A conspiracy theory is an argument from first principles (rather than evidence, it is a claim based on capability and incentives). That is very hard to do right, and most conspiracy theorists have more misses than hits.

That being said, it doesn't invalidate the conspiracy theorists. They fill a useful role - public discourse has three unwritten rules. Assume everyone is speaking in good faith, assume consequences of their actions that they didn't advocate for are accidental and assume that they are only working with information in the public sphere.

All three of these assumptions are unsound, so public discourse is always slightly divorced from reality. We can't have discourse without those rules, but the crazies provide a helpful chorus of "but what if we assume bad faith/indirect action/private knowledge". These ideas need to be in the conversation, even if only peripherally. It is pretty obvious that there is a lot of that negative stuff going on, even if we don't know which specific cases are coincidence vs intent.

> public discourse has three unwritten rules. Assume everyone is speaking in good faith, assume consequences of their actions that they didn't advocate for are accidental and assume that they are only working with information in the public sphere.

What?

> slightly divorced from reality

It's often extremely divorced from reality. For instance the Israel / Palestine conflict.

I agree with your sentiment, but using your own anaolgy, someone who put the time into throwing everything at the wall likely is your best source for what sticks. Because, you know, they tried... everything.

You're right, the analogy is wrong because the conspiracy theorist is actually just yelling "this will stick" at every object they pass, and then doing strange analyses of their favourite objects to try to justify it, but never actually testing the results.

Yep! But there's also the chance that yelling conspiracy theory becomes kind of a social norm to address any issue that is uncomfortable to think about which I think is pretty lazy and probably hurts us long term, too.

Some people refused to believe, for example, that big tech firms work with the gov. The idea seems quaint now but some didnt even believe Snowden!

In the end, a balance is needed.

The question really is did the preceding theories help when Snowden came out? Like you said, some didn't believe him, but he brought his reputation and experience and evidence to eventually convince people. I'm not convinced that the decades of conspiracy theories in any way helped the process, and in fact may have invalidated his claims in the eyes of some.