That said, I don't really believe the moon-landing thing. Here's my logic: I'm talking to Alfred, moon-landing-truther. Alfred, I feel, is open in telling me

That said, I don't really believe the moon-landing thing. Here's my logic: I'm talking to Alfred, moon-landing-truther. Alfred, I feel, is open in telling me how it works. He knows that I believe that the moon landing is real. He acknowledges that there is reason for me to believe that it is real -- he understands the conventional narrative. He explicitly argues his own (crazy) counter-narrative that subsumes the conventional narrative, reinterpreting the facts that I use. I've never heard anyone articulate a conspiracy theory around the example questions this study gave. Nobody has ever said to me -- not even online -- "Sure, it appears that inflation decreased during Reagan, but actually, here's the reason why that's a lie," nor "Sure, it appears that the deficit shrank during Clinton, but that's a lie." The closest that I've heard is two things: 1. A general belief that the media or the establishment lie or shill for Team X, without specifics. 2. Not on "inflation during Reagan" or "deficit during Clinton," but I do sometimes hear conspiracy theories that inflation is not actually currently low because the way that they calculate it and handle new inventions is a cheat, or that unemployment is not actually currently low because the proper measurement of unemployment is workforce participation.