Conspiracy Theories

I love conspiracy theories.  I find them entertaining, but also thought provoking.  One of the arguments I often see people make against them is that they are complex and therefore can't be true.  I find that belief fascinating, the idea that truth is always simple and that anything complicated is a lie.  Of course when you word it that way you immediately realise the flaw in that logic, which takes you back to the theories people just don't want to consider as possible.

One of the reasons I like conspiracy theories is the idea of plausible deniability.  This is a term typically used within the military, which basically requires the person you would most suspect to know the "truth" to be ignorant of it, so that their denial of it is plausible.  For example the idea of Area 51 was often the focus of many conspiracy theories before it was officially acknowledged.  During that time, successive Presidents of the USA denied its existence, and being the commander in chief one would assume that if it did exist, they would know.  Now there's the doubt naturally about whether the President is telling you the truth but we can ignore that for the moment.  There are ways and means of military bodies operating programmes that aren't the direct knowledge of the President.  We know this from history as details emerge decades after specific military operations that we find out the administrations of the time never knew about.

Whether any of that is true doesn't really matter, after all the whole idea of a Conspiracy Theory is that someone else knows and you do not.  Area 51 is the best example of a Conspiracy Theory that was held for decades, officially denied, discredited repeatedly, then eventually acknowledged as being something that actually exists.  Pop culture has depicted Area 51 for decades in countless movies, games, and TV shows, but it wasn't until 2013 that the US government officially admitted it existed.  You can speculate as to the true nature of its contents and the focus of the work that was carried out there, but regardless, it stands as an example of something that was theorized, claimed, discredited, then proven to be true.

Therein lies the entertainment value and the thought provoking element of Conspiracy Theories, that although the bulk of them seem far fetched and implausible, fact is often stranger than fiction and there have been some that have been true.  The appeal therefore is the contemplation of the question "what if" and all it would entail.  One other aspect that I like to consider is the idea "if it was true people would know" because that defence is perhaps the most laughable.  That puts far too much confidence in other peoples' ability to stay informed.  That and there is the fact that there is always a leak, someone somewhere will let something slip about the work they do - those leaks are often the origins of conspiracy theories, although granted they can become warped through Chinese whispers, part of the fun of entertaining conspiracy theories is to consider what the grain of truth is and where the whole thing started.