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The guardian reports on a sobering event in Washington DC.
US police have arrested a man wielding an assault rifle who entered a pizza restaurant that was the target of fake news reports it was operating a child abuse ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top campaign aide.
[...] The suspect entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at a restaurant employee, who fled and notified authorities, police said. The man then discharged the weapon inside the restaurant. There were no injuries.
[...] [Police] said the suspect during an interview with investigators revealed that he came to the establishment to "self-investigate" Pizzagate, the police statement said. Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:19PM
Sorry, but denial of conspiracy theories is just as anti-scientific as acceptance of them. I know we aren't supposed to believe this, but enough actual conspiracies have come to light that just assuming that no conspiracy is pushing things is unreasonable. One needs to ask, if there were a conspiracy, what evidence would I expect to see? One also needs a good definition of what a conspiracy. Is a trade union a conspiracy? If not, why not. What about a club of business men who socialize with each other an occasionally discuss business plans, while excluding those who aren't business men (of an appropriate stature)? If not, why not.
I tend to adopt a rather loose definition and consider BOTH of my examples to be conspiracies. They are people who meet to conspire (breathe together) in an exclusive group with the intent of benefiting themselves and scant concern over whether others are damages in the process. But note that this definition includes ANY company that maintains company secrets. You may well want a tighter definition, if so, what is it? Make it explicit enough that one can apply the definition to decide whether a particular group is or is not a conspiracy. That, after all, is what makes the definition scientific.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @06:35PM
> Sorry, but denial of conspiracy theories is just as anti-scientific as acceptance of them.
That's a bullshit reframing of the issue.
Get this through your head: conspiracies and conspiracy theories are two distinct things with only a small amount of overlap.
Legitimate conspiracies are falsifiable. Conspiracy theories are elaborated as needed to discount any contradictory evidence.
Ask any conspiracy theorist this simple question: What would convince you that the conspiracy theory is false?
If they won't answer or their answer is outlandish, then you aren't dealing with a rational examination of evidence, you are dealing with someone operating on faith.