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It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist

39 points by Manheim 6y ago

cosmodisk 6y ago
The saddest part of conspiracy theories is when they simply support business activities. There was this woman in the US behind a very active anti-vaxxer group on Facebook. Membership numbers in tens of thousands.. So someone went digging to see what's going on there.Turns out the group owner sells vitamin C in huge quantities, literally bags, as an alternative solution for vaccines... Back at home we've got this tech millionaire, who recently started anti-vaxx campaign, across all possible channels from mainstream TV to YouTube..So was thinking why would he do that and what's the motivation...Turns out he's got alternatives medicines online store ....
- thendrill 6y ago
  This is true. Some conspiracies are for selling vitamins. But most are for selling weapons.
melling 6y ago
“The climate is always changing” I wish we could build an Internet bot to go around and address this one.
- labster 6y ago
  The value of money is always changing. Therefore 1% and 100% annual inflation are nothing to worry about, just natural variability.
  - anonytrary 6y ago
    Changes to inflation result in potentially sharp transitions, which creates an implied uncertainty about a future outcome. By definition, climate is not characterized by sharp transitions; it is very slow on a human timescale. The argument "against climate change" is more so an argument against immediate action. It's a silly argument since prepping for climate change involves R&D into ultimately more profitable energy solutions, like nuclear, electric, solar, etc. People are deterred by the cost of change.
- saeranv 6y ago
  I wonder if we would need an argument, all we would need is a graph of global temperature going back a thousand years or so, it's pretty irrefutable.
  - DiabloD3 6y ago
    Closer to about 24 thousand years or so. The regular cycles in the climate are hard to understand except that scale. Last thing we need is to give those nuts more ammo by withholding any information at all; give them the whole truth.
- DiabloD3 6y ago
  The thing is, its not wrong. You can't fight a misinformation campaign by attacking the simple truths that keep it functional as a conspiracy theory. The climate is always changing. Even if we survive the local warming period, we're just as likely to fall into a brutal ice age right afterwards, of which humanity will not survive unless we very quickly learn how to do planetary-scale geoengineering and terraforming. My problem with the whole "climate change is fake" conspiracy nuts is... why aren't they just going for the obvious one that the governments just don't care and aren't fixing the larger issue? The amount the US government spent on the endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan could have ensured the survival of the human race. A nice big juicy conspiracy right there, and none of them are going for it. Government fucked up? Check. People profited from war? Check. Media is refusing to cover it? Check. Come on, take the fucking bait and run with it.
  - brippalcharrid 6y ago
    I think that people are proposing a conspiracy theory as you've described there; I think it goes along with phrases such as "The Deep State" and "Our Greatest Ally".
    - loopz 6y ago
      It also goes along with purging people representing a different perspective than "The Cure". That there's no real plan other than being puppets to billionaires, doesn't phase these groups. That their leaders are willing to seed chaos, destruction and war, for political gains and power, seems also to fly right by.
      - brippalcharrid 6y ago
        Interesting! That sounds like a very different conspiracy theory to the one that I had encountered, but I suppose this isn't really the appropriate forum to go into the gritty details of stuff like that.
  - SaltedCashews 6y ago
    What Western government isn't all-in on climate change? Am I misunderstanding your point? As someone you'd probably describe as a climate skeptic, I think governments are capitalising expertly on this. They have hysterical populations literally begging for bigger and broader taxation; all they have to do is not be greedy. Exploit as much as they can get away with, and no more. That means pandering to the cronyists and greenies begging for taxes (that they won't pay) under the guise of environmentalism, without getting so carried away that the working class father decides enough is enough. That's what they're doing. How is a conspiracy around government inaction going to work when I read about new regulations, committees, levies and taxes every time I open a newspaper?
afpx 6y ago
Are there governments or other organizations purposely spreading these conspiracies? Or, do they mostly appear from emergent collective behavior?
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  Sometimes, yes. The current US President has offered up quite a few theories about Covid. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that he created them though as much as spread them, but there are media and political organizations that spread theories about Covid, climate change, vaccines, etc.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Not collective - driven and organised. Some recent examples. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/troll-farms-macedonia-philippines-pushed-coronavirus-disinformation-facebook-n1218376 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/troll-farms-macedonia... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/21/groups-fossil-fuel-funding-urge-states-reopen-amid-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/21/groups-f... https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots?t=1606645841991 https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
- fit2rule 6y ago
  The CIA conspired to make it easier to sell weapons and foment war in Syria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore They used Obama's image to make it more palatable to the resistant Western Europeans...
- tzs 6y ago
  rt.com put a fair amount of effort into promoting the 5G health theories. Here's a comment from a year ago [1] that includes links to 5 of their video segments on 5G. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20788559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20788559
ALittleLight 6y ago
My intuition is that this is not very good advice. I don't think it is very likely to talk someone out of a conspiracy theory - unless you're really well prepared for the discussion and they are willing to listen and change their mind. If you model the conspiracy theorist as being similar to yourself, I think you'd have to assume there is roughly equal likelihood that you will convince them that covid is caused by a virus (or whatever), as there is that they will convince you that it is caused by their cell phone - that is, not much chance at all of changing people's minds by discussion like this.
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  Sadly there is no reasoning with stupid, I don't mean that in a totally derogatory way, we are all a bit stupid over something, that topic where our reasoning stops and our emotions, fears and justifications take over. The only way to deal with stupid is more stupid. The best example I have heard of this is countering anti-vaxers with "Is is possible anti-vax is miss-information spread by insert "enemy" country to destabilise the health of this country's population?" Or "I wear a mask as it makes the government cameras and microphones harder to track me" (which actually isn't all that stupid probably)
  - cosmodisk 6y ago
    It's not necessary that people are stupid but the logic is so flawed that you just can't help it. Also, people hate to be wrong,so even if the entire world tells different, they'd just defend their line even more stronger. I think this year, I lost all hope for humans seeing masses spouting utter nonsense like it's bloody dark ages..
  - sdoering 6y ago
    Sadly I believe you are right. There are people on the fringes of a "conspiracy" that are still open to reason. They want an explanation for their world gone un-understandable (as I like to calll it) for them. Their worldviews just broke and their sense of security and normalcy received a huge blow. When the first soft lockdown was in place in Germany I stumbled into a small anti-mask/anti-corona discussion. There was a leader type (a medical doctor who should know better) that was unreachable. And there were some clear disciples of his. But there was also one guy who presented numbers and stats printed on paper about how much more deaths the flu season 17/18 caused. Gladly I knew my numbers and could point him to some facts about the numbers. First he only had data about said year. That some few years before there were only two-digit flu death numbers in Germany he didn't know (and I could point him to the same source of original data he was quoting showing this). The more and more I took his arguments seriously and only was arguing in a fact based manner based on his sources, the more I saw that he started to think about what he said. I also was clearly not putting him down and even stating, that some of the government's measures seem illogical to me (as they were at the time and still are), but that I - from the values I was raised with - valued the knowledge, that I do everything not to endanger people who cannot protect themselves as good as I can (they were mostly arguing against masks). I argued that I am guided above all by the value of humanity and that I therefore follow the principle of caution and prefer to wear the masks in a store where I might accidentally get too close to other people, even if I find it unpleasant, rather than taking the risk of possibly endangering someone in the risk group. While we talked, more and more people of this group as well as bystanders started to listen and I saw that at least in some parts the seemingly homogeneous group split into disciples and people starting to think. Do I think I was able to argue somebody out of believing? Clearly not - but I am hopeful, that I was able to plant a seed. One would need more time and more real talks to really pull someone away from the fringes of a conspiracy. Someone captured deep within is imho sadly lost. [Edit:] Forgot - I really like your irrationality approach. Will copy it and try it.
Joeboy 6y ago
I've (sometimes) seen good results from people politely and respectfully challenging their friends' well-intentioned conspiraloon posts on Facebook. I've seen very few successful looking challenges of strangers, bad-faith arguers or full-on nutters.
bsaul 6y ago
From a scientific point of view, the problem is that there are no definition of what a "conspiracy theory" is. Some theories are scientifically proved wrong (earth is flat), other are partially wrong (climate has always changed... yes but not that fast), and others are just far fetched ( hydroxychloroquin has been fought against by big pharmas to try and sell their own expensive drugs). And then there are theories or rumors that happened to be correct after all ( watergate, contras, etc). This is not a black or white thing.
- m0llusk 6y ago
  The conspiracy label is not necessarily interesting or relevant. More to the point is the quality and directness of evidence and potential useful reactions. For example, where novel coronavirus comes from does not change what it takes to avoid the virus. And if Antifa were to make a sustained effort to dominate rural lands then the same kind of efforts that might be used for defense of liberty against any other threat are still the first and best option. Attempting to understand exactly who is involved and what their motivations are is the least effective way of handling modern life. It makes more sense to be measured and balanced with all information and to make use of best practices based on what is most likely.
