I thought flat-earthers were some sort of internet joke, like I was a member of alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die for a while. But then I found a guy I went to school with had become a flat-earther and realised it was serious. So I thought ok, how can I personally test this hypothesis? Fortunately where I live there is an extinct volcano right on the beach, and some conveniently spaced off-shore islands. So I did some math and then climbed the volcanic cone taking photos of the horizon receding past the various islands, pretty much as expected. I let my friend know, and was actually quite shocked when it had no effect on him. That was when I started reading about cognitive biases and logical fallacies, and realised that we humans aren't as logical as I had assumed.
The flat earth movement was not an organic, grass roots movement. It hit all at once on the internet with a few social media accounts and you tube channels that hit the scene with a huge bot following and spread like wild fire with the help of google et al. It was a huge psychological operation whose purpose was probably just to have a little fun at all of our expense. Or maybe to capture the “conspiracy theorists” and portray them as total idiots who suffer from poor thinking skills. Totally worked.
The Atlantis theory isn’t a conspiracy theory as described by Scott, merely a fringe idea. I think the reasons people believe in actual conspiracy theories are psychologically distinct.
I'm not too familiar with the theory- but is one of the differences that the Atlantis theory isn't alleging some sort of literal conspiracy or coverup? It's just a lost city in the ocean somewhere?
The aspect of many people or a specific group knowing about something and trying to conceal it does strike me as pretty psychologically significant to the makeup of a conspiracy theory.
Yes, at least as described there isn’t a conspiracy involved. At most you could say that the theory is being unfairly ignored by academics but even that isn’t really a conspiracy.
> The aspect of many people or a specific group knowing about something and trying to conceal it does strike me as pretty psychologically significant to the makeup of a conspiracy theory.
The same applies to those who believe themselves to know that the CP's are wrong, when the truth value of the underlying proposition is unattainable. Which of the two groups cause more harm in the world is a very interesting question!
"And, if someone commits the Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy in trying to refute your arguments, or even someone else's, call them on it. But don't just link here, you wouldn't want to commit the Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy Fallacy. Ask them how their counterargument distinguishes the allegedly bad argument from arguments that don't have the problem."
(That's not the best part, the whole post is a good and important read.)
Ok, I will do so.
How does your counterargument distinguish the allegedly bad argument from arguments that don't have the problem? :)
God I love the weekend, so much time for endless arguments on the internet.
I think the overall problem is that people tend to be lazy in their thinking unless they have a compelling reason not to be. This applies to conspiracy theorists and those who opposed them. The theorists tend to see something odd and immediately jump to a conclusion, factoring out all evidence against it through confirmation bias. Those opposing them tend to think that (correctly) labeling something a conspiracy theory is enough of a refutation. The problem with that is enough "conspiracy theories" turn into mainstream knowledge over time to expose outright dismissal for what it is: lazy thinking designed to avoid the issue altogether.
At the risk of Steelmanning to the point of fallacy, I intuit a weird truth in many classic C-theories. For example, the Earth isn't flat, but our Universe - our "World" by current consensus Cosmology - may be flat. Or if our world turns out to be Sim, then the world is flat as a screen of code, or bookpage, so to speak.
And the actual tinfoil-hatters of the 60s and 70s, paranoid that They are listening in our private life turned out to be correct, but just a few decades early.
Even the "fake" moon landing - it was fake insofar as it was a media event, designed to win the Space Race, in public perception. They actually went to the Moon, but its primary function was as spectacle, one might argue, and in that sense was "a Show". It helps us forget that the Russians went to Venus [okay, unmanned, and without a clean landing] before the U.S. went to the Moon.
This is an important point. Most conspiracy theories have elements of truth to them, but conspiracy theorists have a tendency to over-extrapolate, miss the forest for the trees, and thus discredit themselves in the eyes of normal people.
It’s absolutely true that the FBI and CIA in the 60’s were doing weird experiments with LSD, spying on and attempting to blackmail civil rights leaders, and infiltrating leftist student groups. Rather than focus on these limited abuses, they spin them all into a bigger conspiracy, make themselves look ridiculous, and no one is actually held accountable.
9/11 is another one. People get so wrapped up in the minutiae of structural engineering, insurance policies, and other red herrings, they miss the facts staring them in the face; Bin Laden was connected to the Saudi royal family, 80% of the hijackers we’re Saudis, and Bush, who had a personal friendship with Prince Bandar, did everything he could to deflect attention away from the Saudis and towards Iraq. A lot of influential Republicans had been pushing for regime change in Iraq for a decade.
