
Ask HN: Favorite conspiracy theories? - germinalphrase
Have a favorite conspiracy theory (they doesn’t pertain to recent electoral&#x2F;political shenanigans)?<p>I’ll offer the Phantom Time Hypothesis: “The phantom time hypothesis is a historical conspiracy theory asserted by Heribert Illig. First published in 1991, it hypothesizes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retrospectively, in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history[1] to legitimize Otto&#x27;s claim to the Holy Roman Empire. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.[2] According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a fabrication, with a &quot;phantom time&quot; of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the Early Middle Ages.”<p>And - of course - “The proposal has been universally rejected by mainstream historians.”
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caymanjim
Not my favorite conspiracy theory, but I have an affinity for the "Face on
Mars". I worked on image processing software for Mars Global Surveyor and Mars
Odyssey. I was probably the first person to see some of the images taken. I
foolishly got into a few debates with conspiracy nuts about the "face," while
showing them the location at higher resolution, from different angles, etc. I
learned that one should just back away from them slowly until it's safe to
run.

I had a similar experience working on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the
"we never landed on the moon" nutjobs, but the Mars people are far crazier.

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thermodynthrway
Not a big believer in traditional conspiracy theories. But, there's a lot of
evidence that the US military has a lot more than they let on.

I mean, GPS, the internet, strong encryption (look up history of DES). Much of
what we take for granted came from black or semi-black US military projects.
Leaked out I guess, sometimes literally.

God knows what's out there now, but UFO sightings are a reasonable place to
start. Hypersonic transport. Plasma stealth. Nuclear engines. EMP, railguns
and laser weapons.

What's made public is a tiny fraction of what's already out there. Terrifying
but fascinating at the same time.

Funny that we already have weapons powerful enough to end the species but
advancement continues.

Most people don't realize, but patents important enough are, and always have
been, immediately been appropriated secret. A little known purpose of the
patent office is to keep the lid on anything truly ground shaking.

And that's where my conspiracy theories start. There's so much out there kept
from the rest of the world. I guess in 20 years or so we'll know what they've
got now

~~~
benjohnson
Here in the Pacific Northwest there's secret project that I estimate thousands
of people know about by now based on the scope of it - I found out because I'm
doing the IT work for one of the subcontractors. The project is almost done.

There's nothing about it on the internet. Absolutely nothing. Not even a hint.

~~~
thermodynthrway
Not surprised, but you might want to delete this. If there's nothing on the
internet but this post I would keep quiet.

I use long lasting throwaways but it's trivial to find me. If nobody has heard
about something you haven't either. As much as I don't like mysterious
technomagic I understand the reasons, I'm just really curious

Edit: just for the luls I'll guess that it's a giant radar/bunker complex.
Russian/asian nukes tend to come from the Northwest amiright. Probably in
Oregon or maybe Alaska. Either missle defence or early warning

~~~
benjohnson
Sorry, I'm not going to spill the beans. I haven't even told my wife. My main
point is that there _are_ secrets that can be kept by large groups of people -
I'm am frankly surprised myself, but I guess I shouldn't be.

Have Blue was kept well hidden for a long time for example - it's hard to
imagine for me this was flying around during the Disco era:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue)

~~~
thermodynthrway
Exactly why I said 20 years! The hopeless diamond. I would still delete this
if real. Even though you didn't give away anything of substance it's enough to
be marked a traitor

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andrewflnr
I heard someone (jokingly) propose that we really did go to the Moon, but the
public video footage was nevertheless faked, because the real footage was just
too crappy. It's really too much to expect astronauts to be skilled
videographers on top of everything else... Maybe not a "real" conspiracy
theory, since no one believes it, but my favorite nonetheless.

~~~
caymanjim
The truth about that is ironically enough exactly the opposite. I can't find a
link to it right now, but there was a great story in the science news about a
month ago, about how many of the images from the Apollo era were intentionally
low-resolution and grainy, because the US didn't want to reveal to the Soviets
just how advanced their remote sensing technology was. NASA had access to the
best military-grade satellite surveillance technology, and the government
didn't want to tip off our cold-war adversaries.

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WalterGR
_I’ll offer the Phantom Time Hypothesis: “...According to this scenario, the
entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a
fabrication, with a "phantom time" of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the
Early Middle Ages.”_

I’ve heard an additional bit.

We call those roughly three centuries The Dark Ages. Very little was recorded
as happening throughout them, when compared to the time period that came
before and the time period that came after. They are “dark” - as in unknown.

According to this conspiracy theory, the reason that so little happened is
because the time period that we call The Dark Ages _never actually existed_.

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krapp
The true cause of the Mandela Effect isn't false or inaccurate memories, it's
the fact that time isn't a line, causality doesn't really exist and the past
constantly changes and alters the present. People are really correctly
remembering details from former versions of reality. You're not getting old,
It really was Berenstein!

Also, the reason this is the case is that CERN discovered the universe is a
simulation and broke time trying to hack it.

