That reads just like something out of a tract from the Church of the Subgenius.
JAMS: We help you pull the wool over your own eyes!
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The problem with every grand conspiracy theory for a lot of us here, is that they’re heavy on circumstantial evidence, heavy on assumptions, heavy on leaps of logic and faith (what if, what if, what if), and very light on substantiated evidence of manipulation, light on discovering valid connections, and light on public documentation.
Conspiracy theorists love to claim they have a theory, but for the most part all they actually have are hypotheses woven together in an unintelligible mess of yarn.
Scientific theories look like this:
Close to all conspiracy theories look like this:
But their proponents keep claiming their theories are actually these:
And that we’re all stupid for not seeing the machine for all the tangled yarn.
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Presumably, a visit from the MIB stalled development. I’m not seeing any warrant canary, are you?
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The majority of conspiracy theorists think that their theories look like flawless clockwork machinery, so we should not discuss or think about what might be going on here then? That doesn’t make sense. Let’s close discussion because scientific method looks like a wool sweater. The case is closed. There’s no possible way a controlling secret society exists. Scientists already know, because the evidence so far is circumstancial. No one is putting something manipulative in front of the eyes of the 14 million people watching the halftime show. No one has anything to gain from that. No proof means that it is not worth exploring. Only scientists can choose if and when they explore this topic with their infallable knitted-sweater-like methods. No one is encoding the music or visuals with symbology. It’s impossible because there is no public documentation on this. The only valid ideas are scientific. Well, if they are secret, I guess they will remain that way… unless, science.
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Here’s a pretty good way to sort out the worthwhile hypotheses from the ones which are more likely to just be paranoid rants. Ask yourself one simple question: "Is this theory FALSIFIABLE?"
In other words, what would it take to convince you that your theory was wrong? Here are a few examples.
Theory: Bigfoot is a myth.
Disproven if: Someone finds physical proof (corpse, live specimen, etc) of a previously undocumented species of hairy bipedal hominid living in North America.
Theory: The Apollo moon landing took place as popularly believed and was not staged inside a sound studio.
Disproven if: Conspirators come forward with tangible evidence of how they faked the moon landing, and future missions to the moon find no physical evidence of the supposed 1969 landing.
Theory: It is impossible for a human being to eat the sun.
Disproven if: A human eats the sun (or a similarly sized star as proof-of-concept).
Now let’s try it with the theory under discussion.
Theory: As part of a ploy to maintain power over an oblivious populace, a centuries-old secret society called “The Illuminati” use their globe-spanning influence to introduce occult symbology into popular culture including internet memes and Katy Perry dance routines during the Superbowl.
Disproven if: ??
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I don’t have satellite or cable tv so I waited a few days before watching the half time show. I knew I would easily be able to see it in some form or other. How I watched it was actually through Christian conspiracy theorist You Tube broadcasters deconstructing its symbolism. The first one had actually uploaded his deconstruction within minutes of the halftime show’s completion! Why am I bothering to point this out? Because I think it is funny that the first version of the SuperBowl half time show I saw was through the filter of people who had already decided it was the latest in a now regular annual Satanic Illuminatus mass programming event.
How do you keep your Southern Baptist buddy from drinking all the beer on a fishing trip? Invite another Southern Baptist buddy.
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Look, @debibulated, I’m sorry we had to turn you down for membership, but you have to admit that your desire to write about things makes you a bit of a security risk. It’s time to forget it and move on. I understand that the NSA is currently looking for astroturfers, I’d get in quick if I were you.
As for the Illuminati, we really don’t exist. No shit. We simply couldn’t compete for weirdness with the Scientologists and the Mormons.
[edit - I’ve just been asked by one of our World Rulers if I could just mention that this post is only a joke.]
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Exactly!
“Exactly” what? That was your cue to fill in the blank. If you think the “Illuminati conspiracy” theory is worthy of investigation then you’re supposed to have some idea of how one could go about trying to disprove it. Otherwise it probably just belongs in the “paranoid rant” category.
