9 ms·

Conspiracy theories bypass people’s rationality

55 points by Anon84 5y ago

rurban 5y ago
Many news articles also. Disinformation is going on on both sides
- Bancakes 5y ago
  At least conspiracy theories have little profitable shock value, as opposed to popular media. It can all stay in our heads.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  We might be missing the forest for the trees here. I think the "angry emoji" being 5x stronger than "like emoji" from Facebook is the key finding this week. Conspiracy theories would make people angry, possibly responding with the angry emoji, and then THOSE posts would have 5x higher scores than "like" emojis on Facebook. Why are people drawn into conspiracy theories? Because when other people react angrily to a post (angry emoji), that post becomes 5x more popular than if they reacted with a simple like. In such an environment, any disinformation would become the most popular* (popular as measured by Facebook, and pushed to the top of feeds). That's the kind of online life that people have been living if they're a part of Facebook. ------- Downvote?? Has anyone missed out on the news? https://thehill.com/policy/technology/578548-facebook-formula-gave-anger-five-times-weight-of-likes-documents-show https://thehill.com/policy/technology/578548-facebook-formul... This is news to me, so yeah, its something I've been thinking about today. Conspiracy theories existed forever (moon landings faked. Holocaust didn't happen. JFK assassination, etc. etc.). But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard? Well, there we go. Anger-emoji seems to explain a lot of it.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. Some conspiracies theories can be real, as conspiracies are possible. Dismissing everything as just a "conspiracy theory" is dangerous as it allows those in power to abuse plausible deniability and if anyone questions them they can be labeled a conspiracy theorist easily. It's reasonable to be curious and want answers. Generally these conspiracies come about when people don't get direct answers or proof to their questions. Then there are flat earthers, moon landing conspiracists etc that have had evidence (a plane or shining a laser on reflectors on the moon) for awhile and still won't concede, I'd argue they are a very small minority though.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      The point is that Facebook has a machine learning algorithm that assigns 5x as many points to ":-(" than to "like". Sure, conspiracies exist on occasion. But by favoring the "angry" conspiracies over all others, you're still making a negative environment.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        I was replying more generically to you. I don't feel like that FB revelation relates to conspiracies at all. It's the same tactic news outlets use, emotional kneejerk stories gets people mad so they keep coming back.
  - dghughes 5y ago
    On reddit a post that is downvoted seems to slowly drop at first say -1, then maybe -5 then -6. But then at some point there is a tipping point a frenzy that seems to take over people. The downvotes suddenly are in the -10s then -100s per hour. It's not even on controversial posts it just seems once the hate starts it snowballs at a certain point. You can tell the mood often by the upvotes to comments ratio. If it has 100 upvotes but 1,000 comments it's most likely a mess of bickering and threats in the comments. But that doesn't seem to necessarily affect the downvote mood but it's likely going to have at least comment one downvoted into oblivion for no reason.
  - fuckcensorship 5y ago
    > Why are people drawn into conspiracy theories? Because when other people react angrily to a post (angry emoji), that post becomes 5x more popular than if they reacted with a simple like. You may be partly correct if you only wish to answer your question within the context of Facebook, but more generally I think the belief and propagation of “conspiracy theories” is a symptom of people’s decreasing control over their reality and an inability to understand it.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Why wouldn't people believe the Holocaust happened? Well, it wasn't too hard to believe that a large political group: the National Socialists of Germany (Nazi for short), got a lot of people to think in a certain manner. Not just in Germany, but also influenced the world (ex: Vichy France, etc. etc.). Such influence extended even into the USA, across the Atlantic. When those who fell under Nazi influence were told about the horrors of the Holocaust, its not too surprising that they'd deny the claims, because they felt like the Nazis were a good philosophy. ----------- I dunno. Its not very hard for me to imagine why people fall for conspiracy theories. You feel that a group you're in is getting attacked by another group, and you instinctively defend the group you're a part of. A Nazi sympathizer will see the Holocaust claims as disinformation, and instinctively defend the Nazi philosophy. --------- What is new and interesting, to me, is the speed at which conspiracies seem to spread _today_. It seems faster and more virulent than before. Understanding the mechanisms of social media is probably key. We've had TV, Newspapers, even "fake news" (called Yellow Journalism in the WW2 era), and propaganda (Dr. Seuss / Disney made lots of wartime propaganda). That's not new at all. People understand that the media manipulates their viewpoints. I think people have less of an understanding of how social media is shaping our society. Sometimes for the better, but in this topic of conspiracies... for the worse.
    - bmhin 5y ago
      > propagation of “conspiracy theories” is a symptom of people’s decreasing control over their reality and an inability to understand it. I've always thought "conspiracies" were pretty simply this. Some folks have a deep aversion to the idea that things are often just "Yeah, no one really knows what's going on and there's some chaotic things happening". That can apply to genuinely unknowable/chaotic things or just things that are beyond an individuals understanding even if they might be well understood by others. The idea of meaningless chaos is so revolting that a simple and, very importantly, human source must be what is really happening because then there's someone in control and that is more comforting (despite being a grim state of affairs if true) and sensible.
  - Epenthesis 5y ago
    It's weird to me that that article's headline emphasizes "angry emojis" have 5x higher score than "likes (and repeats it in the first paragraph) and then only lower down explains it's in fact that any emotion emoji (including "love", "care" and "haha") produce a 5x higher score than a simple like. And it doesn't even explicitly state it, instead saying first "A person was able to react with emojis that correlated to “angry,” “sad,” “haha,” “love” and “wow.”" and then "If a person reacted with an emoji instead of the “like” button, the Facebook algorithm would see the post as five times more valuable and push similar content.", requiring the user to draw an inference that all emojis were treated equally, despite the priming that it only refers to "angry" earlier in the article. This feels, ironically, like an intentionally inflammatory framing.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Somewhat. In the Twitter world, there's a concept called getting "Ratioed", which is when your comments exceed the number of retweets / likes. The idea is (at least on Twitter), "better" posts are roughly the ones that have more eyeballs but fewer reactions. "Getting Ratioed" is a bad thing. You want your tweets to get many eyeballs but not a lot of back-and-forth discussion (as back-and-forth discussion is often a proxy for toxicity) In contrast: Facebook is clearly of the opinion that "better" posts are the ones where people feel like making a comment on. Surprise surprise, Facebook is beginning to look like the more toxic social network.
      - Epenthesis 5y ago
        While it's true that the article indicates FB views comments as positive signals, that's definitely not the primary focus of it, which is about likes vs "higher intentionality likes + other emotions".
        dragontamer 5y ago
        Why award anger at all?
  - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
    > But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard? They spread much faster without any real gatekeeping on them like we had with more centralized media structures. Algorithms tend to be more reactionary (e.g. "devalue QAnon posts") so they're perpetually lagging behind whatever the current conspiracy flavor of the week is. Couple that with, IMO, a mental health crisis the likes we haven't seen in a long time and existing addictive habits created by social media companies chasing engagement. It's hard to pin the blame on any one party here. At some level, misinformation spread is fueled by people who want to believe this sort of thing, or feel like they need to be seen sharing the right type of information, correctness be damned. The best way out for many folks is some time away from the platforms, self-reflection, and filling the void that is being met by conspiracy theories.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    Conspiracy theories have always existed and the jury is out whether they are more prevalent now than in the past. See https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/the-enduring-allure-conspiracies https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/the-enduring-... But I see social media as a place where people feel permitted to share conspiracy theories. If you engage with social media a lot it seems half the world is crazy. If you only engage with people in real life people are seemingly as sensible as ever, because social conventions force them to mostly keep a lid on things.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard? I think that at least part of it is from foreign disinformation campaigns. I can't prove it, so maybe this is just my own conspiracy theory ;-) (As a semi-serious theory, it wouldn't surprise me if Q was in fact a Russian disinformation campaign.)
