I really enjoyed the discussion SyntheticGerbil started in the Life thread, but I'm late to the party and I hope a separate thread will encourage the discussion more. There was some posts before this one, but it's a fine place to start. I think of conspiracy theories as modern day mythologies; it's folklore. Of course people can take it tok seriously and get find themselves living in a root-cellar holding a shotgun and a short-wave radio, but I suspect that's a confluence of challenges that they need to address in their personal lives. Don't let them ruin it for all of us. One thing that strikes me about comspiracy theories is that there's this incredibly obtuse funnel between agency and influence; one group controlling it all. As if a group has an easy time agreeing on anything. I kinda like the idea that there is a secret-society that thinks it is controlling everything in its delusion of grandeur and that they happened to be at CES buying the largest television display so tha they can put a giant map of the world on it with some blinking dots and have skype calls with people in dark rooms. Someone HAS to be doing that right now.