6 ms·

I take such an issue with the portrayal of conspiracy theories like this, that is black and white. As with everything, it's that they encompass a range of thing

• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  In the article, the mother was attempting to indoctrinate her son with “lizard people” conspiracy theories from a young age, among other things. At the extremes, these conspiracy theories are clearly false. The problem is that it’s not simply harmless to believe something so wrong at large scale. The believers aren’t just holding an opinion, they’re making decisions, taking action, voting, and even at times encouraging violence based on beliefs that are clearly wrong.
  • accountwhatever 6y ago
    > The believers aren’t just holding an opinion, they’re making decisions, taking action, voting, and even at times encouraging violence based on beliefs that are clearly wrong. Sounds just like the USA going to war over WMDs in Iraq. Clearly we need to give even more power to the mainstream press so they can act as the sole arbiters of truth. /s
  • ghthor 6y ago
    Clearly is a pretty strong term. I'm sure skeptics arguing against Galileo would have used string words like "clearly" to dismiss his ideas.
    • krapp 6y ago
      >I'm sure skeptics arguing against Galileo would have used string words like "clearly" to dismiss his ideas. The fact that people dismissing Galileo's claimed turned out to have been wrong does not mean people who dismiss COVID conspiracies or reptoids are equally as likely to be wrong. People who believe in a conspiracy of globalist elite reptilian shapeshifters are clearly wrong. Clearly is a strong term, and it's justified in the case of such beliefs. There is no danger that in the future those who hold such beliefs will turn out to have been correct in hindsight, as Galileo was proved correct in hindsight. Reasonable people can agree or disagree on reasonable conspiracy theories. Did Epstein kill himself? Maybe, maybe not. Did Trump or his staff collude with Russia? Maybe, maybe not. Was 9/11 an inside job? I don't believe it was but it's at least within the realm of metaphysical possibility. Are mattress stores just money laundering fronts for the Mafia? Probably not but it is weird how you can have, like, twenty of them on a single street. Who buys that many mattresses? How do they stay in business? There is, however absolutely no need to give anyone who claims Bill Gates created COVID-19 as a pretext to tag people with mind control chips through vaccinations in order to harvest adrenochrome from their brains for satanic ritual orgies the benefit of the doubt. They. Are. Clearly. Wrong.
      • ghthor 6y ago
        I must be a moron then, because I dont think they are clearly wrong. I would say their is clearly more going on then the government is telling us and Bill Gates is creepy as fuck.
• ezekg 6y ago
  It is kind of interesting to think about how we got here. If you question anything mainstream these days, or try to discuss an alternative viewpoint, the conversation almost always turns vitriol. It's unfortunate, because there have been a lot of "conspiracy theories" that have been shown fully- or partially-true with time, but people seem to be very cult-like in their beliefs, even if they don't truly understand their beliefs. It's odd to me, and I wish we weren't like this. I've lost a lot of friends in harsh ways because of things I have become more outspoken about recently, yet we had been friends for years beforehand even when I knew they had the opposing view -- I was simply too afraid to share my view for fear of losing friends. But alas... Edit: it's kind of crazy that I'm getting downvoted for sharing something that I would've hoped people would agree with. I guess not, and this proves my point. Man, we live in crazy times.
  • LeCow 6y ago
    A really interesting example of this is the whole glyphosate case that /r/environment goes nuts over. On the one hand, nearly every scientific, health and farming community in the world says using glyphosate is safe. Yet there was a legal case that said otherwise - so /r/environment jumped on that as truth. Legal precedence science does not make. Thinking like that also makes it really easy to create new laws, e.g. that homosexuality is an affront to god and should be illegal. Then claim it as scientific fact for the opposing side.
  • disease 6y ago
    A lot of conspiracy theories are just slightly repackaged white supremacy and anti-Semitism. It's not hard for me to personally to cut ties with bigoted and hateful individuals.
    • ezekg 6y ago
      Talking point #3: if somebody disagrees with you or the mainstream opinion, they're racist. Give me a break.
• InitialLastName 6y ago
  If people are threatening the health and safety of other people (including uninvolved bystanders, not to mention people who disagree with them) based on their beliefs and opinions, does it not approach being your responsibility to do what you can to disavow them of those beliefs?
