that's (again) the fundamental attribution error, another type of bias where we attribute to people outcomes that are more attributable to situations.
besides, most prevalent among the covid narratives is the fear and panic of the unknown--the complexity and randomness (of nature) as you put it--so quite the opposite of what you narrate.
the simple narrative is that covid is caused by a respiratory virus, and while there's lots to learn about viruses overall, we know plenty enough about them not to be in a panic over it, and to develop reasonable policies entirely from the knowledge we have. but that's too simple for our overwhelming fear of the unknown, untamped by reason, and many of us seek other, often more complicated narratives to assuage our anxiety.
As well as the simplistic counter-narratives deployed to combat those narratives:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23295618
This isn't a battle of facts vs facts as most people believe, but rather a battle of memes vs memes, where both sides are typically not telling the whole truth, but usually for different reasons. It's fascinating to observe the battle (and forum commentary on the battle) from an abstract perspective, if you can manage it, but not many people seem to even know such a perspective even exists, and it certainly isn't something we're taught in school or at home, at least "in The West".
Especially in these days--where there's a pitched ideological/political battle raging, coupled with an assault on "knowing"--that seems to be the larger driving force.
The truth being complexity and randomness is just another part of the narrative.
Why are you interested in minimizing this or finding a media-based conspiracy to overreport?
Occam's Razor may suggest something, but the actual truth of the matter remains unknown.
> Why are you interested in minimizing this or finding a media-based conspiracy to overreport?
An even better question is: why/how has your mind chosen to frame his words in a specific manner that is not actually contained within what he wrote, as well as assume (without evidence) a specific intent/motivation? Was this purely conscious and deliberate, or was it more instinctual?
https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/11/five-telecom-towers-torched-po...
I'm generally interested in the subculture
> used to refer to a situation in which there is a choice between two different plans of action, but both together are not possible
The actual state of affairs is that both are occurring.
One example is this recently popular story on Reddit:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4aydjg/somehow-this-wild-...
> A bonkers hoax video about Bill Gates has been making the rounds on social media — and it’s setting the anti-vaxx conspiracy world on fire.
> The video claims to show Gates briefing the CIA in 2005 about a vaccine to immunize religious fanatics. The video, which is obviously faked, is getting gobbled up by online conspiracy theorists who’ve latched onto the Microsoft co-founder as the mastermind behind the coronavirus pandemic.
A lovely narrative, but if one actually bothered to read the article with critical thinking skills engaged (as would be the case if the article was written by conspiracy theorists, rather than written about conspiracy theorists), it would be obvious that the author didn't even make an attempt to provide any evidence that substantiates the claim that this story is "setting the anti-vaxx conspiracy world on fire".
This is very typically the case with articles about conspiracy theorists, which insinuate (usually without saying explicitly) that all(!) conspiracy theorists believe <x>, and the "evidence" for these claims, if any is provided at all, is almost without exception a simplistic narrative, or another article of the exact same form.
An example of just such an article was even provided as evidence to answer a question in this very HN thread! [1]
If one was to actually do the most basic of fact checking on such articles (the vice.com one above for example), they would frequently encounter posts like this one[2] where the author, rather than "gobbling up the obviously faked video", instead clearly points out the obvious propaganda techniques used by the MSM.
You'd think someone would eventually catch on and say something about this obviously recurring technique in news reporting, but such exposes would occur you know where...in a conspiracy theory community, and you know [3] what they say about conspiracy theorists!
[1] https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/11/five-telecom-towers-torched-po...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/gpj202/bill_gat...
You can’t be theoretical in conspiracies. You can either prove it (or at least know facts others don’t) or you are crazy.
A similar heuristic is someone who gets robbed at gunpoint by a black person, and then claims that all black people are violent. It's interesting how society seemed to be able to not only get over that popular form of stereotype (which is indeed not identical, but is also similar), but now largely abhors it, yet the very idea that not all "conspiracy theories/theorists" are identically flawed is considered (with no supporting evidence whatsoever) impossible.
> You can’t be theoretical in conspiracies. You can either prove it (or at least know facts others don’t) or you are crazy.
Is this a theory/opinion, or a fact? If it's a fact, can you provide some supporting evidence &/or reasoning?
I mean, I can certainly agree that this very much seems to be all that most people are currently capable of, but to say that humans are not capable of it at all, but they are capable of conceptualizing theories in virtually all other fields, seems rather odd.
Can you think of any reasons why people's conceptualization of conspiracy theories/theorists is so unlike virtually every other idea? Why is it that otherwise logical people are unable to exercise logic when the topic arises, but instead revert to almost purely heuristic reasoning, often accompanied by an inability to realize that is what they're doing? Surely there must be some underlying cause behind this mysterious anomaly, no?