The Conspiracy Theory Handbook
climatechangecommunication.org
climatechangecommunication.org
When someone like michael moore does "bowling for columbine", people didn't accuse him of being a conspiracy theory advocate.
Yet, if he were to do a documentary today on the influence of pharmaceutical lobbying on the way the world handled covid (or the influence of china), he would surely be suspected.
I don't think this category is useful in any way to think about a given issue / theory.
Climate change activists have claimed for a long time that our failure to address climate change is partly due to conspiratorial behaviour by oil companies- but this is of course perfectly fine.
Interest and advocacy groups exist and make no secret of their agendas. Do these pass for conspiracies now?
My advice is to foster a worldview in which you accept that the world is poorly understood and many things are possible, and then you won't have to do significant reorganization (or denial and attack) every time an interesting new idea comes your way.
There have been a lot of posts about conspiracies lately, but they have all been pretty tame (or things that were previously considered conspiracies and later proven true). Here are a few more that show that the USA is and has been capable of horrific things since it became a superpower. Now imagine what an autocracy might be doing. Or what things we might be doing that haven't been proven yet/the government actually makes an effort to cover up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n_Flight... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22500231 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
You can accept that the world is more complex than you understand, and that conspiracies exist, while still having a standard for obvious bullshit. Or at the very least, while being dubious of extraordinary claims presented without extraordinary proof.
Your reaction is the reaction I described -- it sounds like you have some work to do on being more open-minded. Being more open minded has helped me across many facets of my life, and I still have plenty of room for improvement. I highly recommend it.
I've found it's probably a futile exercise trying to have a productive discussion with someone who is set in their ways online. I have had much more success in person, because there is more mutual respect, which breeds open-mindedness, even when it challenges a worldview.
Disclaimer: I haven't personally seen any compelling arguments for any of the conspiracies he listed save one, though I doubt anyone would phrase their opinions the way the original poster did.
I think it's just the nature of online discussions. You pop in and out of them scrolling down the links on the front page of this site, or even less time for attention when scrolling twitter posts.
Memes are an evolution of this. Shorter and shorter methods of conveying thought and expressions.
It's like bumper sticker conversations everywhere
Yet here I am being attacked and called closed-minded for even pointing things like this out.
I disagree that most opposition to conspiracy theories comes from fear of having to adjust one's worldview, or that logic and consideration are rare. This statement makes critics of conspiracy theories out to be closed-minded and unreasonable, which is a common argument made by proponents of conspiracy theories to justify not having their worldview threatened by criticism.
Rather, logic and consideration are the reason most conspiracy theories are rejected, because most such theories are not rational, nor do they present compelling evidence.
"My advice is to foster a worldview in which you accept that the world is poorly understood and many things are possible, and then you won't have to do significant reorganization (or denial and attack) every time an interesting new idea comes your way."
Speaking of something obvious that goes without saying, most people already accept that the world is poorly understood and many things are possible. I believe that. That has nothing to do with the credibility of any particular conspiracy theory, and it does seem as if you're arguing against either accepting or rejecting any particular one under the implication that because the world is poorly understood, anything could be possible.
The most charitable interpretation I can make is that you're just arguing against rejecting conspiracy theories for purely emotional reasons... but my reply to you didn't contradict that premise at all, yet you and everyone else here assumes I'm simply closed minded and irrational.
I believe your point of view contributes to the problem. Even if that's not your intent, that is the result.
> I disagree that most opposition to conspiracy theories comes from fear of having to adjust one's worldview, or that logic and consideration are rare. This statement makes critics of conspiracy theories out to be closed-minded and unreasonable, which is a common argument made by proponents of conspiracy theories to justify not having their worldview threatened by criticism.
This is the crux of the disagreement then. Many of the prominent critics of conspiracy theories, especially ones who becomes full-time skeptics, are indeed closed-minded, in my opinion. But you describe it as a conscious activity (experiencing a fear of adjusting one's worldview) when really it's subconscious and most people are unaware of the mental gymnastics they are doing to shoot down an idea. Or for the more dedicated ones, they are playing debate rather than caring about the issue at hand, which can also be seen by groups such as the flat Earth-ers (if you think most of them actually think the Earth is flat, you have been memed).
I think you are in the minority in that most people agree this phenomenon exists, but very few can apply that knowledge to themselves. I can mostly only do so in hindsight, but entertaining ideas is definitely a practice-able skill.
> Speaking of something obvious that goes without saying, most people already accept that the world is poorly understood and many things are possible.