- rualca 6y ago
  > From a scientific point of view, the problem is that there are no definition of what a "conspiracy theory" is. But there is, isn't it? I mean, it's a theory regarding conspiracies. And colloquially, the theory is supported by no rational basis or evidence, or it's basis is so twisted and convoluted that its main premise isn't even falsifiable. > And then there are theories or rumors that happened to be correct after all ( watergate, contras, etc). You're confusing hypothesis with conspiracy theories. Hypothesis are open questions that are falsifiable and verifiable. Conspiracy theories are illogical leaps of faith supported by barely any rationality. There was evidence supporting the theory that Nixon was engaged in shady tactics to steal the election. There is absolutely no evidence that "the masked singer" was produced to condition the public to believe that wearing a mask was cool. > This is not a black or white thing. It pretty much is. At most, the shade of grey between the blackest of blacks and the whitest of whites is very thin. If someone is presenting baseless assertions as facts supporting a conspiracy that is supported or hinted by no rational basis whatsoever then where's the doubt?
friendlybus 6y ago
Very rarely do I see people in good faith believing in the content of the conspiracy theory. It's usually a tool to mount some war against a thorn jabbed in the speaker's side that they cannot articulate in polite company, so a conspiracy group is the next best place to hob nob and chin wag about this malefic thorn in their side, poisoning their thoughts and feelings and yet difficult to discuss without putting everybody to sleep with yet another impossible to solve fear. The changes in view I've seen is when the underlying need to quell a fear has been met, the story they discuss openly tends to change a bit.
- loopz 6y ago
  When a side is able to conjure almost majority of a huge population, there are real unresolved issues these people care deeply about. Democracy is still the best measure we have that confounds even expert opinions. As it is self-integrated, it co-depends on the larger self and identity of the population. What is needed is to resolve those issues, while not succumbing to populists who seek to create enemies and destruction.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    More direct democracy could help. In a R/D party system, you "buy" a party wholesale, with all the opinions and policies that it currently holds. Some of which are repulsive even for you. MJ legalization was almost entirely achieved through ballot initiatives, because both R and D elected politicians were afraid to touch it.
    - loopz 6y ago
      Something need to be fixed for sure. Full-on direct democracy in the digital age could be wild. It'd require high knowledge, deep thought and empathy among citizens. Something need to break the stalemate of two party system. Maybe a new great leader will do it, or maybe restructuring the political system. The problem today is most politicians themselves not fairly representing the people, even the so-called "rebels".
thendrill 6y ago
[removed]
- cttrhow 6y ago
  > I am sure the flat earth stuff and the 5gs are manufactured conspiracies, for the sole reason of developing a mechanism to basically discredit any public suspicion once something gets slapped the "conspiracy theory" term. Also "vaccines cause autism". There was well documented fiasco around swine flu vaccine (pandemrix) that seems to have given narcolepsy to some people, but more often than not bringing that up labels you as an anti-vaxer and noone wants to listen. It's ironic that article speaks about "thought-terminating cliches" where some conspiracy theories are used as such to cover actual issues. My point here is that most issues are subtle: I'm happy I was given polio vaccine when I was a child, but I don't trust pharma that much and I'd rather not take anything that didn't go through years of testing and I think big pharma's bad reputation is well-earned.
  - thendrill 6y ago
    Removed
    - learc83 6y ago
      They do release the details—-both to the FDA (and the equivalent organizations in dozens of other countries) and in their patent applications. But if you want to base medical decisions on an ill fitting analogy because it sounds catchy, then go ahead. As for your article, the phase 3 trials for COVID vaccines can’t be cherry picked because they were registered before hand with preselected success criteria, and they have been intensely followed by the media.
- armada651 6y ago
  Your argument is actually addressed in the article: > It may be worth acknowledging the fact that certain conspiracies – like Watergate – have occurred in the past, but they were supported by incontrovertible evidence rather than rumour and supposition. Even if they turn out to be true, those were all conspiracy theories before there was sufficient evidence for it. And you would have been a conspiracy theorist had you believed any of them without sufficient evidence. Being a conspiracy theorist is not about whether your theories are true or not. It's about what kind of evidence you use to support your theories.
sparkie 6y ago
Recall that the WHO were misinformation spreaders early after the COVID-19 outbreak. "Conspiracy theorist" is basically a label for anybody who does not rely on argument from authority. Half of the time they get it wrong, the other half of the time, the authority gets it wrong. There are some people who believe anything they are told. They might be on either end of this spectrum: Believe anything that an "authority" tells them, or believe anything that the "anti-authority" tells them. The rest are somewhere between: You have incomplete information and must draw your own conclusions.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  They’ve just tried the ‘trumpet medicine as effective, then discredit it as ineffective’ cycle for the second time, now with remdesivir. I don’t know if this is malice or incompetence but I do know that taking their stories at face value, without verifying yourself, is not the smart thing to do.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  "Conspiracy theorists" rejects logic and facts that do not support their theories. They believe some authority more than reason. It happens that official point often stands for a reason.
  - ProofMe5GIsSafe 6y ago
    Fact: WHO claimed that flights from China should not be banned, because China has it under control, and a travel ban would do nothing against spread. Fact: Flights from China, including tourism, contributed to the spread of the coronavirus world-wide. Fact: Instead of acknowledging this fact, the media blamed Trump for being a racist, for banning flights early on, despite what the WHO said. Fact: WHO downplayed the role, responsibility, and severity, and their level of access/transparency of China. Since there is no health reason for doing that, that reason was economic (WHO decision makers being bought or hired), or political (WHO decision makers bowing to China's one-country policy). So we have facts establishing: WHO lied, China lied and is in damage control, media lied and invoked racism over a lie, WHO can't be fully trusted to act in the public's health best interest, and can't be depended on for individual health best practices ("Don't wear mask, unless you are sick."). Some may call those facts conspiracy theories. And if it is a fact that the media did not paint Trump as a racist for making a sane decision, then this just does not support my theory, that the media is biased against Trump, or being played by Trump to become emotional and make bad decisions. I can find other evidence that does support it. Just because the media behaves one time, disproofs nothing, unless my theory is "The Media is 100% anti-Trump". Which would be a poor straw-man theory, easily debunked.
Jabbles 6y ago
One thing that has annoyed me this year is the inability of (some) scientists to pour scorn where it is deserved. Instead they cower behind technically accurate phrases like "there's no evidence 5G can cause Covid". We would have to throw out vast amounts of science to make that true. It's basically magic, but scientists and the media tend to be so cautious that to some people it may seem that there is genuine doubt. I understand that we don't want scientists and the media being overconfident - saying "there's no evidence the covid vaccines have any significant side-effects" is fine, you couldn't say "there is no conceivable way this vaccine could cause a problem". But I do think the distinction between science and fantasy should be made clearer.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  What is the distinction? There’s not a whole lot of science about the effects of radiation on life and there’s not a lot of science about factors that influence how bad a corona case turns out. Of course its far fetched to say 5G causes corona, but I would say it’s only unlikely it influences it. There is no proof either way. Ignoring that uncertainty is not science.
  - purplecats 6y ago
    > Of course its far fetched to say 5G causes corona, but I would say it’s only unlikely it influences it. That's a popular strawman or a fake argument. People weren't saying that 5G causes corona. It was more about how corona is used as a distraction while 5G towers were being put up illegally (while people weren't allowed to be outside to notice), and how it is powerful enough to track chips in humans.
    - Jabbles 6y ago
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-53285610 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-53285610
      - purplecats 6y ago
        Sorry, but your implications are ambiguous.
loopz 6y ago
I find this a good read overall. Not because it's perfect, but because we simply can't tolerate lies to go unchecked. We've witnessed one of the most advanced democracies in the world, susceptible to unsubstantiated claims, wild conspiracy theories and workplace abuse. This can only stop when people know what they're truly dealing with, and speak up, using their freedom of speech and can do so without undue reprecussions.
SpaceManNabs 6y ago
I have not heard an effective way to address the empirical fact that lies are easier to make than truth. It is quite easy to make up a conspiracy, as ill-defined as that term is, and spread it. It is much harder to craft an argument against conspiracies, since it requires adherence to the truth. It is easier to create chaos than order. Then there is the additional factor that onlookers might just see it as baseless arguing---whom do you trust unless you do careful fact-checking (but which repository of "facts" can you trust?). Somewhat related is that "common sense" thinking is often flat out wrong. Sometimes, truth is counter intuitive. Humans will always fall prey to grifts. And the problem of conspiracies in our age seem to be grifting at scale.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  >It is easier to create chaos than order Conspiracy theories are about creating order where there is chaos. It's a story of a secret goings on that explains unknowns. It's more scary to know that no one is in control and that things happen because of random chaos. It is comforting to believe that there is a secret reason behind the chaos. There are not conspiracy theories that have a secret group of people increasing chaos and confusion for its own sake (except possibly the discordians!)
