14 ms·

An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy theories

114 points by iNic 6y ago

noja 6y ago
For anyone looking for a way of talking to friends or family who are into conspiracy theories, this book is good: https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Rabbit-Hole-Conspiracy-Theories/dp/1510735801/ https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Rabbit-Hole-Conspiracy-Theor...
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Is there a book on how to not talk about conspiracy theories? I have some formerly right leaning elderly relatives who are now just plain crazy. They won't stop talking about ridiculous conspiracies. I don't open emails from them anymore. I've given up trying and wish they would at least stop talking to me about them.
  - wolfram74 6y ago
    There's the one upping approach, when they start talking about how the moon landing was faked you could call them sheep for believing the moon exists. I don't think it's a good strategy for improving discourse, but some people probably find the creative element enjoyable.
    - oblio 6y ago
      The "Four Yorkshiremen" approach to conspiracy theory discussions :-))
      - jackric 6y ago
        Back in my day, the Earth was static toroid at the centre of the solar system
    - specialist 6y ago
      My bro does this. I'm not convinced it works as intended. But does give him another dopamine hit. To give you a sense of his motivations: He's a former debate captain, coach, judge. Pendants about grammar, punctuation, pronunciation. Still believes logic and facts are persuasive. Especially said louder, with more sarcasm and derision. I'm trying to be less like that. Old habits are hard to change.
      - jackric 6y ago
        Keep upping the wackiness until the other person is the one trying to talk you down, then nourish the arrow of scepticism and reason.
  - jl6 6y ago
    Conspiracy theories fill holes in peoples’ lives (lack of belonging, lack of achievement, lack of recognition). Help them fill those holes with something else.
    - jackric 6y ago
      Ooo err
  - lez 6y ago
    Send them to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EzSbI-zOk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EzSbI-zOk It is from the INSIDE of the Truth movement, and will convince them to stop talking to everyone about conspiracies - as that's useless and damages human relationships. Also helps them to find meaning in their life.
- wrongthoughtbot 6y ago
  Normal people with correct thoughts that do not deviate from acceptable thought can wear maybe an arm band to self identify. That would let the conspiracy theorist vicitms know not to waste their time on you. It worked in Germany. https://www.etsy.com/market/hear_no_evil_shirt https://www.etsy.com/market/hear_no_evil_shirt
m12k 6y ago
A headline that truly captures the times we live in. There's something poetic about using machine intelligence to detect human stupidity.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway80332 6y ago
  I can't wait until this technology is perfected so that we can finally put an end to online disinformation for good. Those dangerous idiots actually believe that a billionare pedophile spent decades inviting high-ranking politicians and influential decision makers to his private island for orgies with underage girls, and that when he was arrested he managed to hang himself while on suicide watch in a maximum security prison! They really are that deluded and dangerous. This needs to end, now. The nutcases also believe that the governments are working with big tech to eliminate cash so that anybody who doesn't toe the line can be "permanently cancelled". Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? I hope in the future we can just have an algorithm that disables the bank account of anybody who spews such divisive nonsense online. There is no place for that kind of hate in a society that strives for any kind of progress.
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    > I can't wait until this technology is perfected so that we can finally put an end to online disinformation for good. Well, first you need to define "disinformation." It's a non-trivial, and probably a concept that's unable to be rigorously defined.
    - swebs 6y ago
      The entire post is sarcasm.
  - wrongthoughtbot 6y ago
    No such thing a throwaway account in New Normal. This is an automated public service notice. You'll be happy to know that our AI now has a sarcasm module. You've been detected and will be cancelled. "An obedient population is a happy population" as all experts agree, and you are an obstable to universal happiness.
peter_l_downs 6y ago
Linked site won't load so here's a vaguely-related book recommendation: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I don't want to spoil it, but it involves a group of writers who try to come up with a single, maximally compelling, conspiracy theory. Reading it sets up a super interesting tension -- the book is clearly fiction, and yet the conspiracy theory it presents is as compelling as any (and in fact incorporates many) of those you'll read "in the wild". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  Second the recommendation, great book.
- epilys 6y ago
  This BBC article says that the Illuminati conspiracy theory was the result of an elaborate literary prank https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170809-the-accidental-invention-of-the-illuminati-conspiracy https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170809-the-accidental-i...
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  I read Foucault's Pendulum and finished it, but it was heavy going. I then read "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" [0] which I enjoyed much more, because it was more intentionally cranky and funny. It is to conspiracy novels as "Airplane!" was to disaster movies, and then some. [Edit] Both of them make Dan Brown look really, really unimpressive. If "The Da Vinci Code" is a vaguely thought-through concept aimed at general readers, "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is an explosion in a conspiracy theory factory. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy
  - User23 6y ago
    Everything you say is true, but the Illuminatus! Trilogy also presents some serious philosophy sandwiched between the raunchiness and silliness. For example the SNAFU principle is a reasonable explanation for a lot of what we see in large organizations. Also, expanding Hegelian dialectic by adding Parenthesis and Synthesis to fit the Law of Fives is tongue in cheek, but in a haha only serious kind of way.