Perhaps among the average populous, but amongst people who are often the smartest in the room, especially the people perusing HN, this is definitely NOT true. A decade ago, I was certainly one of these people. I felt I could understand any technology from first principles rather easily, and no one around me seemed to be provoking any questions I couldn't answer. It was arrogance, and now I see it in others, too. Far more so in educated and scientifically minded circles.
btw, at the risk of sounding exceedingly cranky, here's some little kernels of truth I can see if I squint at the ridiculousness we started with:
- CIA is keenly interested in mind control
- Globalist ideals harmed the response to COVID (e.g. by insisting on continued air traffic)
- Weather modification is real (e.g. cloud seeding)
- The possibility of high-energy physics experiments doing some fundamental damage to our little corner of the milky way should at least not be completely dismissed out of hand. Which nuclear bomb was it, where they calculated beforehand whether it would not set the whole atmosphere on fire?
- Political influence is absolutely being exerted through universities
- Don't know about sandy hook but false flags have happened and oppressive regimes have taken people's guns away before oppressing them a bit more
- Can you really read the wikipedia article on "deep state" and say none of that is happening in the US?
I don't think Krapp was really arguing against any of these things, but it just annoys me to no end that all you hear is "bill gates 5g vaccine nanobots" when there are legitimate issues to be discussed.
Companies lobby the government to get laws passed that positively impact their bottom line. However I would not consider this some kernel of truth supporting the theory that “big seatbelt” is trying to take away your freedom, and seatbelt laws are part of a boiling the frog approach to turn the US into a totalitarian state.
Another class of BS “conspiracy” theories are simply contested political issues. Here the wacko conspiracy part usually comes into play as some erroneous motive ascribed to one of the parties.
It makes me think the great filter theory is true and we are going to destroy ourselves because a very significant number of people are incapable of basic reasoning, and the number seems to be growing...
This is the proverbial two-way street: unproven theories that reinforce someone's worldview are typically met with the same reaction as supporting political opinions and for similar reasons. Rarely is it based in logic and consideration, since adjusting one's worldview takes a lot of energy.
School shootings are not part of anyone's plan (except the shooters).
Moore tried to reveal the extend of influence and manipulation, not to reveal some new sinister group with secret plot or "everything is connected" in some completely new way that explains shootings. Advancing ones own interest and that having a negative side effect of school shootings is not a conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories have the belief that certain events or situations are secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful forces with negative intent.
To me it seems like a basic failing of psychology. If you want to stop people believing in fringe theories, then understand how they arrived at their position, engage them on their own terms, and acknowledge that (usually) there is a kernel of (often metaphorical) truth at the center, even if it’s been warped beyond recognition into a bizarre conspiracy theory.
There was even more elaborate fake news, like expat Facebook groups in China coordinating getting foreign citizens out of the country -- all carefully choreographed lies.
Luckily, I was banned in late January for telling people that they should wear masks as a precaution. Facebook and Twitter protected you.
In all seriousness, I am actually sure that a year ago there were smug academics and journalists having meetings about how they could counter these "lies".
However, I think that people were right to push back against strong claims about a novel virus. At the time it was unclear whether this was another SARS or MERS, not quite as bad, or something worse. We didn’t even know for sure whether it bound ACE2 or DPP4 before mid February.
Hindsight is 2020 and I am very skeptical of anybody who claims they knew anything about the SARS-CoV-2 virus with any degree of certainty back in January.
And all I wanted was temporary travel moratorium while data could be gathered, and some temporary mask mandates.
We ended up doing it anyway, but we did it the hard way, after it was far too late.
I had no real idea of the nature of the virus, but I knew full well in December 2019 that we should be closing the borders and stockpiling supplies. Things would surely have turned out better for all of us if we hadn't tolerated big tech interfering in the news.
But sadly, for so many people, they trusted the debunkers and really believed it was all fake news. I can't imagine what a shock it must have been for them.
I'm unsure if you meant this to be read as a criticism of the book, or a general statement. The book seems to embrace the ideas that you're suggesting are missing. E.g.:
>Show empathy. Approaches should be empathic and seek to build understanding with the other party. Because the goal is to develop the conspiracy theorist’s open-mindedness, communicators must lead by example.
> Avoid ridicule. Aggressively deconstructing or ridiculing a conspiracy theory, or focusing on “winning” an argument, runs the risk of being automatically rejected. Note, however, that ridicule has been shown to work with general audiences.
1. answers and not questions.
2. positive evidence, and not hypotheses.
