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The explanation of "jackpot" consumers and the marketing of flow were really interesting. It's a rambling piece, but worth drawing those out. I found the theor

The explanation of "jackpot" consumers and the marketing of flow were really interesting. It's a rambling piece, but worth drawing those out. I found the theory of why some people believe conspiracies less compelling. Blaming modernity feels a bit too easy. My hunch is that there are two loosely related cognitive skills: generating plausible theories about the world, and determining which are actually likely. They are orthogonal skill sets... Some people are good at one and bad at the other. Maybe we mostly focus on teaching and praising the former and underdevelop the latter, because we don't treat it as a different skill requiring different tools. Or... people just have trouble switching between identifying evidence in support of a theory and switching to criticize it, people get locked in to crazy theories. Can't stop seeing evidence in favor due to Baader Meinhof effects. YouTube should be slipping in some videos on empirical methods, cognitive biases, and the hard skill of distinguishing plausible theories from likely ones. This piece seemed vaguely postmodernist, so I'm not sure the author would appreciate that solution... You might get fewer people obsessed with both David Icke and Derrida at the same time.

e40 8y ago
I also feel like a lot of people that believe in crackpot theories are contrarians. It feels good to them to go against the status quo. A subset of these people are trolls, but not all of them. I've noticed that these people seem to feel an exhilaration at their discoveries, like it makes them special.
StrictDabbler 8y ago
The author's explanation of why people are vulnerable is certainly abstract and post-modernist. Your explanation of why people get locked into conspiracies, though, is missing desire. People want there to be a masquerade. You've (potentially) explained why some people don't have the skills to avoid tricking themselves. The question of why we willingly fool ourselves is very deep. I think post-modern theory needlessly multiplies entities but there is something to be examined here. It's in the same realm as gambling, unfocused fan-fiction, soap operas and Dragonball Z. Some people really like it when something very unlikely happens. One of the things that motivates them is this feeling that there really must be something "more" than what we see or know and another thing that drives them is the feeling of vindication when they turn out to have been right. Imagine being so hooked on the feeling of being right whene everybody else is wrong that you will believe a hundred unlikely things for every likely thing you accept. "There's just gotta be something else... something we've got wrong. There just has to be. Look at Galileo! Look at Columbus!" Ridiculous legends of men who were right against all opposition. Each ridiculous idea they believe is like another bill fed into a penny-slot machine. The more unlikely the idea the better. This gambling dynamic is why flat-earth has come back. It's the most ridiculous bet on a dark horse that can possibly be imagined. Literally billions of devices around us operate on the basis of a spherical globe surrounded by satellites. It is one of the most proven and believed models that has ever existed in the human span. If it were wrong, and a flat-earther were one of the few people who had seen the truth? Winning the actual state lottery couldn't compare to the high such a person would get from that. For the rest of life, any argument would be answered "yeah, maybe, but I knew the earth was flat back when everybody was a round-earther." But it takes the internet and selection algorithms to produce an alternate universe in which even the most credulous crackpot can defend flat-earthing with a straight face. So when I look at your solution (teach critical thinking) I mostly agree with it as an immunization against this tendency, but I wonder how well trained people have to be for it to hold against selection. If I were suddenly in a world where Google was actively censoring my feeds, how long would it be before I believed some screwed-up stuff? I have a friend who is brilliant, trained in law and science and philosophy, who watches Fox news and believe the President is really turning a corner and taking the country in the right direction. Before the election he believed Trump was an unmitigated and incompetent ass... back when that was what Fox was saying. I'm not sure we can educate people enough to overcome the desire to choose a satisfying falsehood.
- brownbat 8y ago
  I like the lottery theory, that's a good add. Studying cognitive biases might feed that for some... it's kind of the study of why everyone is wrong. But maybe there's an axis of novelty or iconoclasm people need too. I don't really know. After all, mine is just a theory about the dangers of people making up theories. The irony isn't lost on me, so I'm open to refinements. (And data... Though not sure how to get it.)

e40 8y ago

I also feel like a lot of people that believe in crackpot theories are contrarians. It feels good to them to go against the status quo. A subset of these people are trolls, but not all of them. I've noticed that these people seem to feel an exhilaration at their discoveries, like it makes them special.

StrictDabbler 8y ago

The author's explanation of why people are vulnerable is certainly abstract and post-modernist. Your explanation of why people get locked into conspiracies, though, is missing desire. People want there to be a masquerade. You've (potentially) explained why some people don't have the skills to avoid tricking themselves. The question of why we willingly fool ourselves is very deep. I think post-modern theory needlessly multiplies entities but there is something to be examined here. It's in the same realm as gambling, unfocused fan-fiction, soap operas and Dragonball Z. Some people really like it when something very unlikely happens. One of the things that motivates them is this feeling that there really must be something "more" than what we see or know and another thing that drives them is the feeling of vindication when they turn out to have been right. Imagine being so hooked on the feeling of being right whene everybody else is wrong that you will believe a hundred unlikely things for every likely thing you accept. "There's just gotta be something else... something we've got wrong. There just has to be. Look at Galileo! Look at Columbus!" Ridiculous legends of men who were right against all opposition. Each ridiculous idea they believe is like another bill fed into a penny-slot machine. The more unlikely the idea the better. This gambling dynamic is why flat-earth has come back. It's the most ridiculous bet on a dark horse that can possibly be imagined. Literally billions of devices around us operate on the basis of a spherical globe surrounded by satellites. It is one of the most proven and believed models that has ever existed in the human span. If it were wrong, and a flat-earther were one of the few people who had seen the truth? Winning the actual state lottery couldn't compare to the high such a person would get from that. For the rest of life, any argument would be answered "yeah, maybe, but I knew the earth was flat back when everybody was a round-earther." But it takes the internet and selection algorithms to produce an alternate universe in which even the most credulous crackpot can defend flat-earthing with a straight face. So when I look at your solution (teach critical thinking) I mostly agree with it as an immunization against this tendency, but I wonder how well trained people have to be for it to hold against selection. If I were suddenly in a world where Google was actively censoring my feeds, how long would it be before I believed some screwed-up stuff? I have a friend who is brilliant, trained in law and science and philosophy, who watches Fox news and believe the President is really turning a corner and taking the country in the right direction. Before the election he believed Trump was an unmitigated and incompetent ass... back when that was what Fox was saying. I'm not sure we can educate people enough to overcome the desire to choose a satisfying falsehood.

brownbat 8y ago
I like the lottery theory, that's a good add. Studying cognitive biases might feed that for some... it's kind of the study of why everyone is wrong. But maybe there's an axis of novelty or iconoclasm people need too. I don't really know. After all, mine is just a theory about the dangers of people making up theories. The irony isn't lost on me, so I'm open to refinements. (And data... Though not sure how to get it.)