  - SpaceManNabs 6y ago
    Sorry, I was speaking in metaphors to physics. You are correct in this perspective.
redis_mlc 6y ago
The article is nonsense. Society is a conspiracy between groups of people. The fact they don't document their schemes doesn't vanish those conspiracies. Nobody who has looked into COVID-19 can say with certainty that it isn't a bioweapon. Wuhan has 3 virus labs (China has 40), including one that's world famous with published virology papers. Yet no vaccine was developed in the past 18 years since SARS-1, speaks volumes. What were they doing for the last 2 decades? When experts are asked whether COVID-19 is natural or engineered, the answer is always, "I think it's 50/50 at this point."
jsz0 6y ago
> It is troubling enough to see these ideas on social media I think the attempts to censor conspiracy theories are far more troubling. They are works of political fan fiction or at worst someone's erroneously held opinion. Sometimes they even turn out to be true. Censorship is completely indefensible in any case.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  I always tell liberals who advocate for suppression of "misinformation" that they are attacking the very roots of liberalism and that they actually may tear it down. Without personal freedom, liberalism degenerates into a "status quo preserving mechanism", and status quo is subject to severe outside challenge in every economic downturn and every conflict of values on Earth.
  - SaltedCashews 6y ago
    I hope you find that fun, at least, because it's otherwise a complete waste of your time. It's an exercise in power- they don't care for the immorality or hypocrisy because they don't need to when every government, corporation, and organisation with any power or influence is singing from the same hymn book.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      I do, but I had some successes, actually. Not everyone who advocates for something has gamed out all possible consequences and scenarios in his head.
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
After witnessing the head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases blatantly lying to people and admitting it, I wonder why there are not more conspiracy theorists in the US.
cttrhow 6y ago
So I'm a conspiracy theorist and at this point I have no hope of stopping to be one. Simple example that resonates well with current situation - when covid broke out I was spending a lot of energy ingesting everything I could. To my surprise, the vast majorities of predictions made by experts did not come true. I remember back in April-May-June media would predict that cases will skyrocket in two-three weeks and everything will go to hell. But it did not; in "two-three weeks" someone else would again say "we are two-three weeks away from disaster". No one ever retracted their pieces or issued a correction, everyone just forgotten about predictions that never came true. Most of my friends are happy to keep on listening to such experts. The media are happy to promote the experts further. So how am I supposed to not be... heavily sceptical when we don't held opinion makers accountable for what they say? (I know what I'm saying is not 100% related to article, but I just want to see through media bullshit, and need to vent somewhere.)
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  The response to this way of thinking is "we didn't know stuff we know now back then", "we learnt things as we went along, and updated our models, advice, warnings" The mask thing is hardest to justify as the whole of Asia was saying they worked back then and the reasons given for why they said "they don't work" back then is "well they had to lie because we didn't have enough masks to go around and we didn't want you to panic" which admits a lie. Then back then they said "masks do work, but we don't have enough" which implied they were lying initially but can be explained by saying " we didn't know the full facts" again. So an outsider might see these messages as a kind of benevolent way to effect behaviour change amongst PPE shortages and to stop panic, and another sees behaviour modification as lying and manipulation common in conspiracy theories.
  - cttrhow 6y ago
    Sure, I know experts may not know everything. However I'd like people taking responsibility for what they said. I don't see anyone admitting "Yes, I was wrong but I did my best to approximate the truth". I don't see anyone explaining what exactly they were wrong about and how their thinking has changed few months later; what they would have said in hindsight. That's what I'd expect from true authorities but it never happens.
themgt 6y ago
Consider the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, an online document that argues we should aim for herd immunity, while protecting vulnerable people from infection. The authors of the original are three scientists, but the declaration was accompanied by a petition that did not verify the credentials of the signers, many of whom used false names or are real people with no expertise in this area. In reality, the document represents a fringe view, which is unsupported by most epidemiological research, and thousands of other researchers have rejected the basic premise of their argument that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine. The declaration certainly doesn’t reveal widespread dissent among real experts, yet it is often cited by professional conspiracy theorists such as David Icke and “lockdown sceptics” such as Toby Young and Allison Pearson. I want to be clear that I don't agree w/ Barrington Declaration, and given the hopefully now under 2 weeks away arrival of initial vaccinations in the USA herd immunity looks like an especially poor idea. But I completely detest this style of argument, where a bunch of extraneous guilt-by-association is tossed on top of "most experts disagree" written by someone who doesn't seem to understand what the hell they're talking about but writes in the most condescending, let me explain it to these dumb plebs manner possible. To be clear, "epidemiological research" cannot really answer the public policy question of how to respond to a pandemic - this is ultimately a political choice and in a democracy must be subject to some degree of public input. For example I think evidence strongly suggests China's draconian responses have been incredibly effective tools and yet would be completely intolerable in our political culture. Beyond that, all evidence I have seen suggests the author's own authoritative claim rejecting the idea "that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine" is itself not correct. The reality is we are dealing with a novel virus so it's difficult to make any claim about long-term immunity, but all the data we have on mutation rate, lasting immune response from those infected, low rates of reinfection, some pre-existing immunity in select populations, and, importantly, really the entire idea that these vaccines will work ... is predicated on the idea that herd immunity would be achievable without a vaccine. Perhaps the above paragraph is arguable, but it is certainly not some Qanon 5G pizzagate conspiracy theory. You can be entirely opposed to let-it-rip herd immunity on public policy grounds while believing it is scientifically possible. What disturbs me more than crank randos online believing nonsense is western mainstream media's increasingly neurotic and self-discrediting attempt to label anything that disagrees with perceived expert consensus as some completely insane disproven earth-is-flat falsehood, belief in which is akin to a mental illness, and that the ideas must be suppressed and/or re-educated out of those afflicted. Especially given that SARS-Cov-2 was treated by many of these same people as akin to a conspiracy back in January and February. One of my favorite examples is from Cass Sunstein[1], Obama oracle of nudging the hoi polloi away from their dumb irrational choices. But there were many others[2]: As psychologist David DeSteno wrote on 11 February in the New York Times, “our fear distorts our thinking about the coronavirus”. Two days later, the same newspaper picked the brains of several eminent psychologists in a piece titled, “Coronavirus 'hits all the hot buttons' for how we misjudge risk”. And finally, in a Bloomberg article on 28 February, Cass Sunstein (co-author of the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, published in 2008) summed up the advice of many cognitive experts by saying that “a lot of people are more scared than they have any reason to be.” Journalists and opinion-makers would do well to eat some humble pie and treat the public more like peers than children to be educated. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-28/coronavirus-panic-caused-by-probability-neglect https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-28/corona... [2] https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/why-were-we-so-blind https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/why-were-we-so-blind
arminiusreturns 6y ago
I love how people are taking the opportunity here to go from the topic this article talks about (the virus) to just generally shitting on anyone who believes anything they deem unworthy enough to be derided as "conspiracy theory"... despite the fact that the term itself was part of a conspiracy and that the purpose is often the very same fallacy referenced in #5 ("The thought-terminating cliche"). The many people who have and are sure to reinforce this with claims like "conspiracy theories are just attempting to create a reason where there is none", or "conspiracy theories and theorist completely reject logic" and the many variations thereof are doing the same thing. I find it promising though how at least some people see through articles like this. On the topic of conspiracy theories on hn, I generally keep my comments meta to avoid devolving conversation, which I will do here as well to demonstrate how this article itself is full of fallacy. 1. The strawman fallacy and false consensus. Almost always articles of this sort, henceforth generally referenced to as "tfa", start off with or contain some variation of the strawman fallacy, wherein the weakest versions of any given conspiracy theory or set thereof are used to establish the baseline expectance that you the reader also should assume there is no merit to any of this, because there is no nuance. The article does this in the first paragraph. It attempts to use the false consensus effect to solidify the strawman. 2. The cherry picking, texas sharpshooter, and composition fallacies. Via rhetorical devices like "Since many conspiracy theories arise from feelings of uncertainty and fear..." tfa creates an illusion that there is no truth to be had in any of said conspiracy theories. The use of the word "many" softens this effect only slightly, and most readers will glaze right past it and fall for the rhetorical trick. It creates a false consensus that conspiracy theories aren't arrived at by those searching for truth based on the evidence, but rather by some faulty reasoning or cause. Of course uncertainty and fear contribute, and may sometimes play a part in the origins of conspiracy theories, but very often there are many kernels of truth (ignored by detractors) that are the true origins, with uncertainty and fear only being mechanisms by which they are spread to those who didn't understand the at least partially true origins in the first place. 3. The meta-dragon. By ignoring the very real issues with scientific incompetence and malice, the part about invisible dragons applies to itself. 4. Appeal to authority. The great irony of the fake authority section is that it itself is a logical fallacy in an apeal to authority. Even more convienient when they get to predetermine who the authorities are worthy to appeal to. Even more ironic in this part is the reference to the tobacco industry using the tactic they speak about in an attempt to explain why pharma industry wouldn't ever do that. 5. Begging the question about bandwagons and black and white fallacies with some straw thrown in. Section 3 does them all. I tend to lean towards Michael Parenti's views in the way he turns the ridicule around on what he calls "coincidence theorists". It's used all the time to dismiss arguments, and almost never stands up to scrutiny. Phrases like "most people had the good sense to dismiss" (bandwagon), "electromagnetic waves caused the disease" (strawman), and "you could just as easily point to the 2011 film Contagion and argue that director Steven Soderbergh has been plotting the whole thing." (the fallacy fallacy) all together turn section 3 into a version of the black and white fallacy. All in all, the entire article is an explosion of fallacies attempting to show how fallacious the conspiracy theories around the topic are. I shouldn't have to say this, but please note, I'm not defending any of the particular theories put forth (though some of them have more merit than the impression given). “Don't take security in the false refuge of consensus.” - Christopher Hitchens