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From your other examples the blank is obviously…
Disproven if: a centuries-old secret society called “The Illuminati” do not exist and do not use their globe-spanning influence to introduce occult symbology into popular culture including Katy Perry dance routines during the Superbowl.
Did I really have to fill that in?
I’m glad someone is on top of what I’m supposed to be doing in order to avoid paranoid rants. I wasn’t really worried about that though, thanks.
I think you missed the point of that exercise. The idea is to describe what EVIDENCE would prove a theory wrong, not just say “this theory is wrong if it is not true.”
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Well, one thing that would help to disprove this theory would be to find no common influence over the superbowl ads of 2013. Those ads last year and other strange things surrounding that event in that year are what caused me to start scatching my head over this in the first place. Can the marketing people for those ads which all seem to make reference to magic, goats, familiars, deals with Satan, witches, and the Wizard of Oz be traced to a common influence? Was there a memo sent out to each company saying what needed to be included? How would that influence work? Is there someone in a parent company common to all the brands shaping the content? Can the influence be traced? Did the Sandy Hook kids sing " Somewhere over the Rainbow" at the Superbowl opening because they wanted to advertise the new Great and Powerful Oz movie through them? Perhaps there is documentation surrounding that and they got a memo also? I don’t really know how the secret society would work. It would take a great deal of work, but there’s some idea there on maybe one way to find evidence or no evidence. No common link with all the marketing departments would further evidence against the theory that the Illuminati have, specifically, no influence over Superbowl ads. I don’t know, you’d have to pick it apart piece by piece like that to prove the theory wrong. This is why discussion and critical thought are important. I really don’t mind if this conspiracy theory is proven wrong, but I’d like to see substantial evidence of that also before “solid” conclusions are made. Theories can be wrong, but forming a theory isn’t necessarily wrong. How does a falsifiable theory make a valid theory? I can’t really wrap my head around that, but it does make me think.
Also, there IS evidence of Satanic practice in secret among the rich and powerful. Have you heard of Jimmy Saville? Wouldn’t a want to stop people like him from doing horrible things in secret be enough to look into this theory, so that if the illuminati are doing horrible things in secret, we can expose them for what they are and stop those things from happening? Wouldn’t that make it a worthwhile thing to investigate? Falsify my theory, please!
Are your friends Benedictines, by any chance?
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There’s no proof that it isn’t!
Just remember: Leonardo DaVinci had never been seem in the same room at the same time as Katy Perry, and he’s the guy that made the Turin photograph.
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I’m confused? They want us to be culturally aware and musically educated, with an appreciation and understanding of contemporary urban poetics as evolving in the popular idiom; or they want us to stay dumb? Or are both waveform-states simultaneously collapsible to the same eigenstate, that we could be so in-tune to the data-filled zeitgeist that we miss the metanarratives that are lurking cryptically at our liminal boundaries?
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“Making you think” is part of the point. If a theory isn’t falsifiable that means it isn’t testable. An untestable theory may be “valid” but it’s also pretty worthless from the standpoint of anyone trying to discern the nature of the world around them.
For example: for all you know you’re nothing more than a brain floating in a jar hooked up to a computer feeding you a detailed simulation of being a human being living in the real world. But unless you devise some way to test that theory it would be a waste of energy spending too much time worrying about it.
It’s also a good way to gauge how seriously you should take theories posited by other people. Take the plight of a man who believes that the CIA has hidden transceivers in his teeth. After visiting six different dentists in three countries, he’s told each time that X-rays and other tests show no evidence of such implants. Does he conclude:
- “Oh, I guess I was wrong after all. Maybe I should seek psychiatric care.”
- “I should have known that all dentists are taking kickbacks from the CIA to help keep their secret.”
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That is an example of a theory being wrong because it isn’t true.