throwoutttt 6y ago
Or you could just watch cnn
samizdis 6y ago
A few minutes ago I posted the Ars Technica piece about this, but that was before I'd noticed this one referencing the study directly. I duly deleted the Ars piece, but if anyone wants to read it it is at: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/study-folklore-structure-reveals-how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-fall-apart/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/study-folklore-struc... Edited to add: I remembered a piece posted six months ago, referencing UCLA, along the same/similar lines and have just found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681232
hammock 6y ago
>We show how the Pizzagate framework relies on the conspiracy theorists’ interpretation of “hidden knowledge” to link otherwise unlinked domains of human interaction, and hypothesize that this multi-domain focus is an important feature of conspiracy theories. We contrast this to the single domain focus of an actual conspiracy. While Pizzagate relies on the alignment of multiple domains, Bridgegate remains firmly rooted in the single domain of New Jersey politics This study is interesting work to be sure, but the cause behind their hypothesis might be rooted in how journalism works, rather than whether it's truthful/factual or not. Papers have a NJ politics "beat", with an editor and reporters who are experts in that single domain and are expected to produce work rooted in that specific domain. Or worse, the "single domain" in some instances might be appearing because it was a story fed to the paper by a three-letter agency. Citizen journalists (or whatever less charitable term you want to use) don't really have that. They can focus on whatever they want, and it's much easier to build a narrative that spans multiple domains.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  “ Papers have a NJ politics "beat", with an editor and reporters who are experts in that single domain and are expected to produce work rooted in that specific domain.” I suspect that this is increasingly less true every year as local reporting is actively dying.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > “ Papers have a NJ politics "beat", with an editor and reporters who are experts in that single domain and are expected to produce work rooted in that specific domain.” > I suspect that this is increasingly less true every year as local reporting is actively dying. This isn't a new concern, of course[0], but in 2021 local reporting has probably already mostly died as much as it is going to. There just isn't that much money left to take away. [0] https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2017/the-west-wing-totally-predicted-the-great-media-rollup/ https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2017/the-west-wing-total...
aritmo 6y ago
Do these conspiracy theories appear organically or is there a special nudge to make them stick? Who nudges the conspiracy theories to stick?
- throwaway80332 6y ago
  Most likely it is the team around loser ex-president Donald Trump and nazis like Breitbart, and they are bought and controlled by Vladimir Putin and other right-wing extremists, who hacked the election in 2016 even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a landslide. Do you remember when Donald Trump called nazis "very fine people" and threatened to have journalists assasinated? There is nothing these people won't attemp to destroy our democracy, including putting immigrant children in concentration camps, and spreading dangerous falsehoods and conspiracy theories is just another day at the office for them. And these days it is even worse. I fear for the republic if Trump attempts a coup because they ridiculously claim "the election was hacked"! In short, those paranoid idiots spreading conspiracies are sick and evil and I hope we will have the technology in the near future to keep them under very close surveillance 24x7.
  - overallduka 6y ago
    You literally are using a left wing conspiracy theory to corroborate your arguments against CT. You just want shut down opinions that disagrees with you, you are not interested in truth at all, if the IA disagree with you probably you would call the IA "racist" or "nazi".
  - vharuck 6y ago
    Sarcasm doesn't work very well on the internet. Even when it's obvious, it rarely improves the discussion.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    It is hard to tell whether this is sarcasm or not.
- Item_Boring 6y ago
  I can’t answer your question but maybe you’ll find this paper interesting [0]. TLDR: social bots are highly responsible for spreading misinformation - and for such also conspiracy theories. By tagging people with a lot of followers and tweeting the information multiple times they attempt to make it go viral. Keep in mind that this paper concerns the 2016 elections. [0] http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf
tchalla 6y ago
Since the site won't load, an alternative - https://sci-hub.st/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233879 https://sci-hub.st/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...
Anka33 6y ago
CNN?
RobertoG 6y ago
I have observed that speed of change in supporting facts is very important in Internet conspiracy theories (CT) vs. the old conspiracy theories. It goes like this: you find a surprising fact that, if true, will support the CT. You go to investigate it, which, of course, take some time. You realize that the fact has a normal explanation but, when you go back to conversation of the CT, that's not a relevant fact in the conversation anymore. There is a new fact, or more, supporting the CT. Start the process again. It's impossible to catch with the fact that it's, at the moment, supporting the CT. I think, this is different from the old way conspiracy theories, where people just believed highly improbable things. It also makes it more appealing to more people, because, if you take it all globally and don't look carefully, it really looks like there is a lot of evidence.
- jjk166 6y ago