sebow 6y ago
Let's not move twitter here with these kinds of trash articles: full of strawmans, disingenious,etc. It just doesn't help at all.The discussion about conspiracies is useless itself unless you're willing to talk about limiting free speech/freedom of thought. Instead of shaming people and further pushing them into corners you can't pull them out of, just promote the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.
razius 6y ago
It's interesting to see the cognitive dissonance in the article, they give out examples of how the tobacco industry conspired and pushed experts to promote their agenda yet we are supposed to trust the experts now blindly without any skepticism?
lumberingjack 6y ago
I have spent a lot of time with people in the psych ward the fact of the matter is everyone has a truth and that truth in their life drives them. Might be a religion might be quote on quote conspiracy theories. That's how powerful conspiracy theories are that they're a driving force on par with religion they require faith sometimes leaps of faith in the label itself was designed to sound shocking. It's not shocking we just all have different driving factors if diversity really is our strength then we need free thinkers we don't need everyone thinking the exact identical thing that CNN is telling us.
deleted 6y ago
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lumberingjack 6y ago
I'm amazed at all of the anti-conspiracy posts in here one might even call it a conspiracy are you all humans or is this just liberal bot heaven
drewcoo 6y ago
Make sure people are safe and prosperous and this stops. Shame them for seeking "alternate facts" when the real truth always seems work out in someone else's favor and it only reinforces their beliefs. Why does this article prefer the latter?
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Way back in the 20th Century, there existed an activity called "investigative journalism", which was immensely socially valuable at bringing to light abuses of power by influential people in the media, the security state, and industry. Even though conspiracy-theorizing is an essential (if only preliminary) part of this socially beneficial activity, in the 21st century we have outgrown the need for investigative journalism, because we've outgrown the need for self-government. In a post-9/11, post-Covid world, we trust our leaders, and we trust our experts.
ProofMe5GIsSafe 6y ago
It's only fake-news: how to deal with biased media. > 1. Hunting an invisible dragon This is basically saying: Stop digging. If you find nothing in the top soil, stop digging, there is not going to be treasure below. If you find some coins, stop digging. Or dig just a bit more, find nothing, and take that as proof that you are hunting an invisible treasure. And when the treasure is unearthed, it is not invisible anymore, so stop hunting for invisible other treasure. They state "there is no credible research proving the dangers of vaccines, the link between 5G networks and Covid-19 symptoms in humans, you may be told that there is a concerted effort to prevent such evidence from being released". But there is credible research proving adverse or ineffective effects of vaccines, and that these effects are graver/more common for Black people. There is no link with Covid-19, but a concerted effort to prevent misinformation, which amounts to anything not validated with a randomized trial. There is a concerted effort to stop newspapers from reporting a certain vaccine is 52% effective (enough for herd immunity, but hard to understand for lay people who the public health authorities need to take it). > 2. Fake authority Fake authority is the other side of appeal to authority. Your guy says A, but he has a poor education and is not an expert, my guy says B, and he is a well-esteemed professor, who steers well-clear of such murky/unclear issues. Is B more likely to be true? Probably. It is established fact after all. Should we discard A, without investigating the claim on its own merit, because only fringe people hold opinion A? No. That's an appeal to non-authority to avoid debunking the statement with facts. Naturally, there will be an authority imbalance on taking stands on controversial or fringe issues. Don't misuse that imbalance. Don't find the most vocal and most unhinged spokesperson for an entire conspiracy and then pit them against a moderate professor. Don't use status quo as an unquestionable pedestal, where everything on the ground is fake, and not worth looking at when someone picks it up. It is also much like: If it was true, it would already be on the pedestal. If aliens existed, they would be on the news. > 3. Coincidence or covert operations? This is attacking a clear weakness of conspiracy theorists to cast a wide net and to causally connect seemingly unrelated things. Ingoring that this is a necessity: If Snopes or Wikipedia would have cast that net, and proven causal connection, then its not a conspiracy theory, but just being well-informed. The example the article gives is also casting this wide net: saying conspiracy theories are not true, because these are formed on spurious causal connections. "the MMR vaccine can lead to autism" or "the MMR vaccine can lead to manifest onset autism" is a conspiracy theory, but a theory based on the fact that vaccine research is highly political, that the government really has a hand in shaping public opinion on vaccines, has ulterior motives for public (not individual) health, by attacking a flaw of overgeneralization, instead of pointing to supporting facts. The very same researchers in charge of the adverse-effects vaccine-research, were writing papers stating that the veterans complaining about cancer and birth defects (again, only possible to make that connection by casting a wide net, without full access to causal knowledge) were attributing these health issues to a coincidence, not because they worked with Agent Orange, and that it would be painful and costly for the government to admit is used chemical warfare on its own troops. There is presedent for a "covert" operation. > 4. False equivalence A false equivalence is when you take a ridiculous conspiracy theory ("Holocaust did not happen", "5G causes COVID") and use that focus to paint all conspiracies or controversies surrounding a topic ("Every war has victors/survivors who get to write the narritive, possibly introducing irregulatities/falsehoods, due to bias." or "We don't have scientific evidence that states that 5G is not damaging to biological life, so a roll-out before that is risky.") > 5. The thought-terminating cliche This is when you ridicule or weaken conspiracy theorists for making a living from it. By questioning their motives, you make it seem they are dishonest, or not believing in the things they say, but saying it because they make money. By attacking their most terrible conspiracy theory, you deny thoughts that say they may be correct on some topics, or to some degree. Examples are: "Go buy Alex Jones virality pills then, if you want to agree with his conspiracy nonsense of chemicals turning the frogs gay" and "There is good evidence that conspiracy theorists such as David Icke are themselves reaping huge profits from spreading misinformation" and "David Icke is a crank who believes the world is ruled by elite shape-shifting reptilians". > "the virus was created as a Chinese weapon" Facts that may make this seem that way: - The SARS virus is considered a Category C bioweapon - The SARS virus is a viable bioweapon, because it is incredibly disruptive (not due to low mortality) - Chinese labs are experimenting with defensive and offensive biowarfare, also with gene-targeted coronaviruses - Such an offensive weapon research (or military defensive gain-of-function vaccine research, where they enhance artifically the virality of coronovirus) are conducted in labs all over the world, including the Chinese. - There is circumstancial evidence that security and processes at these labs were insufficient - There is still no clear information on patient 0, nor the animal transmission chain, which are signs of biological attack. "The virus was formed naturally". Ok. Where is anything to back that up? Which animal chain? Which patient 0 not on the meat market? How did virus from cave bats hundreds of miles away made it to Wuhan? You can say: "We expect and think it was likely the virus formed naturally" (which the narritive does). But how does this give you any proof that the virus was not a Chinese weapon. It doesn't. It is a possibility. It is up in the air (like how the authorities refused to admit COVID-19 was airborne). "The danger, of course, is that their ideas will discourage people from taking the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to the actual disease." Dangerous ideas. Ok. But not illegal ideas. And not necessarily untrue ideas. Attack free speech because it leaves other people vulnerable to actual disease. Discard their real concerns about the contents of vaccines, and their free will decision to take a vaccine, being forced, or made impossible? It is also a dangerous idea to discourage people from thinking for themselves. From excercising their free speech. From not curbing their actions, because those actions are fully illegal, but because those actions are inconvenient to public health. Challenge all you want. If truth is on your side, it should be able to discard conspiritorial ideas as false, not attack them because they are "dangerous". That's what the evil conspiritors would do.
doublekill 6y ago
This is just an experiment to see how long it takes for a random comment on a submission currently ranking 533 will take if it contains the word "chinese bioweapon". Feel free to ignore if you happen to be in this thread on coincidence and sorry if detracting from real conversation. https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-arise-from-a-bat-coronavirus-research-program-in-a-chinese-laboratory-very-possibly/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-ari... A very troubling idea if true.

