Conspiracy theories bypass people’s rationality
psyche.co
psyche.co
The Jeffrey Epstein story is so deep and disturbing, but no one in media will touch it in any depth. Or even do anything more than superficially acknowledge it.
The fact that an article like this doesn't even acknowledge that there are underlying truths that contribute to conspiracy theories ultimately contributes to the spread of conspiracy theories.
To be clear, I'm not defending Q. But to attack "Q" in a pseudo-intellectual way without pointing out that there is often a truth at the center of these theories is further evidence used by conspiracy theorists to show that truths are being covered up.
The arrogance of articles like this talk is to down to the "stupid people" who believe in such things. But people know there are crazy, almost unbelievable truths out there, like Epstein or MK-ULTRA (and the absolutely nuts connection between MK-ULTRA, Charles Manson, and Jack Ruby).
He was eventually arrested because of a single reporters non-stop work: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/business/media/miami-hera...
I didn't read condescension in this article. What I read was a defense of innate rationality, and an attempt to understand why otherwise rational human beings (i.e., all of us) get sucked so easily into conspiratorial thought.
We are surrounded by this phenomenon, we just don't notice because if everyone agrees on not-actually-true "truths", it is *normal, and therefore completely bypasses our intuitive filter....and if someone is to point out imperfections in popular mainstream narratives, intuitive responses like "That's different!" or "That's just a conspiracy theory!" will be typical responses. If one was to actually study this phenomenon in journalism and social media, I suspect the abstract variations of these responses would be a fairly small list, so similar is intuitive thinking between individual human beings.
As long as our humanity (and science) continues to not expose the varieties of extremely important patterns of behavior in the human mind, these exploits will remain unseen, and can be used for good or evil. If we want conspiracy theories to go away for good, expose what makes them possible, and in turn give up the magical power authorities have over the public. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.
As for conspiracy theories as a whole: I'm not necessarily sure I want them to go away. Conspiracies are sometimes real, so it stands to reason that societies should tolerate some amount of conspiracy theorizing. I think the larger risk is the blurring of conspiracy theory and conspiracy culture, the latter being closer to the cult dynamics that we see with groups like QAnon.
It's not always so cut and dried as ~"false truths", but more like normalcy/convention/cultural-norms are unquestioned.
Look how we conduct journalism, in largely narrative form with a few cherry picked stats here and there. What the media decides and broadcasts is reality is what "mainstream" consumers believe/perceive reality is composed of. Sure, freedom of speech allows differing opinions to be broadcast, to some degree (and with limitations), but we have decades of experience in seeing that the Right beliefs are what prevail, attaching a "conspiracy theory" sticker is just one of the latest.
Take "democracy", our most sacred institution - there are an infinite number of variations of democracy, but how many people think of it any more complexly than a binary? Yes, vigorous debate is allowed and even encouraged about mild tweaks, but how often does one encounter discussion of fundamental changes to how we practice democracy?
Take our financial system - I think we're all aware of some of the interesting decisions that are made in this area on a regular basis.
Consider covid and the "moral obligation" people have to get vaccinated and put up with any financial hardship resulting from lockdowns. I'm not opposing this on its own, but why is saving the lives of primarily boomers who've lived long, relatively lovely lives a moral imperative, spare no expense, and anyone who doesn't fall in line is considered selfish if not evil....but when it comes to children around the world dying of malnutrition, or people at home dying from drug issues, why is there zero moral imperative? "That's different"? Indeed it is, but I would very much like to see it stated explicitly and precisely why one "is" a moral imperative that demands setting aside all other concerns, and the others do not. If it is actually about saving lives, shouldn't we be concerned about all lives?
Take how we live in general: how we educate our children and the public ((or don't as is often the case - see: financial literacy, critical thinking, etc), how we choose to design our cities, you name it. All of this is just "how it is", rarely do we seriously question the optimality of the fundamental ways we run things. But when something goes wrong, oh boy are we quick to point a finger at this or that policy/person, typically with zero regard whatsoever for the comprehensive causality that preceded the event.
