? The hole was too small for a plane and no major plane parts were retrieved.

How did flight 93 disappear into a hole?

Black boxes disintegrated, but a terrorist's passport survived.

Whatever, it doesn't matter, the people are dead either way, but why do we continue to allow wire-tapping, strip away due process, have secret prisons, torture, refuse to submit to war crimes tribunals and basically make ourselves hated internationally and impoverished domestically.

As for conspiracies, this is from last year:

The poll, constructed by Dartmouth government professor Benjamin Valentino and conducted by YouGov from April 26 to May 2, found that fully 63 percent of Republican respondents still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded in 2003. By contrast, 27 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats shared that view.

What you may notice is that people believe what they are told.

[AndyDufresne]

What you may notice is that people believe what they are told.

And people will believe the opposite of what they are told.

Conspiracies, smiracies.


--Andy


(P.S. Everyone should meet me for our underground meeting tonight. Its in the up in treehouse.)

[Haggis_McMutton]

The thing I like best about these outlandish theories is that it's the very same people who complain that the government can't do absolutely anything right that turn around and in the same breath claim the government orchestrated a conspiracy involving thousands of people without any credible evidence outside of grainy youtube videos slipping through the cracks.

Edit:

[Funkyterrance]

It's fascinating how the race numbers on the "probably true" field flip depending on the prez lol.

[AndyDufresne]

The thing I like best about these outlandish theories is that it's the very same people who complain that the government can't do absolutely anything right that turn around and in the same breath claim the government orchestrated a conspiracy involving thousands of people without any credible evidence outside of grainy youtube videos slipping through the cracks.

Haggis, it is all ruse. The ineptitude is a ruse! Didn't you know?! Quick, lets hie to my (and by my, I mean Tom Cruise's) bunker.




--Andy