Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.
Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.
I do. That something is a conspiracy theory does not make it false, conspiracies do happen. For a long time, it would’ve been a conspiracy theory to say that the CIA was behind the 1953 Iranian coup, for instance. They covered it up for decades before finally admitting to it. The person who first broke the Watergate story was a woman named Martha Mitchell, who was branded as crazy and delusional before it was revealed that she was right. The government’s illegal mass surveillance program was long dismissed as a conspiracy theory before Edward Snowden came forward with proof.
Placing these sorts of things on the same level as things that are scientifically proven to be false is harmful, both because it gives undue credibility to the government, and detracts from the credibility of science. There are scientific means of proving that the moon landing was real, that 9/11 was not faked, that the earth is not flat, that evolution happens, etc. But those things are categorically different from reasonable speculation about what intelligence agencies may be up to behind closed doors, in the absence of conclusive proof.
What makes the Kennedy assassination fall in with the rest of those conspiracies is that it relies on the same suspension of reasonable alternatives.
Can you think of no other plausible explanation for why Dulles was selected to be on the committee? None?
Dulles would have to be the sort of person who would commit to murdering the US president over a grudge. A grudge he held for two years. And what would this murder achieve for him? Did he expect he would get his job back? Personal satisfaction? Was that really worth destabilising the nation he had been doing all his CIA work in support of? Not much pay off for the risk he was taking.
And how did he manged to rope in a disgraced former marine who had defected to the Soviets? A marine who only a few months had attempted to assassinate a US General?
As they say in the video, smart people belive stupid things for all sorts of reasons. Here the narrative that a lonely disturbed former marine was behind it all, just isn’t appealing, “surely there’s more to it?” we say.
You’re not alone though, about 75% of Americans beleive in the kennedy conspiracy.
Of course there were reasons to select him, he was an expert in assassinations of world leaders, after all, but those reasons should have been overridden by the clear and obvious conflict of interest.
He may have had a grudge and there may have been people still loyal to him in the intelligence community, but it’s also a question of power and ideology. The Kennedy assassination allowed the intelligence community, that Dulles spent his whole career building and strengthening, to increase its power. By demonstrating that they have the means to assassinate a president who steps out of line, they can exert control over future presidents, and no president since Kennedy has gone so directly against the wishes of the intelligence community. Furthermore, following the failure of The Bay of Pigs, Kennedy became somewhat more inclined towards deescalation and coexistence with socialist countries and his firing of Dulles was only a part of that. Dulles’ whole career was directly contrary to that approach, and he had had people killed over much lower stakes than that.
We’re talking about controlling the direction of the most powerful nation in the world, and you’re describing that as “not much pay off.”
Had tried to defect to the Soviets. Tried and failed. I wonder, why do you think the Soviets refused to accept him? Could it be that they felt there were security risks, you know, that they didn’t trust that his defection was genuine? There is little evidence that would suggest Oswald was actually a committed communist, and for instance Wikipedia cites his diary saying:
The fact that he had tried to defect to the Soviets doesn’t really remove suspicion from him. Surely, if my theory is correct, Dulles would have loved the opportunity to cast suspicion on the USSR.
Allegedly. If there had been proof of that, he wouldn’t have been walking free.
No. For years I fully accepted the official story and wrote off alternatives as conspiracy theories, without looking into it. I changed my mind because I became aware of actual reasons to be suspicious, such as the breach in custody of the bullet and the conflict of interest with Dulles. The evidence is extremely shaky, which is very much consistent with the idea of a cover up. Before becoming aware of that evidence, I was willing to accept the official narrative.
There’s nothing “stupid” about it. There are plenty of conspiracy theories that are stupid, that people believe for the reason you mention or other irrational reasons, but you can’t just label something a conspiracy theory and then use that label to dismiss all criticism.
He planned the coups in Iran, Guatemala and Cuba but those didn’t involve any assassinations. Is Dulles being an assassin part of the conspiracy as well? No evidence seems to exist.
But lets grant that because even then there is more plausible explanation why LBJ selected him for the board. The public at the time had no knowledge of the Kennedy administrations involvement in the bay of pigs disaster, Johnson wanted someone on the commission to make sure no awkward questions got asked.
And how many people were involved with this? Because it sounds like every single CIA director (and probably a few deputies) since then would have to be “in on it”. And not one person has said something, or accidentally dropped a receipt or a recording or any physical evidence whatsoever? Sort of like the Moon landing conspiracy.
He lived in Minsk for three years working at an electronics factory. He wasn’t booted out by the Soviets, he returned to the US of his own will. But why is his failure to defect important for you to dispute? Surely its completely immaterial? How would him being a communist affect the narrative?
Ironically quoting something that disproves your assertion above that he hadn’t defected.
The bullet was eventually linked to a gun Oswald owned and Mrs Oswald testified that he did it, but this didn’t come out until later.
No investigation is perfect and the more plausible explanation is mistakes happen. In order for it not to be a mistake, it has to be part of a chain of deliberate events each with its own probability of being true and each with its own chance of going wrong. So we have to deny the possibility that a single mistake is the plausible explanation in order to allow us to believe that the very implausible event chain (ongoing apparently) of hundreds of possibilities all compounding was executed flawlessly, is true.
That’s why it’s stupid. I’m not trying to convince you otherwise so please don’t take my points above as worthy of responding to, I just wanted to tease out where the cognitive leap was.
That’s a joke, surely. You can’t possibly be that ignorant of history.
Wow, it’s so shocking that the organization that’s in charge of espionage would not accidentally drop major incriminating evidence against themselves. Clearly this proves I’m wrong.
Wait a minute though, the CIA has records on the Kennedy assassination that have, to date, not been declassified, and they’ve somehow managed to avoid leaking them to the public. How many people are involved in maintaining that classified information? Are you really telling me that not one person has said something, or accidentally dropped those records directly in front of a journalist? Clearly, the only conclusion is that those classified documents don’t actually exist. Or… maybe the CIA is capable of keeping secrets, you know, like, the thing that it’s their job to do?
The moon landing conspiracy can easily be disproved scientifically through available evidence, it is not comparable.
No, the bullet was shown to have come from the same type of gun that he owned, not the specific one. The evidence is still circumstantial.
Regardless, this doesn’t prove anything.
There’s a lot more than one single mistake. If you actually look into the evidence, you’ll see that.
My narrative is not a “very implausible event chain.” You haven’t established even a single link in that chain that would be “very implausible.”