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I think this line of thinking is absolutely correct when conspiracy theories are fringe or harmless. You don't believe we landed on the moon? Okay, buddy, have

I think this line of thinking is absolutely correct when conspiracy theories are fringe or harmless. You don't believe we landed on the moon? Okay, buddy, have a nice day. Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society, which is what many of us believe is happening in the USA today. A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that our previous president was born in another country, combined with some conspiracy theories popular among "the Tea Party movement" as they were known, propelled our current president into office, where the theories have snowballed and escalated into shots fired in a pizza parlor, protesters murdered by car, protestors murdered by gun, illegal voter intimidation, and a significant chunk of the population not quite ruling out the possibility that a huge chunk of elected officials and others are part of a cabal of devil-worshipping pederasts who drink the blood of children. Faked moon landings this ain't. Crazy Uncle Roger this ain't. I do live in the US, and I encounter the results of this weekly, sometimes more often. It doesn't take visiting 8kun to be affected by this here. Update: There are people on this page, right here at HN, stating misleading nonsense tangentially related to QAnon. The spread of this stuff is pervasive already.

cheweh 6y ago
Note that Obama's birth was a conspiracy around 2008, before 8chan existed. I would argue that "the Donald" on reddit was a driver of Trump's online popularity. This argument is not for striking down individual websites as much as it is for pervasive rumor-quashing. One could look toward China's internet policy to measure the success of playing "whack-a-mole" at the rumor-level. Propaganda there still gets made and spread, it just stays online for minutes at a time before deletion, and so by the time people see it they have no way of asking for clarification on its truth.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  I sincerely hope there's some effective middle ground between allowing the kind of unrestrained rumor/conspiracy propagation that puts unhinged people in public office and Chinese-style ubiquitous law enforcement. Neither option is particularly attractive.
mistermann 6y ago
> Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society To some degree, of both "frequency of escape" and "magnitude of harm", both of which are valid variables to be considered within the aggregate of all(!) variables related to conspiracy theories (of which these are but two, contrary to popular consensus). > A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that our previous president was born in another country, combined with some conspiracy theories popular among "the Tea Party movement" as they were known, propelled our current president into office, where the theories have snowballed and escalated into shots fired in a pizza parlor, protesters murdered by car, protestors murdered by gun, illegal voter intimidation, and a significant chunk of the population not quite ruling out the possibility that a huge chunk of elected officials and others are part of a cabal of devil-worshipping pederasts who drink the blood of children. This is an interesting sentence, and certainly a popular story. The interesting part is that it uses epistemology as a tool for dismissal ("contrary to all evidence"), but then proceeds to assert several other complex ideas that involve coordinated behavior between multiple people (there's a word for this sort of thing: conspiracy theory), and does so with no concern whatsoever for whether evidence actually (and entirely) supports it. > There are people on this page, right here at HN, stating misleading nonsense tangentially related to QAnon. The spread of this stuff is pervasive already. There are various forms of misleading nonsense on this page. For example, numerous people asserting that QAnon, and conspiracy theories (conspiracy theorists) in general, "are" or "believe" certain things. If one pays close attention to these threads every time they appear on HN (or elsewhere, be it social media or formal media), one may notice that the asserted descriptions are always very vague, and always only include the very worst/silliest of ideas that exist within the communities - very often, ideas that really don't have high consensus agreement in the actual communities themselves. And again, with no with no concern whatsoever for whether the assertions are actually true. The same talking points can be observed in every thread on these subjects, but one talking point you will rarely make an appearance: what is actually true? What is the actual(!) truth of what is discussed/believed among actual conspiracy theorists, as well as what is the actual(!) truth of of each discrete idea (and the sub-ideas within each)? It is very concerning to me how easily such a powerful subconscious heuristic can be mass installed into the minds of the populace, even those of the relatively competent critical thinkers here on HN. This heuristic is roughly: if [an idea has been labelled a Conspiracy Theory], then therefore [the epistemic status is FALSE] How often does the output of this heuristic make an appearance (as a rhetorical, unchallenged axiom) in this thread (and in all others)? I would say: extremely frequently. How often does the fundamentally more important heuristic make an appearance: what is actually true, at a discrete level? I would say (as an understatement): rarely. If truth and rationality is truly on the side of the "anti-conspiracy" side of the divide, you'd think it would be child's play to "destroy conspiracy theorists with facts and logic". And yet, what accompanies the heuristic seems to be an inoculation to any epistemic challenges: circling of the wagons, typically via insubstantial/rhetorical dismissals (ad hominen character attacks), appeals to ends justifying the means, or simply downvoting + silence. Please pay attention to what is really going on in your countries, and in your media. I do not ask that you believe anything specific, but only that you always ask: what is the actual truth? And also, when forming your worldview, do not consider only what you see (or are told, often without any actual evidence), but also what you do not see. Pay attention to what portions of reality are freely discussed in the media (and in turn on social media), and the manner in which they are discussed (watch out for framing via a small set of perspectives that are not inclusive of all details). Observe the nature of the ideas being asserted (are they specific, and supported by logic and evidence, or vague conspiratorial slurs?). Compare specific claims (like "X's believe/say Y") to what is actual reality - which requires going and seeing for yourself. It is regularly recommended that climate change "deniers" "educate themselves on the facts" - be careful that you are not holding them to a standard that you are unwilling to meet (or even acknowledge) yourself.
