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Conspiracy

Entry 390, on 2006-09-05 at 11:30:33 (Rating 3, Comments)

I'm currently listening to a series of podcasts about skepticism. They have covered many subjects from UFOs to intelligent design. The current subject is conspiracy theories related to the 9/11 attacks.

Whenever we need to try to establish the truth of anything which is unclear or being debated we must always look at the most likely explanation. It gets back to our old favourite: Occam's Razor (if you haven't come across this before, its a principle which states that the simplest explanation is always the best).

Generally complex explanations which rely on a lot of new ideas, inter-related and unlikely events, and twisted complicated logic, tend to "self-destruct". In other words as new ideas are introduced they create anomalies which must be explained with more new concepts, which in turn are difficult to explain. A really complex explanation might be true, but if a simpler one (and one which accepts existing phenomena instead of relying on new unproven ones) is available its almost always the simple one which is correct.

Conspiracy theories about 9/11 tend to be complex and create more questions than they answer. A classic example is the theory that the attack on the Pentagon was with a missile, not an aircraft. But we know an aircraft full of people was hijacked. Where did it go? The conspiracy theorists say government agents landed it at an airfield and executed the passengers. This is possible, but is it likely? No, of course not.

Its dangerous to totally eliminate all possible conspiracy theories. Conspiracies do happen, and we should be aware of them. But when the conspiracy reaches the point where it creates more problems than it answers we need to forget them and look at other explanations.

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