Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories
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He has a quote about belief as a whole:
"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended."
That's an incredibly practical insight IMO. It's true: the more you focus on achieving your own goals, the less you care about what else is going on in the world; the most that you care about is overcoming obstacles, but that's the case regardless of whether they're caused by other people's conspiracy plots or random accidents (at least that's the case for me).
So even if you're absolutely right about whatever you think is going on, it's a losing proposition to take on someone else's conspiracy as a pet crusade.
Haven't read Illuminatus trilogy, but the first chapters of Prometheus Rising had an interesting framework for how you can view the world. Definitely recommend!
RAW made conspiracy into art.
I loved it but I also know (and have known) some folks pretty deep into provably untrue conspiracy thinking. Honestly, it seemed to be a way to self-medicate with conspiracies for them. I don't think that my Illuminatus experience compares with what they're thinking in any but the most trivial way.
So can identifying with the mainstream story: I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist, I'm a serious person.
> Conspiracy theories can make people feel like legitimate actors by rationalizing their beliefs and behaviors;
So can identifying with the mainstream story: I'm listening to the experts, everyone is doing it.
> Believing in conspiracy theories entertains people by making them active participants in an exciting tale.
Most conspiracies are non-participatory. The federal reserve was created by a conspiracy[1]. I have no control over that or any ability to change the situation. It's simply depressing.
[1] - https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/jekyll-island-c... "A secret gathering at a secluded island off the coast of Georgia in 1910 laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve System."
Of course there are conspiracy theories that are true, but some guy sitting on the Internet is never going to learn about them. He’ll be dead before he does. Backroom deals are cut all the time but the peasants aren’t going to know about them. So why sit around and theorize and things you’ll never know?
All it comes down to is attempting to comfort yourself in an unstable world, conspiracy theories are the result of a brain that failed to understand reality. It’s collapsing chaos and collapsing complexity into something that makes sense at least to you and your friends. As well, often an attempt of pretending one has secret knowledge that the real peasants don’t have access to. A cheap and easy way to becoming elite, but based on nothing. Only those digging into conspiracy websites know the truth hidden from the public.
A lot, but not all, of the mainstream news is indeed substantiated and corroborated. That’s how we know the truth. It’s the best way that we know of at least. Conspiracy theories that rely on every single western and eastern media outlet to falsify Russian atrocities in Ukraine for example, it’s simply not possible. We can’t create causal links without evidence. I mean we can, but it’s meaningless until you substantiate it. So what’s the point? Just operate off of the evidence.
It’s just a lot less fun. And that’s really what conspiracy theories derive from other than a brain that failed. Schizophrenia is a cause as well. Desire for easy elitism with “hidden knowledge”. Or merely someone seeking a cheap thrill.
Identifying with the conspiracy theory gives them a shortcut to power by inclusion with other conspiracy theorists. They can quickly become a large fish in a small pond. And even as the smallest fish in that pond they are already ahead of everybody who accepts the mainstream theory.
It's also useless. Conspiracy theories give one secret power that can't actually be applied. The best one could hope for is that one day everybody else will be forced to accept your conspiracy theory, which will somehow confer prestige on you. But they can live in hope of that sudden burst of importance, while simultaneously having a built-in excuse for having no importance now.
> "There's an all-powerful, all-knowing entity watching everything you do and recording all your actions, and depending on that behavior you will be either rewarded with a post-life heavenly bliss, or a post-life eternal hellish punishment. A guaranteed way into heaven is absolute loyalty to your feudal lord and payment of a portion of your income to the church and its priests."
Yes, the original 'conspiracy theory' was religion. Just replace the supernatural entities with secret deep state cabals and black helicopters, or alien lizard-people and UFOs, it's basically the same kind of thinking.
Philosophically, there's no scientific way to disprove any of these theories, just as there's no way to disprove the notion that we're all living in a perfectly self-consistent VR simulation. Freedom of belief is also a human right, so whatever you want to imagine, go for it. (Note that believing that nothing exists until it is scientifically verified is also another of these belief systems, so don't start feeling superior, New Atheists).
And yet probability theory has a lot to say about the likelihood of theories and epistemology has come a long way in the last century
Not every likely (or unlikely) hypothesis is as likely (or unlikely) as each other
Would love to see your experiment design for testing with the null hypothesis "there is no god" ... personally, I'm an atheist, but that's still a belief-based position.
But honestly, 99% of the time, i just don't care.