vkou 6y ago
It has also destoyed families. I know people whose parents have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the outcome is absolutely insane. They can't have a 20 minute conversation without the vast pedophilic conspiracy in Washington intruding (Because the parents cannot understand why their children could possibly be acting in accord with it.) Another one of my friends can't even see his mother, because she doesn't believe that coronavirus is real, and is actively refusing to get her symptoms tested. Edit: It's interesting to see how this is not a popular opinion to express here. Do folks disagree with me about this being a bad thing? Do folks actually think there's an iota of value in the Augean pile of QAnon crap? Do they think that this madness elevates the level of discourse in their society? Are they made uncomfortable by a mention of a human-scale anecdote of the observable harm that this movement is inflicting?
- Jetrel 6y ago
  Speaking as someone who deals with a fair amount of this in their extended family, I honestly think a blind spot the human race has is a struggle to believe this can really get "that bad". I've had relatives (now deceased) who were way down the rabbit hole, long before the whole QAnon thing, and given the sort of destructive effects it has on their life, to me - it's in the same bucket as alcoholism or addiction. It did the same sort of things that joining a "cut ties" cult like scientology or 7th day adventists did; you'd lose friends, spouses, even your job, etc. None of this is a new phenomenon - it's just, people don't join the moonies or hare krishna anymore - they join weird internet cults now like QAnon. (In my case, we essentially lost a family member who went on a deep-dive into anti-semitic nationalism back in the 60s.)
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I haven't (and won't) downvote you for expressing an opinion I disagree with - but I do disagree with you. Whether or not there is value in QAnon is beyond me. There is value in people being able to say what they want, even if it is baseless, or disturbed, or hateful. One example that comes to my mind is the Rotterham child rape scandal[1], which, were it not printed in the most reputable newspapers world wide, would sound like something out of the QAnon fantasy. Even worse than this scandal itself, which is saying something given that this scandal describes an organization of men raping children for decades with the tacit knowledge of local police and city government, is the fact that there are many similar occurrences in the UK. That is, this is not a one off horrific event, but part of a terrible and disturbing pattern. Why I bring this up as an example, is, that it seems to me part of the problem the UK has in getting the organized rape of children under control, is an unwillingness to speak about it and be open about it. The UK is so determined to control speech and avoid offending people that they kept secret the organized rape of hundreds if not thousands of children across their country for decades. I would much rather err on the side of allowing people to indulge in dark, even if absurd, fantasies (e.g. QAnon) than forbid or punish people for going public with imperfectly firm accusations (as happened in Rotterham - victims and their families reported the ongoing sexual abuse and rape to the authorities through the many years it was ongoing and the authorities ignored them for fear of being offensive[2]). The organized sexual abuse of children clearly does happen. Sometimes the government is intimately involved. For example the case with Jeffrey Epstein. It's worth it to let people talk about it and make accusations. Sometimes disturbed people will go too far and make baseless claims. That's not ideal, but preventing people from making anything but perfect accusations leads to a culture where horrible crimes are covered up for fear of not having enough evidence. I think it is a better balance to let mean people say mean things and expose whatever evidence there may be of things as soon as possible. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit... 2 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-ignored-child-sex-abuse-21305529 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-ignored-child-s...
varjag 6y ago
> …drink the blood of children This is an echo of another conspiracy theory, that culminated in its heyday into a world war.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Exactly. There are limits to the crazy. In moderation, giving people an outlet for frustration is fine. UFO abduction, all that stuff. But when the crazy gets weaponized for the benefit of actual policy actors, which is what has clearly happened here, we need to start getting it under control. It's not that Q and adrenochrome and pizzagate and birtherism and even the The Protocols are that dangerous per se. It's that people with power discovered they could use the nuts who believed that stuff to get more power.
  - varjag 6y ago
    And social media in the past decade has enabled lateral communication channels to mobilise the crazy mobs. Now you don't need to convince the journalists to get your drivel through out. You don't even have to be in the same country at all.
Uhhrrr 6y ago
"Contrary to all evidence" is not quite true. There were a couple of places where Obama was stated to have been born in Kenya: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/promotional-booklet/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/promotional-booklet/ https://web.archive.org/web/20091020224623/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95550177 https://web.archive.org/web/20091020224623/http://www.npr.or... I think the preponderance of evidence shows that he was born in Hawaii, but it's not "racist" or a "conspiracy theory" just to ask questions about it. It's more disturbing, IMO, to be a "status quo theorist" and refuse to even entertain one idea or another.