I propose that it is the psychological phenomenon/exploit described in this parable that enables this comedy of errors to continue on generation after generation, and I do not think I am the only person who is well aware of it:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Theologically, Atheists and Zoroastrians can’t both be right (to pick a hopefully non-contentious pair); with Brexit, the obvious conjugate pair is Leavers vs. Remainers; with morality I have too many to choose between, but the obvious pair to reference without people assuming (even here) that I take the side of the Evil Ones[0] is abortion, pro-choice vs. pro-life.
There are, I think, also cases where the supermajority of humans believe falsely; I think the identified cases of this are all called “cognitive biases” or sometimes “paradoxes”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
[0] at least, I’ve never seen that response here for that topic, but I have seen bad takes for other dichotomies
The conspiracy theorists that point at everything as child abuse weren't right just because they found one of the most public instances of it. It doesn't make their other dozens of claims true.
This thread is filled with people stating conspiracies as fact (without a hint of irony). We have no idea what his "influence" was, it's all speculation and conjecture. Yet that unknown is somehow proof it's all real ?
I know a bit about the story, but from my limited knowledge it seems like a Pedophile had a lot of powerful connections. Which seems roughly on par with Michael Jackson. A BIG story, but not biggest story of the century.
> there is often a truth at the center of these theories.
Some theories have been proven to be somewhat right, like supercomputers monitoring our communications (as proven by Snowden), but your "often truth" seems to be a broad generalization trying to say we should at least consider any nutjob theory to be legitimate. Lizard people? Flat earth? GTFO!
This issue is something that seems odd to me. Why are blatantly ridiculous theories lumped in with things that have some possibility of truth under one big 'conspiracy theory' label? Things like flat earth and lizard people are so obviously ridiculous yet the media seems to treat theories like that the same as theories that question government or corporate motives or other such things as equivalent.
Of course it's not hard to see why Fe'ers end up being antivaxxers. Or believing about pedophile pizza chains and furniture stores..
One way to neutralize a potential activist is to get them to be in a group that does all the wrong things. Why?
1) The message doesn't get out.
2) A lot of time is wasted
3) The activist is frustrated and discouraged
4) Nothing good is accomplished.
FBI and Police Informers and Infiltrators will infest any group and they have phoney activist organizations established.
Their purpose is to prevent any real movement for justice or eco-peace from developing in this country.
Agents come in small, medium or large. They can be of any ethnic background. They can be male or female.
The actual size of the group or movement being infiltrated is irrelevant. It is the potential the movement has for becoming large which brings on the spies and saboteurs.
This booklet lists tactics agents use to slow things down, foul things up, destroy the movement and keep tabs on activists.
It is the agent's job to keep the activist from quitting such a group, thus keeping him/her under control.
In some situations, to get control, the agent will tell the activist:
"You're dividing the movement."
[Here, I have added the psychological reasons as to WHY this maneuver works to control people]
This invites guilty feelings. Many people can be controlled by guilt. The agents begin relationships with activists behind a well-developed mask of "dedication to the cause." Because of their often declared dedication, (and actions designed to prove this), when they criticize the activist, he or she - being truly dedicated to the movement - becomes convinced that somehow, any issues are THEIR fault. This is because a truly dedicated person tends to believe that everyone has a conscience and that nobody would dissimulate and lie like that "on purpose." It's amazing how far agents can go in manipulating an activist because the activist will constantly make excuses for the agent who regularly declares their dedication to the cause. Even if they do, occasionally, suspect the agent, they will pull the wool over their own eyes by rationalizing: "they did that unconsciously... they didn't really mean it... I can help them by being forgiving and accepting " and so on and so forth.
The agent will tell the activist:
"You're a leader!"
This is designed to enhance the activist's self-esteem. His or her narcissistic admiration of his/her own activist/altruistic intentions increase as he or she identifies with and consciously admires the altruistic declarations of the agent which are deliberately set up to mirror those of the activist.
This is "malignant pseudoidentification." It is the process by which the agent consciously imitates or simulates a certain behavior to foster the activist's identification with him/her, thus increasing the activist's vulnerability to exploitation. The agent will simulate the more subtle self-concepts of the activist.
Activists and those who have altruistic self-concepts are most vulnerable to malignant pseudoidentification especially during work with the agent when the interaction includes matter relating to their competency, autonomy, or knowledge.
The goal of the agent is to increase the activist's general empathy for the agent through pseudo-identification with the activist's self-concepts.
