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People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features
- temptemptemp111 6y agoVery telling that this is at the top of HN. Predictable that it is considered status quo for Scientific American. "Everyone who disagrees with me is insane."
- holidayacct 6y agoIf you want to be able to tell if a story is conspiracy or not ignore the messenger of the theory. Integrate knowledge of psychology, behavioral biology and basic physics. You're going to find that a lot of conspiracy theories are easy to prove or disprove.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- softwaredoug 6y agoPeople try to “debunk” conspiracy theories rationally, when really it’s the emotional content that matters. It’s like talking to someone believing their cheating spouse did X, Y, Z crazy thing. If you responded to that person trying to debunk X, Y, and Z rationally you’d just anger them further. What matters is really the underlying anger that they’re feeling. Not litigating actual facts. In fact such litigating can feel like an attack or invalidation of the underlying emotion. Same is true with feeling threatened by the appearance of “gracias” signs at a restaurant. Or a blue collar person losing status in an increasingly knowledge economy. I feel like to make progress as a society we have to speak to the underlying “emotional truth” and not come across as pedants over facts.
- maxerickson 6y agoWhat's wrong with letting the person that feels threatened by the "graciás" sign go on feeling threatened? As long as they don't take any aggressive or dangerous actions based on the feeling of course.
- softwaredoug 6y agoWell maybe that’s exactly my point. Feeling threatened maybe feels taboo, so we don’t talk about it. Suppressing it creates the breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Talking about it helps us approach it rationally.
- krapp 6y ago>As long as they don't take any aggressive or dangerous actions based on the feeling of course. That's exactly what they will eventually do.
- hackinthebochs 6y agoBut that threatened feeling goes on to inform these people's votes or who they connect with etc. Such emotions are not innocuous and their damage is not confined only to the person who holds them.
- arcturus17 6y agoI don’t think anyone has a clue what “emotional truth” looks like for antivaxxers or people who believe coronavirus is caused by 5G towers.
- softwaredoug 6y agoBecause of anger with the medical system or “being told what to do” Because I want an easy scapegoat for my Covid fears and greedy telecom companies are already disliked...
- arcturus17 6y agoSo we can appease them - and prevent them from spreading potentially harmful information - by trying to make them less angry with the medical system or the telecom companies? Sounds nebulous and I’m highly doubtful.
- blix 6y agoDesigning a healthcare system that makes people less angry would be a fantastic way to make people trust healthcare institutions more. If that seems unactionable, perhaps it says something about the quality of our healthcare systems.
- colordrops 6y agoWait, why are people threatened by gracias signs?
- DiabloD3 6y agoBecause dem Mexicans are stealin our jerbs! Yes, its literally just tribalism gone wild again, your typical lazy fast thinking pooping out nuggets of racism.
- chongli 6y agoThis is lazy thinking as well. There are enormous political and economic factors at play. It’s not only racism that people leverage for political influence. People also use racism as a label for political gain. But the people on the receiving end of that labelling tend not to be well represented on this forum, so it’s easy to smear them as backwards and ignore their complaints.
- zxcmx 6y agoIf you are part of the undifferentiated labour pool, well, this might actually be happening to you. Immigration benefits the U.S overall but if you are hourly labour with no special skills then it is probably not helping your wages.
- Avicebron 6y agoThis needs to be more emphasized. It doesn't have to be racism, or rather the root cause is not a hate for another it's extreme anxiety of one's position for good cause. There a lot of people in the US who are not immigrant who are members of the precariat.
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- softwaredoug 6y agoBecause people worry people different then them are coming to the US and taking their jobs. Because people find immigration threatening...
