"...have there ever been proven conspiracies?..."

[gumboot]

So if the best CT crews can't spot an actual conspiracy then why would anyone expect them to crack some clandestine organization?

The "best CT crews" couldn't predict what was for dinner on "meatloaf Wednesday".

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The "best CT crews" couldn't predict what was for dinner on "meatloaf Wednesday".

That's because the Spaghetti Gang is suppressing that information!

 

[Horatius]

Since the definitions no longer mean what they originally meant, new launguage is needed to distinguish old from new. Also to help avoid confusion and accusations of prejudice and bigotry.

The problem with trying to come up with new terms for these guys, that "avoid ... accusations of prejudice and bigotry", is that any new term we come up with will, in very short time, come to have all the same negative connotations that the current terms have, because the people we're describing really do show all the negative attributes implied by the term.

We saw this happen, in real time, right here on this forum, with regard to the term "Truther" as applied to the 9/11 brand of conspiracy theorists. This was a name they came up with themselves, and proudly used, because (at the time) it made them sound good - who wouldn't be in favor of finding out the truth?

But within a just a couple of years, "Truther" became an at-best ironic misnomer, and a few years after that, Truthers themselves were rejecting the name, claiming it to be a pejorative that non-Truthers applied to the CT crowd, in order to mock, belittle and oppress them.

And that transformation all happened not because of how WE used the term, but solely because of how THEY behaved.

And that will happen to any other term you could suggest we use.

Go ahead, try it. Come up with a name you think isn't subject to "confusion and accusations of prejudice and bigotry", and I'll bet you that, if it becomes popular, within 5 years, it will be considered to have most or all of the negative connotations that Truther and Conspiracy Theorist have now.

 

[fezzic]

I still listen to Coast to Coast AM sometimes. Nobody, no psychics, none of the long list of CT specialists called the economic crash of 2008. This was something happening out in the open in all 50 states, but there was no warning from the CT community at all. None. Zero. NADA. There were maybe a dozen financial annalists who were sounding the warning as early as 2006, but the so-called CT watchdogs never saw it coming.

So if the best CT crews can't spot an actual conspiracy then why would anyone expect them to crack some clandestine organization?

I would never expect a CT group to actually be able to ex ante crack a conspiracy since to do so in any authoritative or believable manner would almost always require information that such a group would be very unlikely to have access to. One or more groups of people collectively doing stupid, in hindsight, things that can be complementary (not necessarily in a good way) to other actions is not unreasonable nor implausible.

For instance, a reason why CT groups didn't predict the housing bubble and economic crash of 2008 is because there was not a "conspiracy" per se associated with it.
Group A thought, for all its own reasons, that doing X would be economically/politically beneficial.
Group B, for all its own reasons, saw X being done and inferred that doing Y could gain them profits especially as A was pushing hard for its own reasons.
Group C, seeing what benefits X was trying to shower on them thought what a deal and did Z which then fed X and Y.
Meanwhile Group D, financial analysts and knowledgeable observers looking on X, Y and Z often thought "this won't end well" but were largely ignored because "it had not happened yet" which would also largely characterize the reaction of Group E (most everyone else).

That the collective result of all this was a bubble and crash shows that it does not take an organized cabal to make or allow bad things to happen. Might be reminded that Group A thought everything was going fine until it became obvious that it wasn't.

CTs are better at backtracking from the bad event and winnowing out the chaff and proclaiming that they figured out the precise path that led to the bad event ignoring that there was no reasonable way to choose one thing over another going forward.

 

[JohnG]

I still listen to Coast to Coast AM sometimes. Nobody, no psychics, none of the long list of CT specialists called the economic crash of 2008. This was something happening out in the open in all 50 states, but there was no warning from the CT community at all. None. Zero. NADA. There were maybe a dozen financial annalists who were sounding the warning as early as 2006, but the so-called CT watchdogs never saw it coming.

The 2008 crash wasn't sexy enough for CTists. Not comic book enough. Not nearly illogical, fanciful, inhuman, stupid or bloody enough.

Predicting the 2008 crash would've also required listening to actual experts in the relevant fields, rather than the type of self-styled "expert" who tends to self-identify as a "Conspiracy Theorist".