39 points by Manheim 6y ago

The saddest part of conspiracy theories is when they simply support business activities. There was this woman in the US behind a very active anti-vaxxer group on Facebook. Membership numbers in tens of thousands.. So someone went digging to see what's going on there.Turns out the group owner sells vitamin C in huge quantities, literally bags, as an alternative solution for vaccines... Back at home we've got this tech millionaire, who recently started anti-vaxx campaign, across all possible channels from mainstream TV to YouTube..So was thinking why would he do that and what's the motivation...Turns out he's got alternatives medicines online store ....

thendrill 6y ago
This is true. Some conspiracies are for selling vitamins. But most are for selling weapons.

melling 6y ago

“The climate is always changing” I wish we could build an Internet bot to go around and address this one.

labster 6y ago
The value of money is always changing. Therefore 1% and 100% annual inflation are nothing to worry about, just natural variability.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  Changes to inflation result in potentially sharp transitions, which creates an implied uncertainty about a future outcome. By definition, climate is not characterized by sharp transitions; it is very slow on a human timescale. The argument "against climate change" is more so an argument against immediate action. It's a silly argument since prepping for climate change involves R&D into ultimately more profitable energy solutions, like nuclear, electric, solar, etc. People are deterred by the cost of change.
saeranv 6y ago
I wonder if we would need an argument, all we would need is a graph of global temperature going back a thousand years or so, it's pretty irrefutable.
- DiabloD3 6y ago
  Closer to about 24 thousand years or so. The regular cycles in the climate are hard to understand except that scale. Last thing we need is to give those nuts more ammo by withholding any information at all; give them the whole truth.
DiabloD3 6y ago
The thing is, its not wrong. You can't fight a misinformation campaign by attacking the simple truths that keep it functional as a conspiracy theory. The climate is always changing. Even if we survive the local warming period, we're just as likely to fall into a brutal ice age right afterwards, of which humanity will not survive unless we very quickly learn how to do planetary-scale geoengineering and terraforming. My problem with the whole "climate change is fake" conspiracy nuts is... why aren't they just going for the obvious one that the governments just don't care and aren't fixing the larger issue? The amount the US government spent on the endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan could have ensured the survival of the human race. A nice big juicy conspiracy right there, and none of them are going for it. Government fucked up? Check. People profited from war? Check. Media is refusing to cover it? Check. Come on, take the fucking bait and run with it.
- brippalcharrid 6y ago
  I think that people are proposing a conspiracy theory as you've described there; I think it goes along with phrases such as "The Deep State" and "Our Greatest Ally".
  - loopz 6y ago
    It also goes along with purging people representing a different perspective than "The Cure". That there's no real plan other than being puppets to billionaires, doesn't phase these groups. That their leaders are willing to seed chaos, destruction and war, for political gains and power, seems also to fly right by.
    - brippalcharrid 6y ago
      Interesting! That sounds like a very different conspiracy theory to the one that I had encountered, but I suppose this isn't really the appropriate forum to go into the gritty details of stuff like that.
- SaltedCashews 6y ago
  What Western government isn't all-in on climate change? Am I misunderstanding your point? As someone you'd probably describe as a climate skeptic, I think governments are capitalising expertly on this. They have hysterical populations literally begging for bigger and broader taxation; all they have to do is not be greedy. Exploit as much as they can get away with, and no more. That means pandering to the cronyists and greenies begging for taxes (that they won't pay) under the guise of environmentalism, without getting so carried away that the working class father decides enough is enough. That's what they're doing. How is a conspiracy around government inaction going to work when I read about new regulations, committees, levies and taxes every time I open a newspaper?

afpx 6y ago

Are there governments or other organizations purposely spreading these conspiracies? Or, do they mostly appear from emergent collective behavior?

alphabettsy 6y ago
Sometimes, yes. The current US President has offered up quite a few theories about Covid. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that he created them though as much as spread them, but there are media and political organizations that spread theories about Covid, climate change, vaccines, etc.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Not collective - driven and organised. Some recent examples. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/troll-farms-macedonia-philippines-pushed-coronavirus-disinformation-facebook-n1218376 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/troll-farms-macedonia... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/21/groups-fossil-fuel-funding-urge-states-reopen-amid-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/21/groups-f... https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots?t=1606645841991 https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
fit2rule 6y ago
The CIA conspired to make it easier to sell weapons and foment war in Syria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore They used Obama's image to make it more palatable to the resistant Western Europeans...
tzs 6y ago
rt.com put a fair amount of effort into promoting the 5G health theories. Here's a comment from a year ago [1] that includes links to 5 of their video segments on 5G. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20788559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20788559

ALittleLight 6y ago

My intuition is that this is not very good advice. I don't think it is very likely to talk someone out of a conspiracy theory - unless you're really well prepared for the discussion and they are willing to listen and change their mind. If you model the conspiracy theorist as being similar to yourself, I think you'd have to assume there is roughly equal likelihood that you will convince them that covid is caused by a virus (or whatever), as there is that they will convince you that it is caused by their cell phone - that is, not much chance at all of changing people's minds by discussion like this.

simonbarker87 6y ago
Sadly there is no reasoning with stupid, I don't mean that in a totally derogatory way, we are all a bit stupid over something, that topic where our reasoning stops and our emotions, fears and justifications take over. The only way to deal with stupid is more stupid. The best example I have heard of this is countering anti-vaxers with "Is is possible anti-vax is miss-information spread by insert "enemy" country to destabilise the health of this country's population?" Or "I wear a mask as it makes the government cameras and microphones harder to track me" (which actually isn't all that stupid probably)
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  It's not necessary that people are stupid but the logic is so flawed that you just can't help it. Also, people hate to be wrong,so even if the entire world tells different, they'd just defend their line even more stronger. I think this year, I lost all hope for humans seeing masses spouting utter nonsense like it's bloody dark ages..
- sdoering 6y ago
  Sadly I believe you are right. There are people on the fringes of a "conspiracy" that are still open to reason. They want an explanation for their world gone un-understandable (as I like to calll it) for them. Their worldviews just broke and their sense of security and normalcy received a huge blow. When the first soft lockdown was in place in Germany I stumbled into a small anti-mask/anti-corona discussion. There was a leader type (a medical doctor who should know better) that was unreachable. And there were some clear disciples of his. But there was also one guy who presented numbers and stats printed on paper about how much more deaths the flu season 17/18 caused. Gladly I knew my numbers and could point him to some facts about the numbers. First he only had data about said year. That some few years before there were only two-digit flu death numbers in Germany he didn't know (and I could point him to the same source of original data he was quoting showing this). The more and more I took his arguments seriously and only was arguing in a fact based manner based on his sources, the more I saw that he started to think about what he said. I also was clearly not putting him down and even stating, that some of the government's measures seem illogical to me (as they were at the time and still are), but that I - from the values I was raised with - valued the knowledge, that I do everything not to endanger people who cannot protect themselves as good as I can (they were mostly arguing against masks). I argued that I am guided above all by the value of humanity and that I therefore follow the principle of caution and prefer to wear the masks in a store where I might accidentally get too close to other people, even if I find it unpleasant, rather than taking the risk of possibly endangering someone in the risk group. While we talked, more and more people of this group as well as bystanders started to listen and I saw that at least in some parts the seemingly homogeneous group split into disciples and people starting to think. Do I think I was able to argue somebody out of believing? Clearly not - but I am hopeful, that I was able to plant a seed. One would need more time and more real talks to really pull someone away from the fringes of a conspiracy. Someone captured deep within is imho sadly lost. [Edit:] Forgot - I really like your irrationality approach. Will copy it and try it.

