I don’t care whether you think the Olympics is fantastic or just a large waste of time and someone’s public monies: landing a battletank (it has lasers) on Mars is probably the most exciting thing to have happened this week, and so this week’s “Conspiracy Corner” was all about Mars and the Mars-related conspiracy theories that so quickly sprung up, full-formed, over at Alex Jones’s website.
There was a lot I didn’t either get to say (due to timing) or just forgot to say. Really, if I had been thinking about it, I wouldn’t have ended with the “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons” theme but, rather, Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” (which was put to such good effect in “Mars Attacks!”). I would have mentioned “Capricorn One” (which I believe I talked about when we covered the Moon Landing Hoax conspiracy theories a while back) and I probably would have spent some more time talking about how useless a distraction a Mars landing (with, admittedly, a fully-armed battletank) would actually be in this era of instant news and celebrity tweets.
This week Zac, Ethan, the time-travelling ghost of Nigel Havers and me talked about the Olympics, UFOs and euphemisms. There was no talk about how I don’t like sport and that the only thing I actually know about the Olympics is that Bolivia is not doing well (is that even true now?).
I think I should expand a little on the unfalsifiable nature of the “Fake UFO Invasion’ conspiracy theory, because conspiracy theories are often, I think wrongly, construed as being prima facie unfalsifiable. This is, I think, just not obviously true; some conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable but so are lots of other non-conspiracy theories; as I go to quite some lengths in my thesis to show, a lot of the problems we associate with conspiracy theories are just part and parcel of the general worries we have about explanations in general.
That being said, the “Fake UFO Invasion’ conspiracy theory (details here) clearly is unfalsifiable, in that no matter what happens, the proponents of the theory can claim they were right. If there is a faked UFO landing and the secret world government uses it to cement their control of humanity, then these particular conspiracy theorists will be vindicated. If, however, the fake UFO invasion is not staged, then these conspiracy theorists are also going to claim victory because, well, they warned the world at large and so the NWO/the Illuminati/Jethro Tull/the Reptilians, who are forever listening in, will have called the whole thing off to make the conspiracy theorists look bad.
So, no matter what happens next week, whether it’s an alien battlefleet warping into view over the Olympic stadium or a spectacular, but alien-free, closing ceremony to the Games, a certain class of conspiracy theorist will be saying adamant in saying that they were right.
This kind of move, putting forward a theory which really can’t be tested, occurs all the time and everywhere. Freud’s theory of Psychoanalysis, as Popper rightly pointed out, ends up being unfalsifiable in the same way as the UFO hoax theory is, as do some construals of String Theory (such as the string theorists who, when a test fails to validate their claims, simply say “We’ll just have to build a bigger collider, then”). There’s nothing about conspiracy theories per se that says they are more or less likely to suffer from problems of not being able to be falsified ((And then there is the attendant issue of what kinds of theories fall under the rubric of falsifiability, anyway. Popper used it as a demarcating feature between scientific and non-scientific theories. It’s not clear it’s meant to apply to all theories. For example, most historical theories are non-falsifiable but that doesn’t make them bad theories.)).
But this particular Olympic theory does make predictions and these predictions can be had either way, which is most unsatisfactory.
Just like the Olympics in general, really. Ho hum.
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Due to an error on my part comments on posts older that 180 days were closed and no longer visible (I don’t quite understand why WordPress would do this; I would have thought “closed” meant “can no longer comment rather than “no longer see or comment”). So, having told you about the “exciting” debate between Aspen and meself over in this post, I then denied you the ability to go and have a look for yourself. I apologise. Comments are back online. Enjoy! (This does mean I will start to get more spam, but hopefully the spam filters are up to the task.)
Last week me and the boys and Esther, who has retired from having early mornings and so won’t be producing any more, talked about the Aurora Shootings (aka the “Batman Shootings”) and some of the issues that have come up re the interpretation as to what happened, who was really responsible and… Well, the “Stargate” connection is something you will just have to hear for yourself.
This week I’m going to talk about the Olympics. As I’ve not watched anything to do with the Olympics just yet I’m just going to say, if asked about the quality of the games, that I’m concerned about Bolivia’s performance thus far.
I’ve been told, post the segment, that the lights in question were flares. Make of that what you will.
Anyway, I never did announce the winner of the competition from a few weeks back. As we only had one entrant, the DVD of “The Claws of Axos” goes to Daniel Schealler (who should e-mail me his postal address)
Which brings me to my next (and final point). Back in January I talked about a conspiracy theory which alleges that “Doctor Who” is a vehicle for the Illuminati message. Aspen, the main proponent of this theory, has been taking me to task in the comments of that post which you may find interesting (or frustrating, or both).
Hello. Almost a week late with this update; I’ve been applying for pos-docs, writing a book proposal and replaying “Portal 2” (and I also played through “Dear Esther,” which is definitely art but maybe not a game; tempted to writing something up on that if I get the time). Anyway, last week I talked about the call to reopen the investigation into the death of Yasser Arafat due to the presence of a radioactive isotype on his clothing.
This week I talked a little about chemtrails and an e-mail that was sent in to the station about how, apparently, the media have revealed the truth of what is really going on with regards to those pesky contrails, weird cloud formations and the like. Have a listen.
Also, for reasons that are not altogether clear, I happen to have a spare Doctor Who DVD, namely “The Claws of Axos” (which features the character of Bill Filer, someone I wish they had granted a spin-off to) which I’m going to give away to the commenter who suggests the best conspiracy theory for me to discuss on an upcoming show. I’m afraid my postage ability really only extends to the North and South Islands of Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu, so this is a NZ-only comp. Sorry.