Thread by @ErrataRob

Conspiracy theorists often sound rational, such as this video. He makes a good point that people simply dismiss their evidence ("you shouldn't say that") without taking the time to determine the truth.

I want to discuss why.

https://twitter.com/CioaraJeremy/status/1344717035649916928

The issue is that it's not us rational people who won't take the time to determine the truth, but the conspiracy theorists. They keep dredging up things they don't understand and demand that rational people explain them.

Such is the case in the report cited in the video. The person in video hasn't spent the time to determine the truth about that document. He doesn't understand what it contains. Yet, he demands we explain it to him.
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

He claims it's by a military intelligence expert and that's why it's credible. It's not -- it's by a guy Joshua Merritt who worked in the motor pool who flunked out of his intro to military intelligence class.
washingtonpost.com/investigations…

No, this is not an "ad hominem". It's them saying the "evidence" is credible because he's an expert. Thus, we should point out the guy is not an expert, and that the "evidence" must be judged on its own merits.

Does the evidence stand on its own merits?

No. It's just a misuse of the OSINT tool named SpiderFoot. Such tools aggressively look for POSSIBLE relationships between things, but is not by itself evidence. It's simply the start looking for evidence.

Here's a post that debunks the report point-by-point:
medium.com/@micallst/misu…

The thing to remember is that this rational effort to determine the truth is debunking something where no effort was made originally by the other side to determine the truth.

That's the nature of conspiracy theories: it's things they don't understand and can't explain. Since it's all explainable by the theory, the absence of any other explanation becomes proof of the conspiracy.

They make no effort to understand their own evidence. Instead, they keep vomiting up endless amounts of anomalies and demand we explain it all. Anything we fail to explain they insist is proof the conspiracy.

If you have true evidence of voter fraud, then fighting for this issue means you are DEFENDING democracy.

If you have no evidence, but make claims of voter fraud anyway (such as in this case), you are ATTACKING democracy, and the principles this country is founded upon.

That's why people are upset. If conspiracy theorists took the time to determine the truth of a thing before claiming it as evidence, then that would a moral defense of our country. But they cite things they don't understand, which means it's an attack against democracy.