MH370 is one of the most covered topics in Elevated Thoughts history. We've dedicated four full episodes to it, brought on investigative journalist Jeff Wise multiple times, and even sat down with Ashton Forbes — one of the most prominent voices in the MH370 conspiracy community.
What started as a fascinating mystery became something more important: a case study in how people evaluate evidence.
The Conspiracy Pipeline
When we first covered MH370, the orb videos were everywhere. Viral clips claiming to show the plane being teleported by mysterious spheres of energy. Millions of views. Passionate communities dissecting every frame.
Then we brought on a VFX expert. And then Jeff Wise, who's spent years investigating the actual disappearance using satellite data, radar records, and cockpit communication logs.
The contrast was stark. One side had compelling visuals and emotional certainty. The other had boring, methodical analysis that didn't make for great TikToks — but was grounded in verifiable data.
What We Got Wrong
I'll be honest: when we first started covering this topic, I was more open to the fringe theories than I should have been. Not because I believed in orb teleportation, but because I fell into the trap of treating all claims as equally worthy of investigation.
They're not. And that's an important distinction.
Being open-minded doesn't mean giving equal weight to every theory. It means being willing to follow evidence wherever it leads — and being honest when one explanation is simply better supported than another.
The Lesson
Here's what four episodes of MH370 coverage taught me:
- Compelling doesn't mean correct. The most watchable explanation is often the least rigorous. Visual evidence feels convincing, but without context and verification, it's just content.
- Expertise matters, even when it's boring. Jeff Wise reading satellite data isn't as exciting as orb theories, but it's based on things you can independently verify. That matters.
- Community reinforcement is powerful. Once you're in a group that believes something, the social cost of changing your mind becomes higher than the intellectual cost of staying wrong.
- Asking "who benefits?" is always useful. Not in a conspiratorial way — but understanding the incentive structures behind claims helps you evaluate them more clearly.
Why This Matters Beyond MH370
The MH370 debate is really a microcosm of how misinformation works in every domain — politics, health, history, science. The mechanisms are the same: emotional certainty, visual persuasion, community reinforcement, and resistance to boring-but-accurate explanations.
If you can learn to spot those patterns in a plane mystery, you can spot them everywhere.
That's the real value of covering this story. Not solving the mystery — but getting better at thinking about mysteries in general.