cheweh 6y ago

Note that Obama's birth was a conspiracy around 2008, before 8chan existed. I would argue that "the Donald" on reddit was a driver of Trump's online popularity. This argument is not for striking down individual websites as much as it is for pervasive rumor-quashing. One could look toward China's internet policy to measure the success of playing "whack-a-mole" at the rumor-level. Propaganda there still gets made and spread, it just stays online for minutes at a time before deletion, and so by the time people see it they have no way of asking for clarification on its truth.

bleepblorp 6y ago
I sincerely hope there's some effective middle ground between allowing the kind of unrestrained rumor/conspiracy propagation that puts unhinged people in public office and Chinese-style ubiquitous law enforcement. Neither option is particularly attractive.

mistermann 6y ago

> Occasionally, though, conspiracy theorists escape the harmless fringe and become actively harmful to society To some degree, of both "frequency of escape" and "magnitude of harm", both of which are valid variables to be considered within the aggregate of all(!) variables related to conspiracy theories (of which these are but two, contrary to popular consensus). > A racist conspiracy theory that posited, contrary to all evidence, that our previous president was born in another country, combined with some conspiracy theories popular among "the Tea Party movement" as they were known, propelled our current president into office, where the theories have snowballed and escalated into shots fired in a pizza parlor, protesters murdered by car, protestors murdered by gun, illegal voter intimidation, and a significant chunk of the population not quite ruling out the possibility that a huge chunk of elected officials and others are part of a cabal of devil-worshipping pederasts who drink the blood of children. This is an interesting sentence, and certainly a popular story. The interesting part is that it uses epistemology as a tool for dismissal ("contrary to all evidence"), but then proceeds to assert several other complex ideas that involve coordinated behavior between multiple people (there's a word for this sort of thing: conspiracy theory), and does so with no concern whatsoever for whether evidence actually (and entirely) supports it. > There are people on this page, right here at HN, stating misleading nonsense tangentially related to QAnon. The spread of this stuff is pervasive already. There are various forms of misleading nonsense on this page. For example, numerous people asserting that QAnon, and conspiracy theories (conspiracy theorists) in general, "are" or "believe" certain things. If one pays close attention to these threads every time they appear on HN (or elsewhere, be it social media or formal media), one may notice that the asserted descriptions are always very vague, and always only include the very worst/silliest of ideas that exist within the communities - very often, ideas that really don't have high consensus agreement in the actual communities themselves. And again, with no with no concern whatsoever for whether the assertions are actually true. The same talking points can be observed in every thread on these subjects, but one talking point you will rarely make an appearance: what is actually true? What is the actual(!) truth of what is discussed/believed among actual conspiracy theorists, as well as what is the actual(!) truth of of each discrete idea (and the sub-ideas within each)? It is very concerning to me how easily such a powerful subconscious heuristic can be mass installed into the minds of the populace, even those of the relatively competent critical thinkers here on HN. This heuristic is roughly: if [an idea has been labelled a Conspiracy Theory], then therefore [the epistemic status is FALSE] How often does the output of this heuristic make an appearance (as a rhetorical, unchallenged axiom) in this thread (and in all others)? I would say: extremely frequently. How often does the fundamentally more important heuristic make an appearance: what is actually true, at a discrete level? I would say (as an understatement): rarely. If truth and rationality is truly on the side of the "anti-conspiracy" side of the divide, you'd think it would be child's play to "destroy conspiracy theorists with facts and logic". And yet, what accompanies the heuristic seems to be an inoculation to any epistemic challenges: circling of the wagons, typically via insubstantial/rhetorical dismissals (ad hominen character attacks), appeals to ends justifying the means, or simply downvoting + silence. Please pay attention to what is really going on in your countries, and in your media. I do not ask that you believe anything specific, but only that you always ask: what is the actual truth? And also, when forming your worldview, do not consider only what you see (or are told, often without any actual evidence), but also what you do not see. Pay attention to what portions of reality are freely discussed in the media (and in turn on social media), and the manner in which they are discussed (watch out for framing via a small set of perspectives that are not inclusive of all details). Observe the nature of the ideas being asserted (are they specific, and supported by logic and evidence, or vague conspiratorial slurs?). Compare specific claims (like "X's believe/say Y") to what is actual reality - which requires going and seeing for yourself. It is regularly recommended that climate change "deniers" "educate themselves on the facts" - be careful that you are not holding them to a standard that you are unwilling to meet (or even acknowledge) yourself.

