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Comment by tw000001 | Hacker News Reader

This is irresponsible journalism.

>You can spot hallmarks of fake theories, such as internal contradictions in the “evidence” and contentions based on shaky assumptions, psychologists say.

Just look at the many legitimate sources of conflicting information regarding COVID. Hell, many of our medical practices are based on "shaky assumptions" and shoddy survey data, especially in psychology.

Conspiracies happen, speculation is valid and arguably necessary for a healthy society. But this? This is just some kind of weird appeal to authority - recognizing the possibility of conspiracies and attempting to piece them together is not pathological and a society which believes it is it placing itself firmly under an unyielding authoritarian boot.

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I agree that immediately diagnosing people's mental state if they are having questions about what they are being told seems way more dangerous than letting people explore new ideas. Maybe there are some truths that needs to be uncovered before the world can become better.

> 'Conspiracy theories are becoming more visible'

One I wanted to share anecdotic (A: and B: texting);

B: "The reason of every causality related to probability is 'action and reaction'."

A: "'Not contentual' but reachable and alternative - Only in one direction. So it would became provable, that in the heart of each theory may be no veritable solution."

B: "Even if combinations of the whole and something imaginary find together ?"

Left me with a question... (-;

x-Files for Computer (-:

In fact conspiracy by the ruling class has been the main mechanism of leveraging power since the dawn of civilization. One of their best conspiracies in modern times has been to convince the populace that those pointing them out are nuts.

“The best trick the devil ever pulled was to make people think he doesn't exist.” — The Usual Suspects

> One of their best conspiracies in modern times has been to convince the populace that those pointing them out are nuts.

Even if this is true, the fact remains that most conspiracy theories are nuts.

No matter how many times conspiracy theorists shout "Snowden! Snowden!" at critics, that doesn't lend credibility by association to flat earth, anti-vaxxers, Pizzagate, etc.

The things you are referencing are known as limited-hangouts, and by a few other terms as well.

It's modern psyops to make legitimate conspiracy theories and theorists look crazy by association... and it is very effective. (case in point)

Not relevant. Most layman get science wrong. It doesn't mean science is bad.

It does mean that scientists who can't or won't differentiate between good and bad science are bad scientists.

Conspiracy theorists who claim to merely be skeptical of the "status quo" but cannot or will not differentiate between a plausible conspiracy theory (say, Snowden or Epstein) and an implausble one (5g towers cause COVID) are bad skeptics.

There are lots of clicks to be gained nowadays from highlighting the very stupidest people you can find and poking fun at them. It's entertaining but it's dumbing down discourse when people are discussing positions that are essentially strawmen.

>It's entertaining but it's dumbing down discourse when people are discussing positions that are essentially strawmen.

One such strawman is one you'll find throughout this thread, that anyone skeptical of conspiracy theories is either an agent of the conspiracy, a useful idiot or a troll. That dumbs down discourse as well but no one seems to question it.

I had to read your post many times and I'm still not entirely sure what you are saying. I think you may misunderstand what "strawman" is. It's a silly opinion you ascribe to the other side of a debate, so you can look good when you refute it.

Fair enough, I may have used the term strawman incorrectly. It's unfortunate that your mind apparently segfaulted on that minor error, rendering you unable to comprehend the rest of my comment and provide a relevant reply to it. I'll try to be more precise with my language in the future.

> most conspiracy theories are nuts.

Most theories claiming to be "conspiracies" are nuts.

When free speech outweighs censorship, spam can be used to make signal harder to find by increasing noise.

If there is useful signal associated with "foo", then "fake foo" (embrace and extend) makes it more expensive to find "foo" signal. This is still preferable to censorship, since increased literacy enables real signals to be found.

You keep hearing about flat-earth only because it is so ridiculous. There are not a lot of people who believe in it.

As for "anti-vaxxers", this is a position rather than a conspiracy. Do you have something specific in mind? (such as the autism thing?)

I do not know about Pizzagate specifically but there is a lot of evidence for sexual abuse by powerful people (epstein is just one recent example).

You have redefined "most" to exclude the conspiracy theories that disprove your point.

How often are you told that vaccines cause autism? How often are you told that the earth is flat?

Now compare that to how often you are told that Epstein did not commit suicide, for example.

Most conspiracy theories aren't false, per se. You just only pay attention to, and remember, the ridiculous ones.

The theory that Epstein was murdered isn't really a conspiracy theory, in the usual sense. Your typical nutty conspiracy theory requires tens or hundreds of people all to be in on the conspiracy. Murdering someone in jail might only require the involvement of two or three people.

