Conspiracy Theories - relative likelihood?

[exile]

Which conspiracy theories, or other unexplained phenomena, are more likely true than others, and why?

For example out of this lot, I'd put these from most to least likely:

1. Princess Diana car crash wasn't an accident but was deliberately crafted. 

2. 9/11 didn't happen the way US officials say (hostile jihadi hijackers) but was devised by the US / CIA / whoever.

3. Some UFOs are alien craft.

 

Or, here are some more scientific ones

1. There was no Big Bang 

2. Darwinian evolution is mistaken

3. The Earth is flat

 

The idea is not to challenge people's beliefs or promote/suppress conspiracy theories but to see how differently people try to judge the likelihoods

 

[ErsatzThistle]

The official story regarding Willie MacRae's death is full of holes.

[exile]

23 hours ago, ErsatzThistle said:

The official story regarding Willie MacRae's death is full of holes.

Where would you place that in terms of likelihood of being a conspiracy, relative to the others?

[Ally Bongo]

The problem with Conspiracy Theories is that really plausible theories get ignored because of the extreme zoomers.

Once ridiculous theories are exposed the public lose interest in finding the actual truth

[ErsatzThistle]

1 hour ago, exile said:

Where would you place that in terms of likelihood of being a conspiracy, relative to the others?

I'm not interested in comparing it to any others but I (and many others) do think that there are big, unanswered questions about Willie MacRae's death.

The polis have pretty much admitted that the initial investigation was badly handled (evidence being moved before it was photographed, contradictory accounts of where exactly object X and object Y were found etc).

Who was in that maroon Volvo that had been following him in the previous weeks and on who's behalf were they were following him for ?

Who broke into his country cottage a few weeks before his death and what were they looking for ? MacRae was unconcerned and remarked "they didn't find what they were looking for."

What was the content of those mysterious papers that he was known to be carrying at the time of his death and yet which were never found ?

MacRae's pathetic brother* (whom he was not close to) keeps claiming that Willie was deeply depressed and shot himself. Yet close friends of his who saw him less than 24 hours before his death describe him as being happy and exited and letting slip that that he intended to make public a recent big discovery which would make plenty of waves. 

* It's worth remembering that the MacRae family considered Willie to be a "black sheep" because they strongly opposed his involvement with the nationalist movement. After returning from war service, he had little contact with them. 

This does not add up. 

Edited September 21, 2019 by ErsatzThistle

[Toepoke]

Given the ease of proving that Flat Earth is bollocks it has to be bottom of the pile. 

[aaid]

What I've never been able to figure out is exactly why Prince Philip or indeed anyone else would want to have Diana Spencer killed.

[Huddersfield]

I'd personally doubt that any UFO sightings are alien craft. The reason isn't that I think it impossible that 'they' have been here, but rather that I think if somewhere or other a civilisation has developed the science to undertake a journey like that, their spacecraft wouldn't actually look anything like a spacecraft. We tend to superimpose our views of flying machines onto our beliefs/desires to find that life exists elsewhere. They should be large, shiny, aerodynamic, etc. But none of those things are needed to fly even normally through space, never mind what you might need to travel in the way necessary to get from there to here.

One example I saw discussed recently was the idea of a hollowed-out asteroid - as well as a perfect disguise there are often built-in resources that could be of use. So if we are being pinged, we should maybe be looking at NEOs not bright shiny things freezing Bubba's car on the country roads of Alabama.

[Caledonian Craig]

20 minutes ago, Huddersfield said:

I'd personally doubt that any UFO sightings are alien craft. The reason isn't that I think it impossible that 'they' have been here, but rather that I think if somewhere or other a civilisation has developed the science to undertake a journey like that, their spacecraft wouldn't actually look anything like a spacecraft. We tend to superimpose our views of flying machines onto our beliefs/desires to find that life exists elsewhere. They should be large, shiny, aerodynamic, etc. But none of those things are needed to fly even normally through space, never mind what you might need to travel in the way necessary to get from there to here.

One example I saw discussed recently was the idea of a hollowed-out asteroid - as well as a perfect disguise there are often built-in resources that could be of use. So if we are being pinged, we should maybe be looking at NEOs not bright shiny things freezing Bubba's car on the country roads of Alabama.