For the first, that means that statements like "Don't you think it's strange...?" statements are not permitted. Generally, conspiracy theorists won't provide answers, they will merely provide doubt to demonstrate a gap in your understanding, and then will happily try to fill the gap with a plausible (but usually wrong) theory.
It will start with "Don't you think it's strange/unlikely...?" regarding some aspect of the official narrative, and then follow with statements like "The only way it could make sense is if ..."
I point out that while he may have a compelling hypothesis, he didn't point to any proof of his hypothesis whatsoever. They are much more likely to point out absence of proof in parts of the official narratives, so use this same strategy with them. Positive proof means something actually demonstrated, not inferred.
It works really well. Most of them will fail right at step 1: "You've asked a lot of reasonable questions, but have not provided any proof for your theory."
Providing proof is hard. Coming up with ideas is easy.
Not sure if it'll work with random people though. It may have worked only because I know these people personally.
Edit: One more important tactic. Most of them rely on the "If you're wrong I must be right!" strategy[0] (or rather, they fall for it). So be very open to accepting that the official narrative is wrong. Say (sincerely) "I can believe the official narrative is problematic or even wrong, but I'm not sure I see a reason your narrative is correct. It's quite possible the true explanation is something else entirely."
[0] See the movie Thank You For Smoking for a good reference to this.
I find that incredibly frustrating. Maybe I’ve rubber-ducked myself into realizing I’m not doing something right.
BTW, I'm not claiming this changes their mind in the long run. It does provide for a good conversation in the moment, though.
A lot of conspiracy theorists are fundamentalists. It's like faith. You can't muscle through it with logic, reasoning and data. Answers and positive evidence will lead you nowhere.
Public embarassment, mockery and comedy are the society's ways of dealing with this. Not saying this is a good idea as it bolsters them even further, but this is all we've got.
I find that to be a positive outcome :-)
Of course, if your goal is to change their mind, then my strategy won't work well (or at least is not sufficient on its own). However, paradoxically, the first rule in influencing people is You cannot change people. You'll see this in most communications and negotiations books. The more they sense you are trying to change them, the greater the walls they'll put up. Change almost always comes from within, and you can only help them be making it easier for them to change.[1] Instead, you have to bring down their defenses, which includes accepting them as they are, whatever their perverse beliefs. That itself will be a major step towards change. The sort of person who cannot stomach a climate change denier is the sort of person who should exit the conversation first - their prejudices will usually do more harm than good.
> You can't muscle through it with logic, reasoning and data.
In that sense, they are merely ordinary people. If you've studied the discipline of influence, you'll find that changing people via logic, reason and data is the exception, not the rule. From my time in academia, I can tell you that even amongst highly respected academics, it tends to work only within their narrow discipline, and mostly not in other areas of their life. It's not hard to find someone who is in the top of their field adhering to weird beliefs. And my former academic self who knew little about influence in those days can assure you that logic, reasoning and data almost never swayed top scientists from conspiracy theories. I know because I tried, as did many of their colleagues.
> Public embarassment, mockery and comedy are the society's ways of dealing with this. Not saying this is a good idea as it bolsters them even further, but this is all we've got.
It may be all you've got, but it's a really ineffective way, and simply closes them off to you. If you read the handbook, they too caution not to use this. Not only that, it alienates even those who are on your side. As an exercise, go find people who used to believe in a conspiracy theory and changed their mind. I'd wager at least 80% of them did not change their mind through mockery and embarrassment. For bonus points, ask them what they think about that strategy.
[1] Ridiculing does the exact opposite - it makes change more difficult in their minds.
Maybe you try listening and maybe they will too.
Maybe realize that it’s more important to understand the person in front of you than score points in your own head.
Maybe start with establishing some common values rather than convince them that you’ll never agree on anything.
Maybe realize that some of the things that you are most concerned about are the things you are least rational about, and this may be that thing for them.
Rather than putting work in to maybe get to a point where they still have to be corrected by those they feel jealous of, those they resent for their cultural capital, they instantaneously put themselves above and beyond all of them.
Reasoning with and understanding them is impossible for two reasons. Everything I've said above and also how infuriating they are. There is only so much going around in circles listening to complete and utter tripe that the most patient of us can deal with. And that is what you'll spend your time doing, because reasoning and explanation is precisely what these people resent about you and it is precisely the driver of their beliefs.
The problem, I believe, is that the ridicule just isn't enough. They have each other as a force field. If they all of a sudden came up with a new piece of half-baked tripe which was ridiculed in their own circles, they would backtrack faster than they've ever adopted any of their views. The ridicule needs to be drilled in.