  I think the opposite is really the case. Back in the day, fact checking was incredibly difficult. If you were a domain expert, you might notice something was off, then go to the library to double check the information, and if the library happened to have what you needed you could try to convince your close friends and family of the truth. The other 99.99% of what you heard on the news or read in the paper was simply accepted as fact. Conspiracy theories were, at the time, either what the news said were conspiracy theories, or ideas so fringe that the news didn't even talk about them. Nowadays, we are a few thumb movements away from fact checking literally any piece of human knowledge. There hasn't been a sudden proliferation of fake news, it's just more readily apparent. As it has become easier to spot the holes in shoddy reporting, faith in journalistic institutions has plummeted. More people are getting news from alternative sources whose quality is variable. For better or for worse, there are simply more versions of stories nowadays. To try to retain viewers, traditional media outlets have tried to cultivate an image of themselves as the arbiters of truth which they once defacto were, and to do so have been quite liberal with labelling their competition as conspiracy theories. We haven't seen any uptick in the number of people wearing tinfoil hats to keep out the mind control rays or claiming any given senator is a lizard person. Instead, we live in a world where you're labelled a conspiracy theorist if you don't think there is a shadowy cabal of government agents spreading misinformation to manipulate us or depending on which of the past two presidential elections you think was illegitimate. Even small deviations from the narrative of any particular bubble are heretical, but that narrative, and every other one, is composed from the incomplete knowledge of fallible people, so invariably as time goes on you will start to notice inconsistencies in the story. In years gone by, we would have simply chalked this up to someone being misinformed, people could admit they were wrong and papers could print retractions and we'd all forget about it. But now the combination of the record being so readily accessible and the increased role of our media consumption in our personal identity means we have forgone nuance and are strongly pressured to adhere to increasingly absurd stories. It's so much easier to label the other side as stupid and crazy than to try to demonstrate the veracity of our position and face the fact that we are not entirely correct either, but if we do not strive for truth ourselves, it becomes easy for them to see the faults in our logic and further convince themselves that we, in fact, are the crazy and stupid ones. tl;dr there are many more non-mainstream narratives being labelled as conspiracy theories at the same time that the mainstream narrators who would normally dispel them are losing credibility.
haunter 6y ago
I'd much love to read a paper like this applied to conspiracy theories that became true (Epstein, PRISM etc). Basically reverse engineering
- pdabbadabba 6y ago
  Agreed! But did I miss the part where the Epstein conspiracy theory was demonstrated to be true?
  - calvinmorrison 6y ago
    Yeah. Without pulling up sources it's on his second paragraph of his wikipedia page, which tends to avoid conspiracies etc. "He developed an elite social circle and procured many women and children who were then sexually abused by Epstein and some of his contacts."
    - pdabbadabba 6y ago
      Oh, that part. Absolutely. I didn't even realize that was ever considered a conspiracy theory. I thought GP was referring to his death!
      - nautilus12 6y ago
        Was most certainly branded as a conspiracy theory until it was revealed. This is why I think people are more apt to believe other conspiracy theories around him as well
        jberryman 6y ago
        What do you mean "until it was revealed"? There was some pretty exhaustive reporting a decade and a half ago, but no one really payed much attention. And certainly his high-profile connections weren't a secret. Conspiracy-minded people imagine a deep shroud of secrecy around the Epstein affair that doesn't really exist.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
The important bits of the abstract to me. > how conspiracy theories ... and their factual counterpart conspiracies... We show how the Pizzagate framework relies on the conspiracy theorists’ interpretation of “hidden knowledge” to link otherwise unlinked domains of human interaction, and hypothesize that this multi-domain focus is an important feature of conspiracy theories. We contrast this to the single domain focus of an actual conspiracy. By highlighting the structural differences between the two narrative frameworks, our approach could be used by private and public analysts to help distinguish between conspiracy theories and conspiracies. I'm not sure how to interpret this new classification of true conspiracies as just "conspiracies" and false ones as "conspiracy theories" that they seem to be pushing in this paper. Many things others called conspiracy theory were eventually proven to be true, at least in some degree, and those things are often still called conspiracy theories because they have uncomfortable truths that people would rather not acknowledge as factual. This seems like an abuse of terminology in some way to me. Before I delve to deeply into this, I will first say, however; As an open conspiracy theorist, (doing my best to "take back" the phrase), who tries to stick to the facts as much as possible, I have long thought about how a scientific approach could be used to prove the likelyhood of what others call conspiracy theories, and the longer I have thought on the matter the more I have great hope that some researchers or other would stumble upon this likely-career hurting approach to said theories. While I disagree with the papers characterization of certain theories as true and certain ones as false, both due to the black and white label and the lack of context primarily surrounding the accusations of the narrative framework of the true to be one that is in more flux and single domain vs the one of the untrue being constantly in less flux and multi-domain, I think this approach could be modified and put to better use beyond the limitations of this paper itself, primarily because the root of their study is the same as a serious conspiracy theory researcher: "actants (people, places, things), relationships between actants, and a sequencing of these relationships". It is only in the application of this approach to center on stories and social media that a series of methodological mistakes emerge to weaken the paper. I could go into some of the details if wanted about these weaknesses, but in general on HN I try to keep the discussion more meta on the topic of conspiracy theories in order to not devolve the conversation too much. One example I will give however, is their overreliance on certain sources of data (twitter, reddit) that were considered at best secondary to the more deep and open conversations (the chans, irc, etc) being had on certain topics (pizzagate for example) juxtaposed against the reliance on UCLA aggregates of NJ newspapers on the topic of Bridgegate. I know, I was participating in all of the above when the last post which "broke the last straw" on reddit caused the sub to be banned. [1] Again, I don't say this to start a discussion on pizzagate as it is likely to devolve quickly, but rather to show I'm not making up my accusations of methodological weakness based on nothing. This sort of snowball methodological weakness then undermines their conclusion, which quickly goes off the rails into so many tropes and cliches not backed by their data and research it quite surprises me to see the the authors take a semi-defensible approach and allow it to be deteriorated by such a series of erroneous "conclusions". Go read the conclusion section for yourself if you think I am exaggerating. 