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The persistence and spread of psychological delusions explains how extremely irrational ideas such as conspiracy theories, even of them most ludicrous kind, can

The persistence and spread of psychological delusions explains how extremely irrational ideas such as conspiracy theories, even of them most ludicrous kind, can gain hold and even spread. If some people can believe that a dog bite will make a male pregnant with a puppy, and this irrational idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population, then even the most ridiculous idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population. Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process, even if it's harmful to the person and their society.

shadowgovt 5y ago
I think that rational thought is a subset of human pattern recognition, which is the more fundamental process. Some patterns are rational and some are not. But discerning the two takes special training beyond the basic human ability to notice correlations and infer causality from them.
- rexreed 5y ago
  Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought. Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Have we always needed this? Does it require more than the trivial rationality of a neural net? At some point in our evolutionary history, we had the same capacity for rationality as many other species. What made that change, the non-(proto-) human part of environment, or the society created by the proto-humans? When it did emerge, did it emerge as an automatic behaviour, or as the capacity to learn that skill? And here I’m assuming it’s one skill rather than many — we do have many apparently irrational cognitive biases. I suspect (but don’t know how to test the idea) that all our cognitive biases are necessary irrationalities to allow us to reach generally useful conclusions on far too little data.
      - rexreed 5y ago
        When birds run into windows killing themselves, is that an expression of reflex or cognitive bias? Are birds capable of the rational thought to avoid running into windows or is their brain only wired for impulse? Clearly birds are smart enough (at least some species) to be able to mimic human voices and perform complex tasks (carrier pigeons). They learn where the food is and hang around boats or people (seagulls / pigeons). So maybe this is not a solely-human characteristic?
        ben_w 5y ago
        I think you and I are agreeing here? That rationality is hard and not automatic.
        rexreed 5y ago
        Yes we indeed are agreeing.
      - BurningFrog 5y ago
        I think both spear hunting wild animals and farming with stone age tech are both real hard problems that will weed out the dimwitted from the gene pool. That said, the prevailing theory of how we evolved intelligence is that it was for handling the social dynamics of a 100+ people tribe.
recursivedoubts 5y ago
As this behavior is apparently universal amongst humans, if you are a darwinian then you must accept that this irrational behavior has some basis in the fitness of societies. It may be rational, as a society, to be irrational.
- hobs 5y ago
  It's not survival of the fittest, its survival of the ones that survive. An organism can have many maladaptations and as long as it continues to be successful enough that they dont drag it down to complete extinction.
  - throwamon 5y ago
    > An organism can have many maladaptations and as long as it continues to be successful enough ... Thus making it the fittest [among the population]?
  - ljm 5y ago
    Survival of the survivors is comically tautological. Surely there is still something that survivors have in common that makes them the fittest, or non-survivors have in common that makes them the not-fittest.
    - jacobr1 5y ago
      The point is more that the fitness occurs on a net-basis. The more-fit traits outweigh the unfit traits. It is equally possible that humans as a species or sub-groups of humans are fit _despite_ irrationality as opposed to irrationality being adaptive. I suspect, however, that irrationality is actually a collection of a wide variety of cognitive traits and heuristics, some helpful in some circumstance, some not helpful, and these are not only situational but also vary by degree.
- Retric 5y ago
  Evolution doesn’t efficiently optimize everything. On a mechanical level every person has several mutations but failing to reproduce is a very weak signal to correct them. Clearly beneficial or harmful mutations have significant pressure, neutral ones don’t.
NoOneNew 5y ago
I'm curious how tied these delusions are to unfulfilled narcissism. For the most part, I've only seen these wild claims in folks who... well... have nothing going on in their lives. I mean, take most bigfoot or aliens-abducted-me folks. If they didnt have that, they're incredibly boring people. Like, they dont even have a hobby they're mediocre at. Add a sudden urge for attention due to mild narcissism or mid life crisis, they'll leap to anything for a group to give then attention. What makes this worse is mass media in general. One person gains attention, then the copycats get triggered to do the same thing. Hell, as an innocent parallel, we do the same with fashion. We see someone looks cool/beautiful wearing a certain outfit, people buy it to get the same looks/attention. Omega watches really only do well because of James Bond. Anyways, the whole thing snowballs. More and more people do it with each instance of successful attention gained. Just an observation I think applies to like 80% of these people. Sure, 20% or 10% are true believers. I think the other 80-90% just need to take up painting or woodworking to get the attention they want from others. Fuck... I hope so at least... or I dont want to live on a planet where guys think they can have a litter of puppies. The amount of stupid in that is painful to comprehend.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  The reality is many high ranking officials and professionals have seen things and gone on record. What you are commenting on is how something is protrayed in the media / film. That stereotype isn't accurate but it is accepted truth from late night talk show hosts.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  What you are describing is called Munchausen Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...
  - NoOneNew 5y ago
    Hmmm, totally related, I agree. But I feel like that's a, "give me attention because something is wrong with me". I think, and wtf do I know, conspiracy quacks are, "give me attention because I have special knowledge/I know the truth/I connected the dots". I might just be splitting hairs. Either way, thanks for the link.
disambiguation 5y ago
> Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process IMO it's human nature, we're inclined to an authority based mentality; either appeal to authority and defying authority. Consider that I'm likely to take statements from my friends and family at face value because A. I've built trust with them and B. it's expensive to sit down and thoroughly verify every little detail. And vice-versa. This is a feature not a bug! It's more pragmatic to have 1 person verify 1 thing than to have everyone trying to verify the same thing. This is true at the scale of society as well, for ex. I'm not smart enough to understand how mRNA vaccines work, but I'll accept their word and the data at face value that it does what it's supposed to. But the real question is what is straining our trust in society and each-other? (Again IMO) due to technology, we live in an unprecedented era of illusion and fake-ness. Our news is fake, internet celebrities cultivate fake lifestyles deep-fakes likes, upvotes, and ad-clicks are fake the reviews are fake the comments are fake algorithms track and "select" our content and on the flip-side, our entertainment, movies, and TV shows have never been more realistic And to top it all off, now there are UFOs! The line between real and fake has been totally blurred. Automating disinformation is a new thing, and we've been totally saturated with noise and information. We're in a transitional period and our old institutions are not equipped for what new technology is capable of. And it's a feedback loop where as institutions decay, our leaders become increasingly corrupt. Our politicians and scientists have incentive to be dishonest, and have admitted to giving false narratives that are "in the best interest of society". Therefore there are many who no longer trust authority figures who were meant to be ambassadors of the truth. Therefore some believe we can become pregnant with puppies.
- rexreed 5y ago
  So if a family member starts believing they will give birth to puppies, you will instantly give that credibility? How does this follow when irrationality is clearly at an extreme? And what if your father believes in UFOs and your mother doesn't? There's something more than just giving credence due to authority, especially in these extreme circumstances.
  - 5y ago