- dade_ 6y agoSocial media is what is making people anxious in the first place. Then they serve as the platform for the circular referencing "proof". Facebook & WhatsApp posts are supported by YouTube videos, are supported by tweets, are supported by more YouTube videos and then back to more Facebook. So some people I was visiting in a small town started going on about 'chemtrails' they learned about from someone on Facebook. These contrails control the weather, while dispensing chemicals that get into the ground water to control people's minds. They showed me a video on YouTube, it was polished bullshit if I ever saw it. Then there were more FB posts about people who "know the truth". It was hopeless, even with apps that showed the flight origin and destination of of the planes overhead for commercial cargo, passengers, etc. Apparently hundreds of international and domestic flights are all part of a conspiracy to make it cloudy and dispense chemicals to control the minds of this town. Further, the chemicals are clearly not working since they are even be able to have these thoughts. I blame social media. The real disaster is coming, this is just the second inning.
- fzeroracer 6y agoSocial media as we know it is just further exposing the rot at the core of our thinking. Before the rise of Twitter and Facebook you had shock jockeys rule the radio world spreading conspiracy theories and what not. Social media has amplified those effects by allowing them to fester and indeed among many far right media sources you see them gleefully engage in such rhetoric as well (see: Seth Rich). Social media is part of the greater symptom which is that conspiratorial thinking has gained mass appeal.
- DevKoala 6y agoThose shock jockeys didn’t use your browsing history to determine exactly which conspiracies you will be most susceptible to. Denying the responsibility of YouTube, Facebook and other platforms that pursue viewer engagement at any cost by calling them a “symptom” of society is disingenuous and almost ill intended. “Hey the cancer that put you in bed is just a symptom of who you are.”
- 6y ago
- blacksmith_tb 6y agoIt's a good impulse, and almost certainly more productive, but aren't we still left with how to deal with people holding (and especially acting on) totally counterfactual beliefs? I would like them feel heard, but without encouraging them to actually harm other people (which fits with the 'cheating spouse' analogy I'd say).
- _greim_ 6y agoThanks for this insightful post! In this sense conspiracy theories are like a pot boiling over. You ultimately have a mess on your hands to wipe up, but the first thing is to remove the source of heat.
- clairity 6y agoyes, emotional content matters and we should try to be empathetic and compassionate, but the flip side of that is that (a primary marker of) maturation is the development of coping mechanisms to deal with anger and the underlying fear that fuels it, rather than mainly relying on others to kid-glove each other. and it’s both, not one or the other.
- youareostriches 6y agoWhat was the term again? “Snowflakes”. Right.
- Simulacra 6y ago"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake." -Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk Chapter 17.
- emsy 6y agoMy experience (I know a lot of people that are into conspiracies) is that if you show people they have insufficient knowledge to make their conclusions it makes them feel uncertain in their belief. They’ll draw back into the certainty of their theory. I’m not sure there is a way to convince conspiracy theorists. People that overcame their false beliefs seem to do this from an internal impetus but I‘d be happy to be proven wrong. (To be clear I’m talking about 100% crazy theories like flat earth)
- dependenttypes 6y ago> People try to “debunk” conspiracy theories rationally, when really it’s the emotional content that matters. I disagree. Often I see some sort of conspiracy theory online and I am interested in seeing in what degree it is true or false. I am interested in rational arguments from both sides, not some emotional bullshit. How do you deduce if a theory is true or not otherwise?
- tw000001 6y agoThis is irresponsible journalism. >You can spot hallmarks of fake theories, such as internal contradictions in the “evidence” and contentions based on shaky assumptions, psychologists say. Just look at the many legitimate sources of conflicting information regarding COVID. Hell, many of our medical practices are based on "shaky assumptions" and shoddy survey data, especially in psychology. Conspiracies happen, speculation is valid and arguably necessary for a healthy society. But this? This is just some kind of weird appeal to authority - recognizing the possibility of conspiracies and attempting to piece them together is not pathological and a society which believes it is it placing itself firmly under an unyielding authoritarian boot.
- fzeroracer 6y agoYou started your account here by claiming that Twitter was engaging in a conspiracy to silence one political party over the others by fact checking Trump. It doesn't seem like to me you're engaging in good faith here at all and are in fact engaging in irresponsible posting.
