[mulmen]

This is what’s fascinating and terrifying about conspiracy theories. You’re clearly an intelligent person who can articulate their thoughts. But none of this is well reasoned. In the face of compelling evidence you propose vague, unsubstantiated alternative theories. This is a bottomless pit. It’s not hard to make up a fantasy to explain reality. But that way lies madness. Reasonable people can disagree and arrive at the truth. But constantly inventing unsubstantiated counter arguments simply delays the inevitable conclusion to the detriment of everyone.

[harry8]

>But none of this is well reasoned.

Conjecture: A is not the culprit because motive xyz does not check out.

Reasoning: That doesn't exonerate A, who could have other motives.

Without agreeing with it, that looks perfectly well reasoned to me.

Compelling evidence exonerating the CIA you say? Well ok, I'll believe that when I see it, just like any other evidence from gravity onward. The CIA's docs haven't been declassified and released.

[mulmen]

The meta argument is the one which is unreasonable. Forming reasonable small arguments is easy. People engage them easily. But because so many can be created so cheaply it’s possible for people’s minds to cloud.

[harry8]

Ok so you acknowledge it was well reasoned and you are apologising to op for saying it wasn't. And moving forward you've come to:

So many well reasoned arguments can be created so it is possible for people's minds to cloud.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here but it seems like it's not contributing anything much to the discussion. Perhaps your mind clouded before you wrote it?

edit: did you edit your original post /after/ I replied?

[autoexec]

> The CIA's docs haven't been declassified and released.

If they were, would you believe them?

[speleding]

I would say that a compelling argument against the CIA being involved is that they would have done a way better job of covering their tracks if it really was them. Think about it: Professional spooks who know they would probably receive a death sentence for treason if caught planning an assassination attempt on the president.

And think about the number of people involved in an organisation like that who pledged allegiance to serve their country and now have to go along with killing the president. Just so incredibly unlikely. People watch too many cloak and dagger movies.

[DrScientist]

> like that who pledged allegiance to serve their country

In that scenario, all you need to do is believe that the interests of the country are separate from the interests of a particular president.

Trump is a classic example where some people might have held that view.

[unethical_ban]

Conspiracies have several variables, from feasibility in general, to number of collaborators, to motives, to methods of discovery.

Assassinating a popular, progressive president in the 1960s was very doable and didn't take a lot of people to pull off. It will never be settled as to the true motive of the killing.

Compare this to "the moon landing was faked" or "9/11 towers were not only an inside job, but imploded" and they are much less plausible.

[Dig1t]

>terrifying about conspiracy theories

People DO conspire. History is filled with examples both large and small. Suspecting a group of people of conspiring is not scary, there are lots of crazy theories out there that do no harm, ancient aliens, crystal skulls, all kinds of stuff.

"conspiracy theory" is a term with a lot of power, I would argue that people in power who actually do conspire have a pretty good incentive to call things that might expose them by that term. This ensures that the media cannot cover the topic without hurting their own reputation and that people who discuss it will be in the out-group and less likely to be taken seriously. In fact, they also have an incentive to play up the craziest ones (pizzagate, birds aren't real) to discredit and cover what might actually be a real case of conspiring.

You cannot stop people from coming up with crazy theories and talking to each other about them, particularly in the age of the Internet. The only thing you can do is discuss and provide evidence against them. Using that label only emboldens believers nowadays, since they become more convinced that the powerful are using the power of the term to suppress them.

[nerdponx]

Seems well-reasoned enough to me. That doesn't make it true, but given that the official story has some practical problems, it doesn't seem like something we can dismiss out of hand.

[pliesfan97]

I think this comes down to a philosophical difference in how we approach truth in the face of uncertainty. The truth here is clearly uncertain (and probably unknowable) at this point. I approach uncertain situations with a Bayesian perspective, meaning I have a certain preconceived understanding of the dynamics at play and I allow facts to shift that conception to ultimately form a conclusion consisting of how likely I believe each scenario.

In this case, history dictates that my Bayesian priors should be strongly shifted towards at least some "conspiracy" at play considering the how other leaders have been killed in the past by some conspiracy. History also dictates specifically that the CIA is capable of similar conspiracies (although this would probably be the biggest/most dramatic). The facts paint a pretty clear picture of how the assassination actually happened, but an entirely unclear picture of the motivations. Other tidbits of information strengthen and weaken these prior understandings (in my opinion they strengthen overall), but since they are only vague tidbits, the shift in understanding is small.

I believe you call this "unsubstantiated" because you do not allow history to form a prior understanding of the dynamics at play. You also seem reticent to allow for fuzzy truths or uncertainties to exist. This is entirely incongruous to the way I, and many other folks on HN, perceive the world, hence the disagreement. There fundamentally is a bottomless pit of possibilities of what happened, but this is the method in which I and many other narrow down that pit to vague likelihoods.

[irrational]

This seems to presuppose the “inevitable conclusion” is true.

[shrimpx]

A lot of it is fueled by the govt continuing to refuse to release the JFK papers.

[jasonm23]

> Reasonable people can disagree and arrive at the truth.

This seems untrue in the current media landscape. It is more likely people will disagree and then drift back to their echo chamber.

[flagrant_taco]

> It’s not hard to make up a fantasy to explain reality.

Unfortunately this isn't limited to conspiracy theories. We spent the better part of the years with leaders and scientists forcing similarly baseless explanations down or throat rather than taking the time to collect the data that actually supported the politically favorable talking points. There were countless fantasies made up to explain the risks of the specific virus, efficacy of masks, net benefit of vaccination, etc.