On the other side of the coin there are so many credible witnesses out there who had so much to lose by coming out and sharing their weird experiences. People in the air force, army, policemen etc.

The reported UFO's (many of them) are nothing like any Earth-like flying machines either. Some are pyramid-shaped or conical or spherical - so nothing like anything on Earth.

My reservations about aliens having visited is because of the vastness of space. The nearest habitable planets are thousands of light years away meaning even a ship travelling at the mind-blowing speed of light it would take thousands of years to get here.

[Huddersfield]

1 hour ago, Caledonian Craig said:

On the other side of the coin there are so many credible witnesses out there who had so much to lose by coming out and sharing their weird experiences. People in the air force, army, policemen etc.

The reported UFO's (many of them) are nothing like any Earth-like flying machines either. Some are pyramid-shaped or conical or spherical - so nothing like anything on Earth.

My reservations about aliens having visited is because of the vastness of space. The nearest habitable planets are thousands of light years away meaning even a ship travelling at the mind-blowing speed of light it would take thousands of years to get here.

I'm not averse to the idea that we've been visited at all; just as I say the assumption that visiting craft will be similar but a bit fancier than the flying machines that we have. I think we also superimpose our own psychology onto this issue...we assume that aliens will be emotionless beasts intent on conquering or destroying us whereas in reality they are perhaps just as likely to visit for (say) tourism or research.

[Caledonian Craig]

3 minutes ago, Huddersfield said:

I'm not averse to the idea that we've been visited at all; just as I say the assumption that visiting craft will be similar but a bit fancier than the flying machines that we have. I think we also superimpose our own psychology onto this issue...we assume that aliens will be emotionless beasts intent on conquering or destroying us whereas in reality they are perhaps just as likely to visit for (say) tourism or research.

The UFO's have often NOT been Earth-like crafts though. I know of no conical, spherical, pyramid-esque flying vehicle made on Earth. And as far as I know all UKO sightings have not been of ones shaped like your typical Earth vehicles with wings.

Edited September 22, 2019 by Caledonian Craig

[Huddersfield]

1 hour ago, Caledonian Craig said:

The UFO's have often NOT been Earth-like crafts though. I know of no conical, spherical, pyramid-esque flying vehicle made on Earth. And as far as I know all UKO sightings have not been of ones shaped like your typical Earth vehicles with wings.

What I mean by Earth-like is things like made of metal, smooth, generally aerodynamic at least to some degree. Then throw in all the issues around what people see & how they see it, it’s that bit of the argument I find really unlikely. Probably from a logic point of view. If you can work out how to either travel at or bypass the need for travelling at multiple times the speed of light, then you almost certainly know how to hide your craft from a primitive species such as ourselves. 

[Caledonian Craig]

1 minute ago, Huddersfield said:

What I mean by Earth-like is things like made of metal, smooth, generally aerodynamic at least to some degree. Then throw in all the issues around what people see & how they see it, it’s that bit of the argument I find really unlikely. Probably from a logic point of view. If you can work out how to either travel at or bypass the need for travelling at multiple times the speed of light, then you almost certainly know how to hide your craft from a primitive species such as ourselves. 

Of course it works both ways though. How would visiting aliens know how well we could detect them? How would they know that we have sight, smell and touch etc.

Early analysis of even distant planets outside our solar system shows them to have a similar type of metalogy in their make-up so it may be that is what is best available to them to make craft from. In any case many times UFO sightings are made of different substances. Some are said to be nothing but a glowing light pulsing with no real outlines. There was the material at Roswell said to be like tinfoil but you crumpled it up but it would unravel to its original form.

[exile]

7 hours ago, aaid said:

What I've never been able to figure out is exactly why Prince Philip or indeed anyone else would want to have Diana Spencer killed.

I don't know. I put that one above the others only because (i) it would only do harm to a very small number of people, and (ii) it would be relatively easy and inexpensive to do. Compared with the thousands of innocents affected by the Trade Centre, and the difficulties of flying (or faking) planes, etc. 

I originally had UFOs at the top, but then on reflection, I think the chances that they are alien craft more unlikely.  Although the chances of alien life and 'civilisation' must be good, given there are apparently a billion trillion stars in the observable universe, the chances they would notice our solar system our of those billion trillion stars,  and find and decide to target us, seems improbable, on top of having the technology to bother actually crossing interstellar space to get here (and then fly around a bit and disappear again). Whereas politically inspired mass murder and cover-up  are definitely known to happen, reasonably regularly (a probability that is small but less than astronomically so). 