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      It wouldn't surprise me if the moon-landings conspiracy theories were also Russian disinformation campaigns. Some conspiracies just work too well / too beneficial to the Russian / Soviets worldview. But yes, conspiracy theories are fun. I'm not against them in general. I'm just against the toxic ones. "The Question" is one of my favorite comic book characters.
- dgb23 5y ago
  Both sides? The world seems to be much more complex and heterogenous than you are suggesting. There are a lot of different voices, networks and biases. Too many to divide it with such a crass simplification.
- fortuna86 5y ago
  Lazy take. Only "one side" is attacking the capitol, pushing voter suppression, etc.
  - postalrat 5y ago
    Your perception and wording has been carefully crafted.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Well, the other side did capture blocks of a state capitol and a police station and made demands, resulting in 6 people's deaths, 2 being black teenagers their "security" mistook for a drive by shooter, gunning them down. (CHAZ)
    - fortuna86 5y ago
      > capture blocks of a state capitol and a police station and made demands, resulting in 6 people's deaths [citation needed] And if you've going to link to a random blog or social media account, don't bother.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        To which part of the statement. It's easy to look up their demands, the areas they captured, and the people who died there. I thought it was pretty common knowledge what they demanded and the people who were killed during it. Are you disputing that noone died during it, or they didn't block off areas and make demands?
        fortuna86 5y ago
        Please link to the specific act of a mob violently storming a public building killing 6 people in the process, or please stop wasting everyone's time with senseless distractions and whataboutisms.
        5y ago
zby 5y ago
This is treating the Qanon believers as passive receivers - the more interesting question is how all those compelling stories are being created: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/epistemic-minor-leagues https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/epistemic-minor-league...
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I don't agree with this. Conspiracy theories are often unprovable. There have been conspiracy theories which were made verifiable after classified documents were made available, for example, but until that happened the theories were unprovable and "rationally" false. The "rational" part of believing in conspiracy theories is understanding two things: 1) Are the people you accuse of doing X, Y, and Z capable of doing it, covering it up, and getting away with it 2) Just because proof doesn't exist now doesn't mean something won't be proven in the future, i.e. we don't know everything and we never will. We can't only operate on things we prove to ourselves. We have to take some things on instinct.
twirlock 5y ago
So does the idiotic worldview being force fed to us by the media.
pwned1 5y ago
How about a mention that so many "conspiracy theories" have a certain grain of truth to them, and the fact that corporate media tries so hard to make sure you're not aware of those things? The Jeffrey Epstein story is so deep and disturbing, but no one in media will touch it in any depth. Or even do anything more than superficially acknowledge it. The fact that an article like this doesn't even acknowledge that there are underlying truths that contribute to conspiracy theories ultimately contributes to the spread of conspiracy theories. To be clear, I'm not defending Q. But to attack "Q" in a pseudo-intellectual way without pointing out that there is often a truth at the center of these theories is further evidence used by conspiracy theorists to show that truths are being covered up. The arrogance of articles like this talk is to down to the "stupid people" who believe in such things. But people know there are crazy, almost unbelievable truths out there, like Epstein or MK-ULTRA (and the absolutely nuts connection between MK-ULTRA, Charles Manson, and Jack Ruby).
- fortuna86 5y ago
  > but no one in media will touch it in any depth. He was eventually arrested because of a single reporters non-stop work: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/business/media/miami-herald-epstein.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/business/media/miami-hera...
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > The arrogance of articles like this talk is to down to the "stupid people" who believe in such things. I didn't read condescension in this article. What I read was a defense of innate rationality, and an attempt to understand why otherwise rational human beings (i.e., all of us) get sucked so easily into conspiratorial thought.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    The reason people get sucked into conspiratorial thought is because the human mind is highly susceptible to believing what it is told is true, based on not great reasoning or evidence. We are surrounded by this phenomenon, we just don't notice because if everyone agrees on not-actually-true "truths", it is *normal, and therefore completely bypasses our intuitive filter....and if someone is to point out imperfections in popular mainstream narratives, intuitive responses like "That's different!" or "That's just a conspiracy theory!" will be typical responses. If one was to actually study this phenomenon in journalism and social media, I suspect the abstract variations of these responses would be a fairly small list, so similar is intuitive thinking between individual human beings. As long as our humanity (and science) continues to not expose the varieties of extremely important patterns of behavior in the human mind, these exploits will remain unseen, and can be used for good or evil. If we want conspiracy theories to go away for good, expose what makes them possible, and in turn give up the magical power authorities have over the public. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.
cma 5y ago
> People can also find conspiracy theories entertaining – and the more entertaining people find them, it seems, the more likely they are to believe in them. There is a lot to this. Entertaining can be enough, but often it's entertaining + hatred of a person or group + political manuevering/scapegoating (motive for spreading negative rumors and conspiracies even if a large portion spreading them don't truly believe them, or at least allowing them to more easily genuinely suspend disbelief). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace
anonnyj 5y ago
You are not immune to propaganda.
hindsightbias 5y ago
Citation required that people are rational to begin with.
- mistermann 5y ago
  Rationalization is often perceived as rationality, and it's commonly used in journalism. If the authors of hit pieces like these turned their critical eye onto popular cultural fairy tales, everyone would look like a fool.
betwixthewires 5y ago
What a load of horse shit. It's basically all the "we have to control the flow of information" nonsense we have been hearing packaged again in the same predictable format. There is nothing thoughtful or compelling in this article whatsoever. It checks all the boxes. Pizzagate? Of course. Q? Trump? January 6th "insurrection"? Yes, all the boogymen must be mentioned. The author made sure to include the usual suspects, because really that's what this article is about.
- fortuna86 5y ago
  You seem very casual about very real threats to democracy. Is it because it's your team doing the agitation ?
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    Permitting citizens to freely participate in the electoral process is not a threat to democracy.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I don't have a team, if I did it certainly wouldn't be the Q wackos. You know what a real threat to democracy is? "We have to control the flow of information lest the people believe the wrong thing and vote the wrong way." I come across casual because the threat is overstated, mostly by the people really doing the agitating.
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > "we have to control the flow of information" Someone already controls the flow of information, it can be Facebook, it can be Twitter, it can be newspapers, ... The open question is who should control information and how. My access to a public is way smaller than the one for Elon Musk. Information control is not uniform in the population. Who do you want to make the rules on how information flows?
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Nobody.
shapefrog 5y ago
Define: conspiracy theory noun a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event. Yeah that covers a lot of ground.
saul_goodman 5y ago