The most common example of this is the agent who will compliment the activist for his competency or knowledge or value to the movement. On a more subtle level, the agent will simulate affects and mannerisms of the activist which promotes identification via mirroring and feelings of "twinship". It is not unheard of for activists, enamored by the perceived helpfulness and competence of a good agent, to find themselves considering ethical violations and perhaps, even illegal behavior, in the service of their agent/handler.
The activist's "felt quality of perfection" [self-concept] is enhanced, and a strong empathic bond is developed with the agent through his/her imitation and simulation of the victim's own narcissistic investments. [self-concepts] That is, if the activist knows, deep inside, their own dedication to the cause, they will project that onto the agent who is "mirroring" them.
The activist will be deluded into thinking that the agent shares this feeling of identification and bonding. In an activist/social movement setting, the adversarial roles that activists naturally play vis a vis the establishment/government, fosters ongoing processes of intrapsychic splitting so that "twinship alliances" between activist and agent may render whole sectors or reality testing unavailable to the activist. They literally "lose touch with reality."
Activists who deny their own narcissistic investments [do not have a good idea of their own self-concepts and that they ARE concepts] and consciously perceive themselves (accurately, as it were) to be "helpers" endowed with a special amount of altruism are exceedingly vulnerable to the affective (emotional) simulation of the accomplished agent.
Empathy is fostered in the activist through the expression of quite visible affects. The presentation of tearfulness, sadness, longing, fear, remorse, and guilt, may induce in the helper-oriented activist a strong sense of compassion, while unconsciously enhancing the activist's narcissistic investment in self as the embodiment of goodness.
The agent's expresssion of such simulated affects may be quite compelling to the observer and difficult to distinguish from deep emotion.
It can usually be identified by two events, however:
First, the activist who has analyzed his/her own narcissistic roots and is aware of his/her own potential for being "emotionally hooked," will be able to remain cool and unaffected by such emotional outpourings by the agent.
As a result of this unaffected, cool, attitude, the Second event will occur: The agent will recompensate much too quickly following such an affective expression leaving the activist with the impression that "the play has ended, the curtain has fallen," and the imposture, for the moment, has finished. The agent will then move quickly to another activist/victim.
The fact is, the movement doesn't need leaders, it needs MOVERS. "Follow the leader" is a waste of time.
A good agent will want to meet as often as possible. He or she will talk a lot and say little. One can expect an onslaught of long, unresolved discussions.
Some agents take on a pushy, arrogant, or defensive manner:
1) To disrupt the agenda
2) To side-track the discussion
3) To interrupt repeatedly
4) To feign ignorance
5) To make an unfounded accusation against a person.
Calling someone a racist, for example. This tactic is used to discredit a person in the eyes of all other group members.
It's claims like this that alienate me from conspiracy theories like this one. What do you mean by "no one in media will touch it in any depth"? There have been innumerable front page and long form articles written about every aspect of it, including bits that are barely substantiated by reality or just barely hint at connections to nefarious forces.
What would be the appropriate amount of coverage? I assume that for many people (not necessarily for you; I don't mean to tar too broadly with this brush) it would be media coverage that confirms the entirety of the theory; from his death at the hands of Hillary Clinton to his private sex island where he pimped out underage girls to his powerful friends and collected the videos to be used as blackmail by his intelligence service (Israeli? French? CIA? Russian?) connections.
Every story with even vague connections to Epstein is plastered over every news outlet in the world. Maybe you would argue that the coverage is superficial, but it might be that the reason that they don't go beneath the surface is because ... there's nothing there. Epstein was a serial rapist who recruited underage girls and convinced them to recruit their friends, for his sexual exploitation. When caught, he used his connections to weasel out of paying for his crimes. When caught again, realizing that his connections could no longer protect him, he attempted to kill himself, failed, and then tried again and succeeded. He was wealthy and thought that his wealth could protect him. He was a big fan of technology and transhumanism and donated extensively in the area and cultivated relationships with people in those spaces. Our jails are not great at keeping people alive when they wish to end their lives, and they failed here, as they do so depressingly often for so many people accused of crimes.
You believe things to be obvious, or as proof of some conspiracy, without evidence. That's a more interesting thing to explore than a single conspiracy.