Just like COVID almost certainly being the result of a lab accident, many conspiracies are just a screwup, followed by opportunistic/flailing attempts at a coverup.
Regime change in Iraq was a longstanding goal of various parties that had attached themselves to the Bush administration. 9/11 was a convenient justification for that, and Saudi complicity was inconvenient to the both the Iraq narrative, and 50 years of economic and strategic investment in the US-Saudi relationship.
To be clear, I don’t think Bush or anyone else conspired with the Saudis to perpetrate 9/11. I think Bin Laden was a rogue element arising from the Saudi royal family’s uneasy arrangement with Wahabbiism. 9/11 was a form of blowback, to which the American Blob responded with either opportunism or ass-covering. This is the simplest explanation that fits all the available facts at the time, and has been buttressed by info declassified in the 20 years since.
I certainly think that Iraq was more convenient than contingent in relation to 9/11. You raise other good points that align with my central thesis - 9/11 (and the response to it) can easily be explained by known actors, their stated agendas, and the history leading up to it. The conspiracy starts and ends with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
And yes, the anthrax scare was much weirder and leaves more room for reasonable speculation about deeper conspiracies. For me that one has echoes of Jeffrey Epstein- evidence tampering, a suspicious suicide, and political interference in the law enforcement or legal process
It's interesting that people seem to see conspiracy theories so differently than the traditional beliefs of major world religions.
I mean, at most one of the traditionally interpreted of major world religions is correct. If Christ was the Mesiah we can't still be waiting for him. If Christ was the son of god he wasn't a mere profit per the Koran and so on.
And yet these religious traditions allege things that seem exceedingly unlikely to anyone of a different religion. Belief seems to be better predicted by who your parents and peers are than by epistemically relevant evidence and it's alleged that the reason their truth isn't completely obvious is a divine conspiracy not to eliminate the need for faith (no giant announcement or being born knowing theological truth).
--
My point here isn't to dump on religion but that what we regard as a conspiracy theory is as much a matter of how we regard the beliefs as their epistemic status.
Ultimately, we all being priors to the table and we call the ones we see as belonging to low status eccentrics conspiracy theories and those which get wide uptake from high status individuals philosophies, religions or ideologies. I mean belief in communism also involves plenty of unlikely factual claims but it too doesn't qualify.
I think that depends a bit on how you define it. The view that says everything in the world is explainable mechanistically and that simple mechanism rather than intelligent agents are the bottom level of explanation. Sure. The idea that one learns about the world by comparing hypothesis to outcomes less clear (though that itself doesn't imply any particular thing about the nature of reality -- and doesn't mean you don't still start that process with priors be they religious or not).
> I think that depends a bit on how you define it.
This is extremely true - for example, when The Science faithful refer to "science", as in "Science does X", they don't realize that they are referring to science *in the abstract* (the method, the (theoretical) *intentions* of scientists).
> The view that says everything in the world is explainable mechanistically and that simple mechanism rather than intelligent agents are the bottom level of explanation.
It is actually unknown, but do you ever notice how The Science faithful speak as if this is not the case, or will *necessarily* not be the case going forward, such as "Science will(!) figure it out", demonstrating that the ideology somehow seems to teach supernatural beliefs to the flock. Another example: The Science faithful regularly [implicitly] claim to be able to mind read.
> and doesn't mean you don't still start that process with priors be they religious or not.
Agree. An interesting question: whats the most effective ideology for overcoming this natural tendency? Personally, I think starting with a base of Taoism is a sound path.
In "Why People Believe Weird Things", Michael Shermer has pointed out that conspiracy theories and religious superstitions have two things in common: "agenticity" (nothing happens without intent) and "patternicity" (everything is related to everything else). I find this plausible, admittedly because I grew up among conservative Christians who were fond of conspiracy theories. They devoured YouTube videos about 9/11 being an inside job with the same uncritical eagerness that they accepted fantastical claims in hagiographies and other pious writings. Faith in the devil is a near-perfect example of a conspiracy theory: he a is malicious, omnipresent agent who secretly seeks to corrupt all of humanity.