Edited September 22, 2019 by exile

[exile]

For alien visitation generally, you could have a more detailed scale, for example

1. Some UFOs really are alien craft.  

2. Alien craft have crash-landed, and alien remains taken away and analysed (and covered up) by the authorities.

3. Alien craft have landed and abducted humans (or beamed them up without landing), and put them back.

4. Alien craft have landed, abducted humans, in order to have sex and reproduce with them, and put them back.

5. Alien lizard humanoids are secretly running the world. Which implies they exist, found us, managed to get here, landed without crashing, made secret contact with world authorities (or whoever they are supposed to control), and took control...

[kumnio]

7 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

My reservations about aliens having visited is because of the vastness of space. The nearest habitable planets are thousands of light years away meaning even a ship travelling at the mind-blowing speed of light it would take thousands of years to get here.

Habitable by our standards.

In the vastness of space, I doubt we are alone.

I don't believe in wee green men probing Cletus, but I do believe there is some other form of life out there.

[Jim Beem]

8 hours ago, aaid said:

What I've never been able to figure out is exactly why Prince Philip or indeed anyone else would want to have Diana Spencer killed.

For blowing a Muslim. Surprised that Meghan Markle hasn’t been bumped off. The state some of the royalists are in because of some   ‘Less than white’ skin entering the family is outrageous.  

[irnbruman]

I'm still convinced that the postal vote in the 2014 referendum was tampered with. When David Cameron admits to having tapped up the Queen - who is to know what other underhand means he utilised or what lengths he went to.

[kumnio]

16 minutes ago, Jim Beem said:

For blowing a Muslim. Surprised that Meghan Markle hasn’t been bumped off. The state some of the royalists are in because of some   ‘Less than white’ skin entering the family is outrageous.  

Yep, and MM is very light skinned, the outrage has been pathetic.

[aaid]

32 minutes ago, Jim Beem said:

For blowing a Muslim. Surprised that Meghan Markle hasn’t been bumped off. The state some of the royalists are in because of some   ‘Less than white’ skin entering the family is outrageous.  

I can totally get why some racists would have a problem with her "dating" Dodi Al Fayed but by stage she was divorced, she wasn't a member of the Royal Family anymore so what's the big deal?  It's hardly a threat to national security

[aaid]

28 minutes ago, irnbruman said:

I'm still convinced that the postal vote in the 2014 referendum was tampered with. When David Cameron admits to having tapped up the Queen - who is to know what other underhand means he utilised or what lengths he went to.

How exactly was it tampered with?

[Jim Beem]

1 hour ago, aaid said:

I can totally get why some racists would have a problem with her "dating" Dodi Al Fayed but by stage she was divorced, she wasn't a member of the Royal Family anymore so what's the big deal?  It's hardly a threat to national security

Yeah but I heard she was about to ‘out’ Prince Charles for having a tiny wee cock and reveal her former brother in law was a devious nonce. She had to go. 

 

[thplinth]

Would it be fair to say she was the most famous woman in the world before her ‘death’? 

The most influential as well?

Mother of the future king of Britain, converts to Islam, maybe comes out in support of the Palestinians... yeah right enough can’t see any problems down the road with all that.

[kumnio]

46 minutes ago, thplinth said:

Would it be fair to say she was the most famous woman in the world before her ‘death’? 

The most influential as well?

Mother of the future king of Britain, converts to Islam, maybe comes out in support of the Palestinians... yeah right enough can’t see any problems down the road with all that.

Between her and Madonna Id say.

The royals reaction after she died wasn't exactly caring, I remember they got a lot of abuse over it.

[aaid]

1 hour ago, Jim Beem said:

Yeah but I heard she was about to ‘out’ Prince Charles for having a tiny wee cock and reveal her former brother in law was a devious nonce. She had to go. 

 

I remember being in Finland once about 25 years ago and a local newspaper had a grainy paparazzi photo of Prince Charles in the skud.  From what I recall, he didn't have any problems as far as that was concerned, quite the package in fact.