- colordrops 6y agoIn fact conspiracy by the ruling class has been the main mechanism of leveraging power since the dawn of civilization. One of their best conspiracies in modern times has been to convince the populace that those pointing them out are nuts.
- tempodox 6y ago“The best trick the devil ever pulled was to make people think he doesn't exist.” — The Usual Suspects
- krapp 6y ago> One of their best conspiracies in modern times has been to convince the populace that those pointing them out are nuts. Even if this is true, the fact remains that most conspiracy theories are nuts. No matter how many times conspiracy theorists shout "Snowden! Snowden!" at critics, that doesn't lend credibility by association to flat earth, anti-vaxxers, Pizzagate, etc.
- Lammy 6y agoWhy is it so weird that people will turn to non-mainstream sources to explain a world that has been screwing them over for decades while mainstream sources say everything is better than ever? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
- oblio 6y agoWho is claiming things are universally better?
- Lammy 6y agoYou can find plenty of people who talk about how great "The Economy" is doing, but that doesn't matter much for an individual who is struggling. When a bunch of those struggling individuals get together in that world you will get conspiracy theories as they try to work out why things are so bad and how they can improve their lives.
- frabbit 6y agoStephen Pinker. Hans Rosling.
- Trasmatta 6y agoAre they actually mainstream anywhere other than places like HackerNews? I feel like the majority of the mainstream info I see is on the opposite side, where everything is always terrible.
- frabbit 6y agoI have no measurements to share with you on that question, but I think Pinker is mainstream, NPR, NYT background thought.
- Lammy 6y agoI think this guy might have a pretty mainstream audience: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/04/trump-touts-his-economy-best-ever-data-is-more-mixed/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/04/trump-tou...
- andarleen 6y agoWhen i was little (14 or so) i used to read a lot about alien and Egyptian mummies conspiracy theories, about various phenomena and was fascinated by them. As i grew older i realised they were just stories. Wondering if some people never left that intellectual development stage. A certain degree of suspicion and caution around what governments do is healthy. But strongly believing there are microchips in vaccines, and 5G networks are meant to cause viruses that’s just adults with the analytical power of a child.
- yters 6y agoThe quantum magnetic dot is not exactly a microchip, but it does provide a weak signal that can be read electronically, and could be administered during a vaccination injection UPDATE: here's the MIT article on their research. http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218 http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218 "MIT engineers have developed a way to store medical information under the skin, using a quantum dot dye that is delivered, along with a vaccine, by a microneedle patch. The dye, which is invisible to the naked eye, can be read later using a specially adapted smartphone."
- vezycash 6y agoWhat I read is that the so called quantum dot is just invisible ink. A stamp that tells the next health care worker if a person has been vaccinated, when, the type... My friend who believes in stuff like these seems to have a thinking impairment in some areas. He latches on to the first idea his mind likes and never lets go. Example was two days ago. He downloaded GTA3 game. The file was a 147mb 7zip archive. Which magically expanded 147mb expanded to over 2GB after he ran a batch file! He immediately started singing the praise of 7zip. Without knowing any detail I told him the uploader was the wizard not 7zip. He sent me the setup.bat file and the stuff became clear. The uploader converted wav to MP3. MPG videos to low quality MP4. The setup.bat used ffmpeg to upscale things. No logical explanation from me changed his mind. Last straw, told him to uninstall 7Zip and run setup.bat. That was the end of the discussion.
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- olivermarks 6y agoI wonder if investigative journalists also share 'a cluster of psychological features' too? Inquiring minds would like to know... You can spot 'hallmarks of flaws' in official narratives, such as internal contradictions in the “evidence” and contentions based on shaky assumptions, and this makes thinking people question the mainstream media...
- arminiusreturns 6y agoI love how easily people see through bullshit articles like this. So tired of coincidence theorists! I ought to do a post some day: "I'm one of HN's resident conspiracy theorists, ama."
- walterbell 6y agoThere's a few academic papers waiting to be written from the HN archive!
- JoeSmithson 6y agoWhat do you think is the theory you believe that is most outside the mainstream?