The comment you responded to did not suggest ridicule as a tactic. More than that, I can almost guarantee the commenter would abhor ridiculing as a strategy. The problem isn't that ridicule isn't enough. Ridiculing is part of the problem.
Let’s take a perspective from statistical theory. Suppose there is a coin that comes up heads 1% of the time. Person A observes it 10 times and concludes that it always comes up tails. Person B does not observe at all and guesses 50/50. Who is more correct? Let’s see what happens when they start betting with 100. Person A is certain that they will win, so always bets everything. Person B expects no gain, so will not bet anything. After 1000 games, what is the probability that person A will have more money than person B? For a more theoretical treatment of why person B is more correct, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullback–Leibler_divergence
I hope that you can understand that, just like epistemology, statistics, and stock trading, civics is not a domain where self-righteousness leads to good outcomes.
It's important to note that often, suspicions of malfeasance by people in authority turn out to be wrong; but sometimes they are not. Claiming that people in power never conspire to do wrong - as this article seems to do - is pretty hard to back up.
(It is unfortunate that the term "conspiracy theory" adds another meaning to the already confusing word "theory".)
Then my government surveilance example fits your definition. "If there's no evidence, then it's well hidden."
However, I would also say that in practice your definition leads to fallacy. In general use, what I've noticed is that literal 'theories about a conspiracy' are labeled as "conspiracy theory", and then dismissed because "conspiracy theories can't be disproven and are therefore crazytalk." (I think there's a term for that fallacy, but I can't find it.)
Believing Epstein could have been killed, because the circumstances around his death seem extremely suspicious, isn't a conspiracy theory.
Believing that the Clintons sent a hit squad to kill him in order to cover up Pizzagate is a conspiracy theory.
People who believe the former also likely hold some doubt, because the actual evidence leaves room for doubt. It is after all possible that he did kill himself, stranger things have happened.
Whereas, no one who believes the latter will likely be convinced otherwise, because belief is obviously a matter of faith in that case, not reason.
Government surveilance, and even COVID-19 (as mentioned elsewhere on the thread) were both by your definition crazyperson conspiracy theories until someone went out and proved it.
To me, it's unintellectual. New theories are dismissed out of hand, since they lack evidence and are considered tantamount to flat-earth theory; any investigation is therefore unwarrented.
Edit: in your example, you're confusing 'belief that something could have happened' with 'belief that something did happen'. Is that all you're trying to say?
I never claimed that any unproven theory is automatically crazy talk. I even provided two examples to show the difference between belief in the likelihood of an unproven conspiracy, and conspiracy theory, and nowhere did I use the word "crazy."
>Government surveilance, and even COVID-19 (as mentioned elsewhere on the thread) were both by your definition crazyperson conspiracy theories until someone went out and proved it.
Again, nothing in my definition implied "crazyperson." And none of those were conspiracy theories. People knew about government surveillance, and people knew about COVID. Conspiracy theories by definition don't have proof.
And yes, until they are proven, they are conspiracy theories.
>To me, it's unintellectual. New theories are dismissed out of hand, since they lack evidence and are considered tantamount to flat-earth theory; any investigation is therefore unwarrented.
Let me explain the scientific process for you, basically. You come up with a hypothesis, you test that hypothesis, you judge the likely truth of that hypothesis based on the evidence.
Yes, new theories without evidence are dismissed without of hand. They should be. Nothing about that implies that investigation is unwarranted, rather, it implies that investigation is necessary to provide evidence to validate the claim.
Conspiracy theorists, however, do not attempt to validate their claims, or provide evidence, or consider evidence to the contrary. They simply believe as an article of faith. That is not intellectualism, that is the nonintellectual position. The intellectual position is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And if the best evidence you have for your claims are Youtube videos or Gematria, you deserve to be ridiculed.
>Edit: in your example, you're confusing 'belief that something could have happened' with 'belief that something did happen'. Is that all you're trying to say?
Sorry, you used up your opportunity to be taken on good faith, so good night.
2. Just because something cannot be disproven doesn’t mean it can’t be proven.
3. There are many theories that can be disproven, but haven’t yet been. These are still theories until such a time.
Likewise, there's only one way a theory can be wrong. No theory has ever been wrong because it was a conspiracy theory.
What's actually being discussed here is how to make other people believe (or claim to believe) something. That's fine, as long as it's not muddled with how the truth is discerned.
