quote:Originally posted by Daniel J*:
Most people don't have access to all the facts and so it is not an option to challenge the given explanation for an event. It's not mere gullibility. In fact, there's a lot to be be said for the principle of parsimony when seeking to explain something; William of Occam, if you guys are hot for famous people and quotations.
Furthermore, it's all very well for investigative journalists and people like that to question the received explanations by actually involving themselves but what does it achieve for people to sit at home with a web browser and convince themselves of an alternative, usually patchy and sinister, version of events?
Tapping one's nose, hinting at cabals and intrigue, and looking pityingly at the gullible masses is probably quite satisfying, especially if one is a bit insecure or inclined to paranoia. Being suspicious of a particular event is perhaps reasonable but people who follow these things avidly, jumping from one to another, start to look like they have a state of mind, not a questioning mind.
It's one thing allowing for the possibility of a different chain of events to the generally accepted one. It's quite another to assume that the accepted chain of events have been manipulated. The Reichstag may well have been burned by the Nazis to cause a crisis. I bet most people probably don't know about the event at all, most people wouldn't care even if they did, and we probably have no way of knowing one way or the other now. Moreover, it doesn't actually matter.
que?
