I have no horse in this race, but you are not more logical than your brother.
First of all, "conspiracy theory" is often taken to mean one of the tinfoil variety ("government and gay aliens experiment with mind control beams" style, or "immortality treatment hidden by pharma for the last 100 years in attempt to increase profits and for eugenic purposes"). But a "conspiracy" simply means an act of collusion done secretly which contrasts with public statements or the law (or is generally harmful). Thousands of these happen every day in various scales. Assuming that you can trust government statements is, based on history, naive. So, do you have a different term for "small conspiracy I accept happens all the time"? Because your rhetoric seems to exclude these from existing.
With respect to the (missing) 9/11 leak, there are countless stories that came out decades after happening. "Establishing it as the real deal" based on the lack of a leak makes to me about as much sense as a statement from a fellow truther (however well informed in his subject matter) establishing it as a lie.
A conspiracy theory typically involves a pretty large group of people doing something big to deceive a massive group of people.
Like a faked moon landing, a large false flag operation like 9/11, or a hillary clinton/democratic party death squad murdering leakers.
Has anything like this ever happened in all of history? The whole snowden thing is the best example I can think of but I don't remember actually being surprised when that came out. Maybe if hitler burned down the reichstag? I don't think that was ever proved though and I'm not sure how many people would really need to be involved in something like that.
> A conspiracy theory typically involves a pretty large group of people doing something big to deceive a massive group of people.
> ... death squad murdering leakers.
Two people are enough to conspire. And to claim (as you did, if I understand correctly) that you need a "large group of people" to hire an assassin to take out one person is irrational, and I believe contradicts a lot of well documented court cases involving organized crime.
> Has anything like this ever happened in all of history? The whole snowden thing is the best example I can think of but I don't remember actually being surprised when that came out.
I wasn't surprised either; but I do remember tens of people I interact with changing, practically overnight, from telling me "you are paranoid, they only listen to bad guys" to "of course, we've always known that". Most people remember always being on the right side of history, even when they demonstrably weren't.
It has happened countless times. The Enigma code breaking story involved tens, perhaps hundreds, deceiving hundreds of millions, for over 30 years; When the secret did get out (officially; no leaks involved), it was a huge surprise.
There are tens of others if you care (I don't have time to list), but ... do you really believe that whatever Snowden informed the world of ONLY started with the things documented in his leaks, and that it ONLY concerned the NSA? That would be the irrational position. (Stated another way: the snowden leak might be unprecedented in depth and breath. But the operations it exposes aren't)
> Two people are enough to conspire. And to claim (as you did, if I understand correctly) that you need a "large group of people" to hire an assassin to take out one person is irrational, and I believe contradicts a lot of well documented court cases involving organized crime.
No this coverup would have to include the DC police with his laptop and many others to bury all the other connections that would exist with wikileaks.
So he wouldn't have tor installed? His computer wouldn't be encrypted? This is ridiculous, the laptop would be full of all the software required for being a leaker.
The enigma code wasn't really much of a conspiracy theory so much as it was normal espionage during ww2. Everyone knew each side was spying and trying to code crack each other. So like, yeah, one of them was successful...
First of all, "conspiracy theory" is often taken to mean one of the tinfoil variety ("government and gay aliens experiment with mind control beams" style, or "immortality treatment hidden by pharma for the last 100 years in attempt to increase profits and for eugenic purposes"). But a "conspiracy" simply means an act of collusion done secretly which contrasts with public statements or the law (or is generally harmful). Thousands of these happen every day in various scales. Assuming that you can trust government statements is, based on history, naive. So, do you have a different term for "small conspiracy I accept happens all the time"? Because your rhetoric seems to exclude these from existing.
With respect to the (missing) 9/11 leak, there are countless stories that came out decades after happening. "Establishing it as the real deal" based on the lack of a leak makes to me about as much sense as a statement from a fellow truther (however well informed in his subject matter) establishing it as a lie.