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The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?", because there is a big difference between people who think the world is flat and people who th

by roenxi 2y ago

The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?", because there is a big difference between people who think the world is flat and people who think there is something fishy about, say, the Jeff Epstein saga. In this case we seem to be talking about the conspiracy mentality questionnaire [0]. So they've found a correlation between loneliness and what seems to be a 5 question survey. To me, this says that lonely people probably have more time to reflect on the world. For example more social people don't have time to keep track of, say, the financial and electronic tracking systems that have been developed over the last 20 or so years. They really are quite frightening considering what the Nazis achieved in 1940s tech. The next industrial genocide may well be unprecedented. How alert people are to that fact is probably correlated to Q3. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fpsyg-04-00225.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fps... Saving people a click: 1...many very important things happen in the world, which the public is never informed about. 2...politicians usually do not tell us the true motives for their decisions. 3...government agencies closely monitor all citizens. 4...events which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities. 5...there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions.

clipsy 2y ago
That's a pretty awful poll. 3 is essentially a statement of fact, 5 is describing any "dark money" PAC, and 2 is a healthy skepticism of people who are asking to have enormous power over us.
- roenxi 2y ago
  I dunno about awful, it is exactly what it says on the tin - do people have a "conspiracy mentality"? It is just easy to misinterpret as a negative when it is not.
jasonlotito 2y ago
Note: That's the final five questions in a 38 question survey with 33 primer questions about specific conspiracy theories. It wasn't just 5 questions.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Are you sure? The Conspiracy Theory Questionnaire is 38 questions but the CMQ is 5 questions. Today's HN link talked about the CMQ. And figure one lists 5 observed indicators which I took as a hint. You can grep for "The 38 items administered in this study [dubbed the Conspir-acy Theory Questionnaire (CTQ) by Darwin et al., 2011] con-tained 33 items measuring the belief in specific conspiracy theoriesand five items assessing participants’ general tendency to believe inconspiracies or their conspiracy mentality. We refer to these latterfive items as the CMQ (see Appendix for complete item wording)." in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fpsyg-04-00225.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fps... to see the context of what I'm going off.
  - jasonlotito 2y ago
    > Are you sure? Yes. What I said was accurate.
nsguy 2y ago
There isn't actually such a big difference between flat earthers and other conspiracy theories. The common theme is that it's the opposite of science or the scientific process. Conspiracy theorists filter out anything that doesn't align with their theory and go to extremes to support their world views. E.g. flat earthers believe that all airline pilots are part of the conspiracy to hide the fact that the earth is flat. The scientific process, to contrast, would drive you to try and falsify your theory via experimentation, and the flat earth theory is so easily falsifiable. If you look at vaccines, or climates, or 9/11, or those guys that believe nobody was killed in some massacre, they all use the same sort of logic (or shall we say non-logic). Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. They don't trust experts or scientists. It's not impossible to have conspiracies in the real world. But I'd say those are rare. The more people are involved the harder it is to keep a secret. There are also situations where the evidence isn't necessarily pointing overwhelmingly one way or another, and there is science that later gets refined or even overturned as more data/knowledge is acquired. Science isn't necessarily absolute truth, it's just the model that best explains the observable phenomena.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. Yeah but you're basically describing ideologues here. This is how the vast majority of political activists approach the world where, last time I checked, parties even pretending to do things by scientific consensus are rare and they tend to not, in reality, refer to much science. > If you look at vaccines ... they don't trust experts or scientists. My mother just caught COVID last week. I was told - by people confidently claiming to speak for experts - that this wouldn't happen after she and the rest of the population were vaccinated because the spread would cease. I personally doubt the experts actually said that because they tend to be accurate in their field of expertise but good luck with that perspective around the time of the vaccine mandates. I suspect even more than lack of trust that the issue is experts are so rare in politics that people don't recognise them when they do turn up. There are a lot of unexperts playing pretend on such topics and expert opinions are subject to misrepresentation.
linearrust 2y ago
> The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?" Everyone here seems to be missing the 'essence' of the study and article. Do these conspiracy theorists influence global pandemic policy? Do flat earther conspiracy theorist affect global climate change policy? That's what the article and the 'study' is ultimately implying. That lonely conspiracy theorist flat earthers are controlling global policy. Some think reptilians are controlling the world. Nature and these 'researchers' think that lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world.
- krapp 2y ago
  No one is claiming that "lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world." But it is obvious that some conspiracy theories such as replacement theory, the trans "groomer" panic and COVID conspiracy theories have become mainstream within certain political demographics. QAnon actively hampers real efforts to combat sex abuse with their phantom fears of leftist sex-slave cabals. People within the Pentagon who believe in alien abductions and Skinwalker Ranch are interfering with legitimate counterintelligence work. Pretending all conspiracy theorists are just "lonely" and harmless people who have no real effect on the world is simply naive.
  - linearrust 2y ago
    > No one is claiming that "lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world." The article and the study is. > But it is obvious that some conspiracy theories such as replacement theory, the trans "groomer" panic and COVID conspiracy theories have become mainstream within certain political demographics. And certain conspiracy theories like 'lonely conspiracy theorists in living their mom's basements are secretlly controlling the world' have become mainstream within certain politcal demographics. That's my point. Neither side are 'lonely conspiracy theorists'. Both sides are part of major political parties. > Pretending all conspiracy theorists are just "lonely" and harmless people who have no real effect on the world is simply naive. Yes. So stop being so naive. Most of these conspiracy theories on all sides are being pushed by major media outlets like nature and major political parties.