Joeboy 6y ago

I've (sometimes) seen good results from people politely and respectfully challenging their friends' well-intentioned conspiraloon posts on Facebook. I've seen very few successful looking challenges of strangers, bad-faith arguers or full-on nutters.

bsaul 6y ago

From a scientific point of view, the problem is that there are no definition of what a "conspiracy theory" is. Some theories are scientifically proved wrong (earth is flat), other are partially wrong (climate has always changed... yes but not that fast), and others are just far fetched ( hydroxychloroquin has been fought against by big pharmas to try and sell their own expensive drugs). And then there are theories or rumors that happened to be correct after all ( watergate, contras, etc). This is not a black or white thing.

m0llusk 6y ago
The conspiracy label is not necessarily interesting or relevant. More to the point is the quality and directness of evidence and potential useful reactions. For example, where novel coronavirus comes from does not change what it takes to avoid the virus. And if Antifa were to make a sustained effort to dominate rural lands then the same kind of efforts that might be used for defense of liberty against any other threat are still the first and best option. Attempting to understand exactly who is involved and what their motivations are is the least effective way of handling modern life. It makes more sense to be measured and balanced with all information and to make use of best practices based on what is most likely.
rualca 6y ago
> From a scientific point of view, the problem is that there are no definition of what a "conspiracy theory" is. But there is, isn't it? I mean, it's a theory regarding conspiracies. And colloquially, the theory is supported by no rational basis or evidence, or it's basis is so twisted and convoluted that its main premise isn't even falsifiable. > And then there are theories or rumors that happened to be correct after all ( watergate, contras, etc). You're confusing hypothesis with conspiracy theories. Hypothesis are open questions that are falsifiable and verifiable. Conspiracy theories are illogical leaps of faith supported by barely any rationality. There was evidence supporting the theory that Nixon was engaged in shady tactics to steal the election. There is absolutely no evidence that "the masked singer" was produced to condition the public to believe that wearing a mask was cool. > This is not a black or white thing. It pretty much is. At most, the shade of grey between the blackest of blacks and the whitest of whites is very thin. If someone is presenting baseless assertions as facts supporting a conspiracy that is supported or hinted by no rational basis whatsoever then where's the doubt?

friendlybus 6y ago

Very rarely do I see people in good faith believing in the content of the conspiracy theory. It's usually a tool to mount some war against a thorn jabbed in the speaker's side that they cannot articulate in polite company, so a conspiracy group is the next best place to hob nob and chin wag about this malefic thorn in their side, poisoning their thoughts and feelings and yet difficult to discuss without putting everybody to sleep with yet another impossible to solve fear. The changes in view I've seen is when the underlying need to quell a fear has been met, the story they discuss openly tends to change a bit.

loopz 6y ago
When a side is able to conjure almost majority of a huge population, there are real unresolved issues these people care deeply about. Democracy is still the best measure we have that confounds even expert opinions. As it is self-integrated, it co-depends on the larger self and identity of the population. What is needed is to resolve those issues, while not succumbing to populists who seek to create enemies and destruction.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  More direct democracy could help. In a R/D party system, you "buy" a party wholesale, with all the opinions and policies that it currently holds. Some of which are repulsive even for you. MJ legalization was almost entirely achieved through ballot initiatives, because both R and D elected politicians were afraid to touch it.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Something need to be fixed for sure. Full-on direct democracy in the digital age could be wild. It'd require high knowledge, deep thought and empathy among citizens. Something need to break the stalemate of two party system. Maybe a new great leader will do it, or maybe restructuring the political system. The problem today is most politicians themselves not fairly representing the people, even the so-called "rebels".

thendrill 6y ago

[removed]

cttrhow 6y ago
> I am sure the flat earth stuff and the 5gs are manufactured conspiracies, for the sole reason of developing a mechanism to basically discredit any public suspicion once something gets slapped the "conspiracy theory" term. Also "vaccines cause autism". There was well documented fiasco around swine flu vaccine (pandemrix) that seems to have given narcolepsy to some people, but more often than not bringing that up labels you as an anti-vaxer and noone wants to listen. It's ironic that article speaks about "thought-terminating cliches" where some conspiracy theories are used as such to cover actual issues. My point here is that most issues are subtle: I'm happy I was given polio vaccine when I was a child, but I don't trust pharma that much and I'd rather not take anything that didn't go through years of testing and I think big pharma's bad reputation is well-earned.
- thendrill 6y ago
  Removed
  - learc83 6y ago
    They do release the details—-both to the FDA (and the equivalent organizations in dozens of other countries) and in their patent applications. But if you want to base medical decisions on an ill fitting analogy because it sounds catchy, then go ahead. As for your article, the phase 3 trials for COVID vaccines can’t be cherry picked because they were registered before hand with preselected success criteria, and they have been intensely followed by the media.
armada651 6y ago
Your argument is actually addressed in the article: > It may be worth acknowledging the fact that certain conspiracies – like Watergate – have occurred in the past, but they were supported by incontrovertible evidence rather than rumour and supposition. Even if they turn out to be true, those were all conspiracy theories before there was sufficient evidence for it. And you would have been a conspiracy theorist had you believed any of them without sufficient evidence. Being a conspiracy theorist is not about whether your theories are true or not. It's about what kind of evidence you use to support your theories.

sparkie 6y ago

Recall that the WHO were misinformation spreaders early after the COVID-19 outbreak. "Conspiracy theorist" is basically a label for anybody who does not rely on argument from authority. Half of the time they get it wrong, the other half of the time, the authority gets it wrong. There are some people who believe anything they are told. They might be on either end of this spectrum: Believe anything that an "authority" tells them, or believe anything that the "anti-authority" tells them. The rest are somewhere between: You have incomplete information and must draw your own conclusions.

tinus_hn 6y ago
They’ve just tried the ‘trumpet medicine as effective, then discredit it as ineffective’ cycle for the second time, now with remdesivir. I don’t know if this is malice or incompetence but I do know that taking their stories at face value, without verifying yourself, is not the smart thing to do.
sergeykish 6y ago
"Conspiracy theorists" rejects logic and facts that do not support their theories. They believe some authority more than reason. It happens that official point often stands for a reason.
- ProofMe5GIsSafe 6y ago
  Fact: WHO claimed that flights from China should not be banned, because China has it under control, and a travel ban would do nothing against spread. Fact: Flights from China, including tourism, contributed to the spread of the coronavirus world-wide. Fact: Instead of acknowledging this fact, the media blamed Trump for being a racist, for banning flights early on, despite what the WHO said. Fact: WHO downplayed the role, responsibility, and severity, and their level of access/transparency of China. Since there is no health reason for doing that, that reason was economic (WHO decision makers being bought or hired), or political (WHO decision makers bowing to China's one-country policy). So we have facts establishing: WHO lied, China lied and is in damage control, media lied and invoked racism over a lie, WHO can't be fully trusted to act in the public's health best interest, and can't be depended on for individual health best practices ("Don't wear mask, unless you are sick."). Some may call those facts conspiracy theories. And if it is a fact that the media did not paint Trump as a racist for making a sane decision, then this just does not support my theory, that the media is biased against Trump, or being played by Trump to become emotional and make bad decisions. I can find other evidence that does support it. Just because the media behaves one time, disproofs nothing, unless my theory is "The Media is 100% anti-Trump". Which would be a poor straw-man theory, easily debunked.

Jabbles 6y ago

One thing that has annoyed me this year is the inability of (some) scientists to pour scorn where it is deserved. Instead they cower behind technically accurate phrases like "there's no evidence 5G can cause Covid". We would have to throw out vast amounts of science to make that true. It's basically magic, but scientists and the media tend to be so cautious that to some people it may seem that there is genuine doubt. I understand that we don't want scientists and the media being overconfident - saying "there's no evidence the covid vaccines have any significant side-effects" is fine, you couldn't say "there is no conceivable way this vaccine could cause a problem". But I do think the distinction between science and fantasy should be made clearer.

tinus_hn 6y ago
What is the distinction? There’s not a whole lot of science about the effects of radiation on life and there’s not a lot of science about factors that influence how bad a corona case turns out. Of course its far fetched to say 5G causes corona, but I would say it’s only unlikely it influences it. There is no proof either way. Ignoring that uncertainty is not science.
- purplecats 6y ago
  > Of course its far fetched to say 5G causes corona, but I would say it’s only unlikely it influences it. That's a popular strawman or a fake argument. People weren't saying that 5G causes corona. It was more about how corona is used as a distraction while 5G towers were being put up illegally (while people weren't allowed to be outside to notice), and how it is powerful enough to track chips in humans.
  - Jabbles 6y ago
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-53285610 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-53285610
    - purplecats 6y ago
      Sorry, but your implications are ambiguous.

loopz 6y ago

I find this a good read overall. Not because it's perfect, but because we simply can't tolerate lies to go unchecked. We've witnessed one of the most advanced democracies in the world, susceptible to unsubstantiated claims, wild conspiracy theories and workplace abuse. This can only stop when people know what they're truly dealing with, and speak up, using their freedom of speech and can do so without undue reprecussions.