The MSM and Q both fight for a slice of the disinformation pie. I can't blame someone for believing Q. When MSM gets away with a reporter standing in front of a burning city and saying it's a "Fiery but mostly peaceful protest" there's a problem. On one hand, people are stupid. On the other, people are smarter than you think. Somewhere in the back of their brain they can tell when they are being lied to when a scene like this unfolds on the TV news. Conspiracy fills the missing gap when things don't add up to the party line. And because of that, as long as people are lied to for "their own good", there will be a chasm waiting to be filled with a reason and conspiracy fills that void. Over the past year people have been denying inflation is happening. I've watched people here snidely tear into anyone suggesting inflation has increased above the ordinary annual rate of 1-2%. In the past 2 months I've personally heard NPR extol the virtues of inflation and then even deny it's happening. Anyone who does their own grocery shopping understands this is a massive lie. JPow lies to our faces every time he gets up and says it's "transitory inflation". But of course the danger is that if the Fed even whispers the I word it can induce inflation to actually take off. So, lies abound, all for our own good. The nature of the state is that it lies to us. You can believe the lies as-is and maby have a happy life if you are in the middle-class. You can silently accept they are lies but act on the reality that you can perceive. And you can search for a reason why what you are told doesn't match up with reality.
- smhenderson 5y ago
  I can't blame someone for believing Q. I can; when they attack the Capitol of the country I live in and kill people. Regardless of what they believe they have crossed a line at that point and that type of behavior can not be forgiven or tolerated in a civilized society.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    No one besides a cop killed anyone though, or are you thinking of the CHAZ state capitol take over? Jan6th, there were a few deaths, one murder by cop, others were heart attacks and one stampeded I believe. One officer was initially reported as murdered by fire extinguisher but his autopsy came back he had a stroke due to natural causes. I don't believe anyone in J6 was charged with having a gun or even insurrection. They all got slapped with misdemeanors for trespassing. Yeah they shouldn't have been there, but many videos inside just show them talking with cops and taking selfies. -- edit: to user below because I'm at my post limit -- Sicknick is the officer I'm talking about, he died of natural causes, no evidence it was due to pepper spray either. https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-after-suffering-two-strokes-day-after-jan-6-report/ https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-off... > Prosecutors never alleged that the bear spray they allegedly used played a role in Sicknick’s death. > D.C. Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz told the Post that the autopsy found no evidence that Sicknick had an allergic reaction to the spray and disclosed to the paper that he did not find evidence of internal or external injuries. Also, shooting an unarmed person is something we were protesting the whole year but on that day it's fine. Both of her hands were shown when she was climbing, he could have arrested her. She had no weapon and was no threat. Remember those weeks where the country was reviewing every police encounter (the guy who stole the taser, the kid who turned with the gun, the girl trying to stab the other girl with the knife) and everyone was debating whether they could have shot them in the leg or something. It just seems when you're on the wrong side it's fine for a cop to shoot you unarmed.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Lots of conspiracy theories unfortunately have more than a grain of truth to them. For example, the lab-leak theory was enough to get you banned from most social media platforms. Now politicians are seriously talking about it and it's on every mainstream news outlet.
- PaulKeeble 5y ago
  Widespread spying on everyone was a conspiracy theory for tin foil hatters until Snowden. Now no one is surprised by any of that now. Some conspiracy theories will turn that nugget of central truth into largely true, but most don't.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Part of me thinks that government agencies are behind distributing some of these 'theories' to intellectually deficient individuals in order to discredit the theories. Like, QAnon folk are obviously idiots, but it's more than plausible that QAnon was created by some government agency in order to discredit theories of events that could be damaging to the government. In the US there's been a ton of 'movements' that have risen and then fizzled out very quickly as they initially capture the public's imagination, then are co-opted by (useful) idiots.
- bell-cot 5y ago
  True - but the grain of truth may turn out to be more poetic than literal. And human nature tends to heap so much fantasy on top of any such grains that the average person is far better off using a blanket "disbelieve all conspiracy theories" heuristic.
tppiotrowski 5y ago
I’m reading Carl Sagan’s Daemon Haunted World and would recommend it. It talks a bit about why humans throughout history gravitate towards conspiracy theories. One reason is mentioned in this article: “Information that is interesting and attention-grabbing is easier to mentally process than information that is boring” Today it’s QAnon. In the 1990’s it was UFOs. Before that it was witches. And daemons before that. As religion fades, we put “faith” in more secular stories like QAnon or extraterrestrials. I’m still reading the book but Sagan’s thesis so far is that doing a better job of teaching critical thinking and science is the ultimate remedy.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  I've tried to argue with someone who thinks she's more open-minded and she uses critical thinking more because she didn't believe what MSM said and she just knew (probably from all the random blogs she read) that MSM is being controlled by the Rotschilds. But probably there's a lot of confirmation bias there https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/ https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/ . She also believed Bill Gates was doing something with the devil. When she said "Do your own research, but use DuckDuckGo not Google" I had to laugh. I told her "But you do know DDG uses results from Bing, which is from... Microsoft?" (not that BillG has anything to do with MS nowadays) but of course her mind just ironed away this cognitive dissonance. I think I'm pretty sane, but how do I know I'm believing the truth? I can read 2 papers about Covid and dismiss one as baloney (like the ones written by that pro-HCQ French doctor) and take the other one as "probably legit", but how do we lay-people even tell the difference other than "It starts out with the premise I prefer". I guess there's comfort in statistics, e.g. the number of people vaccinated so far and the very few reports of side-effects, and the high correlation between high-vaccine areas and low incidence rates and vice versa. Or the statistics that if Biden's win was fraud there would've been quite a lot of fraud needed, and the chances of keeping all of that quiet and well-coordinated was very small...
  - tppiotrowski 5y ago
    "Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder." -Carl Sagan How would you design a test to determine if MSM is being controlled by the Rotschilds? It's hard to prove the vaccine is safe but you can count how many unvaccinated covid deaths vs vaccinated covid deaths to show that being vaccinated reduces chance of death.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
Area 51 started as a conspiracy theory and eventually became known after the government acknowledged its existence. UAP started as a conspiracy theory now the dept of defense acknowledges they exist. Conspiracy theories expand human thinking don’t take the last of the fun things humans can enjoy.
- crazy_horse 5y ago
  There was a secret military installation. The conspiracy was that they were doing creepy deepy stuff there, only a fraction of which was true. But conspiracy theorists count that as a win.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  The conspiracy theory about area 51 was that there was alien tech there, not that it existed.
Hokusai 5y ago
I remember a theory of why this happens. In a natural environment it may be better for individuals of social species to look for causation on others. It's better to think that maybe your neighbor threw you a rock on purpose that by mistake. Or if others do not talk to you during the day, it's better to think that they are angry at you and try to do something about it than to just assume that is an statistical anomaly. We spend a lot of time trying to know what others think of us. Conspiracy theories seem to fit that trend as usually involve "groups of people" with bad intentions, and hiding their true intentions. Some people, thou, is going to be more addicted to find "what others really think of them" than others.
bagswatchesus 5y ago
On one hand, people are stupid. On the other, people are smarter than you think of https://www.bragmyshoe.com/designer-sneakers/alexander-mcqueen/women.html https://www.bragmyshoe.com/designer-sneakers/alexander-mcque...
umvi 5y ago
I hate how "conspiracy theory" has become synonymous with "fictitious myth that crazy/irrational people believe in" - yet conspiracies do exist. Organizations conspire all the time in the pursuit of money, power, etc. But to theorize on whether an organization is conspiring labels you a crazy person these days I guess. Lab leak theory is probably the most mind boggling example of how even speculating that the Chinese government was covering up a mistake to save face got you branded a "conspiracy theorist" (crazy person). Now I'm wondering if the original lab leak theory shutdown was itself the result of pressure on the media from China (i.e. a meta-conspiracy theory).
- ssklash 5y ago