1. https://archive.md/MrsGu https://archive.md/MrsGu edit: in particular I would like to call out their overreliance on calling conspiracy theory discussion some variation of "imaginative interpretations of “hidden knowledge”". In reality, and this is something I frequently like to stress to my more logical/scientific friends who are skeptical of certain conspiracy theories, what many conspiracy theories rely on, often without being aware of it (to their detriment) is a series of inductive logical conclusions, as opposed to a series of deductive logical conclusions. Rightly so I say, because in the domain of conspiracy theory you often lack the hard evidence to back claims, and therefor must often rely on inductive logic instead (and the lack of deductive evidence does not alway indicate untruthfulness as is often assumed). This is one of the keys that helped me get past many issues, because when it comes to conspiracy theories true or not, the real crux is the probabalistic likelyhood of truth which can be modified as more data points emerge, not some black and white true and untrue label.
ppod 6y ago
You'd think considering academics do the reviewing, proofing, and typesetting for free the $1600 publication fee might enable the publisher to at least make a site that can stand up to HN traffic. Here's an arxiv version: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.09961 https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.09961
corona-research 6y ago
Is mass surveillance a conspiracy theory?
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
This technology can’t come soon enough. I still meet people who don’t believe Iraq has WMDs and that we invaded simply because of the oil.
boredumb 6y ago
We're actually doing a Rust application that downloads the image snopes is displaying for that particular conspiracy theory in order to feed them into a tensor flow model and predict the validity of future conspiracies.
- jackric 6y ago
  Shut up and take my money
throwaway91774 6y ago
I watched pizzagate grow from day 0, AMA. I spent an inordinate amount of time on /pol/ around the 2016 election and when Wikileaks made the emails available I was among those hitting the random button to see what we could find. The authors of the paper did a great job in understanding a key feature; (vacuous) conspiraciy theories involve a lot of jumping to conclusions, and are all over the place (multi-domain). At the time there was so much momentum to find dirt on Hillary, that every silly comment seen through chan culture lenses became a zero-point energy engine, and suddenly we were swimming in mspaint.exe infographics pulled out of thin air. I was never a believer though, but I did enjoy the shitstorm, and human trafficking is a real thing. I was disappointed that people was so fed up with the matter that Epstein's suicide was not a bigger deal with the general public.
- deorder 6y ago
  You might find the following interesting: 2016 election timeline: https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6fyugv/link_your_oldest_rconspiracy_post_and_say_what/dimqin0/ https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6fyugv/link_you... 2016 summary of Wikileaks events: https://old.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/6nebdk/can_someone_explain_what_happened_in_october_2016/dk9jvgu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/6nebdk/can_...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
motohagiography 6y ago
Does nobody else appreciate the irony of using a graph, which essentially reduces to a conspiracy chart, to describe conspiracy theories? CT's are just folktales and explanations for things people don't understand or control. A conspiracy theory only becomes dangerous or harmful when it threatens to upset an established order, which makes it oddly self fulfilling, since its real purpose is to facilitate organizing people around counter-establishment narratives. When you look at this paper as a new way to use technology to automatically detect counter-establishment narratives, it seems like pretty standard playbook for a secret elite coordinating to secure and expand their powers, which is hilarious, to me anyway. However, the conclusion includes criteria for detecting actual conspiracies as separate from theories, "We hypothesize that three features—a single domain of interaction, a robustness to deletions of nodes and relationships, and a proliferation of peripheral actants and relationships—are key characteristics of an actual conspiracy and may be helpful in distinguishing actual conspiracies from conspiracy theories. " I think they buried the lede on that one, as a heuristic for evaluating CT's and accusations of them could be super valuable.
- throwaway91774 6y ago
  I'd say it's fitting, not ironic. Conspiracies do exist, and implicit conspiracy-like behaviour does emerge where minds converge too.
Tycho 6y ago
The important thing about 'conspiracy theories'® is that you have charlatans trying to profit off them by misleading people. What I mean is that if they come across information that hurts their narrative, they won't share it, while continuing to posture as honest investigators in search of the truth. And for the readers it's hard to detect this fundamental dishonesty (how do you know what you haven't been told?). This isn't to say that there are no conspiracies, and people aren't justified in looking for explanations, but this mechanism of deceit is what makes it a controversial/goofball topic.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
now do one for "critical race theory"
corona-research 6y ago
My favorite conspiracy: Epstein killed himself.
guilhas 6y ago
I only believe in truths from my government or approved media sources. And I try to think as less as possível so I don't get too tired while doing the 9-5.