- arminiusreturns 6y agoMainstream of of which community? Some things that seem out there to most people are regularly accepted by the conspiracy community, and vice versa sometimes too. Almost any conspiracy theory of any depth is outside the mainstream. The furthest in both cases would probably have to do with aliens (whether real or fake but useful aka project blue beam). Or perhaps quantum mechanic related phenomenon. Not saying these are ones I subscribe to but giving examples. I'll give you an example of one that is very much not accepted: Pizzagate (please don't misunderstand, I don't necessarily think pizzagate is "real", I think it very much could be a limited-hangout, etc). To many it sounds completely crazy, beyond ever being considered. For those of us who are aware of the larger pattern it matches though, it fits into that pattern. A great example of a similar case in which we have deductive evidence is the Dutroux affair (aka the Belgian X-Files). Epstein was on the periphery of the same type of operation, but was more of a front man/procurer, much like Dutroux. I could list many similar examples (Franklin scandal, finders cult, Saville, Jersey, Kinkora, Elm Guest House, Roy Cohn, etc) where we have witnesses and testimony and evidence that usually got buried, assassinated, etc if it ever got closer to the heart and away from the front men/fall guys (and gals, looking at you Ghislaine Maxwell). This is the power of inductive logic.
- 6y ago
- walterbell 6y agoIf human language can be manipulated for commercial gain, it will be. Taken to its logical conclusion, the economically contested term ceases to have any meaning. Think of SEO search keywords or fashionable technology buzzwords (cloud, big data, AI). The adversarial weaponization of language by economically motivated actors should not be confused with the use of language for communication. Real humans have an amazing ability to communicate even on noisy channels.
- vezycash 6y agoThis article reads like string theory from big bang theory. A search for one explanation that explains all. With humans things rarely fit neatly.
- raincom 6y agoAnother ad hoc explanation is sold as science. Just because a group of people share some features, those set of features won't explain any thing.
- yostrovs 6y agoScientific American has changed its coverage drastically in the last few yeard. If you look at the headlines, there's an incredible amount of articles that discuss society, racism, government,etc. It's not science. This article is yet another example.
- blix 6y agoI find Scientific American has been deeply disappointing for 5 years if not more. They infrequnetly cover meaningful science, and when they do try their work is full of errors.
- yters 6y agocan the opposite also be true, that people who refuse to accept true conspiracies may also be anxious to preserve their worldview, ignore contradiction, and eschew rational analysis for emotion ladden thinking? e.g. this is the popular portrayal of religious people who refuse to accept the claim their religions are massive lies made up to control and console in which case these psycological factors may just be generally indicative of people who have trouble accepting the truth when it contradicts their cherished worldview, conspiracy or otherwise on the other hand, if someone possesses this psychological makeup, and refuses to accept a certain proposition, i am not sure there is much we can conclude from this study. maybe they are being irrational, or maybe not. we would have to examine the actual reasons they reject the belief, and not rely on psychoanalysis, since if we did so it would ironically be irrational on our part
- sremani 6y agoI do not believe in all conspiracy theories and I do not ignore all conspiracy theories. When you understand that there are certain unprovable things and layers of gatekeepers for what is called "news". You have to connect the dots - and some would call it conspiracy theory.
- thephyber 6y agoI think the attack on “news” gatekeepers is a red herring. The National Enquirer has long been one of these, but they have never had any legitimate journalism credentials. I think it’s more important to distinguish that there are good faith investigations into conspiracies and there are bad faith investigations (more commonly called conspiracy theories, but this terminology is overloaded to muddy the difference). Good faith investigations acknowledge there are limits to what government/power/authority is reasonably able to do. Conspiracy theorists tend to attribute an impossibly high level of coordination, organization, ability to execute with no leaks, believe contradictory theories, accept complex assertions while rejecting simpler ones, etc. Additionally, people who believe in one conspiracy theory are likely to believe in many. I would argue that there’s a pathology in attributing the worst intentions to everyone in power and an inability for believers to impartially weigh evidence against their beliefs, so they aren’t incentivized to Only believe hypotheses with more coherence.