  Words change, and when society uses certain words changes. In a vacuum the phrase "conspiracy theory" would apply to a theory about the existence of a conspiracy. Now it means "fictitious myth that crazy/irrational people believe in". That's fine. Words develop new connotations over time. No one is saying you can't theorize about the existence of actual conspiracies, ala Snowden and government surveillance, it's just that the terminology has changed. And in my opinion, it changed because of so many nutjobs that believe in patently crazy theories. I don't think normal people object to the theorizing about the existence of conspiracies, like the origins and intentions behind the Iraq invasion. But they do object to lizard people and flat earth and Hilary Clinton drinking the blood of babies. But as in many other things, extremists can ruin things for the average people.
- skybrian 5y ago
  The lab leak hypothesis seems like a good example of a theory that is apparently very entertaining but a complete waste of time for non-specialists to think about. Whether or not it turns out to be true in the end, we’re not going to figure it out without evidence, and we’re not likely to find that evidence online.
hilbert42 5y ago
Old wisdom: 5% conspiracy, 95% fuck-up. More likely fact: <1% conspiracy, >99% fuck-up!
- bell-cot 5y ago
  I'd go with your "Old wisdom". But add that 95% of the 5% (conspiracy) only happens after the fuck-up - to downplay, cover up, blame shift, distract, etc.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    Of course, it depends on one's definition of conspiracy. I'd consider your defn. as concealment. In practice, there are very few real instances of conspiracy in relative terms as it requires deliberate organization and forethought between multiple machinators/plotters from the outset - and such organization, in practice, is often difficult to achieve with success (that is, the planning and implementation thereof, not necessarily its outcome). Concealment is much more common as it's a secondary process in reaction to an unfortunate or surreptitious event that's past. In phil. they're defined differently. Here's some instances: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Conspiracy https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Conspiracy https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Concealment https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Concealment
adamrezich 5y ago
has anyone else noticed that increasingly in recent years, it seems as though any interpretation of reality that sits outside of the general "accepted" media consensus is deemed a "conspiracy theory"? and then it seems like, for many people, once they've been instructed through media consumption to "learn" that various ideas should be filed away under the "conspiracy theory" label in one's mind, then whenever anyone tries to discuss any possibility of any alternate explanation for world events outside of generally-accepted media coverage relating to the subject, it seems to trigger "CONSPIRACY THEORY" alarms in their head, causing them to refuse to even entertain any possible alternate explanation for said world events outside of said generally-accepted media coverage. anyone know what I'm talking about? it's like people get programmed to internally respond to any and all skepticism with a throw new ConspiracyTheoryException(); that breaks any attempt at internal logical control flow for even casually entertaining the possibility that any aspect of reality that is portrayed as the Official, Generally-Accepted Media Narrative has any chance of being different in reality compared to its Official, Generally-Accepted Media Portrayal. basically we've got to the point where showing any signs of skepticism is considered more or less offensive in most public discourse. "conspiracy theories" may "bypass people's rationality," but it's also pretty clear that, these days, the term "conspiracy theory" also "bypasses people's rationality." (this is difficult to explain generally but bringing up specific contentious examples would not lead to productive discussion.)
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > any interpretation of reality that sits outside of the general "accepted" media consensus is deemed a "conspiracy theory" Do you think that in the past people were more acceptant of non-mainstream ideas? Because that sounds quite false, from atheist to homosexuals people was institutionalized for being different. Persecution of communists was a witch hund. Why do you think that "the past was better"?
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    > Why do you think that "the past was better"? I quite literally never said that. this is not my thesis, but you quoted the main part of my thesis, so it's confusing to me why you would quote me saying $X, and then ask me why I believe $Y.
motohagiography 5y ago
The necessary ingredient for news and a story is conflict and tension, and I think a conspiracy theory brings conflict to something where there might not be one, and that's what makes it interesting, compelling, but often wrong. What makes mainstream news so unwatchable is that it's not the events themselves that are fake, but the conflict and tension contrived to make them into a story itself is an artifact of ideology, and that's what makes the news seem fake. That talking head tone of, "well, this is out of the ordinary!" with a wink at the audience is the expression of an ordinary that few people seriously have. What they mean is, "well, well, this is counter to the official narrative, let's find out if these people are freaks and barbarians!" It's not reporting, it's carnival barking. Ideology (the logic of an idea) creates narrative tension against real events where there may be none. If you already have a sense of persecution and believe there is a cabal of people who are working to undermine you, applying the logic of that idea to incoming events produces conspiracy theories. Some are more accurate than others. The logic of the idea that police, corporate executives, doctors, politicians and billionaires want to kill you because you are the representative of a group will cause you to hypothesize and test whether an encounter with them could be an attempt on your life. Similarly, if you believe a category of people has conspired to subordinate you, you're likely going to interpret interactions with them through that lens. In this sense, conspiracy theories are rationality driven askew by being anchored to iterating the logic of an existing belief. Technically, a competing ideology that gets in the way of reconciling our experiences with truth. Merely being against conspiracy theories doesn't make anyone any smarter or likely to be in posession of truth. It's like saying being "against-bad" is sufficient to make you "good."
dane-pgp 5y ago
> Conspiracy theories bypass people’s rationality That's what they want you to think! /s
deft 5y ago
Rejection of all conspiracy theories and framing alternative-thinkers (can't think of a better word, but its the same as what's happened to naturopathy) as insane and stupid is intellectually limiting as well as technologically. The cathedral has decided heterodoxy must be squashed. Really sad.
wazoox 5y ago
One thing that the media never talks about is their own role in the success of conspiracy theories. By wanting to be "neutral" they love often presenting "both sides" instead of just seeking to present the truth. So they'll invite both a climate sceptic and a climatologist and treat them both equally to be "fair". Or an "anti-vaccine" and a professor in epidemiology. A racist and a liberal. And on and on. Of course the incurred raucous "debates" are good business: what's more clickbaity than a respectable professor losing their temper when confronted with a bad faith ideologue? But the end result is terrible for science, rationality and democracy.
- PaulKeeble 5y ago
  They love to refer to fake news as something outside mainstream media as well, sites like newstrump and theonion. But given the media is caught making up stories on a weekly basis as well they never seem to show the self awareness they are a much bigger problem for fake news. They absolutely pass conspiracy theories and lie to their audience and then play constantly this game of blaming the audience for believing in it all when their correction likely never even gets published and if it does its no where near the prominence of the original clearly proven false story.
- tppiotrowski 5y ago
  We need to hear both sides. Many cite revoking the Fairness Doctrine[1] as leading to the rise of far left/far right media we see today. I share your frustration but I believe we should strive to provide a more compelling argument than to censor the other side. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
syngrog66 5y ago
some conspiracy theories are true. some are not. some have a large set and pattern of evidence so strong collectively that a reasonable person may conclude that they are correct, and beyond all reasonable doubt -- though they cannot be 100% perfectly certain. some theories have weak, or easily forged evidence the ongoing challenge for us is to figure out which type any given theory is
jackfoxy 5y ago
Add to the list of preposterous baseless debunked conspiracy theories that turns out to be true, NIH has finally admitted that Ecohealth, the NGO headed by Peter Daszak, the most vocal opponent of the lab leak theory, did indeed carry out Gain-on-Function research with chimeric coronaviruses in bats that were able to infect humanized mice. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nih-admits-fauci-lied-about-funding-wuhan-gain-of-function-experiments/ar-AAPLZIe https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nih-admits-fauci-lie...
t0bia_s 5y ago
80% of news are not 100% truth. There is narration, different point of view, sensation, agenda... Segregate people to conspiracy theorist and find myself as better person is dangerous for society. Also... Lab leak was conspiracy theory, social media banned this story. Now they don't. Who give whom the patent on truth anyway? We should find out together instead shouting for each other.