Spiritualism is as much about this world as it is about concepts of afterlife.
All other hypothesis win over an omnipotent god. That model has infinite complexity and allows every law of nature to be broken due to infinite power being an intrinsic part of that entity. You need infinite evidence to even start considering it over every other non infinitely complex hypothesis that doesn't imply everything we know about physics being wrong
And they don't even give it a good excuse unlike, for example, living in a simulation
As for the other gods... Well, whoever thinks they are likely will have to give at least some epistemologically valid argument for them. Which for the most part they don't, although I'm willing to be convinced otherwise
People require more evidence to believe a bench is wet than they do to believe in most religions. I'll convert once there's good arguments to convert, until then I'll chuck gods in the generic set of "unlikely stuff that needs more reason to be considered", which is quite the big set
The all-knowing-entity theory was conveyed by authority. In theory subject to scrutiny but in practice not really. Exactly like our "scientific facts".
So let's not succumb to the temptation to believe that we are special in our wisdom. (That's another belief shared by every culture.)
If you want to consider yourself wise then you'll probably want to stray from what's "modern and popular" first.
Not really.
The religious experience tends to operate differently than conspiracy in terms of the psychology and neuroscience at work.
As the article describes, conspiracy is mostly a defense mechanism for the ego. It gives people agency in a chaotic world. It rationalizes the chaos into a simple narrative. These serve to reinforce the current executive self as it currently is.
In contrast, the religious experience tends towards being a conduit for change in self. In general, religion serves to present potential ideal future self to model ones behavior on. Be like jesus/budda/serapis etc.
I don't doubt that religion and conspiracy share some mechanisms, and that one creeps into the other depending on where you look. However, my intuition is that religion at it's core is rooted in change of self to fit a cultural/moral ideal, while conspiracy is rooted in paranoia of harm to self or others.
As far as the nature of reality, I like this quote:
"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." ― Frank Herbert, Dune
There are some religious traditions that take this view, perhaps Sufi mysticism, perhaps Zen Buddhism, and even some scientific concepts like quantum logic are analogous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic#Differences_with...
There are other aspects to the religious experience that differentiate it from other external models for the self. Things like feeling an overwhelming sacredness, performing ritual, a feeling of mysticism.
I don't doubt people model themselves off of fictional stories, but few if any are going into ecstatic trances over Sam asking about po-tae-toes.
> Why did something bad happen? I must have done something wrong.
> Why did something good happen? I must have done something right.
> There sure is a lot of cool stuff around. Someone must have made it.
Perhaps the original conspiracy theory is free-will, the idea that we have some control over anything that happens to us. No evidence, no proofs, just a hopeful thought that we can do something to make things better.
How and why the God hole is filled varies wildly per person, but the desire to do so does seem to be ubiquitous. I've struggled a lot with nihilistic thought in the past - e.g "why do anything? If you look at a big enough picture the sun will explode and nothing will ever matter or be remembered". I speculate that a major downside of higher levels of consciousness/awareness, like those found in humans, is knowing their own insignificance and normality relative to the grand scheme of the universe. I speculate filling the "God hole" and the aforementioned nihilistic perspective is a direct response to that awareness. It could even be argued that, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's important for most people to fill their God hole so they feel like they should be doing _something_ as the species would otherwise die.
tl;dr if something that fills a "God hole" is an interface in the programming sense, conspiracy is one of many implementations of the interface
It's like some (alleged) variations of the young-earth creationist theory which posits that all the fossil evidence was deliberately planted by Satan to trick the gullible and only the true-believers can see though it. That's a pretty hard one to disprove.
First time I saw real photo of Earth I was somewhat shocked.
In the US, the conspiracy memes are literally on our money, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence.
We nurture and spread the memes of the all seeing eye and the slow grinding gears of justice, not because they're literally true in all cases, but because if you get a critical mass of people to behave as if they are true and voluntarily act in compliance with the rules of this entity, then the much more limited power of the entity can focus itself on the tiny minority of detractors. That's also why detractors often spend time trying to get as many other people out of compliance as possible. It's easier to hide in a crowd when the entity you're hiding from can't arrest everybody.
This is also why it really doesn't take a terribly large minority to collapse this power dynamic, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35.... The actual kinetic power is necessarily supported by its memetic power.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Stigmatization-of-Conspiracy-T...
The term was particular pushed in a negative light onto those questioning the murder of JFK.
https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/russholmes/104-1...