- throwaway122378 6y agoSo now people who search out the truth have psychological differences than normal people who believe and act on anything CNN tells them.
- csommers 6y agoCool story. We’d still believe the Earth is flat (some idiots still do) if we went by this logic and didn’t question the status-quo.
- Lammy 6y agoIdiots == people who are questioning the status quo of their day?
- krapp 6y agoIf the status quo is trivially provable, and has been for thousands of years, yes.
- Lammy 6y agoIf it were trivially provable to these people they wouldn't question it.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI'm sure we all wish that were true. There are people who have flown around the world many times who have gone down the flat earth rabbit hole. Unfortunately the people who aren't confident they can actually learn about what they are afraid of, or correctly judge probabilities of things being true, spend their energy choosing who to believe instead of gathering information and forming a coherent understanding.
- ColanR 6y agoBackwards. "Idiots" are the ones who do not question the status quo.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- White_Wolf 6y ago(sarcastic) summary: If you don't take things at fac(k)e value, you're not part of the herd and would rather check the facts: you a conspirationist.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- calibas 6y agoI'm not convinced all the recent research on "conspiracy theorists" is objective science. It seems politically motivated to me. What bugs me the most is that authoritarians will use this as "scientific proof" that people who question their government are mentally ill.
- mythrwy 6y agoMaybe so. I wonder if people who accept official or authoritative accounts of everything in spite of overwhelming evidence also share a cluster of psychological features?
- mellow2020 6y agoI'm sure that even if we lived in (or better: actively maintained) a much more sane and just world, some people, because they're sick or for other reasons, would still try to find fault with it. But it wouldn't spread like a wildfire. The rich are getting richer, people who start wars of aggression and whatnot aren't punished, companies have battalions of lawyers and Jane Doe has nothing, we are on the course for environmental collapse and mass extinction, and so on. These are shorthands for huge and very much real issues. And yes, conspiracy theories aren't helping, either, and many people spouting them don't really want to roll up their sleeves and turn this ship around. But that's also true for many people obsessing about conspiracy theorists, too. Let's say the emperor is naked. Most people say variations of "nice clothes! maybe some issues here and there, but nothing major". Some people go "he's butt naked!". And yet others go "he's wearing planet Jupiter as a hat!". The latter are obviously wrong, but it's still just so awkward when the people who think he has nice clothes on start to laugh at those thinking he is wearing Jupiter as a hat, and lump everyone who doesn't think he's wearing nice clothes into that category. It's as if the mainstream is using these even sicker people to pretend it itself is not sick, contrary to the mountains of evidence.
- ghthor 6y ago> and many people spouting them don't really want to roll up their sleeves and turn this ship around I don't know if I agree with you here. > It's as if the mainstream is using these even sicker people to pretend it itself is not sick, contrary to the mountains of evidence. I feel quite strongly that this is happening.
- mellow2020 6y ago> > and many people spouting them don't really want to roll up their sleeves and turn this ship around > I don't know if I agree with you here. Would it help if "many" was changed to "some"? I was thinking of people who are more interested in scapegoats than anything, but I didn't mean to make a point about distribution, it was just to acknowledge that it isn't black and white.
- 6y ago
- coinward 6y agoWhy can't we just call them myths? Conspiracy theory has become so dismissive, it can't be good for truth overall
- nabla9 6y agoI have a cousin is into conspiracy theories and this explains him very accurately. He is highly intelligent and used to be very analytical but got sidetracked in his life. Anxiety, disappointment and disenfranchisement describes his current state. Year after he became unemployed he started to watch X-files and all kind of conspiracy related entertainment. It was just entertainment. He saw it was silly. Then became History Channel and conspiracy internet tubers and all kinds of serious conspiracy stuff and it became more real to him. Five years later he is deeply into that stuff. When we talk about it, he can follow my thinking perfectly and usually realizes that those theories are silly and laughs it off. Few hours later he is back into it. It's like he has tracks in his brain. He has walked the path so many times that his thinking goes back to the same things over and over. Maybe conspiracy theories protect him from negative emotions and facts of his situation as long as he keeps thinking them. He is harmless and nice person but his world view is crazy.