I think the Epstein conspiracy is more about figuring out just who he was, where he got his money, and how his connections to very many very powerful people tie in to his known abuse of children. That's why people question the official narrative of suicide.

> and how his connections to very many very powerful people

It's funny how the true Epstein case turns out to be so broadly similar to the Pizzagate and Qanon conspiracy stories. I mean, Epstein did not actually own a pizza place somewhere in DC, but he could have.

The best lies have a kernel of truth inside them.

> flat earth, anti-vaxxers, Pizzagate

I disagree with the assertion that these are representative of "most" conspiracy theories. How about JFK? The Panama Papers? Mass surveillance? These are real things that happen, and people are offered no explanation—or no good explanation—and will try to reason out their own.

Do you not see the stark difference between the first set and the set you list?

Each of the ones you listed fall into two camps - lack of evidence to disprove (e.g. JFK papers being sealed) or evidence available to support (Mass surveillance, Panama Papers).

Flat earth, anti-vax, pizzagate have mountains of evidence to disprove them, but there are a worrying number of people who buy into them, and an entire cottage industry pushing them. See also 5G.

Weak evidence is not the same as a shaky assumption, which is not evidence at all.

> Conspiracies happen

As do coincidences. This isn’t about conspiracies but about conspiracy theories.

A provable conspiracy is two or more agents coming together, even without their awareness of alignment, to achieve a single specific secretive goal as qualified with evidence. Qualified evidence is any single or series of provable facts that directly links each participating agent to the secretive goal with intent. The most important part of that is proving intent. A conspiracy theory is a belief there should be a conspiracy but without the necessary qualified evidence.

Coincidence - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence

Conspiracy theory (nonsense) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

Conspiracy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy

Intention - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention

Given the terms I find it’s not at all far fetched to conclude there exists some common mental health defect that allows conspiracy theories to flourish amongst some people and not others.

> A conspiracy theory is a belief there should be a conspiracy but without the necessary qualified evidence.

That is an arbitrarily high standard. Just because the subject of a hypothesis is that there is a conspiracy doesn't automatically make lack of evidence problematic. Even for natural phenomena there can go decades before a hypothesis is backed with evidence if ever (e.g. Einstein), human interactions and particularly intent is much more unlikely to leave a trail of evidence so I don't get how being even more strict with it helps with our knowledge gathering process. All conspiracies that turned out to be true were conspiracy hypotheses before they were proven and this defense could have been (and was, and is) used to stifle the process of evidence gathering.

This doesn't mean most of the conspiracy hypotheses aren't far fetched, emotional and poorly argued, nor that all is entitled to public attention equally, but we can't apply different epistemological standards between conspiracies or natural phenomena (science) when we are faced with unknowns.

> Given the terms I find it’s not at all far fetched to conclude there exists some common mental health defect

If we judged this premise by the standard you've posited, it would be equally problematic. In fact, we know in the past, states have abused psychiatry to discredit dissenters. Check out Soviet Union and their "creative" diagnostic labels used against political dissenters as an example.

> That is an arbitrarily high standard.

Which likely explains why conspiracy theories proliferate.

> Which likely explains why conspiracy theories proliferate.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, but setting an arbitrarily high standard is problematic. Human life is complex, interactions are combinatorially so. Just because uncertainty makes us uncomfortable doesn't mean we should move the bar higher to only deal with the comfortable territory (those with readily available evidence). History is full of atrocities that didn't immediately produced evidence, and even in the face of evidence we denied it could be happening for a long while. Even evidence is no panacea for our biased knowledge-seeking machinery. Not all beliefs are bad. Not all truths are comfortable. Therefore it is imperative we be careful with what we ignore and what we don't.

> Therefore it is imperative we be careful with what we ignore and what we don't.

That is why investigations are a thing. The need for proofs is completely unrelated to complexity.

> That is why investigations are a thing

My point was exactly how states in the past could not un-corrupt themselves through investigations. That is why observing, questioning eyes of everyone is needed.

> The need for proofs is completely unrelated to complexity.

You couldn't be more wrong. Number of possible moves in a game of chess is 10^43. It exhausts the computation capacity of the most powerful computer, let alone a human's. They have to use heuristics, in other words, they have to decide what is relevant and what is not. Real life is infinitely more complex, rules are not self evident and there are many more players. Therefore we always have to decide how we will deal with complexity, therefore e.g. what we choose to investigate or what criteria we will use to assess the claims is much more consequential than you acknowledge. You are suggesting an arbitrarily high bar for investigation, assuming anything that doesn't readily have evidence will not be relevant. This is one way to narrow the problem space indeed, but it is not a good one. Things that have the most evidence are not always the things that are most relevant and vice versa.