My favorite modern conspiracy that's true, not a theory. Is that there is a ring of elite pedophiles in washington and around the globe trafficking kids. We have confirmation of that with Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell is currently in prison for the sex trafficking of minors... of course, they failed to prosecute or even mention to whom they were being trafficked; although there's a lot of politicians and wealthy business men who've been seen / visited their island (where the sex trafficking was taking place).
The point I'm making is that the negative connotation with this term comes directly because people in power want it that way; its a way to dismiss criticism and belittle those identifying failure. Identifying what's wrong with the world is good for us.Then sharing and discussing that belief builds a community and a shared identity. There's obviously a benefit to that.
Believing that the greater social structure of your society is controlled by conspiring entities who tend to work in their mutual self interest and to support the status quo will almost necessarily be seen negatively by those who merely support the status quo, which is basically everybody. So yes, there are negative social cohesion consequences for being aware of that, just as there are negative social cohesion consequences of being aware the religious structure of theocracy is also the same kind of thing, or any other broadly accepted popular fiction, your government exists to serve you, your priest is a conduit to god, whatever.
Most humans just don't care and aren't capable of parsing the truth value of the questions raised, they're just interested in their status within those structures rather than the nature of them. They'll trade n percent of the total time in their lives for n million kudos bucks without spending a ten thousandth thereof pondering the nature of how kudos bucks enter into circulation or exit therefrom, nor who has their hands on the scales, and in what manner.
If you are not one of them though and you genuinely find the pursuit of truth and investigation into the actual state of reality behind the socially constructed fiction, then once again almost necessarily you're going to be the kind of person who finds meaning and a sense of purpose in that pursuit, if it's true, all the better because you will have fewer doubts about that sense of purpose and mission.
Good job, you've successfully identified the core belief of almost every conspiracy theorist. A big part of the reason conspiracy theories are so appealing is that it gives the theorist has the happy thought that they and they alone see the truth while everyone else is not 'capable of parsing the truth'.
If a person can't do that though, then they're not even trying to parse the truth, they're just engaging in tribal in-group signalling with their peers, which as far as I can see is the vast majority of what humans do to the exclusion of all else. The supermajority of humanity waving red or blue flags and shouting their slogans hasn't sat down and actually analysed any of the underlying issues, that's not what their displays are about.
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's always the way its seemed to me, I've never witnessed that tribal in-group signaling being subject to any kind of critical analysis whatsoever, and any attempt to engage in such isn't seen as an attempt to find out what's true, but an attack on their tribe.
This isn't even limited to the more popular tribal in-groups. I am certain that you could find an Alex Jones infowars type who, if you sat down and earnestly attempted to engage in a dialogue with them about some belief they held that you could prove outright empirically was false, they would not view that dialogue as a mechanism for finding the truth, but once again, an attack on their tribe. This just seems to be the way the vast majority of humans work, and it kind of makes sense in a context of collectives engaged in constant struggle against each other for dominance in brutal and messy ways.
Nuanced views are a luxury few can afford, and a neat way to end up outcast and subject to the depredations of any of the aforementioned dominant aggressive collectives. Before you know it, they're forcing you to drink Hemlock.
Lol… the founding documents of the United States are pretty explicit about not trusting government. Something like 80% of people don’t trust news media today.
I wouldn’t say everyone supports the status quo. In fact I think the vast majority of people don’t like the status quo. The discussion is always how to make it better.
All that said, “conspiracies” are real and everywhere. I have multiple active conspiracies with my friends to go on a trip this fall, wife doesn’t know yet. Lol
My point was actually that conspiracies are all around us. Being apart of them is common. That makes us apart of something and makes us happy. Social cohesion wasn’t exactly what I was discussing, but I don’t think cohesion is actually necessary - so long as everyone tolerates one another.
That said I do see your point. The search for truth is definitely key. But truth isn’t much different than faith. Imo believing truth is a willingness to accept constantly being wrong. You much always change your opinions.
Why are people pushing a globe model? Who does this benefit?
At the end of the day though, a conspiracy theory is a way to rationalize a situation that you perceive as bad without having to really dig into it and see the other side that is benefiting from it. It's easier to believe that there are a group of people controlling the strings in any situation than it is that there are a ton of people who are all acting in self interest and collectively tugging the strings.