- Avicebron 6y agoIn this particular case then maybe it's worth (generally, not saying you in particular) how he became anxious and disenfranchised. Maybe the problem isn't the people themselves, but the systematic circumstances that lead people down this road. If there's an upstream problem, then it's better to work on a fix for that than to out of hand dismiss people as crazy.
- nabla9 6y agoThat's what the article says and I agree. But crazy worldview is crazy even if it's created by the circumstances.
- thephyber 6y ago> Maybe the problem isn't the people themselves, but the systematic circumstances that lead people down this road. What is the difference? Systemic circumstances define us if they occur for long enough.
- Avicebron 6y ago
- TheHeretic12 6y agoPoint of Information: the phrase "conspiracy theorist" was developed and fielded by the CIA as a counterintelligence effort. Among other tactics, they wished to be able to use the term as a dismissal of anyone who got information about their real operations. This is very well documented, and is common among intel agencies of many countries. It is also well documented, that the CIA and others (KGB etc.), have intentionally spread disinformation, from AIDS to Apollo hoaxes, in the same channel as (limited) legitimate information. This tactic is called "poisoning the well," the limited real info is a "limited hangout." If you put those terms into any search, youll find reams of documents detailing examples. Usually, these are the actions of some foreign service, analysed and released for the public service. When the author began to align obviously false information with more credible things, what he is seeing are these intentional networks of lies that our own services have created. These things are not organic. He identifies common psychological features in these posters, because the intel agencies strongly select based on personality. Also, how many of the accounts he investigated are bots? Was he able to prove that real individual people were doing this? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Its been debunked already!
- JoeSmithson 6y ago> "Point of Information: the phrase "conspiracy theorist" was developed and fielded by the CIA as a counterintelligence effort." Why do you think this? I had never heard this before, and to be honest it immediately gave off whacko vibes, so I Googled it and found this article that says it is false - https://theconversation.com/theres-a-conspiracy-theory-that-the-cia-invented-the-term-conspiracy-theory-heres-why-132117 https://theconversation.com/theres-a-conspiracy-theory-that-...
- User23 6y agoThe entire concept of "conspiracy theories" is a persuasive device. Calling someone a conspiracy theorist isn't an argument, it's a rhetorical trick to discredit and disqualify the target, independent of the truth value of the target's claim. Or, as Harry Frankfurt calls it, bullshit. I think I'm going to have to expand my list of normative sciences to four: 1) Logic, the normative science of what is true. 2) Aesthetic, the normative science of what is beautiful. 3) Ethic, the normative science of what is good. 4) Rhetoric, the normative science of what can be persuaded. To be rigorous, which I admit often isn't worth the effort, one would have to examine a so-called conspiracy theory along every one of those axes that's germane.
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago>The entire concept of "conspiracy theories" is a persuasive device. Calling someone a conspiracy theorist isn't an argument, it's a rhetorical trick to discredit and disqualify the target, independent of the truth value of the target's claim. Or, as Harry Frankfurt calls it, bullshit. Great analysis
- mrfusion 6y agoCigarettes causing cancer was once a conspiracy theory.
- dependenttypes 6y agoRemember that the NSA spying thing was considered a conspiracy theory until the snowden leaks. Same goes for things like the Glomar Explorer. Being aware that there are conspiracies and being sceptical is not a mental defect, but rather a successful evolutionary strategy.