> Real life is infinitely more complex

As somebody who has conducted lawful investigations I am fully aware. In a real life investigation where the outcome can bring legal sanctions that destroys a person's life or career the opinion of the investigator has weight, but that opinion is irrelevant without evidence to connect the dots. A conspiracy theory will sink the credibility of the investigation. What matters is what you can prove and what the attorney finds is legally qualified.

> You are suggesting an arbitrarily high bar for investigation

As I should.

> In a real life investigation where the outcome can bring legal sanctions that destroys a person's life or career the opinion of the investigator has weight, but that opinion is irrelevant without evidence to connect the dots

Truth is not under the monopoly of legal systems. Legal systems make use of truth to deliver justice, not to make sense and meaning of what is going on at large. They don’t orient us as a society regarding what is important to pay attention to. Besides, you can’t be suggesting legal investigations catch everything there is to investigate, nor lack of due investigation doesn’t destroy lives either. Nor every conspiracy is readily codified in law. Laws change and get applied as a function of what we bring into attention or not.

Conspiracies by nature rely heavily on information asymmetries. It means most of the time we don’t even know what to investigate. That is why conspiracy hypotheses are crucial to be vigilant about the possible connections even with weak evidence. It is a preliminary exploration of the problem space; reasonable people don’t suggest we prosecute people based on hypotheses only. We are talking about a process that might or might not lead to an investigation but not an alternative to it.

Truth is a product of belief systems and agreement, opposed to factuality, which is why evidence is given greater authority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

That is not what truth is. Belief, knowledge, truth they all have different meanings in epistemology. There are centuries of philosophy and critique made on these problems. If you are interested in learning, I would suggest starting with some Kant, and checking the term das-ding-an-sich.

Writing off people with dissenting/anti-establishment viewpoints as mentally ill is at best extremely pedestrian; potentially extremely sinister.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatr...

It is not about agreement/disagreement. It is only about the inability to separate belief systems from evidence.

Conspiracy theory often happens when coincidence becomes unbelievable. (I like the phrase someone else coined in this thread, 'coincidence theory', when we hold onto the coincidence explanation too long.) NSA spying was believed by many long before snowden, because the coincidences were piling up even though intent was not proven.

I don't think it's fair to conclude there's a mental health defect in people more skeptical of the status quo (If we want to go that route, perhaps there is a similar mental health defect that allows belief in improbable coincidence to flourish among some people and not others?).

> I don't think it's fair to conclude there's a mental health defect in people more skeptical of the status quo.

It’s not about fair, popularity, perceptions, or belief systems. It is only about the inability to separate evidence from belief. The strength or popularity of the belief does transform that belief into evidence.

Let me say it differently then. It isn't intellectually honest to dismiss someone's opinion by claiming them mentally defective. It would be just as easy to say that you're in denial, because you're asking for unreasonably high levels of evidence.

I can dismiss conspiracy theories as nonsense, regardless of any mental defect, because they are nonsense. Perhaps that is horribly unfair, but it’s entirely intellectually honest. If you want intellectual honesty pursue evidence instead of agreement.

a) You're skipping right past my point, that dismissing a conspiracy theory by calling its proponent mentally defective is intellectually dishonest. Also, it comes dangerously close to an ad homenim, if not done right.

b) NSA surveilance was a conspiracy theory 15 years ago. Was that nonsense?

> Also, it comes dangerously close to an ad homenim, if not done right.

Equating mental illness or impairment to an ad hominem ignores the medical nature of the subject in preference for an ignorant social stigma. See the last paragraph of this comment to discover what mental illness is according to the medicine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23329867

Citing yourself and a paper that isn't published or peer-reviewed puts you at exactly the same level of evidence that you have expressed such disdain for.

The definition of mental illness has nothing to do with whether what you said is an ad homenim. If you were to diagnose someone with a relevant mental illness, and then have a conversation with them which brought their conspiratorial ideas to your attention for the first time, then saying their conspiratorial talk was the result of a mental illness would be legitimate. However, to have a conversation with someone, hear them theorize the existence of a conspiracy, and then conclude they must be part of a set of people with a mental deficiency? That is absolutely an ad homenim.

So, again: I don't think it's fair to conclude there's a mental health defect in people more skeptical of the status quo.