HARD agree on this — and congrats for so helpfully chunking Scott’s piece in the elegant phrase “The truth is, most conspiracy theorists probably know more about the topics that they discuss than you do.”
I’ve had a different experience, though, with flat-Earthers. I was lucky enough to get to record a conversation with Mark Sargent (https://losttools.substack.com/p/interview-with-the-flat-earther), and I was — I don’t want to be uncharitable here — surprised by how little he had thought through so many of his points. (To his credit, he didn’t try to deny this.)
Maybe the difference was that I had prepared for the conversation? I suspect the bigger reason is that I took care to not come at it as an oppositional debate, but as a warm conversation in which we asked each other questions.
Which is all to say that maybe a faster way to puncture conspiracy theories is to engage in better human conversations, rather than spending lots of time boning up for a debate.
I’ve always understood hardcore conspiracy theorizing to be a frame of mind; a posture more than a set of beliefs. It’s been my experience that most conspiracy theorists aren’t picky or selective about their conspiracies. They rarely attach to just one. If you think Bigfoot is out there, you probably think Tupac and Elvis are too..
Thank you for highlighting that the flaw of conspiracy theorists is a universal human flaw. The cure to a conspiracy theorist's condition is to start from a position of humility and self-skepticism, understanding that your own personal biases are most likely to lead away from the path of truth. Not an easy thing to do, and one that is likely to trip up many!
The professionalism of a scientist isn't measured by his ability to accrue data for his hypothesis or against another; it's measured by the degree to which he has purged himself of the bias that would lead one astray either way. At the forefront of research there are often 10's of valid competing hypothesis and the sign of real expertise is somehow being able to decipher among those. You cannot afford to let your own bias stand in the way, and those who have been diligent about actively purging those mechanisms that have lead them astray in the past, will undoubtedly gain an advantage.
Instead, conspiracy theorist exist outside of these established frameworks. Here, one can engage in acquiring scientific facts in the same way as any other collection of understanding, so it might seem to be a matter of mere choice of what one would prefer to believe. Indeed, many who believe in science never seriously questions the underlying correctness. This is an arduous task and they have their lives to live. Operating in this sort of environment, the conspiracy can somewhat survive, as the measure of their work is in the degree to which they sow seeds of doubt in existing understanding. They only validate their own truths by attempting to invalidate another. This isn't serious scientific practice. They are outsiders because a real scientist would never have been able to sustain a career this way. But, the flaw as you rightly point out is not necessarily ignorance, rather it is from a poverty of questioning one's own relation to truth. Truth is the greatest of privilege, and only obtained in degree to one's moral commitment to its pursuit.
Excellent post. Do you think conspiracy theories can be summed up as any theory that doesn't adhere to Occam's Razor? It seems the main epistemological fault of conspiracy theorists is to add additional steps to their theories when none are required. A related error would be a lack of faith in experts, which I think is driven by an over-reliance on a critical/Cartesian mode of thinking that questions all assumptions relentlessly, rather than relying on some level of pragmatic group consensus.
The expertise of experts is fundamentally relative, and imagined (as it cannot be measured), but in our culture certain forms of hallucination are encouraged.
I think everyone needs to put actual mental illness in their prior, so to speak.
When someone shows unusual patterns of thought and strange behavior, it should be considered as an explanation.
Here is a pattern many people describe in the early parts of psychosis: seeing a bunch of strange patterns and coincidences, with such a strong feeling of meaning that they can’t be ignored. They cry out for explanation and the result is often some kind of conspiracy organizing everything that’s happening.
People are reasonably hesitant to reach for mental illness as an explanation, because there is a sensible taboo against diagnosing strangers. But I think it should still always be a consideration even if we hesitate to say it confidently.
This would seem to be correct. At least, this study which seems well designed and measured various factors from education, general knowledge, religiousity, big 5 personality traits etc but also tendencies towards personality disorders, found weak associations with being more conservative, religious, less educated, and more extraverted and conscientious...but those factors were basically nullified once you took personality disorders into account. Being high on Cluster A personality disorder traits and especially schizotypal and paranoid style thinking was far more productive than anything else. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9604007/
This applies to beliefs in things like democracy as well, but the delusional conclusion is positive and in line with what we're taught to think so it "is" all good.
If you want to really learn about what is wrong with humans, pay close attention to their usage of the word "is".
