Jade Helm 15 is over. A lesson in critical thinking?

The military training exercise dubbed Jade Helm has concluded, and contrary to the claims of a number of conspiracy claims, Texas and other Southern states are still very much intact.

No, Texas wasn’t invaded by the American military. Nor by the Chinese military. Texan key political figures and dissidents are alive and well. Citizens still have their guns. Martial law hasn’t been established, and there has been no sign of a “New World Order” or any kind of population control imposed. There was no “bloody civil war”, no implementation of Sharia law, the Illuminati were nowhere to be seen and those Walmart stores didn’t turn into military guerrilla bases.

Oh, and no FEMA death camps, either.

So, you know, we can all relax now.

Jade Helm, or Jade Helm 15, has been the focus of the conspiracy world during the summer of 2015, with a substantial and varied array of conspiracy theories popping up on the Internet. So many, that they even have their own Wikipedia page.

For those that were not aware, Jade Helm was a large scale military training exercise set in Texas and other states in the south, where American troops could practice various exercises on unfamiliar territory. Most exercises were conducted in remote and sparsely populated regions near smaller towns. They actually happen all of time, albeit on a much smaller scale.

The entire thing is yet another good demonstration as to why we should employ a little more critical thinking to the content we encounter online, before we blindly believe and subsequently share all the crazy things out there simply because it fits in with our pre-conceived ideologies and beliefs.

Yes, this means that even though a person may be critical or even distrustful of – let’s say – a government, it doesn’t mean that person should trust or share content simply because it supports that agenda. It’s an important lesson of effective scepticism and critical thinking – just because you want to believe it is no justification that you should believe it. Whatever the claim, it should only be considered true or false after a careful evaluation of the supporting evidence, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Yet predictably in this case, evidence was once again something severely lacking, limited to blurry photographs, circumstantial hearsay, unspectacular coincidences, distrust, bizarre biblical references, incoherent YouTube videos and Alex Jones claiming “he’s got the documents to prove it”.

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Of course those spouting the theories we mentioned above won’t admit they were wrong. Conceding mistakes is a rare quality found in this niche, and most will deflect to lesser theories with more ambiguous timeframes as to when they can be “proven” to be accurate. For example many are likely to now assert the exercise was to get people used to a military presence in preparation for a military takeover on an unconfirmed but imminent date that always seems to be just around the corner, just like those who continually predict the “end of days” yet push back the deadline when each prediction inevitably turns out to be wrong.

If there is anything we can hope to gain from the Jade Helm conspiracy debacle, it’s that this could be a good reason to promote more critical thinking online. For example, a video may label itself as having irrefutable evidence, but after critical evaluation with an unbiased mind, ask yourself if it really did, and if it would stand up in a courtroom.

Beliefs and convictions are a great thing to have, but they should never take priority over knowledge and evidence, especially concerning things you hear over the Internet. Wanting to believe something is true isn’t good enough.

And finally, whilst we never tackled the Jade Helm conspiracy theories directly, it wasn’t because we were never asked. The queries and requests related to Jade Helm went into triple figures. But fringe paranoia-laden conspiracy debunking has never been our focus, and we’ve already been accused of being paid government shills enough times this year!