shadowgovt 5y ago

I think that rational thought is a subset of human pattern recognition, which is the more fundamental process. Some patterns are rational and some are not. But discerning the two takes special training beyond the basic human ability to notice correlations and infer causality from them.

rexreed 5y ago
Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought. Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Have we always needed this? Does it require more than the trivial rationality of a neural net? At some point in our evolutionary history, we had the same capacity for rationality as many other species. What made that change, the non-(proto-) human part of environment, or the society created by the proto-humans? When it did emerge, did it emerge as an automatic behaviour, or as the capacity to learn that skill? And here I’m assuming it’s one skill rather than many — we do have many apparently irrational cognitive biases. I suspect (but don’t know how to test the idea) that all our cognitive biases are necessary irrationalities to allow us to reach generally useful conclusions on far too little data.
    - rexreed 5y ago
      When birds run into windows killing themselves, is that an expression of reflex or cognitive bias? Are birds capable of the rational thought to avoid running into windows or is their brain only wired for impulse? Clearly birds are smart enough (at least some species) to be able to mimic human voices and perform complex tasks (carrier pigeons). They learn where the food is and hang around boats or people (seagulls / pigeons). So maybe this is not a solely-human characteristic?
      - ben_w 5y ago
        I think you and I are agreeing here? That rationality is hard and not automatic.
        rexreed 5y ago
        Yes we indeed are agreeing.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      I think both spear hunting wild animals and farming with stone age tech are both real hard problems that will weed out the dimwitted from the gene pool. That said, the prevailing theory of how we evolved intelligence is that it was for handling the social dynamics of a 100+ people tribe.

recursivedoubts 5y ago

As this behavior is apparently universal amongst humans, if you are a darwinian then you must accept that this irrational behavior has some basis in the fitness of societies. It may be rational, as a society, to be irrational.

