“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Ghost MacRoth]

Ah yes, fair one.   I took it as more general, my mistake. 

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Chaos Theory it may be but buildings don't tend to evaporate no matter how much chaos is involved.

Chaos theory does not describe things that tend to happen. This was a unique event. I don't doubt that the most qualified people and most brilliant minds in the world couldn't come up with an perfect explanation, but that alone does not imply a conspiracy.

I don't claim to understand the subleties of geo-politics, propaganda and spin, but when you start citing science, YOU'RE IN MY HOUSE, BITCH!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Again, I should really stay away from the internet when I've been drinking.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Again, I should really stay away from the internet when I've been drinking.

LIKE.
I've been drinking too. I'm not going near this thread again till tomorrow.

[Jim_Campbell]

I don't claim to understand the subleties of geo-politics, propaganda and spin, but when you start citing science, YOU'RE IN MY HOUSE, BITCH!

This is one of the many frustrations in arguing with people who support a fringe view point — they have a tendency to demand a level of expertise they do not themselves possess, and standards of evidence they cannot themselves produce ("You're not a structural engineer!" or "I don't care about that structural engineer's report! What about this YouTube video!").

Occasionally, I suffer a lapse in judgement and get into an argument with one of a disparate group I like to call "Shakespeare Deniers". Now, I don't claim to be an expert on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays but I did study both the Bard as a dedicated paper and the wider field of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature as a separate paper at university, so in a roomful of randomly sampled people ordered from "layman" to "expert", I feel confident asserting that I stand comfortably on the "expert" side of the median line.

The first thing to note about those who argue for Marlowe, Devere, Raleigh, et al, is their insistence on referring to Shakespeare as "Stratford" or "The Stratford Man", which is essential to their argument since it allows them to obfuscate the somewhat significant fact that Shakespeare's name is on the front of the plays. These people point to the lack of facts in support of Shakespeare's authorship, when the facts we can be reasonably confident of are that: Shakespeare was part-owner of the Globe theatre, which was home to the King's (Lord Chamberlain's) Men, a company of actors of which Shakespeare was also a part and which performed Shakespeare's plays. Also, the broadly contemporary Ben Jonson penned a verse to preface Shakespeare's first (posthumous) folio collection fairly clearly identifying Shakespeare as author of the works therein.

Yet you find yourself confronted with protestations that this is inconclusive, that a higher standard of evidence is required, from an opponent whose position (in the case of the Marlowe camp*) requires their candidate for authorship to have faked his own death and then spent twenty years having plays smuggled into England anonymously from secret exile in Italy so that Shakespeare could pretend that they were his.

And this is one of the most pernicious effects of the internet: the myth of equivalence of opinion when not all opinions are equal. All of the cases for alternative authorship of Shakespeare's plays require the dismissal of some or all of the known facts of Shakespeare's life, and some bending of the biographical detail of the preferred alternative candidate (de Vere, for example, inconveniently died four years before the believed date of Shakespeare's final play).

Many of the counter arguments to Shakespeare's authorship don't hold water under any kind of scrutiny: it's asserted that a common man of limited education** couldn't have displayed such knowledge of foreign parts, and examples of him getting important details (such as the location of certain Italian cities) hilariously wrong are hand-waved away.

And yet, when you systematically go through all of this, pointing out the illogicalities and inconsistencies of their argument, an argument which supports a version of events far less likely than the mainstream version (which also has the advantage of being supported by the vast majority of the available facts) then the shutters come down, and you're labelled an establishment stooge, incapable of critical thinking, blahblahblah.

Which all seems very familiar to the argument at hand. It's a basic template, all you have to do is change the subject and the pattern is identical. I'm not suggesting that one should never question the orthodoxy*** merely observing that knee-jerk rejection of the mainstream narrative on a particular subject should be approached with caution, particularly if one's alternative explanation for that subject is really fucking stupid.

Cheers

Jim

* Who, I will concede are outliers in the debate and whom I've chosen largely for comedic value.

** Remarkable how many arguments against Shakespeare's authorship proceed from the assertion that he was a pleb and couldn't possibly have written the works because he wasn't posh enough.