114 points by iNic 6y ago

noja 6y ago

For anyone looking for a way of talking to friends or family who are into conspiracy theories, this book is good: https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Rabbit-Hole-Conspiracy-Theories/dp/1510735801/ https://www.amazon.com/Escaping-Rabbit-Hole-Conspiracy-Theor...

sandworm101 6y ago
Is there a book on how to not talk about conspiracy theories? I have some formerly right leaning elderly relatives who are now just plain crazy. They won't stop talking about ridiculous conspiracies. I don't open emails from them anymore. I've given up trying and wish they would at least stop talking to me about them.
- wolfram74 6y ago
  There's the one upping approach, when they start talking about how the moon landing was faked you could call them sheep for believing the moon exists. I don't think it's a good strategy for improving discourse, but some people probably find the creative element enjoyable.
  - oblio 6y ago
    The "Four Yorkshiremen" approach to conspiracy theory discussions :-))
    - jackric 6y ago
      Back in my day, the Earth was static toroid at the centre of the solar system
  - specialist 6y ago
    My bro does this. I'm not convinced it works as intended. But does give him another dopamine hit. To give you a sense of his motivations: He's a former debate captain, coach, judge. Pendants about grammar, punctuation, pronunciation. Still believes logic and facts are persuasive. Especially said louder, with more sarcasm and derision. I'm trying to be less like that. Old habits are hard to change.
    - jackric 6y ago
      Keep upping the wackiness until the other person is the one trying to talk you down, then nourish the arrow of scepticism and reason.
- jl6 6y ago
  Conspiracy theories fill holes in peoples’ lives (lack of belonging, lack of achievement, lack of recognition). Help them fill those holes with something else.
  - jackric 6y ago
    Ooo err
- lez 6y ago
  Send them to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EzSbI-zOk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EzSbI-zOk It is from the INSIDE of the Truth movement, and will convince them to stop talking to everyone about conspiracies - as that's useless and damages human relationships. Also helps them to find meaning in their life.
wrongthoughtbot 6y ago
Normal people with correct thoughts that do not deviate from acceptable thought can wear maybe an arm band to self identify. That would let the conspiracy theorist vicitms know not to waste their time on you. It worked in Germany. https://www.etsy.com/market/hear_no_evil_shirt https://www.etsy.com/market/hear_no_evil_shirt

m12k 6y ago

A headline that truly captures the times we live in. There's something poetic about using machine intelligence to detect human stupidity.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway80332 6y ago
I can't wait until this technology is perfected so that we can finally put an end to online disinformation for good. Those dangerous idiots actually believe that a billionare pedophile spent decades inviting high-ranking politicians and influential decision makers to his private island for orgies with underage girls, and that when he was arrested he managed to hang himself while on suicide watch in a maximum security prison! They really are that deluded and dangerous. This needs to end, now. The nutcases also believe that the governments are working with big tech to eliminate cash so that anybody who doesn't toe the line can be "permanently cancelled". Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? I hope in the future we can just have an algorithm that disables the bank account of anybody who spews such divisive nonsense online. There is no place for that kind of hate in a society that strives for any kind of progress.
- jimktrains2 6y ago
  > I can't wait until this technology is perfected so that we can finally put an end to online disinformation for good. Well, first you need to define "disinformation." It's a non-trivial, and probably a concept that's unable to be rigorously defined.
  - swebs 6y ago
    The entire post is sarcasm.
- wrongthoughtbot 6y ago
  No such thing a throwaway account in New Normal. This is an automated public service notice. You'll be happy to know that our AI now has a sarcasm module. You've been detected and will be cancelled. "An obedient population is a happy population" as all experts agree, and you are an obstable to universal happiness.

peter_l_downs 6y ago

Linked site won't load so here's a vaguely-related book recommendation: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I don't want to spoil it, but it involves a group of writers who try to come up with a single, maximally compelling, conspiracy theory. Reading it sets up a super interesting tension -- the book is clearly fiction, and yet the conspiracy theory it presents is as compelling as any (and in fact incorporates many) of those you'll read "in the wild". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum

EamonnMR 6y ago
Second the recommendation, great book.
epilys 6y ago
This BBC article says that the Illuminati conspiracy theory was the result of an elaborate literary prank https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170809-the-accidental-invention-of-the-illuminati-conspiracy https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170809-the-accidental-i...
KineticLensman 6y ago
I read Foucault's Pendulum and finished it, but it was heavy going. I then read "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" [0] which I enjoyed much more, because it was more intentionally cranky and funny. It is to conspiracy novels as "Airplane!" was to disaster movies, and then some. [Edit] Both of them make Dan Brown look really, really unimpressive. If "The Da Vinci Code" is a vaguely thought-through concept aimed at general readers, "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is an explosion in a conspiracy theory factory. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy
- User23 6y ago
  Everything you say is true, but the Illuminatus! Trilogy also presents some serious philosophy sandwiched between the raunchiness and silliness. For example the SNAFU principle is a reasonable explanation for a lot of what we see in large organizations. Also, expanding Hegelian dialectic by adding Parenthesis and Synthesis to fit the Law of Fives is tongue in cheek, but in a haha only serious kind of way.