I think meta-level evidence can definitely be a real argument, you just need to be very careful with how you weight it. Obviously if the teacher says something, that is evidence in favor of it being true given that the teacher has been shown correct more often than not before, but you wouldn't distrust your own senses just because your teacher told you to.
I just want to highlight that because some types of meta-evidence, in particular stock prices and the odds in prediction markets, can be very good evidence.
Your truth about teachers is only true to the degree that it is true though, a value which is unknowable, thus it is hallucinated, as a consequence of cultural norms of strong anti-"pedantry".
Any given "fact" taught in schools ultimately boils down to whether or not (or, to what degree, and in what way) it "is" (whatever that means) it is factual.
Take social studies in Western countries, where I suspect more than occasionally children are taught that "democracy" is ~"the best" form of governance.
Any culture is composed of many thousands of questionably factual facts, but cultural psychological conditioning makes all the complexity vanish.
But the very notion that "conspiracy theory" as a label in any way epistemically meaningful is a pretty sketchy assumption to begin with.
Since it's almost devoid of content, it can be applied to any position that's either in contradiction to dominant, influential or mainstream views, or that in one way or the other challenges established discourses and power structures.
But what's worse, there's nothing about the characteristics that allow us to define a position as a "conspiracy theory" that has any necessary bearing on whether it's true or not. Moreover, the psychology or epistemic attitudes of their proponents discussed in this piece (actual or not) have no innate relationship to the content of the theories that get labelled in this way.
I thought flat-earthers were some sort of internet joke, like I was a member of alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die for a while. But then I found a guy I went to school with had become a flat-earther and realised it was serious. So I thought ok, how can I personally test this hypothesis? Fortunately where I live there is an extinct volcano right on the beach, and some conveniently spaced off-shore islands. So I did some math and then climbed the volcanic cone taking photos of the horizon receding past the various islands, pretty much as expected. I let my friend know, and was actually quite shocked when it had no effect on him. That was when I started reading about cognitive biases and logical fallacies, and realised that we humans aren't as logical as I had assumed.
> I thought flat-earthers were some sort of internet joke, like I was a member of alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die for a while.
It was, then a few idiots took it seriously.
The flat earth movement was not an organic, grass roots movement. It hit all at once on the internet with a few social media accounts and you tube channels that hit the scene with a huge bot following and spread like wild fire with the help of google et al. It was a huge psychological operation whose purpose was probably just to have a little fun at all of our expense. Or maybe to capture the “conspiracy theorists” and portray them as total idiots who suffer from poor thinking skills. Totally worked.
> I thought flat-earthers were some sort of internet joke
What's your take on Flatlanders? :)
as in the Larry Niven novel?
Nope, this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
Ah, I saw Carl Sagan talk about this idea on Cosmos but I assumed it was his invention. I must check that out, thanks.
Ironically, Carl (whom I love) was himself a Flatlander!
sorry to be a bit slow, but you'll need to explain that to me as well. Yeah, Carl was my hero as a kid, and I bought all of his books.
The Atlantis theory isn’t a conspiracy theory as described by Scott, merely a fringe idea. I think the reasons people believe in actual conspiracy theories are psychologically distinct.
I'm not too familiar with the theory- but is one of the differences that the Atlantis theory isn't alleging some sort of literal conspiracy or coverup? It's just a lost city in the ocean somewhere?
The aspect of many people or a specific group knowing about something and trying to conceal it does strike me as pretty psychologically significant to the makeup of a conspiracy theory.
Yes, at least as described there isn’t a conspiracy involved. At most you could say that the theory is being unfairly ignored by academics but even that isn’t really a conspiracy.
It could be something more like unnecessarily negative emergence..."science" is plausibly not optimal.
> The aspect of many people or a specific group knowing about something and trying to conceal it does strike me as pretty psychologically significant to the makeup of a conspiracy theory.
The same applies to those who believe themselves to know that the CP's are wrong, when the truth value of the underlying proposition is unattainable. Which of the two groups cause more harm in the world is a very interesting question!
www.lesswrong.com/tag/fallacy-of-gray
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PhPLcopkHxQkK3EGi/catchy-fallacy-name-fallacy-and-supporting-disagreement
"And, if someone commits the Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy in trying to refute your arguments, or even someone else's, call them on it. But don't just link here, you wouldn't want to commit the Catchy Fallacy Name Fallacy Fallacy. Ask them how their counterargument distinguishes the allegedly bad argument from arguments that don't have the problem."