If you need a more expanded definition that otherwise says much the same things try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder#Definition

Diagnosing somebody with a broken arm is not a personal attack and neither should be a mental health diagnosis.

> I don't think it's fair

Life isn't fair. Fairness is a subject best left to small children and courts of law. To address your concern though, evidence is not about agreement.

> If you need a more expanded definition

Logically speaking, we could be talking about how belief in conspiracy theory is affected by mental deficiency, a preference for apple pie, or a broken arm. Giving me a definition of 'thing-that-is-bad' is irrelevant to its use as a potential ad homenim. And as I said - if you already have a diagnosis of the person, then feel free to mention it as a point against their theory of a conspiracy. But if you do not already have that diagnosis, then claiming the theory implies a mental deficiency is absolutely an ad homenim against the theory. The order of the cause and effect matters.

I think you mistook my use of the word "fair". I was using the first definition from merriam-webster: "marked by impartiality and honesty." Maybe I should just keep using "intellectually honest" since that appears to cause less confusion. We do agree on your other point, though, that "evidence is not about agreement." Maybe I should use the phrase 'theorize about the existence of a conspiracy' instead of 'skeptical of the status quo'.

With that addressed: I don't think it's intellectually honest to conclude there's a mental health defect in people who theorize about the existence of a conspiracy.

> NSA spying was believed by many long before snowden, because the coincidences were piling up even though intent was not proven

What were the inexpiable coincidences that were piling up?

I wouldn't say so much "coincidences" as "significant prior evidence."

Here's what led me to believe that the NSA was engaged in large sale interception of communications years before the Snowden disclosures:

"The Puzzle Palace," published in 1982: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puzzle_Palace

Report from the EU's investigation of ECHELON in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Committee_on_the_ECH...

Disclosures around room 641A in 2006 (discussed yesterday on HN): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

The NSA's capabilities were correctly speculated upon by technically adept civil libertarians before the Snowden disclosures. The details were certainly fuzzier before 2013. But mass surveillance capabilities were no more in doubt than the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons program. In both cases there was plenty of concrete evidence despite official denial and/or stonewalling.

Yes, I agree with you completely that there was significant prior evidence. I would go as far to say as a very large amount of what Snowden revealed was in fact already known. This seems to be the opposite of it being a conspiracy theory - that's why I asked specifically about these "coincidences piling up".

You're changing the definition of "conspiracy theory" in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample you were given of NSA spying.

What's an example of a claim that you think was considered a conspiracy theory pre-Snowden, that now isn't?

The existence of "NSA spying" I don't believe was ever considered a conspiracy theory.

> What's an example of a claim that you think was considered a conspiracy theory pre-Snowden, that now isn't?

"The NSA has a giant secret building in the midwest where they store surveilance." "The US government is spying on US citizens."

I remember the pre-snowden discussions online and offline, and saying the US government was spying on US citizens was tinfoil hat territory. I even had conversations with government contractors who used the line, 'the government could never keep a secret that big'.

I would say it's the Dunning–Kruger effect that makes some people fall for such things but not others. At lest at the beginning. If someone once went down the rabbit hole they will start to question absolutely everything but that the fact that they could be wrong. And where you can't help them anymore with logic arguments. Logic build on what everyone agrees on like math, physics etc. But if you try to explain why the earth atmosphere isn't sucked away by the vacuum of space if there is no ceiling dome, you are lost if the other person questions gravity because that was invent by the Jews or whatever to [insert evil plan here].

Like all those who spouted the evidence free Russia-gate conspiracy theory? Thats a lot of mental health defects. I'm obviously being hyperbolic but you should get the point.

On a more serious note, it's important to remember the power of inductive logic in places where we lack evidence, such as in the conspiracy theory realm. Not everything has to be deductive, though of course it is preferred.

> Thats a lot of mental health defects.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23329867

It’s a straw man against critical thinking. I don’t mind their example, global warming caused by people. What I do mind is them trying to dismiss conspiracy theorists because of it.

I remember pre-Snowden everyone called you a headcase if you said NSA is monitoring everything and everyone.

After Snowden, everyone mysteriously shut up about it.

And then there was Epstein, even if the details were fuzzy...something nefarious was happening.

And famously Martin Luther King Jr, even Hemingway.

TL;DR: His friends were disturbed by his paranoia that the FBI was following him. But years later it turned out to be based on fact: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html

> a straw man against critical thinking

I like your summary. It has seemed like calling something 'conspiracy theory' has been, for many people, a comfortable dismissal. It's so much easier to believe the conspiracy theorist "needs help" than to accept that the NSA is monitoring everyone.

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