throwoutttt 6y ago

Or you could just watch cnn

samizdis 6y ago

A few minutes ago I posted the Ars Technica piece about this, but that was before I'd noticed this one referencing the study directly. I duly deleted the Ars piece, but if anyone wants to read it it is at: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/study-folklore-structure-reveals-how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-fall-apart/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/study-folklore-struc... Edited to add: I remembered a piece posted six months ago, referencing UCLA, along the same/similar lines and have just found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681232

hammock 6y ago

>We show how the Pizzagate framework relies on the conspiracy theorists’ interpretation of “hidden knowledge” to link otherwise unlinked domains of human interaction, and hypothesize that this multi-domain focus is an important feature of conspiracy theories. We contrast this to the single domain focus of an actual conspiracy. While Pizzagate relies on the alignment of multiple domains, Bridgegate remains firmly rooted in the single domain of New Jersey politics This study is interesting work to be sure, but the cause behind their hypothesis might be rooted in how journalism works, rather than whether it's truthful/factual or not. Papers have a NJ politics "beat", with an editor and reporters who are experts in that single domain and are expected to produce work rooted in that specific domain. Or worse, the "single domain" in some instances might be appearing because it was a story fed to the paper by a three-letter agency. Citizen journalists (or whatever less charitable term you want to use) don't really have that. They can focus on whatever they want, and it's much easier to build a narrative that spans multiple domains.

germinalphrase 6y ago
“ Papers have a NJ politics "beat", with an editor and reporters who are experts in that single domain and are expected to produce work rooted in that specific domain.” I suspect that this is increasingly less true every year as local reporting is actively dying.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > “ Papers have a NJ politics "beat", with an editor and reporters who are experts in that single domain and are expected to produce work rooted in that specific domain.” > I suspect that this is increasingly less true every year as local reporting is actively dying. This isn't a new concern, of course[0], but in 2021 local reporting has probably already mostly died as much as it is going to. There just isn't that much money left to take away. [0] https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2017/the-west-wing-totally-predicted-the-great-media-rollup/ https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2017/the-west-wing-total...

aritmo 6y ago

Do these conspiracy theories appear organically or is there a special nudge to make them stick? Who nudges the conspiracy theories to stick?

throwaway80332 6y ago
Most likely it is the team around loser ex-president Donald Trump and nazis like Breitbart, and they are bought and controlled by Vladimir Putin and other right-wing extremists, who hacked the election in 2016 even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a landslide. Do you remember when Donald Trump called nazis "very fine people" and threatened to have journalists assasinated? There is nothing these people won't attemp to destroy our democracy, including putting immigrant children in concentration camps, and spreading dangerous falsehoods and conspiracy theories is just another day at the office for them. And these days it is even worse. I fear for the republic if Trump attempts a coup because they ridiculously claim "the election was hacked"! In short, those paranoid idiots spreading conspiracies are sick and evil and I hope we will have the technology in the near future to keep them under very close surveillance 24x7.
- overallduka 6y ago
  You literally are using a left wing conspiracy theory to corroborate your arguments against CT. You just want shut down opinions that disagrees with you, you are not interested in truth at all, if the IA disagree with you probably you would call the IA "racist" or "nazi".
- vharuck 6y ago
  Sarcasm doesn't work very well on the internet. Even when it's obvious, it rarely improves the discussion.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  It is hard to tell whether this is sarcasm or not.
Item_Boring 6y ago
I can’t answer your question but maybe you’ll find this paper interesting [0]. TLDR: social bots are highly responsible for spreading misinformation - and for such also conspiracy theories. By tagging people with a lot of followers and tweeting the information multiple times they attempt to make it go viral. Keep in mind that this paper concerns the 2016 elections. [0] http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf

tchalla 6y ago

Since the site won't load, an alternative - https://sci-hub.st/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233879 https://sci-hub.st/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...

Anka33 6y ago

CNN?

RobertoG 6y ago

I have observed that speed of change in supporting facts is very important in Internet conspiracy theories (CT) vs. the old conspiracy theories. It goes like this: you find a surprising fact that, if true, will support the CT. You go to investigate it, which, of course, take some time. You realize that the fact has a normal explanation but, when you go back to conversation of the CT, that's not a relevant fact in the conversation anymore. There is a new fact, or more, supporting the CT. Start the process again. It's impossible to catch with the fact that it's, at the moment, supporting the CT. I think, this is different from the old way conspiracy theories, where people just believed highly improbable things. It also makes it more appealing to more people, because, if you take it all globally and don't look carefully, it really looks like there is a lot of evidence.