vkou 6y ago

It has also destoyed families. I know people whose parents have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the outcome is absolutely insane. They can't have a 20 minute conversation without the vast pedophilic conspiracy in Washington intruding (Because the parents cannot understand why their children could possibly be acting in accord with it.) Another one of my friends can't even see his mother, because she doesn't believe that coronavirus is real, and is actively refusing to get her symptoms tested. Edit: It's interesting to see how this is not a popular opinion to express here. Do folks disagree with me about this being a bad thing? Do folks actually think there's an iota of value in the Augean pile of QAnon crap? Do they think that this madness elevates the level of discourse in their society? Are they made uncomfortable by a mention of a human-scale anecdote of the observable harm that this movement is inflicting?

Jetrel 6y ago
Speaking as someone who deals with a fair amount of this in their extended family, I honestly think a blind spot the human race has is a struggle to believe this can really get "that bad". I've had relatives (now deceased) who were way down the rabbit hole, long before the whole QAnon thing, and given the sort of destructive effects it has on their life, to me - it's in the same bucket as alcoholism or addiction. It did the same sort of things that joining a "cut ties" cult like scientology or 7th day adventists did; you'd lose friends, spouses, even your job, etc. None of this is a new phenomenon - it's just, people don't join the moonies or hare krishna anymore - they join weird internet cults now like QAnon. (In my case, we essentially lost a family member who went on a deep-dive into anti-semitic nationalism back in the 60s.)
ALittleLight 6y ago
I haven't (and won't) downvote you for expressing an opinion I disagree with - but I do disagree with you. Whether or not there is value in QAnon is beyond me. There is value in people being able to say what they want, even if it is baseless, or disturbed, or hateful. One example that comes to my mind is the Rotterham child rape scandal[1], which, were it not printed in the most reputable newspapers world wide, would sound like something out of the QAnon fantasy. Even worse than this scandal itself, which is saying something given that this scandal describes an organization of men raping children for decades with the tacit knowledge of local police and city government, is the fact that there are many similar occurrences in the UK. That is, this is not a one off horrific event, but part of a terrible and disturbing pattern. Why I bring this up as an example, is, that it seems to me part of the problem the UK has in getting the organized rape of children under control, is an unwillingness to speak about it and be open about it. The UK is so determined to control speech and avoid offending people that they kept secret the organized rape of hundreds if not thousands of children across their country for decades. I would much rather err on the side of allowing people to indulge in dark, even if absurd, fantasies (e.g. QAnon) than forbid or punish people for going public with imperfectly firm accusations (as happened in Rotterham - victims and their families reported the ongoing sexual abuse and rape to the authorities through the many years it was ongoing and the authorities ignored them for fear of being offensive[2]). The organized sexual abuse of children clearly does happen. Sometimes the government is intimately involved. For example the case with Jeffrey Epstein. It's worth it to let people talk about it and make accusations. Sometimes disturbed people will go too far and make baseless claims. That's not ideal, but preventing people from making anything but perfect accusations leads to a culture where horrible crimes are covered up for fear of not having enough evidence. I think it is a better balance to let mean people say mean things and expose whatever evidence there may be of things as soon as possible. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit... 2 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-ignored-child-sex-abuse-21305529 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-ignored-child-s...

varjag 6y ago

> …drink the blood of children This is an echo of another conspiracy theory, that culminated in its heyday into a world war.

newacct583 6y ago
Exactly. There are limits to the crazy. In moderation, giving people an outlet for frustration is fine. UFO abduction, all that stuff. But when the crazy gets weaponized for the benefit of actual policy actors, which is what has clearly happened here, we need to start getting it under control. It's not that Q and adrenochrome and pizzagate and birtherism and even the The Protocols are that dangerous per se. It's that people with power discovered they could use the nuts who believed that stuff to get more power.
- varjag 6y ago
  And social media in the past decade has enabled lateral communication channels to mobilise the crazy mobs. Now you don't need to convince the journalists to get your drivel through out. You don't even have to be in the same country at all.

Uhhrrr 6y ago

"Contrary to all evidence" is not quite true. There were a couple of places where Obama was stated to have been born in Kenya: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/promotional-booklet/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/promotional-booklet/ https://web.archive.org/web/20091020224623/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95550177 https://web.archive.org/web/20091020224623/http://www.npr.or... I think the preponderance of evidence shows that he was born in Hawaii, but it's not "racist" or a "conspiracy theory" just to ask questions about it. It's more disturbing, IMO, to be a "status quo theorist" and refuse to even entertain one idea or another.