  • LeCow 6y ago
    How does believing in something false threaten someones safety?
    • DFHippie 6y ago
      If it causes you to act in accordance with the false belief in ways that threaten someone's safety. For instance, you might shoot up Comet Pizza.
    • redlock 6y ago
      By refusing to follow the rules set by the medical authorities. Refusing to wear mask, not isolating when infected, etc... A more extreme example of false beliefs causing great harm is the Holocaust that was caused by Nazis believing the Jews are part of a conspiracy to undermine Germany and were the cause of Germany's defeat in WW1. False beliefs can cause a lot of harm to a lot of people in both personal level (not vaccinating your kids) and to the larger societal level.
    • InitialLastName 6y ago
      If that belief leads you to assault (even just verbally) retail employees for requesting you follow basic hygiene principles in slowing the spread of a pandemic.
    • brlewis 6y ago
      Merely believing in something false is harmless, but once in a while humans actually act on their beliefs. Suppose a restaurant employee believes that the requirement to wash hands before returning to work is a hoax by the soap companies in order to sell more soap. If the employee believes this but never acts on it, fine. But if they stop washing their hands before returning to work, that threatens public health.
• AkshatM 6y ago
  > Why should I — someone with many of my subjective ideas and opinions try and talk someone else out of their personal beliefs and opinions. Because letting people operate on a false belief affects everyone else. It's one thing to believe in homeopathy as curative - it's another thing to recommend it to people as sound medical advice, when there is no evidence that supports it. It's one thing to personally believe in creationism - it's another when you insist on teaching it in schools, disregarding its empirical validity. That's when real people, either the gullible or the vulnerable or even the ones in no position to resist, are hurt - either physically, as homeopathy can do, or intellectually, as science denial does, or even socially, as people vote against their own self-interests through an incorrect understanding of what's actually happening. You normalize this harm by allowing it to happen. I'm not saying don't let people believe whatever they want. I'm saying it's important to insist they know where their beliefs end and where facts begin, because the alternative is them causing harm, justifying it under their beliefs, and you thinking that's alright then. Conspiracy theorists do not know that distinction between fact and belief. You raise a good distinction between "conspiracies that turned out to be true" and "conspiracies in general", but you're talking at cross-purposes here. The article is discussing belief in clearly-false claims (as evidenced either by actual research on the subject or evaluation of the complete record), whereas you're using "conspiracy" in the classic sense of disinformation (claims which are true but where knowledge of their truth is suppressed until a later time). I would argue that, even with that distinction, the same default position to novel claims should be assumed in everyday life: skepticism, willingness to examine the evidence against the baseline, and openness to agreeing with said evidence should it meet a strong standard. This default position usually means you don't change your current behaviour unless the evidence is insurmountable, so: trust, but verify(!!!), all new claims before acting on them, and if that verification fails, repudiate and encourage repudiation from your fellow humans. What's important also is that most people don't have the tools to understand how to verify information correctly, so even the method above only works if you understand how to verify anything. Scientific illiteracy, innumeracy, and herd mentality are common issues here, as is cognitive dissonance or poor methodology - the Netflix documentary "Behind the Curve" describes how flat Earth experiments typically start by rejecting the premise of a globe, conducting experiments that strongly fit the narrative of globe nature, and then dismissing those results as flawed and only highlighting those which seem to indicate anything other than globe nature. That's cherrypicking, and cognitive dissonance alone lets people conclude that that's not what they're really doing. These are ordinary people, like you and I, with an impressive capability to rationalize and a reluctance to challenge whatever gives them comfort - any one of us could end up like them, in the right conditions. That's why it's important to arm yourself too with knowledge about practical epistemology. LessWrong is a weird community, but they seem to have better resources on this than many other places, so I recommend their wiki. Knowledge of the scientific method helps, as is knowledge of the historical method. Understanding how scholarship is a prerequisite to science - that is, it's not enough to have done an experiment to be a scientist, you also need understanding of the current state-of-the-art to be able to advance a meaningful argument and to be able to demonstrate correct understanding when asked - is absolutely critical (this is the number one reason why physics and math professors receive so many emails from crackpots advocating a new proof of the Riemann hypothesis and whatnot, because these crackpots either aren't aware of the necessity of scholarship or are aware but have never been subjected to a rigorous test of their scholarship).