Just one excerpt:
>In the wake of the discovery of Foster's body, Bernard Nussbaum, White House counsel, denied FBI agents access to Foster's office the day after the suicide and ordered an FBI agent to sit in a chair and remain there while White House officials rummaged through the office. When the agent rose to see what all the noise was about, Nussbaum shouted at him to remain in his chair and warned him not to rise from it again.
>There is no explanation of Nussbaum's behavior in the Fiske report. Nussbaum's actions alone ought to be condemned for interfering with the course of an investigation, and they raise further questions about what Foster was involved in and whether that had anything to do with his death. Not insignificantly, Fiske and Nussbaum have had a professional relationship for years, and Nussbaum had even sought Fiske's advice on the names of potential Clinton appointments to the federal bench.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1994-07-25-94072...
Again, your conspiracy thinking is taking over. There are problems with a lot of stories, that doesn't make them conspiracies.
Should they? “Convicted child sex offender whose previous punishments were surprisingly minor died in jail” feels like a dog-bites-man story to me. Would you have noticed his death if he wasn’t famous?
There are far too many possibilities to jump to any strong conclusions. For example, I’m not saying the guards who were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes did decide to take the law into their own hands (even ignoring libel laws that’s just my imagination and I have zero evidence), nor if the reason they “fell asleep” was being drugged by someone else who wanted to take the law into their own hands (ditto, my imagination and no evidence), but I also wouldn’t be surprised if either of these were the case. Nor would I be surprised if it was suicide.
There are probably at least a dozen stories that wouldn’t surprise me, but no reason to prefer any given one of them, and that is one of the problems with conspiracy theories.
This sounds like a not that unusual thing to me tbh. especially if many people know about that crime and we are speaking about countries with a problematic prison system like the US and that person not joining/"bowing to" a gang in prison for protection.
I would even go as far and say it's probably somewhat common in many parts of the world.
Examples? And also what do you mean with conspiracy theories, may a group of corrupt politicians and businessmen qualify as a conspiracy in your sense?
(1): I'm speaking from a German POV and as such about German press, but it probably applies to many other countries, too.
In my experience the "small but of truth" somewhere hidden in there is not just often quite distorted, the consequences /lesson people are made to believe this has/should have is often inanely distorted. Very often by using clever subtile manipulative layering of various conspiracy theories, lies, distortions etc.
So the moment you say "of point A in way A is actually true", a lot of people will interpret it a "point W,X,Y are true in way Z" where both the truth and interpretation they take from your statement have little to nothing to do with your statement at all.
So acknowledging some truth hidden in some conspiracy theory can easily become quite dangerous. I have seen cases of this in my environment.
What we are missing is I think proper purely objective and exploratory non linear press content and especially "scientific communication" (not sure how to translate it, basically science press for non science people).
But it's hard to start it now, and if we do we need to be very careful.
Because we life in a messed up world, and I fare if we go from 0 to 100% objective truth about everything a lot of people would either claim it's conspiracy or totally end if entangled in conspiracy theories.
I mean just confront ~60y people with climate change and/or environmental damage facts and see how many accept them and how many try to find all kind of excuses labeling thinks as being exaggerating or out right a conspiracy theory because they can't accept that their generation has majorly fucked up. Similar topic confronting ~60y old people with cooperate corruption in Germany.
[1] https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Political-Polari...
Lab leak theory is probably the most mind boggling example of how even speculating that the Chinese government was covering up a mistake to save face got you branded a "conspiracy theorist" (crazy person). Now I'm wondering if the original lab leak theory shutdown was itself the result of pressure on the media from China (i.e. a meta-conspiracy theory).
For example, the lab-leak theory was enough to get you banned from most social media platforms. Now politicians are seriously talking about it and it's on every mainstream news outlet.
Like, QAnon folk are obviously idiots, but it's more than plausible that QAnon was created by some government agency in order to discredit theories of events that could be damaging to the government.
In the US there's been a ton of 'movements' that have risen and then fizzled out very quickly as they initially capture the public's imagination, then are co-opted by (useful) idiots.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nih-admits-fauci-lie...
noun a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event.
Yeah that covers a lot of ground.
