On Jun 13, 2006, at 10:54 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
No! As Doug and I have both argued, you cannot rationally debate conspiracists. Disprove one point and they invent another.
The piece I posted from LBO about conspiracy yesterday attracted more hostile mail than just about anything I've written. (I also delivered a version on my radio show, and got the same hostile reaction.) But every response was along the lines: how can you say this? Conspiracies exist! Not one engaged the central point - that a consultant to the Pentagon recommended the use of selectively released data that would stimulate conspiracy theorists as a useful political distraction. Right there in the open: an admission of a conspiracy of sorts! But the conspiracists couldn't get their heads around that. They had to move on to a new conspiracy. Doug