*** Whilst I wouldn't claim to have maintained anything other than the most cursory of interest in the academic study of Shakespeare since my degree, continued academic rigour has seen the case for Middleton's hand in some of Shakespeare's plays strengthen radically, and the identifying of Cardenio as a plausible candidate for a 'lost' Shakespeare work, demonstrating that even the 'mainstream' position is not one cast in stone.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'd say my area of moderate expertise is the JFK assassination. I have a pretty dull job with access to the internet, so I pick a new subject every week to learn about. One week was baseball (handy when I met Mrs Mortimer, an American and fan of fancy-rounders); and another was JFK, which led to years of reading and interaction with some of the oddest corners of the internet.

My last argument about it (and the last one I'll ever have on the subject, probably - life is too damn short) had the greatest hits of conspiracy-minded thinking. A court transcript directly contradicted what one person was saying, so I linked to it, but because the site that the transcript was hosted by was run by a well-known Oswald-did-it guy, they felt able to ignore it. Their argument was a hydra - chop one head off, and a bunch more would spring up. Ask what they thought actually happened, and you'd just get the "well, I'm only asking questions" response. 

One of the main issues I have with trying to have a discussion with "people like that" on the internet is they tend not to treat it as an attempt to find the truth, but as a court case that needs winning, so they use all the tricks of the disreputable lawyer (and every logical fallacy known to humanity).

[Richmond Clements]

The JFK one is interesting. It just blows the mind that one single nutter with a gun could alter history in such a way. The cannot accept it so construct a comforting narrative that tells them someone somewhere is in control.

Nope. Just a nutter with a gun.

[JamesC]

What about Diana and that tunnel though eh? 

[I, Cosh]

What about Diana and that tunnel though eh? 

The great "Man Wearing Seatbelt Survives Crash" conspiracy?

[Jim_Campbell]

The great "Man Wearing Seatbelt Survives Crash" conspiracy?

Stooge.

Cheers

Jim

[Colin YNWA]

The JFK one is interesting. It just blows the mind that one single nutter with a gun could alter history in such a way. The cannot accept it so construct a comforting narrative that tells them someone somewhere is in control.

Nope. Just a nutter with a gun.

Arh man I got really into that as a teen. Bill Sienkiewicz trading cards leading me to all kinds of books that made the case quite clear to my alcohol fuelled mind. This was backed up by Oliver Stone and Pete Milligan issues of Shade (my chronology is not to be trusted here by the way) and that was it. I was through the looking glass people...

...then I heard the other side and well...

... oh I see...

...sorry about all the fuss folks.

I now find things about debunking conspiracy theories fascinating having been suckered into one myself.

[Professor Bear]

I've always thought the Red Dwarf episode where a time-traveling JFK assassinated himself so he wouldn't take America down with him when his dirty linen was aired in public makes more sense than most official theories.

One of the main issues I have with trying to have a discussion with "people like that" on the internet is they tend not to treat it as an attempt to find the truth, but as a court case that needs winning, so they use all the tricks of the disreputable lawyer (and every logical fallacy known to humanity).

Pedants are not confined to conspiracy discussions - there's a very common kind of internet troll whose MO is simply to get any kind of concession or admittance of minor inaccuracy from the person they're arguing with - regardless of how they get it or its importance to the discussion either way - at which point they act like they've won something.  In their own minds, I think they might actually believe that they have.

[Famous Mortimer]

Oh, agreed - pedantry is the bane of anything interesting.

I'd recommend reading Michael Barkun's "Culture Of Conspiracy" for a flavour of that sort of thinking and activity; David Aaronovitch's book, provided you don't have to spend any money on it, is worth a flick through too.

[Tombo]

The JFK one is interesting. It just blows the mind that one single nutter with a gun could alter history in such a way. The cannot accept it so construct a comforting narrative that tells them someone somewhere is in control.

Nope. Just a nutter with a gun.

Poor choice of words or dark humour?

[Richmond Clements]

I would like to claim the latter, but that would be a lie!