Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Man, that'll get the conspiracies going... What a tragedy



Pretty much any traumatic event gets the conspiracy theories going, which lends credence to the hypothesis that they are at least partially emotional coping mechanisms.


That was my first thought too - I don't really believe in conspiracies, but this one got me thinking immediately.


What did it get you thinking??


Well, AIDS/HIV has always had this reputation of being created by man (didn't do any research on it personally though, so this is based purely on word of mouth, I guess). So when I discovered the news it occurred to me that it's quite a big coincidence that the leading scientists die in a plane crash, especially now, that we're starting to see some people getting successfully cured of HIV.

Not sure why I'm getting downvoted above.


Because it's ridiculous to think this is a conspiracy? It's a complete coincidence. On any long range flight like this you're likely to find a big bunch of people heading to some conference or other. Especially one like this that's a convenient link between Europe and Asia.

It's also 100 people from a conference of 25,000.


On any given flight you'd probably find a large number of X, where X = leading AIDS experts, semiconductor researchers (MH370 anyone?), football players, etc. You could fit a conspiracy theory for any plane crash.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: