Nasa Photo

Hiding in the shadows, a sinister plot builds and grows…

There’s nothing quite like a good conspiracy, is there? The lovely interplay of thousands of parts, all spinning together, toward a sinister end. It’s actually somewhat comforting to think that there is a pattern is all the randomness of the world. After all, humans see patterns instinctively. In fact, seeing patterns was probably a survival trait on the African savannah and in prehistory. If someone could see the shape of a tiger or lion lurking in the tall grass, they would have a better chance of surviving into adulthood and reproduction.

However, conspiracies are persistent. For example, there is a small but dedicated group that insists on doubting that the Moon landings ever happened. They believe that they were faked on a Hollywood backlot or a studio or a desert out West. While on the surface some of these claims seem plausible, there’s one rather large problem. How has NASA and the US Government managed to suppress all of the information and pictures that would show that the landings were faked? Basically, my counterargument to this conspiracy is that it presupposes a level of competency that doesn’t quite match up properly. In addition, more than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo Project and none of them has come out to support this theory.

This is my main issue with the conspiracy of a Global Order that secretly runs everything. If they are powerful enough to run the entire world, why not just step out and rule directly? And two, how has no one in the organization stepped out? Occam’s Razor is a nifty little tool that cuts right to the heart of conspiracies: the simplest solution is usually the best.

Admittedly, there have been some conspiracies that were true. The 1953 Iranian coup d’etat was run by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States. There really was a US government program dedicated to studying drugs, called MKUltra.  But those generally much more limited in scale and are incredibly rare. In general, apply Occam’s Razor and a splash of logic and you’ll do alright.