Mick,
That was a very interesting discussion which I think raises quite a number of questions.
One observation I’d like to make is that I think one of the reasons I have little tendency to believe conspiracy theories is that my default attitude is to believe that most normal people are generally honest most of the time. To qualify what I mean by that I think there are people who seem to have largely exited the world of conventional reality and live in some sort of fantasy world where it’s unclear what if any epistemological principles are thought to apply (there seem to be quite a few of these in UFO communities). So obviously I’m excluding these types of individuals from what I mean by “normal people”. It might be overly restrictive but my basic filter for deciding whether a person is likely to be “normal” is have they demonstrated an ability to function at a reasonably high level in a field that is strongly grounded in conventional reality ? Examples would be people who have had a successful career in computer programming ... Read even more