hobs 5y ago
It's not survival of the fittest, its survival of the ones that survive. An organism can have many maladaptations and as long as it continues to be successful enough that they dont drag it down to complete extinction.
- throwamon 5y ago
  > An organism can have many maladaptations and as long as it continues to be successful enough ... Thus making it the fittest [among the population]?
- ljm 5y ago
  Survival of the survivors is comically tautological. Surely there is still something that survivors have in common that makes them the fittest, or non-survivors have in common that makes them the not-fittest.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    The point is more that the fitness occurs on a net-basis. The more-fit traits outweigh the unfit traits. It is equally possible that humans as a species or sub-groups of humans are fit _despite_ irrationality as opposed to irrationality being adaptive. I suspect, however, that irrationality is actually a collection of a wide variety of cognitive traits and heuristics, some helpful in some circumstance, some not helpful, and these are not only situational but also vary by degree.
Retric 5y ago
Evolution doesn’t efficiently optimize everything. On a mechanical level every person has several mutations but failing to reproduce is a very weak signal to correct them. Clearly beneficial or harmful mutations have significant pressure, neutral ones don’t.

NoOneNew 5y ago

I'm curious how tied these delusions are to unfulfilled narcissism. For the most part, I've only seen these wild claims in folks who... well... have nothing going on in their lives. I mean, take most bigfoot or aliens-abducted-me folks. If they didnt have that, they're incredibly boring people. Like, they dont even have a hobby they're mediocre at. Add a sudden urge for attention due to mild narcissism or mid life crisis, they'll leap to anything for a group to give then attention. What makes this worse is mass media in general. One person gains attention, then the copycats get triggered to do the same thing. Hell, as an innocent parallel, we do the same with fashion. We see someone looks cool/beautiful wearing a certain outfit, people buy it to get the same looks/attention. Omega watches really only do well because of James Bond. Anyways, the whole thing snowballs. More and more people do it with each instance of successful attention gained. Just an observation I think applies to like 80% of these people. Sure, 20% or 10% are true believers. I think the other 80-90% just need to take up painting or woodworking to get the attention they want from others. Fuck... I hope so at least... or I dont want to live on a planet where guys think they can have a litter of puppies. The amount of stupid in that is painful to comprehend.

ipaddr 5y ago
The reality is many high ranking officials and professionals have seen things and gone on record. What you are commenting on is how something is protrayed in the media / film. That stereotype isn't accurate but it is accepted truth from late night talk show hosts.
marcodiego 5y ago
What you are describing is called Munchausen Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...
- NoOneNew 5y ago
  Hmmm, totally related, I agree. But I feel like that's a, "give me attention because something is wrong with me". I think, and wtf do I know, conspiracy quacks are, "give me attention because I have special knowledge/I know the truth/I connected the dots". I might just be splitting hairs. Either way, thanks for the link.

disambiguation 5y ago

> Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process IMO it's human nature, we're inclined to an authority based mentality; either appeal to authority and defying authority. Consider that I'm likely to take statements from my friends and family at face value because A. I've built trust with them and B. it's expensive to sit down and thoroughly verify every little detail. And vice-versa. This is a feature not a bug! It's more pragmatic to have 1 person verify 1 thing than to have everyone trying to verify the same thing. This is true at the scale of society as well, for ex. I'm not smart enough to understand how mRNA vaccines work, but I'll accept their word and the data at face value that it does what it's supposed to. But the real question is what is straining our trust in society and each-other? (Again IMO) due to technology, we live in an unprecedented era of illusion and fake-ness. Our news is fake, internet celebrities cultivate fake lifestyles deep-fakes likes, upvotes, and ad-clicks are fake the reviews are fake the comments are fake algorithms track and "select" our content and on the flip-side, our entertainment, movies, and TV shows have never been more realistic And to top it all off, now there are UFOs! The line between real and fake has been totally blurred. Automating disinformation is a new thing, and we've been totally saturated with noise and information. We're in a transitional period and our old institutions are not equipped for what new technology is capable of. And it's a feedback loop where as institutions decay, our leaders become increasingly corrupt. Our politicians and scientists have incentive to be dishonest, and have admitted to giving false narratives that are "in the best interest of society". Therefore there are many who no longer trust authority figures who were meant to be ambassadors of the truth. Therefore some believe we can become pregnant with puppies.

rexreed 5y ago
So if a family member starts believing they will give birth to puppies, you will instantly give that credibility? How does this follow when irrationality is clearly at an extreme? And what if your father believes in UFOs and your mother doesn't? There's something more than just giving credence due to authority, especially in these extreme circumstances.
- 5y ago