There is a lot to this. Entertaining can be enough, but often it's entertaining + hatred of a person or group + political manuevering/scapegoating (motive for spreading negative rumors and conspiracies even if a large portion spreading them don't truly believe them, or at least allowing them to more easily genuinely suspend disbelief).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_the_Diamond_Necklace
In a natural environment it may be better for individuals of social species to look for causation on others. It's better to think that maybe your neighbor threw you a rock on purpose that by mistake. Or if others do not talk to you during the day, it's better to think that they are angry at you and try to do something about it than to just assume that is an statistical anomaly.
We spend a lot of time trying to know what others think of us. Conspiracy theories seem to fit that trend as usually involve "groups of people" with bad intentions, and hiding their true intentions. Some people, thou, is going to be more addicted to find "what others really think of them" than others.
Do you think that in the past people were more acceptant of non-mainstream ideas? Because that sounds quite false, from atheist to homosexuals people was institutionalized for being different. Persecution of communists was a witch hund. Why do you think that "the past was better"?
I quite literally never said that. this is not my thesis, but you quoted the main part of my thesis, so it's confusing to me why you would quote me saying $X, and then ask me why I believe $Y.
Demonstrating the validity of your theory.
The human mind (and therefore, significant portions of itself) is fairly easily programmable, and while this programming does not work with super high precision, in the aggregate it works wonderfully.
"man it sucks how the US space program isn't as good as it used to be a few decades ago."
"well ok but a few decades ago people were more racist and homophobic than they are today, why do you think the past was better?"
this is a pretty insulting and non-sequitur response that's very easy to make about just about anything that compares any point in the past to any point in the present, I don't see what it has to do with anything I wrote above, and in fact it seems to sidestep my entire thesis by reframing my argument as "remember the good ol' days when we were more homophobic and religiously intolerant, and also not everything was deemed a 'conspiracy theory'?"
You’re arguing about how other people understood it instead of trying to clarify your point.
People like simple narratives. The MSM is the approved simple narrative. The idea that there are conspiracies, but also that in most cases you'll never know about them, is unsatisfying for people.
some have a large set and pattern of evidence so strong collectively that a reasonable person may conclude that they are correct, and beyond all reasonable doubt -- though they cannot be 100% perfectly certain.
some theories have weak, or easily forged evidence
the ongoing challenge for us is to figure out which type any given theory is
Also... Lab leak was conspiracy theory, social media banned this story. Now they don't. Who give whom the patent on truth anyway? We should find out together instead shouting for each other.
When MSM gets away with a reporter standing in front of a burning city and saying it's a "Fiery but mostly peaceful protest" there's a problem. On one hand, people are stupid. On the other, people are smarter than you think. Somewhere in the back of their brain they can tell when they are being lied to when a scene like this unfolds on the TV news. Conspiracy fills the missing gap when things don't add up to the party line. And because of that, as long as people are lied to for "their own good", there will be a chasm waiting to be filled with a reason and conspiracy fills that void.
Over the past year people have been denying inflation is happening. I've watched people here snidely tear into anyone suggesting inflation has increased above the ordinary annual rate of 1-2%. In the past 2 months I've personally heard NPR extol the virtues of inflation and then even deny it's happening. Anyone who does their own grocery shopping understands this is a massive lie. JPow lies to our faces every time he gets up and says it's "transitory inflation". But of course the danger is that if the Fed even whispers the I word it can induce inflation to actually take off. So, lies abound, all for our own good.
The nature of the state is that it lies to us. You can believe the lies as-is and maby have a happy life if you are in the middle-class. You can silently accept they are lies but act on the reality that you can perceive. And you can search for a reason why what you are told doesn't match up with reality.
I can; when they attack the Capitol of the country I live in and kill people. Regardless of what they believe they have crossed a line at that point and that type of behavior can not be forgiven or tolerated in a civilized society.
Jan6th, there were a few deaths, one murder by cop, others were heart attacks and one stampeded I believe.
One officer was initially reported as murdered by fire extinguisher but his autopsy came back he had a stroke due to natural causes.
I don't believe anyone in J6 was charged with having a gun or even insurrection. They all got slapped with misdemeanors for trespassing. Yeah they shouldn't have been there, but many videos inside just show them talking with cops and taking selfies.
-- edit: to user below because I'm at my post limit --
Sicknick is the officer I'm talking about, he died of natural causes, no evidence it was due to pepper spray either.