55 points by Anon84 5y ago

rurban 5y ago

Many news articles also. Disinformation is going on on both sides

Bancakes 5y ago
At least conspiracy theories have little profitable shock value, as opposed to popular media. It can all stay in our heads.
dragontamer 5y ago
We might be missing the forest for the trees here. I think the "angry emoji" being 5x stronger than "like emoji" from Facebook is the key finding this week. Conspiracy theories would make people angry, possibly responding with the angry emoji, and then THOSE posts would have 5x higher scores than "like" emojis on Facebook. Why are people drawn into conspiracy theories? Because when other people react angrily to a post (angry emoji), that post becomes 5x more popular than if they reacted with a simple like. In such an environment, any disinformation would become the most popular* (popular as measured by Facebook, and pushed to the top of feeds). That's the kind of online life that people have been living if they're a part of Facebook. ------- Downvote?? Has anyone missed out on the news? https://thehill.com/policy/technology/578548-facebook-formula-gave-anger-five-times-weight-of-likes-documents-show https://thehill.com/policy/technology/578548-facebook-formul... This is news to me, so yeah, its something I've been thinking about today. Conspiracy theories existed forever (moon landings faked. Holocaust didn't happen. JFK assassination, etc. etc.). But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard? Well, there we go. Anger-emoji seems to explain a lot of it.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. Some conspiracies theories can be real, as conspiracies are possible. Dismissing everything as just a "conspiracy theory" is dangerous as it allows those in power to abuse plausible deniability and if anyone questions them they can be labeled a conspiracy theorist easily. It's reasonable to be curious and want answers. Generally these conspiracies come about when people don't get direct answers or proof to their questions. Then there are flat earthers, moon landing conspiracists etc that have had evidence (a plane or shining a laser on reflectors on the moon) for awhile and still won't concede, I'd argue they are a very small minority though.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    The point is that Facebook has a machine learning algorithm that assigns 5x as many points to ":-(" than to "like". Sure, conspiracies exist on occasion. But by favoring the "angry" conspiracies over all others, you're still making a negative environment.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      I was replying more generically to you. I don't feel like that FB revelation relates to conspiracies at all. It's the same tactic news outlets use, emotional kneejerk stories gets people mad so they keep coming back.
- dghughes 5y ago
  On reddit a post that is downvoted seems to slowly drop at first say -1, then maybe -5 then -6. But then at some point there is a tipping point a frenzy that seems to take over people. The downvotes suddenly are in the -10s then -100s per hour. It's not even on controversial posts it just seems once the hate starts it snowballs at a certain point. You can tell the mood often by the upvotes to comments ratio. If it has 100 upvotes but 1,000 comments it's most likely a mess of bickering and threats in the comments. But that doesn't seem to necessarily affect the downvote mood but it's likely going to have at least comment one downvoted into oblivion for no reason.
- fuckcensorship 5y ago
  > Why are people drawn into conspiracy theories? Because when other people react angrily to a post (angry emoji), that post becomes 5x more popular than if they reacted with a simple like. You may be partly correct if you only wish to answer your question within the context of Facebook, but more generally I think the belief and propagation of “conspiracy theories” is a symptom of people’s decreasing control over their reality and an inability to understand it.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Why wouldn't people believe the Holocaust happened? Well, it wasn't too hard to believe that a large political group: the National Socialists of Germany (Nazi for short), got a lot of people to think in a certain manner. Not just in Germany, but also influenced the world (ex: Vichy France, etc. etc.). Such influence extended even into the USA, across the Atlantic. When those who fell under Nazi influence were told about the horrors of the Holocaust, its not too surprising that they'd deny the claims, because they felt like the Nazis were a good philosophy. ----------- I dunno. Its not very hard for me to imagine why people fall for conspiracy theories. You feel that a group you're in is getting attacked by another group, and you instinctively defend the group you're a part of. A Nazi sympathizer will see the Holocaust claims as disinformation, and instinctively defend the Nazi philosophy. --------- What is new and interesting, to me, is the speed at which conspiracies seem to spread _today_. It seems faster and more virulent than before. Understanding the mechanisms of social media is probably key. We've had TV, Newspapers, even "fake news" (called Yellow Journalism in the WW2 era), and propaganda (Dr. Seuss / Disney made lots of wartime propaganda). That's not new at all. People understand that the media manipulates their viewpoints. I think people have less of an understanding of how social media is shaping our society. Sometimes for the better, but in this topic of conspiracies... for the worse.
  - bmhin 5y ago
    > propagation of “conspiracy theories” is a symptom of people’s decreasing control over their reality and an inability to understand it. I've always thought "conspiracies" were pretty simply this. Some folks have a deep aversion to the idea that things are often just "Yeah, no one really knows what's going on and there's some chaotic things happening". That can apply to genuinely unknowable/chaotic things or just things that are beyond an individuals understanding even if they might be well understood by others. The idea of meaningless chaos is so revolting that a simple and, very importantly, human source must be what is really happening because then there's someone in control and that is more comforting (despite being a grim state of affairs if true) and sensible.
- Epenthesis 5y ago
  It's weird to me that that article's headline emphasizes "angry emojis" have 5x higher score than "likes (and repeats it in the first paragraph) and then only lower down explains it's in fact that any emotion emoji (including "love", "care" and "haha") produce a 5x higher score than a simple like. And it doesn't even explicitly state it, instead saying first "A person was able to react with emojis that correlated to “angry,” “sad,” “haha,” “love” and “wow.”" and then "If a person reacted with an emoji instead of the “like” button, the Facebook algorithm would see the post as five times more valuable and push similar content.", requiring the user to draw an inference that all emojis were treated equally, despite the priming that it only refers to "angry" earlier in the article. This feels, ironically, like an intentionally inflammatory framing.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Somewhat. In the Twitter world, there's a concept called getting "Ratioed", which is when your comments exceed the number of retweets / likes. The idea is (at least on Twitter), "better" posts are roughly the ones that have more eyeballs but fewer reactions. "Getting Ratioed" is a bad thing. You want your tweets to get many eyeballs but not a lot of back-and-forth discussion (as back-and-forth discussion is often a proxy for toxicity) In contrast: Facebook is clearly of the opinion that "better" posts are the ones where people feel like making a comment on. Surprise surprise, Facebook is beginning to look like the more toxic social network.
    - Epenthesis 5y ago
      While it's true that the article indicates FB views comments as positive signals, that's definitely not the primary focus of it, which is about likes vs "higher intentionality likes + other emotions".
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Why award anger at all?
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  > But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard? They spread much faster without any real gatekeeping on them like we had with more centralized media structures. Algorithms tend to be more reactionary (e.g. "devalue QAnon posts") so they're perpetually lagging behind whatever the current conspiracy flavor of the week is. Couple that with, IMO, a mental health crisis the likes we haven't seen in a long time and existing addictive habits created by social media companies chasing engagement. It's hard to pin the blame on any one party here. At some level, misinformation spread is fueled by people who want to believe this sort of thing, or feel like they need to be seen sharing the right type of information, correctness be damned. The best way out for many folks is some time away from the platforms, self-reflection, and filling the void that is being met by conspiracy theories.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Conspiracy theories have always existed and the jury is out whether they are more prevalent now than in the past. See https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/the-enduring-allure-conspiracies https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/the-enduring-... But I see social media as a place where people feel permitted to share conspiracy theories. If you engage with social media a lot it seems half the world is crazy. If you only engage with people in real life people are seemingly as sensible as ever, because social conventions force them to mostly keep a lid on things.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  > But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard? I think that at least part of it is from foreign disinformation campaigns. I can't prove it, so maybe this is just my own conspiracy theory ;-) (As a semi-serious theory, it wouldn't surprise me if Q was in fact a Russian disinformation campaign.)
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    It wouldn't surprise me if the moon-landings conspiracy theories were also Russian disinformation campaigns. Some conspiracies just work too well / too beneficial to the Russian / Soviets worldview. But yes, conspiracy theories are fun. I'm not against them in general. I'm just against the toxic ones. "The Question" is one of my favorite comic book characters.
dgb23 5y ago
Both sides? The world seems to be much more complex and heterogenous than you are suggesting. There are a lot of different voices, networks and biases. Too many to divide it with such a crass simplification.
fortuna86 5y ago
Lazy take. Only "one side" is attacking the capitol, pushing voter suppression, etc.
- postalrat 5y ago
  Your perception and wording has been carefully crafted.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Well, the other side did capture blocks of a state capitol and a police station and made demands, resulting in 6 people's deaths, 2 being black teenagers their "security" mistook for a drive by shooter, gunning them down. (CHAZ)
  - fortuna86 5y ago
    > capture blocks of a state capitol and a police station and made demands, resulting in 6 people's deaths [citation needed] And if you've going to link to a random blog or social media account, don't bother.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      To which part of the statement. It's easy to look up their demands, the areas they captured, and the people who died there. I thought it was pretty common knowledge what they demanded and the people who were killed during it. Are you disputing that noone died during it, or they didn't block off areas and make demands?
      - fortuna86 5y ago
        Please link to the specific act of a mob violently storming a public building killing 6 people in the process, or please stop wasting everyone's time with senseless distractions and whataboutisms.
        5y ago

