Canada Is Not That Strange And Other Biases | Wednesday | Period 2

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"Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about conspiracy theories," Fraser said, grateful that class gave him the opportunity to be up front and honest anyway. He wouldn't spout anything too bad in class. "Now, I don't know a lot about conspiracy theories but most of them are just from the minds of crackpots with nothing better to do."

Or maybe not. Fraser frowned.

"Conspiracy theories are, basically, a way to explain a current or historical event as the result of a secret plot by a group of conspirators of superhuman power and cunning. Conspiracy theories are rarely supported by any factual evidence and the evidence that there is can be refuted easily or explained away. It's very hard to prove a conspiracy theory but, despite that, these theories grow and become widely believed by groups of people. Does that make them crackpots too? Perhaps just easily influenced? Maybe they wanted to believe it in the first place? It's different for everyone. For today, we're going to see how well you can come up with conspiracy theories of your own. I'm going to hand out a list of historical events and I want you all to write down a conspiracy theory for one of those events. Be sure to try and be as far fetched as you'd like but think about who would believe it and how you could make people believe it without any factual evidence. Think about these before just going with the first thing you can think of. All right? You can start."

Comments

Re: Class Activity | Conspiracy Theories [Canada 11/10]

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Oh, Jane was going to have fun with this one. She chose the Wall Street Crash, the Cuban missile crisis and Woodstock at random, deciding she'd go with whatever ended up with the best theory.

They all started with "space aliens."