~~~
WalterGR
Another:

The true cause of the Mandela Effect isn't false or inaccurate memories, it's
the fact that time isn't a single, straight line. Rather, there are multiple
timelines that have converged on what we all think of as the current moment.

Everyone is remembering their origin timeline correctly... it’s just that some
people came from the timeline where it was The Berenstein Bears, and others
where it was The Berenstain Bears.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Another..similarily... when you die, you jump into 'you' in a different
timeline at the exact moment you died, but that 'you' didn't die and lives on,
till the 'new' you dies' and you 'jump' into another timeline at the same age,
and continue till the oldest 'you' and 'last' you dies at which your
progression ends.

This could tie in, because your 'mandela' effect could be memories from your
'other' lives that you've lived while 'jumping' through the multiverse.

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genjipress
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.

(EDIT: Can't claim credit for this one. It was the top prizewinner in an OMNI
Magazine contest for joke conspiracy theories.)

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kangnkodos
If the total US national deficit keeps getting bigger and bigger as a
percentage of GDP, at some point, lenders (bond buyers) will decide it's too
much and demand higher interest rates. This will start a downward death spiral
as the US needs to borrow more and more just to pay off interest. The only
choice will be to shoot out more money causing massive inflation inside the
US. The price of anything imported will skyrocket. The US will drastically cut
social security payments and other spending, leading to riots.

All politicians have told us that since the US is the global fiat currency,
this will never happen here. It has happened to many other countries which
have borrowed too much, but it will never happen to the US. So it's OK for the
US to keep spending, and cutting taxes at the same time.

My conspiracy theory is that all the politicians are deliberately lying, and
this is a possible scenario.

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guessmyname
Flat Earth [1] which gets funnier the more you research about it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies)

~~~
duxup
I there was a news story where a reporter recounted his time with flat earth
people. It was interesting how there were distinct ties to Christian identity
stuff, but most of all it seemed like many of those people just wanted to
belong to something and at the same time these conspiracy theories make the
madness of the world.... understandable.

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duxup
I don't really believe in any conspiracy theories..... except to say that I
get how all those Lee Harvey Oswald theories pop up because if you made up
that guy's life story people would say you made it too absurd to be
believed.....

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ryanmercer
Rick isn't an alcoholic, it's a side effect of the mega seeds.

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megamindbrian2
Agartha and inner earth and general Byrd's Arctic flight to find it. I don't
see it as a physical dimension like most hallow earthers, it's more of a
gravitational existence.

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insickness
The universe was created by God five minutes ago. He implanted memories in
everyone along with all the evidence.

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cpr
[http://drjudywood.com/towers/](http://drjudywood.com/towers/)

This is easily the most intriguing site on the 9/11 conspiracy.

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Cypher
911 was an inside job

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zachrose
U.S. Representative Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at Obama’s first state of the
union address.

Seven months later, Kanye West interrupts Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at
the MTV VMAs to say Beyoncé had the best video of all time.

A few days later Obama calls West a jackass in an “accidentally” recorded
interview.

The theory is that Kanye West and Obama were in on finding a very roundabout
way to condemn Wilson.

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gHosts
My starting point is this...

Take the minutes of the last business meeting you had.

Without even asking your boss, publish them on the open web.

Here on Hacker News for example.

After a day or so point this out to your CEO, telling him you will be doing
this with _all_ future meetings.

Report back to us what was the result of your happy chat with your CEO.

I think you will find that, sadly, most of us do, indeed, conspire in secret
against the interests of the general public at large.

