One really serious problem I run into when trying to get into a sober discussion of conspiracies with either people who believe in them or people who don't is the fact that "conspiracy" is a very ill-defined word. The best legal scholarship, (serious legal scholarship including actual case law, not just linguist's chit chat) begins by expressly pointing out that the prefix "con" means "with", that's as in chili con carne, and con does not have other meanings in the west. "Con" means with. It is from Latin and used in Spanish. In English, the con has been translated and expressed in terms of faith, especially in the sense of a banking monetary trust. It's a confidence game, to be completely explicit.
Is anyone able to join a conversation and go into confidence history, or want to elaborate on the encyclopedic meaning of conspiracy?
Is anyone able to join a conversation and go into confidence history, or want to elaborate on the encyclopedic meaning of conspiracy?