zby 5y ago

This is treating the Qanon believers as passive receivers - the more interesting question is how all those compelling stories are being created: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/epistemic-minor-leagues https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/epistemic-minor-league...

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

I don't agree with this. Conspiracy theories are often unprovable. There have been conspiracy theories which were made verifiable after classified documents were made available, for example, but until that happened the theories were unprovable and "rationally" false. The "rational" part of believing in conspiracy theories is understanding two things: 1) Are the people you accuse of doing X, Y, and Z capable of doing it, covering it up, and getting away with it 2) Just because proof doesn't exist now doesn't mean something won't be proven in the future, i.e. we don't know everything and we never will. We can't only operate on things we prove to ourselves. We have to take some things on instinct.

twirlock 5y ago

So does the idiotic worldview being force fed to us by the media.

pwned1 5y ago

How about a mention that so many "conspiracy theories" have a certain grain of truth to them, and the fact that corporate media tries so hard to make sure you're not aware of those things? The Jeffrey Epstein story is so deep and disturbing, but no one in media will touch it in any depth. Or even do anything more than superficially acknowledge it. The fact that an article like this doesn't even acknowledge that there are underlying truths that contribute to conspiracy theories ultimately contributes to the spread of conspiracy theories. To be clear, I'm not defending Q. But to attack "Q" in a pseudo-intellectual way without pointing out that there is often a truth at the center of these theories is further evidence used by conspiracy theorists to show that truths are being covered up. The arrogance of articles like this talk is to down to the "stupid people" who believe in such things. But people know there are crazy, almost unbelievable truths out there, like Epstein or MK-ULTRA (and the absolutely nuts connection between MK-ULTRA, Charles Manson, and Jack Ruby).

fortuna86 5y ago
> but no one in media will touch it in any depth. He was eventually arrested because of a single reporters non-stop work: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/business/media/miami-herald-epstein.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/business/media/miami-hera...
woodruffw 5y ago
> The arrogance of articles like this talk is to down to the "stupid people" who believe in such things. I didn't read condescension in this article. What I read was a defense of innate rationality, and an attempt to understand why otherwise rational human beings (i.e., all of us) get sucked so easily into conspiratorial thought.
- mistermann 5y ago
  The reason people get sucked into conspiratorial thought is because the human mind is highly susceptible to believing what it is told is true, based on not great reasoning or evidence. We are surrounded by this phenomenon, we just don't notice because if everyone agrees on not-actually-true "truths", it is *normal, and therefore completely bypasses our intuitive filter....and if someone is to point out imperfections in popular mainstream narratives, intuitive responses like "That's different!" or "That's just a conspiracy theory!" will be typical responses. If one was to actually study this phenomenon in journalism and social media, I suspect the abstract variations of these responses would be a fairly small list, so similar is intuitive thinking between individual human beings. As long as our humanity (and science) continues to not expose the varieties of extremely important patterns of behavior in the human mind, these exploits will remain unseen, and can be used for good or evil. If we want conspiracy theories to go away for good, expose what makes them possible, and in turn give up the magical power authorities have over the public. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

cma 5y ago

> People can also find conspiracy theories entertaining – and the more entertaining people find them, it seems, the more likely they are to believe in them. There is a lot to this. Entertaining can be enough, but often it's entertaining + hatred of a person or group + political manuevering/scapegoating (motive for spreading negative rumors and conspiracies even if a large portion spreading them don't truly believe them, or at least allowing them to more easily genuinely suspend disbelief). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace

anonnyj 5y ago

You are not immune to propaganda.

hindsightbias 5y ago

Citation required that people are rational to begin with.

mistermann 5y ago
Rationalization is often perceived as rationality, and it's commonly used in journalism. If the authors of hit pieces like these turned their critical eye onto popular cultural fairy tales, everyone would look like a fool.

betwixthewires 5y ago

What a load of horse shit. It's basically all the "we have to control the flow of information" nonsense we have been hearing packaged again in the same predictable format. There is nothing thoughtful or compelling in this article whatsoever. It checks all the boxes. Pizzagate? Of course. Q? Trump? January 6th "insurrection"? Yes, all the boogymen must be mentioned. The author made sure to include the usual suspects, because really that's what this article is about.

fortuna86 5y ago
You seem very casual about very real threats to democracy. Is it because it's your team doing the agitation ?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  Permitting citizens to freely participate in the electoral process is not a threat to democracy.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I don't have a team, if I did it certainly wouldn't be the Q wackos. You know what a real threat to democracy is? "We have to control the flow of information lest the people believe the wrong thing and vote the wrong way." I come across casual because the threat is overstated, mostly by the people really doing the agitating.
Hokusai 5y ago
> "we have to control the flow of information" Someone already controls the flow of information, it can be Facebook, it can be Twitter, it can be newspapers, ... The open question is who should control information and how. My access to a public is way smaller than the one for Elon Musk. Information control is not uniform in the population. Who do you want to make the rules on how information flows?
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Nobody.

shapefrog 5y ago

Define: conspiracy theory noun a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event. Yeah that covers a lot of ground.

saul_goodman 5y ago

The MSM and Q both fight for a slice of the disinformation pie. I can't blame someone for believing Q. When MSM gets away with a reporter standing in front of a burning city and saying it's a "Fiery but mostly peaceful protest" there's a problem. On one hand, people are stupid. On the other, people are smarter than you think. Somewhere in the back of their brain they can tell when they are being lied to when a scene like this unfolds on the TV news. Conspiracy fills the missing gap when things don't add up to the party line. And because of that, as long as people are lied to for "their own good", there will be a chasm waiting to be filled with a reason and conspiracy fills that void. Over the past year people have been denying inflation is happening. I've watched people here snidely tear into anyone suggesting inflation has increased above the ordinary annual rate of 1-2%. In the past 2 months I've personally heard NPR extol the virtues of inflation and then even deny it's happening. Anyone who does their own grocery shopping understands this is a massive lie. JPow lies to our faces every time he gets up and says it's "transitory inflation". But of course the danger is that if the Fed even whispers the I word it can induce inflation to actually take off. So, lies abound, all for our own good. The nature of the state is that it lies to us. You can believe the lies as-is and maby have a happy life if you are in the middle-class. You can silently accept they are lies but act on the reality that you can perceive. And you can search for a reason why what you are told doesn't match up with reality.