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-off...
> Prosecutors never alleged that the bear spray they allegedly used played a role in Sicknick’s death.
> D.C. Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz told the Post that the autopsy found no evidence that Sicknick had an allergic reaction to the spray and disclosed to the paper that he did not find evidence of internal or external injuries.
Also, shooting an unarmed person is something we were protesting the whole year but on that day it's fine. Both of her hands were shown when she was climbing, he could have arrested her. She had no weapon and was no threat.
Remember those weeks where the country was reviewing every police encounter (the guy who stole the taser, the kid who turned with the gun, the girl trying to stab the other girl with the knife) and everyone was debating whether they could have shot them in the leg or something. It just seems when you're on the wrong side it's fine for a cop to shoot you unarmed.
I think the event you are referring to was ruled a "justifiable homicide". Also, you are missing the case of 42 year old Brian Sicknick, a cop who had two strokes and died after being pepper-sprayed during the riot. That wasn't classified as murder, but the medical investigator found that "all that transpired played a role in his condition".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_att...
The full list of charges is here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases
Just the 7th entry on that list includes a gun possession charge.
A charge for insurrection is unlikely to be brought, as I don't think the events meet the legal definition of insurrection, but sedition charges have been brought (179 search results for "Obstruction of an official proceeding").
I'm not accusing anyone of murder (unlike you did), I'm just saying that if the riot hadn't happened, he probably wouldn't have had those strokes that day.
> It just seems when you're on the wrong side it's fine for a cop to shoot you unarmed.
Or, more like, when you're trespassing with hundreds of violent criminals, a cop may need to secure a perimeter to protect himself.
But conspiracy theorists count that as a win.
What makes mainstream news so unwatchable is that it's not the events themselves that are fake, but the conflict and tension contrived to make them into a story itself is an artifact of ideology, and that's what makes the news seem fake.
That talking head tone of, "well, this is out of the ordinary!" with a wink at the audience is the expression of an ordinary that few people seriously have. What they mean is, "well, well, this is counter to the official narrative, let's find out if these people are freaks and barbarians!" It's not reporting, it's carnival barking.
Ideology (the logic of an idea) creates narrative tension against real events where there may be none. If you already have a sense of persecution and believe there is a cabal of people who are working to undermine you, applying the logic of that idea to incoming events produces conspiracy theories. Some are more accurate than others. The logic of the idea that police, corporate executives, doctors, politicians and billionaires want to kill you because you are the representative of a group will cause you to hypothesize and test whether an encounter with them could be an attempt on your life. Similarly, if you believe a category of people has conspired to subordinate you, you're likely going to interpret interactions with them through that lens.
In this sense, conspiracy theories are rationality driven askew by being anchored to iterating the logic of an existing belief. Technically, a competing ideology that gets in the way of reconciling our experiences with truth. Merely being against conspiracy theories doesn't make anyone any smarter or likely to be in posession of truth. It's like saying being "against-bad" is sufficient to make you "good."
That's what they want you to think! /s
Of course the incurred raucous "debates" are good business: what's more clickbaity than a respectable professor losing their temper when confronted with a bad faith ideologue? But the end result is terrible for science, rationality and democracy.
“Information that is interesting and attention-grabbing is easier to mentally process than information that is boring”
Today it’s QAnon. In the 1990’s it was UFOs. Before that it was witches. And daemons before that. As religion fades, we put “faith” in more secular stories like QAnon or extraterrestrials.
I’m still reading the book but Sagan’s thesis so far is that doing a better job of teaching critical thinking and science is the ultimate remedy.
I think I'm pretty sane, but how do I know I'm believing the truth? I can read 2 papers about Covid and dismiss one as baloney (like the ones written by that pro-HCQ French doctor) and take the other one as "probably legit", but how do we lay-people even tell the difference other than "It starts out with the premise I prefer". I guess there's comfort in statistics, e.g. the number of people vaccinated so far and the very few reports of side-effects, and the high correlation between high-vaccine areas and low incidence rates and vice versa. Or the statistics that if Biden's win was fraud there would've been quite a lot of fraud needed, and the chances of keeping all of that quiet and well-coordinated was very small...