(That's not the best part, the whole post is a good and important read.)
Ok, I will do so.
How does your counterargument distinguish the allegedly bad argument from arguments that don't have the problem? :)
God I love the weekend, so much time for endless arguments on the internet.
I think the overall problem is that people tend to be lazy in their thinking unless they have a compelling reason not to be. This applies to conspiracy theorists and those who opposed them. The theorists tend to see something odd and immediately jump to a conclusion, factoring out all evidence against it through confirmation bias. Those opposing them tend to think that (correctly) labeling something a conspiracy theory is enough of a refutation. The problem with that is enough "conspiracy theories" turn into mainstream knowledge over time to expose outright dismissal for what it is: lazy thinking designed to avoid the issue altogether.
A problem: "correctness" is typically an epistemically unsound hallucination.
At the risk of Steelmanning to the point of fallacy, I intuit a weird truth in many classic C-theories. For example, the Earth isn't flat, but our Universe - our "World" by current consensus Cosmology - may be flat. Or if our world turns out to be Sim, then the world is flat as a screen of code, or bookpage, so to speak.
And the actual tinfoil-hatters of the 60s and 70s, paranoid that They are listening in our private life turned out to be correct, but just a few decades early.
Even the "fake" moon landing - it was fake insofar as it was a media event, designed to win the Space Race, in public perception. They actually went to the Moon, but its primary function was as spectacle, one might argue, and in that sense was "a Show". It helps us forget that the Russians went to Venus [okay, unmanned, and without a clean landing] before the U.S. went to the Moon.
This is an important point. Most conspiracy theories have elements of truth to them, but conspiracy theorists have a tendency to over-extrapolate, miss the forest for the trees, and thus discredit themselves in the eyes of normal people.
It’s absolutely true that the FBI and CIA in the 60’s were doing weird experiments with LSD, spying on and attempting to blackmail civil rights leaders, and infiltrating leftist student groups. Rather than focus on these limited abuses, they spin them all into a bigger conspiracy, make themselves look ridiculous, and no one is actually held accountable.
9/11 is another one. People get so wrapped up in the minutiae of structural engineering, insurance policies, and other red herrings, they miss the facts staring them in the face; Bin Laden was connected to the Saudi royal family, 80% of the hijackers we’re Saudis, and Bush, who had a personal friendship with Prince Bandar, did everything he could to deflect attention away from the Saudis and towards Iraq. A lot of influential Republicans had been pushing for regime change in Iraq for a decade.
Just like COVID almost certainly being the result of a lab accident, many conspiracies are just a screwup, followed by opportunistic/flailing attempts at a coverup.
Regime change in Iraq was a longstanding goal of various parties that had attached themselves to the Bush administration. 9/11 was a convenient justification for that, and Saudi complicity was inconvenient to the both the Iraq narrative, and 50 years of economic and strategic investment in the US-Saudi relationship.
To be clear, I don’t think Bush or anyone else conspired with the Saudis to perpetrate 9/11. I think Bin Laden was a rogue element arising from the Saudi royal family’s uneasy arrangement with Wahabbiism. 9/11 was a form of blowback, to which the American Blob responded with either opportunism or ass-covering. This is the simplest explanation that fits all the available facts at the time, and has been buttressed by info declassified in the 20 years since.
I certainly think that Iraq was more convenient than contingent in relation to 9/11. You raise other good points that align with my central thesis - 9/11 (and the response to it) can easily be explained by known actors, their stated agendas, and the history leading up to it. The conspiracy starts and ends with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
And yes, the anthrax scare was much weirder and leaves more room for reasonable speculation about deeper conspiracies. For me that one has echoes of Jeffrey Epstein- evidence tampering, a suspicious suicide, and political interference in the law enforcement or legal process
It's interesting that people seem to see conspiracy theories so differently than the traditional beliefs of major world religions.
I mean, at most one of the traditionally interpreted of major world religions is correct. If Christ was the Mesiah we can't still be waiting for him. If Christ was the son of god he wasn't a mere profit per the Koran and so on.
And yet these religious traditions allege things that seem exceedingly unlikely to anyone of a different religion. Belief seems to be better predicted by who your parents and peers are than by epistemically relevant evidence and it's alleged that the reason their truth isn't completely obvious is a divine conspiracy not to eliminate the need for faith (no giant announcement or being born knowing theological truth).