At any point in time a new observation can be found that actually invalidates a previous hypothesis. Every single hypothesis ever made by mankind has the potential to be invalidated this way and therefore no hypothesis has ever been proven to be definitively true. Thus nothing can be proved to be true in science and by extension nothing can be proved to be true in reality as we know it.
The scientific method is based on two axiomatic foundations which we can only assume to be true: Logic and Probability. When you apply these axioms to an arena with an unverifiable amount of entities/primitives the result is a universe where nothing can be proven.
Say you believe that Hillary is a pedophile. Why don't you believe that Donald Trump is?
Wherever you bias lies, if someone obtained pictures of Hillary conducting pedophilic actions your bias will be irrelevant against the content of those pictures.
I think one way might be to get the person to question their reasons for why they believe them, why not as well believe something else?
In such a case an honest and open-minded person might say hey maybe I believe what I have believed so far because that is what I WANT to believe. Say I believe Trump won the election. Maybe I believe so because I want to believe it is true.
This isn't some philosophical conjecture either. There are many examples of my point in science. For example: Newtons laws of motion.
Newtons laws of physics are now to our knowledge ultimately wrong. These laws were once fundamental to science and part of our common sense. We now know that these laws were never actually proven to be true. Subsequent observations have verified that Newton was in fact ultimately wrong and that relativity is ultimately the more accurate theory.
Yet relativity has not yet been proven to be true. Nor can we ever prove it to be true. It will always be and shall always be open to disproof. Scientists are fully aware of this that's why a good number of theoretical physicists are trying to work out an alternative theory.
This is literally what the scientific method is, I'm not pulling this out my ass. How facts like this applies to a conspiracy is not something I remarked about.
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." -Albert Einstien
Not a bad definition in my mind just good to be clear about what we take as the definition of the term.
BTW> Here's an article about how to approach the "conspiracy theorists": https://theconversation.com/how-to-talk-someone-out-of-a-dam...
It is one thing to be distrustful of official sources and another to believe that Bill Gates is injecting nano particles into vegetables based on a video you saw on YouTube.
Edit: And I am confident this is the reason because I have observed people go down this process. People who are intelligent, and not the caricatures they are made out to be.
Even with QAnon, the pieces were already there among the right-wing and extremist Christianity, they were just assembled into a single, somewhat coherent narrative.
For example, rare and unforeseeable side effects from vaccines. They exist. Information is not being suppressed. However, the risk-benefit calculation from both a personal and societal standpoint is just complex and muddy enough to be exploited by some snake oil salesman hawking nutritional supplements that boost “natural immunity”.
it's really easy to see this if you just go to the conspiracy regions of social media -- people providing "evidence" consisting of strange numerology, pointing to nonexistent patterns in photos and texts, claiming that random events are coded messages or evidence they are being monitored, etc.
i think these people are relatively small in number but have outsized influence in conspiracy communities, because they are much more vocal than average online.
attempts like this document makes to explain conspiracy in terms of emotional needs, personality, and cognitive habits are not without merit, but I think they will never provide a complete explanation.
none of these recommendations will work for someone who is not currently capable of normal cognition due to mental illness.
of course it's doubly irresponsible for laypeople to try to diagnose specific strangers. and history shows that "my political enemies are mentally ill" is a very dangerous idea.
still, I think communication strategies around conspiracy theories should take into account that the community they want to reach includes these people, and research into conspiratorial thinking also ought to take it into account.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/knppcu/heres_10...
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4g7jay/updated_...
So I think something similar may happen inside governments, most government employees believe and accept the official truth, and don't try to spread a counter-narrative, or be critical about the official truth. Truth is what benefits the person telling the truth and it usually does not benefit you to be critical of the official version.
If we all believe it is the truth then who's gonna say it is not, except crackpots and people we label as such. Who wants to be labeled crackpot?
[1] Lewandosky et al. "NASA faked the moon landing, Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science"
You can't respond to this by saying "fine, we will each believe what we want and won't force anything on each other", because if climate change is real, we HAVE to take collective action to stop it.
This is the case for a lot of conspiracy theories... Covid, climate change, etc. There exist real problems in the world that requires everyone to take action. We can't just throw up our hands and do nothing just because some people refuse to believe reality.
https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Conspiracies-Conspiracy-...
The problem is, conspiracy theories tend to be fluid and interconnected, and new ones pop up all the time, so it's all but impossible to compile an exhaustive list.
This can’t be a “normal” person, right? This has to be a paid actor.
A conspiracy is almost never the correct explanation. As George Carlin once said: You don't need a conspiracy when interests converge.