(May 31, 2015 at 1:17 pm)Alex K Wrote: I agree in that I would never blame the X-Files for the existence of conspiracy nuts, but you can't seriously suggest that the world depicted in the X-Files doesn't have a much higher level of realism than Star Wars or Superman (in fact, people can immediately know that they do not live in Superman's universe because the existence of Superman is not a secret in-universe.)
Having seen a good number of the episodes of the X-Files, I can confidently assert that it is full of crazy nonsense, and is not more realistic than Superman. Both involve us being visited by aliens, who do basically magical things (though there may be some pretense that it isn't magic). But in the case of the X-Files, there is also a good amount of nonsense that isn't presented as being from aliens, but is apparently just a part of the world. I do not recall anything in the Superman story that is earthly and supernatural, just earthly and science fictional. For Superman to be as unrealistic as the X-Files, there would need to be earthly supernatural nonsense.
My guess is that you have not watched much of the X-Files. Otherwise, if you think it is even remotely realistic, your grasp of reality must be much less than I have presumed to be the case.
We could look at this another way. The odds of the X-Files being an accurate representation of reality are precisely the same as the odds of Superman being an accurate representation of reality.
The difference you perceive is, I think, not in the shows, but in the fact that there are crazy people who believe some of the types of nonsense depicted in the X-Files, but there are not (at least not many) who believe in the nonsense depicted in Superman. That is not due to the show being more realistic; it is that the basic ideas for the show comes from real craziness instead of artificial craziness. That makes it more like the movie The Omen, which also is based on craziness that people actually believe.
Perhaps you object to basing a ridiculous show on ideas that crazy people actually have, rather than on ideas that some [presumably] sane person dreams up. And there might be a legitimate reason to object to that. But it does not make the show more realistic.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