by roenxi 2y ago

clipsy 2y ago

That's a pretty awful poll. 3 is essentially a statement of fact, 5 is describing any "dark money" PAC, and 2 is a healthy skepticism of people who are asking to have enormous power over us.

roenxi 2y ago
I dunno about awful, it is exactly what it says on the tin - do people have a "conspiracy mentality"? It is just easy to misinterpret as a negative when it is not.

jasonlotito 2y ago

Note: That's the final five questions in a 38 question survey with 33 primer questions about specific conspiracy theories. It wasn't just 5 questions.

roenxi 2y ago
Are you sure? The Conspiracy Theory Questionnaire is 38 questions but the CMQ is 5 questions. Today's HN link talked about the CMQ. And figure one lists 5 observed indicators which I took as a hint. You can grep for "The 38 items administered in this study [dubbed the Conspir-acy Theory Questionnaire (CTQ) by Darwin et al., 2011] con-tained 33 items measuring the belief in specific conspiracy theoriesand five items assessing participants’ general tendency to believe inconspiracies or their conspiracy mentality. We refer to these latterfive items as the CMQ (see Appendix for complete item wording)." in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fpsyg-04-00225.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fps... to see the context of what I'm going off.
- jasonlotito 2y ago
  > Are you sure? Yes. What I said was accurate.

nsguy 2y ago

There isn't actually such a big difference between flat earthers and other conspiracy theories. The common theme is that it's the opposite of science or the scientific process. Conspiracy theorists filter out anything that doesn't align with their theory and go to extremes to support their world views. E.g. flat earthers believe that all airline pilots are part of the conspiracy to hide the fact that the earth is flat. The scientific process, to contrast, would drive you to try and falsify your theory via experimentation, and the flat earth theory is so easily falsifiable. If you look at vaccines, or climates, or 9/11, or those guys that believe nobody was killed in some massacre, they all use the same sort of logic (or shall we say non-logic). Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. They don't trust experts or scientists. It's not impossible to have conspiracies in the real world. But I'd say those are rare. The more people are involved the harder it is to keep a secret. There are also situations where the evidence isn't necessarily pointing overwhelmingly one way or another, and there is science that later gets refined or even overturned as more data/knowledge is acquired. Science isn't necessarily absolute truth, it's just the model that best explains the observable phenomena.

roenxi 2y ago
> Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. Yeah but you're basically describing ideologues here. This is how the vast majority of political activists approach the world where, last time I checked, parties even pretending to do things by scientific consensus are rare and they tend to not, in reality, refer to much science. > If you look at vaccines ... they don't trust experts or scientists. My mother just caught COVID last week. I was told - by people confidently claiming to speak for experts - that this wouldn't happen after she and the rest of the population were vaccinated because the spread would cease. I personally doubt the experts actually said that because they tend to be accurate in their field of expertise but good luck with that perspective around the time of the vaccine mandates. I suspect even more than lack of trust that the issue is experts are so rare in politics that people don't recognise them when they do turn up. There are a lot of unexperts playing pretend on such topics and expert opinions are subject to misrepresentation.

linearrust 2y ago

> The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?" Everyone here seems to be missing the 'essence' of the study and article. Do these conspiracy theorists influence global pandemic policy? Do flat earther conspiracy theorist affect global climate change policy? That's what the article and the 'study' is ultimately implying. That lonely conspiracy theorist flat earthers are controlling global policy. Some think reptilians are controlling the world. Nature and these 'researchers' think that lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world.

krapp 2y ago
No one is claiming that "lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world." But it is obvious that some conspiracy theories such as replacement theory, the trans "groomer" panic and COVID conspiracy theories have become mainstream within certain political demographics. QAnon actively hampers real efforts to combat sex abuse with their phantom fears of leftist sex-slave cabals. People within the Pentagon who believe in alien abductions and Skinwalker Ranch are interfering with legitimate counterintelligence work. Pretending all conspiracy theorists are just "lonely" and harmless people who have no real effect on the world is simply naive.
- linearrust 2y ago
  > No one is claiming that "lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world." The article and the study is. > But it is obvious that some conspiracy theories such as replacement theory, the trans "groomer" panic and COVID conspiracy theories have become mainstream within certain political demographics. And certain conspiracy theories like 'lonely conspiracy theorists in living their mom's basements are secretlly controlling the world' have become mainstream within certain politcal demographics. That's my point. Neither side are 'lonely conspiracy theorists'. Both sides are part of major political parties. > Pretending all conspiracy theorists are just "lonely" and harmless people who have no real effect on the world is simply naive. Yes. So stop being so naive. Most of these conspiracy theories on all sides are being pushed by major media outlets like nature and major political parties.