SpaceManNabs 6y ago

I have not heard an effective way to address the empirical fact that lies are easier to make than truth. It is quite easy to make up a conspiracy, as ill-defined as that term is, and spread it. It is much harder to craft an argument against conspiracies, since it requires adherence to the truth. It is easier to create chaos than order. Then there is the additional factor that onlookers might just see it as baseless arguing---whom do you trust unless you do careful fact-checking (but which repository of "facts" can you trust?). Somewhat related is that "common sense" thinking is often flat out wrong. Sometimes, truth is counter intuitive. Humans will always fall prey to grifts. And the problem of conspiracies in our age seem to be grifting at scale.

thinkingemote 6y ago
>It is easier to create chaos than order Conspiracy theories are about creating order where there is chaos. It's a story of a secret goings on that explains unknowns. It's more scary to know that no one is in control and that things happen because of random chaos. It is comforting to believe that there is a secret reason behind the chaos. There are not conspiracy theories that have a secret group of people increasing chaos and confusion for its own sake (except possibly the discordians!)
- SpaceManNabs 6y ago
  Sorry, I was speaking in metaphors to physics. You are correct in this perspective.

redis_mlc 6y ago

The article is nonsense. Society is a conspiracy between groups of people. The fact they don't document their schemes doesn't vanish those conspiracies. Nobody who has looked into COVID-19 can say with certainty that it isn't a bioweapon. Wuhan has 3 virus labs (China has 40), including one that's world famous with published virology papers. Yet no vaccine was developed in the past 18 years since SARS-1, speaks volumes. What were they doing for the last 2 decades? When experts are asked whether COVID-19 is natural or engineered, the answer is always, "I think it's 50/50 at this point."

jsz0 6y ago

> It is troubling enough to see these ideas on social media I think the attempts to censor conspiracy theories are far more troubling. They are works of political fan fiction or at worst someone's erroneously held opinion. Sometimes they even turn out to be true. Censorship is completely indefensible in any case.

inglor_cz 6y ago
I always tell liberals who advocate for suppression of "misinformation" that they are attacking the very roots of liberalism and that they actually may tear it down. Without personal freedom, liberalism degenerates into a "status quo preserving mechanism", and status quo is subject to severe outside challenge in every economic downturn and every conflict of values on Earth.
- SaltedCashews 6y ago
  I hope you find that fun, at least, because it's otherwise a complete waste of your time. It's an exercise in power- they don't care for the immorality or hypocrisy because they don't need to when every government, corporation, and organisation with any power or influence is singing from the same hymn book.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    I do, but I had some successes, actually. Not everyone who advocates for something has gamed out all possible consequences and scenarios in his head.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago

After witnessing the head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases blatantly lying to people and admitting it, I wonder why there are not more conspiracy theorists in the US.

cttrhow 6y ago

So I'm a conspiracy theorist and at this point I have no hope of stopping to be one. Simple example that resonates well with current situation - when covid broke out I was spending a lot of energy ingesting everything I could. To my surprise, the vast majorities of predictions made by experts did not come true. I remember back in April-May-June media would predict that cases will skyrocket in two-three weeks and everything will go to hell. But it did not; in "two-three weeks" someone else would again say "we are two-three weeks away from disaster". No one ever retracted their pieces or issued a correction, everyone just forgotten about predictions that never came true. Most of my friends are happy to keep on listening to such experts. The media are happy to promote the experts further. So how am I supposed to not be... heavily sceptical when we don't held opinion makers accountable for what they say? (I know what I'm saying is not 100% related to article, but I just want to see through media bullshit, and need to vent somewhere.)

thinkingemote 6y ago
The response to this way of thinking is "we didn't know stuff we know now back then", "we learnt things as we went along, and updated our models, advice, warnings" The mask thing is hardest to justify as the whole of Asia was saying they worked back then and the reasons given for why they said "they don't work" back then is "well they had to lie because we didn't have enough masks to go around and we didn't want you to panic" which admits a lie. Then back then they said "masks do work, but we don't have enough" which implied they were lying initially but can be explained by saying " we didn't know the full facts" again. So an outsider might see these messages as a kind of benevolent way to effect behaviour change amongst PPE shortages and to stop panic, and another sees behaviour modification as lying and manipulation common in conspiracy theories.
- cttrhow 6y ago
  Sure, I know experts may not know everything. However I'd like people taking responsibility for what they said. I don't see anyone admitting "Yes, I was wrong but I did my best to approximate the truth". I don't see anyone explaining what exactly they were wrong about and how their thinking has changed few months later; what they would have said in hindsight. That's what I'd expect from true authorities but it never happens.

themgt 6y ago

Consider the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, an online document that argues we should aim for herd immunity, while protecting vulnerable people from infection. The authors of the original are three scientists, but the declaration was accompanied by a petition that did not verify the credentials of the signers, many of whom used false names or are real people with no expertise in this area. In reality, the document represents a fringe view, which is unsupported by most epidemiological research, and thousands of other researchers have rejected the basic premise of their argument that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine. The declaration certainly doesn’t reveal widespread dissent among real experts, yet it is often cited by professional conspiracy theorists such as David Icke and “lockdown sceptics” such as Toby Young and Allison Pearson. I want to be clear that I don't agree w/ Barrington Declaration, and given the hopefully now under 2 weeks away arrival of initial vaccinations in the USA herd immunity looks like an especially poor idea. But I completely detest this style of argument, where a bunch of extraneous guilt-by-association is tossed on top of "most experts disagree" written by someone who doesn't seem to understand what the hell they're talking about but writes in the most condescending, let me explain it to these dumb plebs manner possible. To be clear, "epidemiological research" cannot really answer the public policy question of how to respond to a pandemic - this is ultimately a political choice and in a democracy must be subject to some degree of public input. For example I think evidence strongly suggests China's draconian responses have been incredibly effective tools and yet would be completely intolerable in our political culture. Beyond that, all evidence I have seen suggests the author's own authoritative claim rejecting the idea "that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine" is itself not correct. The reality is we are dealing with a novel virus so it's difficult to make any claim about long-term immunity, but all the data we have on mutation rate, lasting immune response from those infected, low rates of reinfection, some pre-existing immunity in select populations, and, importantly, really the entire idea that these vaccines will work ... is predicated on the idea that herd immunity would be achievable without a vaccine. Perhaps the above paragraph is arguable, but it is certainly not some Qanon 5G pizzagate conspiracy theory. You can be entirely opposed to let-it-rip herd immunity on public policy grounds while believing it is scientifically possible. What disturbs me more than crank randos online believing nonsense is western mainstream media's increasingly neurotic and self-discrediting attempt to label anything that disagrees with perceived expert consensus as some completely insane disproven earth-is-flat falsehood, belief in which is akin to a mental illness, and that the ideas must be suppressed and/or re-educated out of those afflicted. Especially given that SARS-Cov-2 was treated by many of these same people as akin to a conspiracy back in January and February. One of my favorite examples is from Cass Sunstein[1], Obama oracle of nudging the hoi polloi away from their dumb irrational choices. But there were many others[2]: As psychologist David DeSteno wrote on 11 February in the New York Times, “our fear distorts our thinking about the coronavirus”. Two days later, the same newspaper picked the brains of several eminent psychologists in a piece titled, “Coronavirus 'hits all the hot buttons' for how we misjudge risk”. And finally, in a Bloomberg article on 28 February, Cass Sunstein (co-author of the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, published in 2008) summed up the advice of many cognitive experts by saying that “a lot of people are more scared than they have any reason to be.” Journalists and opinion-makers would do well to eat some humble pie and treat the public more like peers than children to be educated. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-28/coronavirus-panic-caused-by-probability-neglect https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-28/corona... [2] https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/why-were-we-so-blind https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/why-were-we-so-blind

arminiusreturns 6y ago

I love how people are taking the opportunity here to go from the topic this article talks about (the virus) to just generally shitting on anyone who believes anything they deem unworthy enough to be derided as "conspiracy theory"... despite the fact that the term itself was part of a conspiracy and that the purpose is often the very same fallacy referenced in #5 ("The thought-terminating cliche"). The many people who have and are sure to reinforce this with claims like "conspiracy theories are just attempting to create a reason where there is none", or "conspiracy theories and theorist completely reject logic" and the many variations thereof are doing the same thing. I find it promising though how at least some people see through articles like this. On the topic of conspiracy theories on hn, I generally keep my comments meta to avoid devolving conversation, which I will do here as well to demonstrate how this article itself is full of fallacy. 1. The strawman fallacy and false consensus. Almost always articles of this sort, henceforth generally referenced to as "tfa", start off with or contain some variation of the strawman fallacy, wherein the weakest versions of any given conspiracy theory or set thereof are used to establish the baseline expectance that you the reader also should assume there is no merit to any of this, because there is no nuance. The article does this in the first paragraph. It attempts to use the false consensus effect to solidify the strawman. 2. The cherry picking, texas sharpshooter, and composition fallacies. Via rhetorical devices like "Since many conspiracy theories arise from feelings of uncertainty and fear..." tfa creates an illusion that there is no truth to be had in any of said conspiracy theories. The use of the word "many" softens this effect only slightly, and most readers will glaze right past it and fall for the rhetorical trick. It creates a false consensus that conspiracy theories aren't arrived at by those searching for truth based on the evidence, but rather by some faulty reasoning or cause. Of course uncertainty and fear contribute, and may sometimes play a part in the origins of conspiracy theories, but very often there are many kernels of truth (ignored by detractors) that are the true origins, with uncertainty and fear only being mechanisms by which they are spread to those who didn't understand the at least partially true origins in the first place. 3. The meta-dragon. By ignoring the very real issues with scientific incompetence and malice, the part about invisible dragons applies to itself. 4. Appeal to authority. The great irony of the fake authority section is that it itself is a logical fallacy in an apeal to authority. Even more convienient when they get to predetermine who the authorities are worthy to appeal to. Even more ironic in this part is the reference to the tobacco industry using the tactic they speak about in an attempt to explain why pharma industry wouldn't ever do that. 5. Begging the question about bandwagons and black and white fallacies with some straw thrown in. Section 3 does them all. I tend to lean towards Michael Parenti's views in the way he turns the ridicule around on what he calls "coincidence theorists". It's used all the time to dismiss arguments, and almost never stands up to scrutiny. Phrases like "most people had the good sense to dismiss" (bandwagon), "electromagnetic waves caused the disease" (strawman), and "you could just as easily point to the 2011 film Contagion and argue that director Steven Soderbergh has been plotting the whole thing." (the fallacy fallacy) all together turn section 3 into a version of the black and white fallacy. All in all, the entire article is an explosion of fallacies attempting to show how fallacious the conspiracy theories around the topic are. I shouldn't have to say this, but please note, I'm not defending any of the particular theories put forth (though some of them have more merit than the impression given). “Don't take security in the false refuge of consensus.” - Christopher Hitchens