--
My point here isn't to dump on religion but that what we regard as a conspiracy theory is as much a matter of how we regard the beliefs as their epistemic status.
Ultimately, we all being priors to the table and we call the ones we see as belonging to low status eccentrics conspiracy theories and those which get wide uptake from high status individuals philosophies, religions or ideologies. I mean belief in communism also involves plenty of unlikely factual claims but it too doesn't qualify.
Abstract both science and religion to fundamental ideology, and science suffers from the same problem.
Given that Christ castigated the money changers in the temple, he most certainly was not a mere profit.
;)
I think that depends a bit on how you define it. The view that says everything in the world is explainable mechanistically and that simple mechanism rather than intelligent agents are the bottom level of explanation. Sure. The idea that one learns about the world by comparing hypothesis to outcomes less clear (though that itself doesn't imply any particular thing about the nature of reality -- and doesn't mean you don't still start that process with priors be they religious or not).
> I think that depends a bit on how you define it.
This is extremely true - for example, when The Science faithful refer to "science", as in "Science does X", they don't realize that they are referring to science *in the abstract* (the method, the (theoretical) *intentions* of scientists).
> The view that says everything in the world is explainable mechanistically and that simple mechanism rather than intelligent agents are the bottom level of explanation.
It is actually unknown, but do you ever notice how The Science faithful speak as if this is not the case, or will *necessarily* not be the case going forward, such as "Science will(!) figure it out", demonstrating that the ideology somehow seems to teach supernatural beliefs to the flock. Another example: The Science faithful regularly [implicitly] claim to be able to mind read.
> and doesn't mean you don't still start that process with priors be they religious or not.
Agree. An interesting question: whats the most effective ideology for overcoming this natural tendency? Personally, I think starting with a base of Taoism is a sound path.
In "Why People Believe Weird Things", Michael Shermer has pointed out that conspiracy theories and religious superstitions have two things in common: "agenticity" (nothing happens without intent) and "patternicity" (everything is related to everything else). I find this plausible, admittedly because I grew up among conservative Christians who were fond of conspiracy theories. They devoured YouTube videos about 9/11 being an inside job with the same uncritical eagerness that they accepted fantastical claims in hagiographies and other pious writings. Faith in the devil is a near-perfect example of a conspiracy theory: he a is malicious, omnipresent agent who secretly seeks to corrupt all of humanity.
HARD agree on this — and congrats for so helpfully chunking Scott’s piece in the elegant phrase “The truth is, most conspiracy theorists probably know more about the topics that they discuss than you do.”
I’ve had a different experience, though, with flat-Earthers. I was lucky enough to get to record a conversation with Mark Sargent (https://losttools.substack.com/p/interview-with-the-flat-earther), and I was — I don’t want to be uncharitable here — surprised by how little he had thought through so many of his points. (To his credit, he didn’t try to deny this.)
Maybe the difference was that I had prepared for the conversation? I suspect the bigger reason is that I took care to not come at it as an oppositional debate, but as a warm conversation in which we asked each other questions.
Which is all to say that maybe a faster way to puncture conspiracy theories is to engage in better human conversations, rather than spending lots of time boning up for a debate.
I wrote on this question here: https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/how-to-treat-conspiracy-theories?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios
XKCD made a similar point in a very funny way.
https://xkcd.com/2898/
I’ve always understood hardcore conspiracy theorizing to be a frame of mind; a posture more than a set of beliefs. It’s been my experience that most conspiracy theorists aren’t picky or selective about their conspiracies. They rarely attach to just one. If you think Bigfoot is out there, you probably think Tupac and Elvis are too..
Thank you for highlighting that the flaw of conspiracy theorists is a universal human flaw. The cure to a conspiracy theorist's condition is to start from a position of humility and self-skepticism, understanding that your own personal biases are most likely to lead away from the path of truth. Not an easy thing to do, and one that is likely to trip up many!
The professionalism of a scientist isn't measured by his ability to accrue data for his hypothesis or against another; it's measured by the degree to which he has purged himself of the bias that would lead one astray either way. At the forefront of research there are often 10's of valid competing hypothesis and the sign of real expertise is somehow being able to decipher among those. You cannot afford to let your own bias stand in the way, and those who have been diligent about actively purging those mechanisms that have lead them astray in the past, will undoubtedly gain an advantage.