jjk166 6y ago
I think the opposite is really the case. Back in the day, fact checking was incredibly difficult. If you were a domain expert, you might notice something was off, then go to the library to double check the information, and if the library happened to have what you needed you could try to convince your close friends and family of the truth. The other 99.99% of what you heard on the news or read in the paper was simply accepted as fact. Conspiracy theories were, at the time, either what the news said were conspiracy theories, or ideas so fringe that the news didn't even talk about them. Nowadays, we are a few thumb movements away from fact checking literally any piece of human knowledge. There hasn't been a sudden proliferation of fake news, it's just more readily apparent. As it has become easier to spot the holes in shoddy reporting, faith in journalistic institutions has plummeted. More people are getting news from alternative sources whose quality is variable. For better or for worse, there are simply more versions of stories nowadays. To try to retain viewers, traditional media outlets have tried to cultivate an image of themselves as the arbiters of truth which they once defacto were, and to do so have been quite liberal with labelling their competition as conspiracy theories. We haven't seen any uptick in the number of people wearing tinfoil hats to keep out the mind control rays or claiming any given senator is a lizard person. Instead, we live in a world where you're labelled a conspiracy theorist if you don't think there is a shadowy cabal of government agents spreading misinformation to manipulate us or depending on which of the past two presidential elections you think was illegitimate. Even small deviations from the narrative of any particular bubble are heretical, but that narrative, and every other one, is composed from the incomplete knowledge of fallible people, so invariably as time goes on you will start to notice inconsistencies in the story. In years gone by, we would have simply chalked this up to someone being misinformed, people could admit they were wrong and papers could print retractions and we'd all forget about it. But now the combination of the record being so readily accessible and the increased role of our media consumption in our personal identity means we have forgone nuance and are strongly pressured to adhere to increasingly absurd stories. It's so much easier to label the other side as stupid and crazy than to try to demonstrate the veracity of our position and face the fact that we are not entirely correct either, but if we do not strive for truth ourselves, it becomes easy for them to see the faults in our logic and further convince themselves that we, in fact, are the crazy and stupid ones. tl;dr there are many more non-mainstream narratives being labelled as conspiracy theories at the same time that the mainstream narrators who would normally dispel them are losing credibility.

haunter 6y ago

I'd much love to read a paper like this applied to conspiracy theories that became true (Epstein, PRISM etc). Basically reverse engineering

pdabbadabba 6y ago
Agreed! But did I miss the part where the Epstein conspiracy theory was demonstrated to be true?
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  Yeah. Without pulling up sources it's on his second paragraph of his wikipedia page, which tends to avoid conspiracies etc. "He developed an elite social circle and procured many women and children who were then sexually abused by Epstein and some of his contacts."
  - pdabbadabba 6y ago
    Oh, that part. Absolutely. I didn't even realize that was ever considered a conspiracy theory. I thought GP was referring to his death!
    - nautilus12 6y ago
      Was most certainly branded as a conspiracy theory until it was revealed. This is why I think people are more apt to believe other conspiracy theories around him as well
      - jberryman 6y ago
        What do you mean "until it was revealed"? There was some pretty exhaustive reporting a decade and a half ago, but no one really payed much attention. And certainly his high-profile connections weren't a secret. Conspiracy-minded people imagine a deep shroud of secrecy around the Epstein affair that doesn't really exist.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

The important bits of the abstract to me. > how conspiracy theories ... and their factual counterpart conspiracies... We show how the Pizzagate framework relies on the conspiracy theorists’ interpretation of “hidden knowledge” to link otherwise unlinked domains of human interaction, and hypothesize that this multi-domain focus is an important feature of conspiracy theories. We contrast this to the single domain focus of an actual conspiracy. By highlighting the structural differences between the two narrative frameworks, our approach could be used by private and public analysts to help distinguish between conspiracy theories and conspiracies. I'm not sure how to interpret this new classification of true conspiracies as just "conspiracies" and false ones as "conspiracy theories" that they seem to be pushing in this paper. Many things others called conspiracy theory were eventually proven to be true, at least in some degree, and those things are often still called conspiracy theories because they have uncomfortable truths that people would rather not acknowledge as factual. This seems like an abuse of terminology in some way to me. Before I delve to deeply into this, I will first say, however; As an open conspiracy theorist, (doing my best to "take back" the phrase), who tries to stick to the facts as much as possible, I have long thought about how a scientific approach could be used to prove the likelyhood of what others call conspiracy theories, and the longer I have thought on the matter the more I have great hope that some researchers or other would stumble upon this likely-career hurting approach to said theories. While I disagree with the papers characterization of certain theories as true and certain ones as false, both due to the black and white label and the lack of context primarily surrounding the accusations of the narrative framework of the true to be one that is in more flux and single domain vs the one of the untrue being constantly in less flux and multi-domain, I think this approach could be modified and put to better use beyond the limitations of this paper itself, primarily because the root of their study is the same as a serious conspiracy theory researcher: "actants (people, places, things), relationships between actants, and a sequencing of these relationships". It is only in the application of this approach to center on stories and social media that a series of methodological mistakes emerge to weaken the paper. I could go into some of the details if wanted about these weaknesses, but in general on HN I try to keep the discussion more meta on the topic of conspiracy theories in order to not devolve the conversation too much. One example I will give however, is their overreliance on certain sources of data (twitter, reddit) that were considered at best secondary to the more deep and open conversations (the chans, irc, etc) being had on certain topics (pizzagate for example) juxtaposed against the reliance on UCLA aggregates of NJ newspapers on the topic of Bridgegate. I know, I was participating in all of the above when the last post which "broke the last straw" on reddit caused the sub to be banned. [1] Again, I don't say this to start a discussion on pizzagate as it is likely to devolve quickly, but rather to show I'm not making up my accusations of methodological weakness based on nothing. This sort of snowball methodological weakness then undermines their conclusion, which quickly goes off the rails into so many tropes and cliches not backed by their data and research it quite surprises me to see the the authors take a semi-defensible approach and allow it to be deteriorated by such a series of erroneous "conclusions". Go read the conclusion section for yourself if you think I am exaggerating. 1. https://archive.md/MrsGu https://archive.md/MrsGu edit: in particular I would like to call out their overreliance on calling conspiracy theory discussion some variation of "imaginative interpretations of “hidden knowledge”". In reality, and this is something I frequently like to stress to my more logical/scientific friends who are skeptical of certain conspiracy theories, what many conspiracy theories rely on, often without being aware of it (to their detriment) is a series of inductive logical conclusions, as opposed to a series of deductive logical conclusions. Rightly so I say, because in the domain of conspiracy theory you often lack the hard evidence to back claims, and therefor must often rely on inductive logic instead (and the lack of deductive evidence does not alway indicate untruthfulness as is often assumed). This is one of the keys that helped me get past many issues, because when it comes to conspiracy theories true or not, the real crux is the probabalistic likelyhood of truth which can be modified as more data points emerge, not some black and white true and untrue label.

