> When the author began to align obviously false information with more credible things I think there is a terminology problem in this discussion and it will ca

> When the author began to align obviously false information with more credible things I think there is a terminology problem in this discussion and it will cause lots of us in the comments to chase our tails. I think the credibility word is too subjective to be useful in this discussion. I think most conspiracy accusations are unprovable by most of us (unless we are federal prosecutors) so I assume that both logic conspiracies and fantasy conspiracies must be evaluated with equally few facts. I think the myth that the CIA created/empowered the term “conspiracy theory” has lots of the same symptoms of fantasy conspiracy theories themselves. It apparently empowers the powerful and gives additional persecution claims to those who are labeled “crazy”. The most interesting part of your comment was to get me thinking about the role of bots (and AI in the future) in crafting both hypotheses and researching them. I’m curious if social media bots may give us the tools to effectively test the psychological traits of people who are more likely to adopt theories about less coherent conspiracies.