smhenderson 5y ago
I can't blame someone for believing Q. I can; when they attack the Capitol of the country I live in and kill people. Regardless of what they believe they have crossed a line at that point and that type of behavior can not be forgiven or tolerated in a civilized society.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  No one besides a cop killed anyone though, or are you thinking of the CHAZ state capitol take over? Jan6th, there were a few deaths, one murder by cop, others were heart attacks and one stampeded I believe. One officer was initially reported as murdered by fire extinguisher but his autopsy came back he had a stroke due to natural causes. I don't believe anyone in J6 was charged with having a gun or even insurrection. They all got slapped with misdemeanors for trespassing. Yeah they shouldn't have been there, but many videos inside just show them talking with cops and taking selfies. -- edit: to user below because I'm at my post limit -- Sicknick is the officer I'm talking about, he died of natural causes, no evidence it was due to pepper spray either. https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-after-suffering-two-strokes-day-after-jan-6-report/ https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-off... > Prosecutors never alleged that the bear spray they allegedly used played a role in Sicknick’s death. > D.C. Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz told the Post that the autopsy found no evidence that Sicknick had an allergic reaction to the spray and disclosed to the paper that he did not find evidence of internal or external injuries. Also, shooting an unarmed person is something we were protesting the whole year but on that day it's fine. Both of her hands were shown when she was climbing, he could have arrested her. She had no weapon and was no threat. Remember those weeks where the country was reviewing every police encounter (the guy who stole the taser, the kid who turned with the gun, the girl trying to stab the other girl with the knife) and everyone was debating whether they could have shot them in the leg or something. It just seems when you're on the wrong side it's fine for a cop to shoot you unarmed.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Lots of conspiracy theories unfortunately have more than a grain of truth to them. For example, the lab-leak theory was enough to get you banned from most social media platforms. Now politicians are seriously talking about it and it's on every mainstream news outlet.

PaulKeeble 5y ago
Widespread spying on everyone was a conspiracy theory for tin foil hatters until Snowden. Now no one is surprised by any of that now. Some conspiracy theories will turn that nugget of central truth into largely true, but most don't.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Part of me thinks that government agencies are behind distributing some of these 'theories' to intellectually deficient individuals in order to discredit the theories. Like, QAnon folk are obviously idiots, but it's more than plausible that QAnon was created by some government agency in order to discredit theories of events that could be damaging to the government. In the US there's been a ton of 'movements' that have risen and then fizzled out very quickly as they initially capture the public's imagination, then are co-opted by (useful) idiots.
bell-cot 5y ago
True - but the grain of truth may turn out to be more poetic than literal. And human nature tends to heap so much fantasy on top of any such grains that the average person is far better off using a blanket "disbelieve all conspiracy theories" heuristic.

tppiotrowski 5y ago

I’m reading Carl Sagan’s Daemon Haunted World and would recommend it. It talks a bit about why humans throughout history gravitate towards conspiracy theories. One reason is mentioned in this article: “Information that is interesting and attention-grabbing is easier to mentally process than information that is boring” Today it’s QAnon. In the 1990’s it was UFOs. Before that it was witches. And daemons before that. As religion fades, we put “faith” in more secular stories like QAnon or extraterrestrials. I’m still reading the book but Sagan’s thesis so far is that doing a better job of teaching critical thinking and science is the ultimate remedy.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
I've tried to argue with someone who thinks she's more open-minded and she uses critical thinking more because she didn't believe what MSM said and she just knew (probably from all the random blogs she read) that MSM is being controlled by the Rotschilds. But probably there's a lot of confirmation bias there https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/ https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/ . She also believed Bill Gates was doing something with the devil. When she said "Do your own research, but use DuckDuckGo not Google" I had to laugh. I told her "But you do know DDG uses results from Bing, which is from... Microsoft?" (not that BillG has anything to do with MS nowadays) but of course her mind just ironed away this cognitive dissonance. I think I'm pretty sane, but how do I know I'm believing the truth? I can read 2 papers about Covid and dismiss one as baloney (like the ones written by that pro-HCQ French doctor) and take the other one as "probably legit", but how do we lay-people even tell the difference other than "It starts out with the premise I prefer". I guess there's comfort in statistics, e.g. the number of people vaccinated so far and the very few reports of side-effects, and the high correlation between high-vaccine areas and low incidence rates and vice versa. Or the statistics that if Biden's win was fraud there would've been quite a lot of fraud needed, and the chances of keeping all of that quiet and well-coordinated was very small...
- tppiotrowski 5y ago
  "Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder." -Carl Sagan How would you design a test to determine if MSM is being controlled by the Rotschilds? It's hard to prove the vaccine is safe but you can count how many unvaccinated covid deaths vs vaccinated covid deaths to show that being vaccinated reduces chance of death.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

Area 51 started as a conspiracy theory and eventually became known after the government acknowledged its existence. UAP started as a conspiracy theory now the dept of defense acknowledges they exist. Conspiracy theories expand human thinking don’t take the last of the fun things humans can enjoy.

crazy_horse 5y ago
There was a secret military installation. The conspiracy was that they were doing creepy deepy stuff there, only a fraction of which was true. But conspiracy theorists count that as a win.
oh_sigh 5y ago
The conspiracy theory about area 51 was that there was alien tech there, not that it existed.

Hokusai 5y ago

I remember a theory of why this happens. In a natural environment it may be better for individuals of social species to look for causation on others. It's better to think that maybe your neighbor threw you a rock on purpose that by mistake. Or if others do not talk to you during the day, it's better to think that they are angry at you and try to do something about it than to just assume that is an statistical anomaly. We spend a lot of time trying to know what others think of us. Conspiracy theories seem to fit that trend as usually involve "groups of people" with bad intentions, and hiding their true intentions. Some people, thou, is going to be more addicted to find "what others really think of them" than others.

bagswatchesus 5y ago

On one hand, people are stupid. On the other, people are smarter than you think of https://www.bragmyshoe.com/designer-sneakers/alexander-mcqueen/women.html https://www.bragmyshoe.com/designer-sneakers/alexander-mcque...

umvi 5y ago

I hate how "conspiracy theory" has become synonymous with "fictitious myth that crazy/irrational people believe in" - yet conspiracies do exist. Organizations conspire all the time in the pursuit of money, power, etc. But to theorize on whether an organization is conspiring labels you a crazy person these days I guess. Lab leak theory is probably the most mind boggling example of how even speculating that the Chinese government was covering up a mistake to save face got you branded a "conspiracy theorist" (crazy person). Now I'm wondering if the original lab leak theory shutdown was itself the result of pressure on the media from China (i.e. a meta-conspiracy theory).