How would you design a test to determine if MSM is being controlled by the Rotschilds? It's hard to prove the vaccine is safe but you can count how many unvaccinated covid deaths vs vaccinated covid deaths to show that being vaccinated reduces chance of death.
One specific question I pondered around the time (I think Sagan may have raised it, but can’t remember for sure) was this: if we think about all the weird stuff that happens, the vast majority has a rational explanation that we can find, but for some extra weird events (let’s say 3%), what happened seems to require the supernatural, or aliens. How should we react to that 3%? Do we update our metaphysics? Or do we shrug and say “I don’t know, but absent better evidence I’m going to assume it wasn’t aliens”? How you answer that question determines your worldview.
This is where “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” really hits home. It’s the main reason I’m able to avoid wasting brain power on fringe theories. If the evidence mounts, I’ll update my beliefs.
You could believe that a cabal capable of eliminating any trace of itself in a world where Wikileaks and whistleblowing is becoming a more frequent occurrence. Or, you could invoke the simpler explanation that if there is no concrete/verifiable/reproducable evidence of it, it just doesn't exist.
I'm just going to assume it doesn't exist === I'm going to assume it wasn't aliens.
More likely fact: <1% conspiracy, >99% fuck-up!
Concealment is much more common as it's a secondary process in reaction to an unfortunate or surreptitious event that's past. In phil. they're defined differently. Here's some instances:
I think the "angry emoji" being 5x stronger than "like emoji" from Facebook is the key finding this week. Conspiracy theories would make people angry, possibly responding with the angry emoji, and then THOSE posts would have 5x higher scores than "like" emojis on Facebook.
Why are people drawn into conspiracy theories? Because when other people react angrily to a post (angry emoji), that post becomes 5x more popular than if they reacted with a simple like.
In such an environment, any disinformation would become the most popular* (popular as measured by Facebook, and pushed to the top of feeds). That's the kind of online life that people have been living if they're a part of Facebook.
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Downvote?? Has anyone missed out on the news? https://thehill.com/policy/technology/578548-facebook-formul...
This is news to me, so yeah, its something I've been thinking about today. Conspiracy theories existed forever (moon landings faked. Holocaust didn't happen. JFK assassination, etc. etc.). But why is it under today's society that conspiracies are getting pushed so hard?
Well, there we go. Anger-emoji seems to explain a lot of it.
Some conspiracies theories can be real, as conspiracies are possible.
Dismissing everything as just a "conspiracy theory" is dangerous as it allows those in power to abuse plausible deniability and if anyone questions them they can be labeled a conspiracy theorist easily.
It's reasonable to be curious and want answers. Generally these conspiracies come about when people don't get direct answers or proof to their questions.
Then there are flat earthers, moon landing conspiracists etc that have had evidence (a plane or shining a laser on reflectors on the moon) for awhile and still won't concede, I'd argue they are a very small minority though.
Sure, conspiracies exist on occasion. But by favoring the "angry" conspiracies over all others, you're still making a negative environment.
You can tell the mood often by the upvotes to comments ratio. If it has 100 upvotes but 1,000 comments it's most likely a mess of bickering and threats in the comments. But that doesn't seem to necessarily affect the downvote mood but it's likely going to have at least comment one downvoted into oblivion for no reason.
You may be partly correct if you only wish to answer your question within the context of Facebook, but more generally I think the belief and propagation of “conspiracy theories” is a symptom of people’s decreasing control over their reality and an inability to understand it.
Well, it wasn't too hard to believe that a large political group: the National Socialists of Germany (Nazi for short), got a lot of people to think in a certain manner. Not just in Germany, but also influenced the world (ex: Vichy France, etc. etc.). Such influence extended even into the USA, across the Atlantic.
When those who fell under Nazi influence were told about the horrors of the Holocaust, its not too surprising that they'd deny the claims, because they felt like the Nazis were a good philosophy.
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I dunno. Its not very hard for me to imagine why people fall for conspiracy theories. You feel that a group you're in is getting attacked by another group, and you instinctively defend the group you're a part of.
A Nazi sympathizer will see the Holocaust claims as disinformation, and instinctively defend the Nazi philosophy.
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What is new and interesting, to me, is the speed at which conspiracies seem to spread _today_. It seems faster and more virulent than before. Understanding the mechanisms of social media is probably key.