- tropdrop 6y agoFrom the article: > Encouraging analytic thinking may also help. In a 2014 study published in Cognition, Swami and his colleagues recruited 112 people for an experiment. First, they had everyone fill out a questionnaire that evaluated how strongly they believed in various conspiracy theories. A few weeks later the subjects came back in, and the researchers split them into two groups. One group completed a task that included unscrambling words in sentences containing words such as “analyze” and “rational,” which primed them to think more analytically. Also: > In addition, false conspiracy theories have several hallmarks, Lewandowsky says. Three of them are particularly noticeable. First, the theories include contradictions. For example, some deniers of climate change argue that there is no scientific consensus on the issue while framing themselves as heroes pushing back against established consensus. Both cannot be true. A second telltale sign is when a contention is based on shaky assumptions. Trump, for instance, claimed that millions of illegal immigrants cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election and were the reason he lost the popular vote. Beyond the complete lack of evidence for such voting, his assumption was that multitudes of such votes—if they existed—would have been for his Democratic opponent. Yet past polls of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants suggest that many of them would have voted for a Republican candidate over a Democratic one... A third sign that a claim is a far-fetched theory, rather than an actual conspiracy, is that those who support it interpret evidence against their theory as evidence for it. When the van of the alleged mail bomber Cesar Sayoc was found in Florida plastered with Trump stickers, for instance, some individuals said this helped to prove that Democrats were really behind the bombs. “If anyone thinks this is what a real conservative’s van looks like, you are being willfully ignorant. Cesar Sayoc is clearly just a fall guy for this obvious false flag,” one person posted on Twitter. This article is about encouraging skepticism and analysis, not discouraging it. Notice how it discusses false conspiracy theories, as an acquiescence that sometimes conspiracy theories could become truth.
- emsign 6y agoWhat notion is really interesting to me is the underlying believe that if "everything would be back to normal if those people responsible for this mess were exposed and removed". The adversity to accepting that most of life is just random and that evil things are a normal part of it is probably one fundamental trait of a conspiracy theory believer.
- winstonewert 6y agoIt seems to me that there are two kinds of conspiracy theories which should not be conflated. On the one hand, there are theories which postulates a conspiracy to explain the available evidence. Nothing wrong with that, sometimes that is the correct explanation. On the other hand, there are theories which invoke a conspiracy to invalidate the available evidence. Such theories are unfalsifiable, no evidence could possibly prove them wrong because all contrary evidence is just part of the conspiracy. This kind is problematic because its necessarily unhinged from any evidence or reality.
- giardini 6y ago"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by John Ioannidis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ Just a reminder!8-))
- tal8d 6y agoWow, not even a quarter of the way through and I'm seeing what would most charitably described as "lies by omission". Also, I don't know if the writer would prefer I assume she is stupid, or that she conspired with her editor to structure things in such a way as to drive traffic through outrage - for example: "...claiming that Jewish people were stealthily supporting illegal immigrants." Well I'll go ahead and touch the third rail. There were a lot of non-profits involved, some would obviously fit the the conspiracy theorist's description (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for example), others had 990s that further strengthened the theory. Was there a shadowy conspiracy? I doubt it, the majority of involved non-profits were classic left-wing open-borders types, some communists, and a bunch of Christian alliances. So why lie instead of presenting the results of a statistical sample? "...positing that high-ranking Democratic Party officials were involved in a child sex ring..." Pizzagate was a 4chan inside joke that got taken seriously by people who already had cause to be suspicious, and Epstein didn't kill himself. It reminds me of something Saddam Hussein admitted under FBI interrogation: he wanted the US to think he had WMDs, because that would cause his regional adversaries to think the same. Obviously he miscalculated. After years of weird spirit cooking talk and association with known degenerates, people are going to start thinking you mean it. Finally: does anybody remember the satanic panic? Surprise, there was a government cover-up of weird cult ritual stuff involving abused children. If you said so, for almost 30 years, you were a wacky conspiracy theorist... until the FBI released the file to zero interest: https://vault.fbi.gov/the-finders https://vault.fbi.gov/the-finders
- yamrzou 6y ago> A 2017 study reported that believing in work-related conspiracies—such as the idea that managers make decisions to protect their own interests—causes individuals to feel less committed to their job. That's not a conspiracy. It's a prior about the intent of others. Given that we humans are generally selfish, it's a justified prior.