Any group of "deniers" is naturally going to have more critical thinkers than a group that would use the term "denier" for those who disagree.
All of them have deniers, and that is the core function. When your core critical thought relies on denial of all evidence or outside data 'my falsehood is as good as your truth' then it isn't critical anymore.
But it looks like critical thinking. Often with an elaborate scientific pantomime built around it.
One of the hardest of modern things is separating the mimes from practicioners. You cannot have sufficient knowledge or reasoning in most domains, the language is tricky, and there are liars, unknowing mimes, and bad actors everywhere. And our brains are actively working against us much of the time.
Once you commit to these identities, you’re fucked. The conspiracy theorist will never think critically, and neither will this developer as they are too invested in keeping up the image. The conspiracy theorist is just gonna deny everything and apply some theory to it, and the developer will suffer similar patterns.
Anyway, back to my original point. Don’t think technical people are not susceptible to the same shit most of the society is susceptible to. Our profession doesn’t better create critical thinkers.
In many 'conspiracy theories' there are often curiosities, contradictions, or straight up open questions.
Roswell was an actual conspiracy to hide Project Mogul. [1] The US government conspired and lied to convince the public it was just a 'weather balloon', when it was very obviously something else to witnesses. This truth was only revealed to the public (relatively) recently.
Your other examples are very current and are politically difficult if not dangerous to address with an open mind. Would you allow someone to challenge any of your _beliefs_ on racism, nazism, climate-change, vaccines, etc?
I'll give some examples of wrongthink questions: "What other pogroms did Zionists instigate? [2][3][4]", "Was Stalin the real 'Hitler'?", "Other than Katyn, what else did USSR try to pin on Hitler?". "How could there have been _no_ atrocity propaganda during WW2? [5]". These questions (and more!) might make you a racist anti-semitic nazi sympathizer.
Does anyone remember vaccine enhanced RSV? Nope, lol crazy anti-vaxers with crazy theories of government mind-control or something.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul#Roswell_incident [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%9351_Baghdad_bombin... [4] https://www.motl.org/yad-vashem-interview-with-miriam-ron-wi... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda#World_War_...