We've had TV, Newspapers, even "fake news" (called Yellow Journalism in the WW2 era), and propaganda (Dr. Seuss / Disney made lots of wartime propaganda). That's not new at all. People understand that the media manipulates their viewpoints.
I think people have less of an understanding of how social media is shaping our society. Sometimes for the better, but in this topic of conspiracies... for the worse.
I've always thought "conspiracies" were pretty simply this. Some folks have a deep aversion to the idea that things are often just "Yeah, no one really knows what's going on and there's some chaotic things happening". That can apply to genuinely unknowable/chaotic things or just things that are beyond an individuals understanding even if they might be well understood by others.
The idea of meaningless chaos is so revolting that a simple and, very importantly, human source must be what is really happening because then there's someone in control and that is more comforting (despite being a grim state of affairs if true) and sensible.
And it doesn't even explicitly state it, instead saying first "A person was able to react with emojis that correlated to “angry,” “sad,” “haha,” “love” and “wow.”" and then "If a person reacted with an emoji instead of the “like” button, the Facebook algorithm would see the post as five times more valuable and push similar content.", requiring the user to draw an inference that all emojis were treated equally, despite the priming that it only refers to "angry" earlier in the article.
This feels, ironically, like an intentionally inflammatory framing.
In the Twitter world, there's a concept called getting "Ratioed", which is when your comments exceed the number of retweets / likes.
The idea is (at least on Twitter), "better" posts are roughly the ones that have more eyeballs but fewer reactions. "Getting Ratioed" is a bad thing. You want your tweets to get many eyeballs but not a lot of back-and-forth discussion (as back-and-forth discussion is often a proxy for toxicity)
In contrast: Facebook is clearly of the opinion that "better" posts are the ones where people feel like making a comment on. Surprise surprise, Facebook is beginning to look like the more toxic social network.
They spread much faster without any real gatekeeping on them like we had with more centralized media structures. Algorithms tend to be more reactionary (e.g. "devalue QAnon posts") so they're perpetually lagging behind whatever the current conspiracy flavor of the week is.
Couple that with, IMO, a mental health crisis the likes we haven't seen in a long time and existing addictive habits created by social media companies chasing engagement. It's hard to pin the blame on any one party here. At some level, misinformation spread is fueled by people who want to believe this sort of thing, or feel like they need to be seen sharing the right type of information, correctness be damned.
The best way out for many folks is some time away from the platforms, self-reflection, and filling the void that is being met by conspiracy theories.
But I see social media as a place where people feel permitted to share conspiracy theories. If you engage with social media a lot it seems half the world is crazy. If you only engage with people in real life people are seemingly as sensible as ever, because social conventions force them to mostly keep a lid on things.
I think that at least part of it is from foreign disinformation campaigns. I can't prove it, so maybe this is just my own conspiracy theory ;-)
(As a semi-serious theory, it wouldn't surprise me if Q was in fact a Russian disinformation campaign.)
Some conspiracies just work too well / too beneficial to the Russian / Soviets worldview.
But yes, conspiracy theories are fun. I'm not against them in general. I'm just against the toxic ones. "The Question" is one of my favorite comic book characters.
(CHAZ)
[citation needed]
And if you've going to link to a random blog or social media account, don't bother.
I thought it was pretty common knowledge what they demanded and the people who were killed during it.
Are you disputing that noone died during it, or they didn't block off areas and make demands?
Many in different ways, the one example I listed was just one tragedy of several.
> resulting in 6 people's deaths, 2 being black teenagers their "security" mistook for a drive by shooter, gunning them down.
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/night-of-gunfire-...
I can find you all of them eventually, I think there's at least 6 instances of people dying and each one is a tragedy.
They died because of a stupid political stunt that accomplished nothing. The people who organized it sieged land and explicitly made political demands.
Ok, just so we are clear on your false equivalence.
All deaths at J6 were outside as well other than Babbit being murdered by the cop inside, and those outside were accidents not murders.
I think you just don't want to acknowledge that group got people killed for a political stunt, the events are very comparable.
The things we tell ourselves to protect our worldview.
And you forgot the 3 capital police that committed suicide in the aftermath. I don't think that was an accident that you did.