ssklash 5y ago
Words change, and when society uses certain words changes. In a vacuum the phrase "conspiracy theory" would apply to a theory about the existence of a conspiracy. Now it means "fictitious myth that crazy/irrational people believe in". That's fine. Words develop new connotations over time. No one is saying you can't theorize about the existence of actual conspiracies, ala Snowden and government surveillance, it's just that the terminology has changed. And in my opinion, it changed because of so many nutjobs that believe in patently crazy theories. I don't think normal people object to the theorizing about the existence of conspiracies, like the origins and intentions behind the Iraq invasion. But they do object to lizard people and flat earth and Hilary Clinton drinking the blood of babies. But as in many other things, extremists can ruin things for the average people.
skybrian 5y ago
The lab leak hypothesis seems like a good example of a theory that is apparently very entertaining but a complete waste of time for non-specialists to think about. Whether or not it turns out to be true in the end, we’re not going to figure it out without evidence, and we’re not likely to find that evidence online.

hilbert42 5y ago

Old wisdom: 5% conspiracy, 95% fuck-up. More likely fact: <1% conspiracy, >99% fuck-up!

bell-cot 5y ago
I'd go with your "Old wisdom". But add that 95% of the 5% (conspiracy) only happens after the fuck-up - to downplay, cover up, blame shift, distract, etc.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  Of course, it depends on one's definition of conspiracy. I'd consider your defn. as concealment. In practice, there are very few real instances of conspiracy in relative terms as it requires deliberate organization and forethought between multiple machinators/plotters from the outset - and such organization, in practice, is often difficult to achieve with success (that is, the planning and implementation thereof, not necessarily its outcome). Concealment is much more common as it's a secondary process in reaction to an unfortunate or surreptitious event that's past. In phil. they're defined differently. Here's some instances: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Conspiracy https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Conspiracy https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Concealment https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=Concealment

adamrezich 5y ago

has anyone else noticed that increasingly in recent years, it seems as though any interpretation of reality that sits outside of the general "accepted" media consensus is deemed a "conspiracy theory"? and then it seems like, for many people, once they've been instructed through media consumption to "learn" that various ideas should be filed away under the "conspiracy theory" label in one's mind, then whenever anyone tries to discuss any possibility of any alternate explanation for world events outside of generally-accepted media coverage relating to the subject, it seems to trigger "CONSPIRACY THEORY" alarms in their head, causing them to refuse to even entertain any possible alternate explanation for said world events outside of said generally-accepted media coverage. anyone know what I'm talking about? it's like people get programmed to internally respond to any and all skepticism with a throw new ConspiracyTheoryException(); that breaks any attempt at internal logical control flow for even casually entertaining the possibility that any aspect of reality that is portrayed as the Official, Generally-Accepted Media Narrative has any chance of being different in reality compared to its Official, Generally-Accepted Media Portrayal. basically we've got to the point where showing any signs of skepticism is considered more or less offensive in most public discourse. "conspiracy theories" may "bypass people's rationality," but it's also pretty clear that, these days, the term "conspiracy theory" also "bypasses people's rationality." (this is difficult to explain generally but bringing up specific contentious examples would not lead to productive discussion.)

Hokusai 5y ago
> any interpretation of reality that sits outside of the general "accepted" media consensus is deemed a "conspiracy theory" Do you think that in the past people were more acceptant of non-mainstream ideas? Because that sounds quite false, from atheist to homosexuals people was institutionalized for being different. Persecution of communists was a witch hund. Why do you think that "the past was better"?
- adamrezich 5y ago
  > Why do you think that "the past was better"? I quite literally never said that. this is not my thesis, but you quoted the main part of my thesis, so it's confusing to me why you would quote me saying $X, and then ask me why I believe $Y.

motohagiography 5y ago

The necessary ingredient for news and a story is conflict and tension, and I think a conspiracy theory brings conflict to something where there might not be one, and that's what makes it interesting, compelling, but often wrong. What makes mainstream news so unwatchable is that it's not the events themselves that are fake, but the conflict and tension contrived to make them into a story itself is an artifact of ideology, and that's what makes the news seem fake. That talking head tone of, "well, this is out of the ordinary!" with a wink at the audience is the expression of an ordinary that few people seriously have. What they mean is, "well, well, this is counter to the official narrative, let's find out if these people are freaks and barbarians!" It's not reporting, it's carnival barking. Ideology (the logic of an idea) creates narrative tension against real events where there may be none. If you already have a sense of persecution and believe there is a cabal of people who are working to undermine you, applying the logic of that idea to incoming events produces conspiracy theories. Some are more accurate than others. The logic of the idea that police, corporate executives, doctors, politicians and billionaires want to kill you because you are the representative of a group will cause you to hypothesize and test whether an encounter with them could be an attempt on your life. Similarly, if you believe a category of people has conspired to subordinate you, you're likely going to interpret interactions with them through that lens. In this sense, conspiracy theories are rationality driven askew by being anchored to iterating the logic of an existing belief. Technically, a competing ideology that gets in the way of reconciling our experiences with truth. Merely being against conspiracy theories doesn't make anyone any smarter or likely to be in posession of truth. It's like saying being "against-bad" is sufficient to make you "good."

dane-pgp 5y ago

> Conspiracy theories bypass people’s rationality That's what they want you to think! /s

deft 5y ago

Rejection of all conspiracy theories and framing alternative-thinkers (can't think of a better word, but its the same as what's happened to naturopathy) as insane and stupid is intellectually limiting as well as technologically. The cathedral has decided heterodoxy must be squashed. Really sad.

wazoox 5y ago

One thing that the media never talks about is their own role in the success of conspiracy theories. By wanting to be "neutral" they love often presenting "both sides" instead of just seeking to present the truth. So they'll invite both a climate sceptic and a climatologist and treat them both equally to be "fair". Or an "anti-vaccine" and a professor in epidemiology. A racist and a liberal. And on and on. Of course the incurred raucous "debates" are good business: what's more clickbaity than a respectable professor losing their temper when confronted with a bad faith ideologue? But the end result is terrible for science, rationality and democracy.

PaulKeeble 5y ago
They love to refer to fake news as something outside mainstream media as well, sites like newstrump and theonion. But given the media is caught making up stories on a weekly basis as well they never seem to show the self awareness they are a much bigger problem for fake news. They absolutely pass conspiracy theories and lie to their audience and then play constantly this game of blaming the audience for believing in it all when their correction likely never even gets published and if it does its no where near the prominence of the original clearly proven false story.
tppiotrowski 5y ago
We need to hear both sides. Many cite revoking the Fairness Doctrine[1] as leading to the rise of far left/far right media we see today. I share your frustration but I believe we should strive to provide a more compelling argument than to censor the other side. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

syngrog66 5y ago

some conspiracy theories are true. some are not. some have a large set and pattern of evidence so strong collectively that a reasonable person may conclude that they are correct, and beyond all reasonable doubt -- though they cannot be 100% perfectly certain. some theories have weak, or easily forged evidence the ongoing challenge for us is to figure out which type any given theory is

jackfoxy 5y ago

Add to the list of preposterous baseless debunked conspiracy theories that turns out to be true, NIH has finally admitted that Ecohealth, the NGO headed by Peter Daszak, the most vocal opponent of the lab leak theory, did indeed carry out Gain-on-Function research with chimeric coronaviruses in bats that were able to infect humanized mice. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nih-admits-fauci-lied-about-funding-wuhan-gain-of-function-experiments/ar-AAPLZIe https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nih-admits-fauci-lie...

t0bia_s 5y ago

80% of news are not 100% truth. There is narration, different point of view, sensation, agenda... Segregate people to conspiracy theorist and find myself as better person is dangerous for society. Also... Lab leak was conspiracy theory, social media banned this story. Now they don't. Who give whom the patent on truth anyway? We should find out together instead shouting for each other.