ppod 6y ago

You'd think considering academics do the reviewing, proofing, and typesetting for free the $1600 publication fee might enable the publisher to at least make a site that can stand up to HN traffic. Here's an arxiv version: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.09961 https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.09961

corona-research 6y ago

Is mass surveillance a conspiracy theory?

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

This technology can’t come soon enough. I still meet people who don’t believe Iraq has WMDs and that we invaded simply because of the oil.

boredumb 6y ago

We're actually doing a Rust application that downloads the image snopes is displaying for that particular conspiracy theory in order to feed them into a tensor flow model and predict the validity of future conspiracies.

jackric 6y ago
Shut up and take my money

throwaway91774 6y ago

I watched pizzagate grow from day 0, AMA. I spent an inordinate amount of time on /pol/ around the 2016 election and when Wikileaks made the emails available I was among those hitting the random button to see what we could find. The authors of the paper did a great job in understanding a key feature; (vacuous) conspiraciy theories involve a lot of jumping to conclusions, and are all over the place (multi-domain). At the time there was so much momentum to find dirt on Hillary, that every silly comment seen through chan culture lenses became a zero-point energy engine, and suddenly we were swimming in mspaint.exe infographics pulled out of thin air. I was never a believer though, but I did enjoy the shitstorm, and human trafficking is a real thing. I was disappointed that people was so fed up with the matter that Epstein's suicide was not a bigger deal with the general public.

deorder 6y ago
You might find the following interesting: 2016 election timeline: https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6fyugv/link_your_oldest_rconspiracy_post_and_say_what/dimqin0/ https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6fyugv/link_you... 2016 summary of Wikileaks events: https://old.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/6nebdk/can_someone_explain_what_happened_in_october_2016/dk9jvgu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/6nebdk/can_...
- deleted 6y ago
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motohagiography 6y ago

Does nobody else appreciate the irony of using a graph, which essentially reduces to a conspiracy chart, to describe conspiracy theories? CT's are just folktales and explanations for things people don't understand or control. A conspiracy theory only becomes dangerous or harmful when it threatens to upset an established order, which makes it oddly self fulfilling, since its real purpose is to facilitate organizing people around counter-establishment narratives. When you look at this paper as a new way to use technology to automatically detect counter-establishment narratives, it seems like pretty standard playbook for a secret elite coordinating to secure and expand their powers, which is hilarious, to me anyway. However, the conclusion includes criteria for detecting actual conspiracies as separate from theories, "We hypothesize that three features—a single domain of interaction, a robustness to deletions of nodes and relationships, and a proliferation of peripheral actants and relationships—are key characteristics of an actual conspiracy and may be helpful in distinguishing actual conspiracies from conspiracy theories. " I think they buried the lede on that one, as a heuristic for evaluating CT's and accusations of them could be super valuable.

throwaway91774 6y ago
I'd say it's fitting, not ironic. Conspiracies do exist, and implicit conspiracy-like behaviour does emerge where minds converge too.

Tycho 6y ago

The important thing about 'conspiracy theories'® is that you have charlatans trying to profit off them by misleading people. What I mean is that if they come across information that hurts their narrative, they won't share it, while continuing to posture as honest investigators in search of the truth. And for the readers it's hard to detect this fundamental dishonesty (how do you know what you haven't been told?). This isn't to say that there are no conspiracies, and people aren't justified in looking for explanations, but this mechanism of deceit is what makes it a controversial/goofball topic.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

now do one for "critical race theory"

corona-research 6y ago

My favorite conspiracy: Epstein killed himself.

guilhas 6y ago

I only believe in truths from my government or approved media sources. And I try to think as less as possível so I don't get too tired while doing the 9-5.