sebow 6y ago

Let's not move twitter here with these kinds of trash articles: full of strawmans, disingenious,etc. It just doesn't help at all.The discussion about conspiracies is useless itself unless you're willing to talk about limiting free speech/freedom of thought. Instead of shaming people and further pushing them into corners you can't pull them out of, just promote the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.

razius 6y ago

It's interesting to see the cognitive dissonance in the article, they give out examples of how the tobacco industry conspired and pushed experts to promote their agenda yet we are supposed to trust the experts now blindly without any skepticism?

lumberingjack 6y ago

I have spent a lot of time with people in the psych ward the fact of the matter is everyone has a truth and that truth in their life drives them. Might be a religion might be quote on quote conspiracy theories. That's how powerful conspiracy theories are that they're a driving force on par with religion they require faith sometimes leaps of faith in the label itself was designed to sound shocking. It's not shocking we just all have different driving factors if diversity really is our strength then we need free thinkers we don't need everyone thinking the exact identical thing that CNN is telling us.

deleted 6y ago

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lumberingjack 6y ago

I'm amazed at all of the anti-conspiracy posts in here one might even call it a conspiracy are you all humans or is this just liberal bot heaven

drewcoo 6y ago

Make sure people are safe and prosperous and this stops. Shame them for seeking "alternate facts" when the real truth always seems work out in someone else's favor and it only reinforces their beliefs. Why does this article prefer the latter?

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago

Way back in the 20th Century, there existed an activity called "investigative journalism", which was immensely socially valuable at bringing to light abuses of power by influential people in the media, the security state, and industry. Even though conspiracy-theorizing is an essential (if only preliminary) part of this socially beneficial activity, in the 21st century we have outgrown the need for investigative journalism, because we've outgrown the need for self-government. In a post-9/11, post-Covid world, we trust our leaders, and we trust our experts.

ProofMe5GIsSafe 6y ago

It's only fake-news: how to deal with biased media. > 1. Hunting an invisible dragon This is basically saying: Stop digging. If you find nothing in the top soil, stop digging, there is not going to be treasure below. If you find some coins, stop digging. Or dig just a bit more, find nothing, and take that as proof that you are hunting an invisible treasure. And when the treasure is unearthed, it is not invisible anymore, so stop hunting for invisible other treasure. They state "there is no credible research proving the dangers of vaccines, the link between 5G networks and Covid-19 symptoms in humans, you may be told that there is a concerted effort to prevent such evidence from being released". But there is credible research proving adverse or ineffective effects of vaccines, and that these effects are graver/more common for Black people. There is no link with Covid-19, but a concerted effort to prevent misinformation, which amounts to anything not validated with a randomized trial. There is a concerted effort to stop newspapers from reporting a certain vaccine is 52% effective (enough for herd immunity, but hard to understand for lay people who the public health authorities need to take it). > 2. Fake authority Fake authority is the other side of appeal to authority. Your guy says A, but he has a poor education and is not an expert, my guy says B, and he is a well-esteemed professor, who steers well-clear of such murky/unclear issues. Is B more likely to be true? Probably. It is established fact after all. Should we discard A, without investigating the claim on its own merit, because only fringe people hold opinion A? No. That's an appeal to non-authority to avoid debunking the statement with facts. Naturally, there will be an authority imbalance on taking stands on controversial or fringe issues. Don't misuse that imbalance. Don't find the most vocal and most unhinged spokesperson for an entire conspiracy and then pit them against a moderate professor. Don't use status quo as an unquestionable pedestal, where everything on the ground is fake, and not worth looking at when someone picks it up. It is also much like: If it was true, it would already be on the pedestal. If aliens existed, they would be on the news. > 3. Coincidence or covert operations? This is attacking a clear weakness of conspiracy theorists to cast a wide net and to causally connect seemingly unrelated things. Ingoring that this is a necessity: If Snopes or Wikipedia would have cast that net, and proven causal connection, then its not a conspiracy theory, but just being well-informed. The example the article gives is also casting this wide net: saying conspiracy theories are not true, because these are formed on spurious causal connections. "the MMR vaccine can lead to autism" or "the MMR vaccine can lead to manifest onset autism" is a conspiracy theory, but a theory based on the fact that vaccine research is highly political, that the government really has a hand in shaping public opinion on vaccines, has ulterior motives for public (not individual) health, by attacking a flaw of overgeneralization, instead of pointing to supporting facts. The very same researchers in charge of the adverse-effects vaccine-research, were writing papers stating that the veterans complaining about cancer and birth defects (again, only possible to make that connection by casting a wide net, without full access to causal knowledge) were attributing these health issues to a coincidence, not because they worked with Agent Orange, and that it would be painful and costly for the government to admit is used chemical warfare on its own troops. There is presedent for a "covert" operation. > 4. False equivalence A false equivalence is when you take a ridiculous conspiracy theory ("Holocaust did not happen", "5G causes COVID") and use that focus to paint all conspiracies or controversies surrounding a topic ("Every war has victors/survivors who get to write the narritive, possibly introducing irregulatities/falsehoods, due to bias." or "We don't have scientific evidence that states that 5G is not damaging to biological life, so a roll-out before that is risky.") > 5. The thought-terminating cliche This is when you ridicule or weaken conspiracy theorists for making a living from it. By questioning their motives, you make it seem they are dishonest, or not believing in the things they say, but saying it because they make money. By attacking their most terrible conspiracy theory, you deny thoughts that say they may be correct on some topics, or to some degree. Examples are: "Go buy Alex Jones virality pills then, if you want to agree with his conspiracy nonsense of chemicals turning the frogs gay" and "There is good evidence that conspiracy theorists such as David Icke are themselves reaping huge profits from spreading misinformation" and "David Icke is a crank who believes the world is ruled by elite shape-shifting reptilians". > "the virus was created as a Chinese weapon" Facts that may make this seem that way: - The SARS virus is considered a Category C bioweapon - The SARS virus is a viable bioweapon, because it is incredibly disruptive (not due to low mortality) - Chinese labs are experimenting with defensive and offensive biowarfare, also with gene-targeted coronaviruses - Such an offensive weapon research (or military defensive gain-of-function vaccine research, where they enhance artifically the virality of coronovirus) are conducted in labs all over the world, including the Chinese. - There is circumstancial evidence that security and processes at these labs were insufficient - There is still no clear information on patient 0, nor the animal transmission chain, which are signs of biological attack. "The virus was formed naturally". Ok. Where is anything to back that up? Which animal chain? Which patient 0 not on the meat market? How did virus from cave bats hundreds of miles away made it to Wuhan? You can say: "We expect and think it was likely the virus formed naturally" (which the narritive does). But how does this give you any proof that the virus was not a Chinese weapon. It doesn't. It is a possibility. It is up in the air (like how the authorities refused to admit COVID-19 was airborne). "The danger, of course, is that their ideas will discourage people from taking the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to the actual disease." Dangerous ideas. Ok. But not illegal ideas. And not necessarily untrue ideas. Attack free speech because it leaves other people vulnerable to actual disease. Discard their real concerns about the contents of vaccines, and their free will decision to take a vaccine, being forced, or made impossible? It is also a dangerous idea to discourage people from thinking for themselves. From excercising their free speech. From not curbing their actions, because those actions are fully illegal, but because those actions are inconvenient to public health. Challenge all you want. If truth is on your side, it should be able to discard conspiritorial ideas as false, not attack them because they are "dangerous". That's what the evil conspiritors would do.

doublekill 6y ago

This is just an experiment to see how long it takes for a random comment on a submission currently ranking 533 will take if it contains the word "chinese bioweapon". Feel free to ignore if you happen to be in this thread on coincidence and sorry if detracting from real conversation. https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-arise-from-a-bat-coronavirus-research-program-in-a-chinese-laboratory-very-possibly/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-ari... A very troubling idea if true.