Instead, conspiracy theorist exist outside of these established frameworks. Here, one can engage in acquiring scientific facts in the same way as any other collection of understanding, so it might seem to be a matter of mere choice of what one would prefer to believe. Indeed, many who believe in science never seriously questions the underlying correctness. This is an arduous task and they have their lives to live. Operating in this sort of environment, the conspiracy can somewhat survive, as the measure of their work is in the degree to which they sow seeds of doubt in existing understanding. They only validate their own truths by attempting to invalidate another. This isn't serious scientific practice. They are outsiders because a real scientist would never have been able to sustain a career this way. But, the flaw as you rightly point out is not necessarily ignorance, rather it is from a poverty of questioning one's own relation to truth. Truth is the greatest of privilege, and only obtained in degree to one's moral commitment to its pursuit.
Excellent post. Do you think conspiracy theories can be summed up as any theory that doesn't adhere to Occam's Razor? It seems the main epistemological fault of conspiracy theorists is to add additional steps to their theories when none are required. A related error would be a lack of faith in experts, which I think is driven by an over-reliance on a critical/Cartesian mode of thinking that questions all assumptions relentlessly, rather than relying on some level of pragmatic group consensus.
The expertise of experts is fundamentally relative, and imagined (as it cannot be measured), but in our culture certain forms of hallucination are encouraged.
I think everyone needs to put actual mental illness in their prior, so to speak.
When someone shows unusual patterns of thought and strange behavior, it should be considered as an explanation.
Here is a pattern many people describe in the early parts of psychosis: seeing a bunch of strange patterns and coincidences, with such a strong feeling of meaning that they can’t be ignored. They cry out for explanation and the result is often some kind of conspiracy organizing everything that’s happening.
People are reasonably hesitant to reach for mental illness as an explanation, because there is a sensible taboo against diagnosing strangers. But I think it should still always be a consideration even if we hesitate to say it confidently.
This would seem to be correct. At least, this study which seems well designed and measured various factors from education, general knowledge, religiousity, big 5 personality traits etc but also tendencies towards personality disorders, found weak associations with being more conservative, religious, less educated, and more extraverted and conscientious...but those factors were basically nullified once you took personality disorders into account. Being high on Cluster A personality disorder traits and especially schizotypal and paranoid style thinking was far more productive than anything else. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9604007/
This applies to beliefs in things like democracy as well, but the delusional conclusion is positive and in line with what we're taught to think so it "is" all good.
If you want to really learn about what is wrong with humans, pay close attention to their usage of the word "is".
You're right, they're not ignorant, just distrustful.
That kind of "meta-level evidence" is pure conformity and authority bias, not a real argument IMHO.
I think meta-level evidence can definitely be a real argument, you just need to be very careful with how you weight it. Obviously if the teacher says something, that is evidence in favor of it being true given that the teacher has been shown correct more often than not before, but you wouldn't distrust your own senses just because your teacher told you to.
I just want to highlight that because some types of meta-evidence, in particular stock prices and the odds in prediction markets, can be very good evidence.
Your truth about teachers is only true to the degree that it is true though, a value which is unknowable, thus it is hallucinated, as a consequence of cultural norms of strong anti-"pedantry".
I think I'm having trouble following- Could you try explaining in more detail?
Any given "fact" taught in schools ultimately boils down to whether or not (or, to what degree, and in what way) it "is" (whatever that means) it is factual.
Take social studies in Western countries, where I suspect more than occasionally children are taught that "democracy" is ~"the best" form of governance.
Any culture is composed of many thousands of questionably factual facts, but cultural psychological conditioning makes all the complexity vanish.
I 100% disagree with this and will get to writing a counter post at some point
But the very notion that "conspiracy theory" as a label in any way epistemically meaningful is a pretty sketchy assumption to begin with.
Since it's almost devoid of content, it can be applied to any position that's either in contradiction to dominant, influential or mainstream views, or that in one way or the other challenges established discourses and power structures.
But what's worse, there's nothing about the characteristics that allow us to define a position as a "conspiracy theory" that has any necessary bearing on whether it's true or not. Moreover, the psychology or epistemic attitudes of their proponents discussed in this piece (actual or not) have no innate relationship to the content of the theories that get labelled in this way.
https://www.josephbronski.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Vk1L5Oxao