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Hanlon's Razor: Difference between revisions
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**** If more than one person participates in the cover-up, and they coordinate their actions in any way, then it is, by definition, a conspiracy.
****Colloquially the phrase [[Conspiracy Theory]] implies "Spectacular conspiracy of mythical proportions." That is if two thugs collaborate to mug an old lady that is indeed a "conspiracy" but saying somewhere sometime two thugs have collaborated to mug an old lady is not a [[Conspiracy Theory]].
***** Colloquially, the phrase [[Conspiracy Theory]] means "someone disagrees with an obviously corrupt expert" in about 100 cases out of 100 (not counting strawman references brought up in support of others as separate uses). Which in the end only escalates the issues to [[Gamergate|consumer riots]].
** This [http://www.cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html cracked article] says it best, and even invokes this trope.
{{quote|"Just as it's wrong to find complicated conspiracy where simple incompetence will explain everything, it's also wrong to presume evil motives where simple mental retardation may be the explanation."}}
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** It's not going to go away anytime soon, as [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''[[State of Fear]]'' made sure there was [[Harsher in Hindsight|a fanbase waiting for it]]!
** Ironically, this may in itself be due to ignorance of what is expected in the way of standard knowledge within the scientific community. The sloppy editing is particularly atrocious as both the editor and the author of the paper involved should have known that the original source was '''not''' one to cite as anything more than anecdotal, and only inside a grant application at that. (The grant in question could be summed up as "Please give me money to measure glaciers for a while and see if these rumors are true.")
** When the sloppy editing somehow ends up supporting one side repeatedly, people assume corruption. Just like when a cashier constantly makes errors and those errors are overwhelmingly in the cashier's favor, people assume this cashier is a crook, and everyone who claims cashier did nothing wrong diligently ignoring the "errors" being so one-sided is also a crook - or serves one. Which usually is the case, obviously. What most people miss is that the second crook often ''does not need to'' explicitly collude with the first, but may do it out of crooked self-interest, because making a slap on the wrist the common outcome will help if and when the second crook is caught too - and it discourages people from exposing such crooks in the first place. Hence if you see someone going after e.g. an obviously corrupt journalist, [[Gamergate|you'll probably see "solidarity" tags soon]].
* There's still some debate as to whether the Holodomor, the famine cause by Stalin's agricultural collectivization policies in the Ukraine, was the result of simple mismanagement or a deliberate genocide against a nation that had a (not undeserved) reputation as a breeding ground for counter-revolutionary sentiment. [[Inverted Trope|Of course, this is]] ''Stalin'' we're talking about here...
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