COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND "CONSPIRACY THEORIES"

[Chris Bristow]

A topic on the JFK Assassination Forum asked why people believe in Ct's. It got me thinking about the other side of the issue. Anyone who accepts the possibility of CT's as being true has experienced the extreme cognitive dissonance that the general public can display. 
 There's a knee jerk reaction to anything dubbed 'Conspiracy" that results in an immediate and absolute conclusion that ALL those things are fake. End of story! It seems to be a human condition to jump to conclusions and relieve the uncomfortable feeling of ambiguity. If you can write off  everything that gets labeled "conspiracy" you can put all those ambiguities aside and move on. 
  I believe if the truth of the Iran Contra scandal was leaked long before it became public there would have been a well developed Ct, and also many skeptics who wrote it off as too crazy to be true. The same would be true for MK Ultra. But the time between first hearing about these accusations and the confirmation of them was short and so no great conspiracy theory developed. But if they had,  they would have been proved true in the end.
 The big failing of the "All is fake' position is that each conspiracy theory is different yet they write of all of them with a broad brush. 
 In 1968 when Project Bluebook closed the lead astronomer/researcher Allen Hynek Leaked the fact that our military has been tracking solid objects moving in our atmosphere that 1. far out performed our aircraft. 2. Appeared to be under intelligent control. 3. Sometimes appeared to violate the laws of momentum I.E. instant acceleration, deceleration, and sharp turns at high speed. 
 Ok so that sounds crazy and our Military denied it. But them in 2014 or 2016 the Pentagon admitted they had been studying ufo's as recently as 2011. They released a documented encounter from 2001 and guess what?  it validated what Hynek said back in 1968. 
  What this tells us is that from at least 2001 up till 2014 our military  hid the truth that they indeed did track solid objects that far out preform our aircraft and violate the laws of momentum. This is exactly a conspiracy theory come true! Verified by the Pentagon!
 This proves that lumping all 'Conspiracy theories together is simply due to cognitive dissonance. there is nothing logical about it.
 There is also some craziness on the CT'er side. People will accept conspiracy theories as quickly as skeptics dismiss them. They can see assassins behind every bush, even when the bush is 12 inches tall. Maybe they are attempting to remove ambiguity too, or maybe Ct is just a lot of fun to embrace. I suspect there is an element of narcissism in discovering what no one else has. 
 People can think illogically on both sides of the issue but I have a personal bias here. Those who avoid any intellectual rigor by dismissing all Ct as crazy and then form the opinion that considering a Ct makes you a bit of a lunatic, are soft brained fools. Or at  least they are acting like fools. (Im am not talking about educated skeptics like those on this forum. I refer to the responses of the generally uneducated public)
 It is our own distaste for ambiguity  and our human ego that makes us draw premature conclusions and state theory and opinion as fact. An open mind is essential to investigation and a closed mind is often doomed to misunderstand things from the start. 
 
 

[Lawrence Schnapf]

very simple answer. the secret service agents and others will testify that they saw a hugh blowout in the rear of the head but then say they still believed that all shots were fired from the rear by oswald. why to refuse to acknowledge that their observations refute the theory they so strongly support?Its because of false patriotism. they simply cannot accept that a conspiracy could have occurred in the USA or that the government would have lied about it because as Bugliosi said in his boo, this would mean we are no different than the Europeans and resemble a third world country. it would put a lie to the notion of American Exceptionalism. they just cannot emotional accept this possibility.  

[Michael Clark]

Brain-snap.

When one is first confronted with the consequences of particular conspiracies, like the JFKA, it is overwhelming. One, in a matter of seconds moves away from the notion, and buys the lie, or stumbles through a very difficult process of confrontation and acceptance of that notion of conspiracy. Like I said, it is a matter of seconds between deciding upon a comforting or immensely troubling world-view or accepting the lie. There are also many people who know better but will continue to provide an illusion of comfort and safety for the masses who chose to believe the lie.

When the reality of the situation first appeared before me, I was rocked to my core. I never wavered from it, but it took many years, and the Internet, and the Educationforum in particular, before I felt there was way, a resource, to peel away the layers of lies.

[Chris Bristow]

On March 28, 2019 at 3:58 PM, Lawrence Schnapf said:

very simple answer. the secret service agents and others will testify that they saw a hugh blowout in the rear of the head but then say they still believed that all shots were fired from the rear by oswald. why to refuse to acknowledge that their observations refute the theory they so strongly support?Its because of false patriotism. they simply cannot accept that a conspiracy could have occurred in the USA or that the government would have lied about it because as Bugliosi said in his boo, this would mean we are no different than the Europeans and resemble a third world country. it would put a lie to the notion of American Exceptionalism. they just cannot emotional accept this possibility.  

Yes I agree patriotism can be a cause of dissonance as well. Religion can do that too. Many reject the alien possibility because it contradicts religious beliefs.

Edited March 30, 2019 by Chris Bristow

[Chris Bristow]

On March 28, 2019 at 4:16 PM, Michael Clark said:

Brain-snap.

When one is first confronted with the consequences of particular conspiracies, like the JFKA, it is overwhelming. One, in a matter of seconds moves away from the notion, and buys the lie, or stumbles through a very difficult process of confrontation and acceptance of that notion of conspiracy. Like I said, it is a matter of seconds between deciding upon a comforting or immensely troubling world-view or accepting the lie. There are also many people who know better but will continue to provide an illusion of comfort and safety for the masses who chose to believe the lie.

When the reality of the situation first appeared before me, I was rocked to my core. I never wavered from it, but it took many years, and the Internet, and the Educationforum in particular, before I felt there was way, a resource, to peel away the layers of lies.

"A matter of seconds" yup so true.

[Chris Bristow]

Recently I read about the investigation onto the cause of the sinking of the Titanic. Many witnesses recounted how the ship nosed down and the stern lifted up out of the water  before breaking in two.

The investigators decided that sounded a bit too fantastic. They concluded the stress and drama of the event caused people to embellish their story. 

They ignored the consistency of the reports and their own personal bias took over. They wrote those stories off.

It sounds like a cheap excuse when skeptics say witnesses must have talked among themselves or seen similar news artciles. It can happen but I think it has also become an excuse to explain away difficult evidence.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Chris Bristow