There's no reward for being right when everyone else is too. There's little penalty for being wrong a few times either, so they'll latch onto a bunch of wild theories in hopes that just one will get them the validation they seek. Note that their own belief is hardly necessary. Often it's actually quite weak. If an idea is fully discredited it's swiftly disavowed, and hopefully forgotten.
It's easy to spot this behavior online, of course. Reddit is full of it, and this site isn't exactly immune either. Strident, even aggressive, evangelism about a "contrarian" theory is usually the big tell. Accusing others of being "sheep" is solid confirmation. People who are pursuing an unconventional theory for its own sake, out of pure intellectual curiosity, tend to be quieter about it. The loud ones are just playing Russian Roulette with their reputations and sometimes their friendships. It's the same impulse that has led more than a few Nobel prize winners to start issuing grand pronouncements in unrelated fields where they're still rank amateurs, just like sports or entertainers trying to get into the spotlight one more time and usually embarrassing themselves. Or Rudy Giuliani, but the less said about him the better.
A few quirky ideas might make you an oddball, but a hundred, month after month and year after year, makes you a laughingstock and/or a pain in the ass. My father-in-law alienated most people around him by going this route. So did another of my own friends. I feel the temptation myself, and have to consciously reject that path. Some might say I've failed, and this theory itself is evidence of that failure. :shrug: In any case, there it is FWIW.
I absolutely LOVE when they do this.
Think about it for just one second.
Labeling someone a "sheep" because they were vaccinated, but someone who refuses to get vaccinated, like many others are not "sheep"? Perspective is everything?
Your point is spot on, once labels like "sheep" are used there is no point trying to further the conversation. They have taken their conspiracy theory views to religious heights and no amount of evidence can remove a religious view.
There is reason people use statements like "take it on faith".
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that some ideas are specifically designed to be pacifying and neutralizing, and concern about conspiracy theories seems to be one of them. Delegitimizing opposition is a standard propaganda tool.
If were to accuse you as a reader of being a propagandized zombie incapable of reason, divorced from reality, operating as an ideological automaton in a bubble of insidiously manufactured stimuli - I would suspect your response would be dismissive. Yet this is exactly what we accuse people of when we say they believe in conspiracy theories.
All ideologies are conspiracy theories, and the only thing that makes one more meaningful than another is their falsifiability and predictive power about reality - and not its post-hoc explanatory power. As a thinking person with intellectual and moral agency, you are capable of ascertaining whether one or more of your beliefs is the artifact of this one fallacy: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Affirmative_conclusion_from_a_... , and I'd argue that calling people conspiracy theorists is the most reliable indicator that someone has been fully atomized.
I can't defend all assertions of conspiracy, but to me the urge to articulate them at all is an indicator a person is not actuated by the much greater social danger of banal nihilism.
No. That's a huge stretch, if not an outright strawman. There's equal textual support for the more charitable interpretation that many people aren't getting enough of these positive feelings in less Manichaean or conflict-inducing ways. Even as they accept the importance and legitimacy of climate change (for example) they don't get excited by participating in activism on that issue. Conspiracy theories are a way to jump-start those feelings, and often the discomfiture of others is part of the appeal. It enhances the rush. A healthier mind seeks out meaningful engagement without turning it into combat.
> All ideologies are conspiracy theories > ... > the only thing that makes one more meaningful than another is their falsifiability and predictive power
Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that, according to people who actually study these things, non-falsifiability is one of the defining characteristics of a conspiracy theory. So no, not all beliefs are conspiracy theories. "If you disagree you must be part of the conspiracy" is a well known trope, even among comedians. Which brings us to...
> I'd argue that calling people conspiracy theorists is the most reliable indicator that someone has been fully atomized.
Not all beliefs are ideological, and not all ideologies are beliefs, especially when they are just conclusions. Category errors are funny, but clearly not everyone is in on the joke.
The OP's entire problematization of conspiracy theories is insincere. Without a mutual understanding that originates from a belief in the possibility of both truth and meaning, we're just animals without humanity to one another. I acknowledge these distinctions because those stakes are too high to be so intellectually careless as to ignore them.
In other news, I’m a very big believer in what many would consider “conspiracy theories” and it’s been nothing but detrimental to my life. I wish I was like the rest of you and didn’t believe them.
I’d like to mention I do not believe in obvious psyops like flat Earth or birds not being real or Q anon.
My advice to them is to practice "critical thinking". A fairly easy approach should be to recognize your "confirmation bias' and curiosity and feed that by actively looking for contradictory evidence.
Too often conspiracy theory types seek out evidence to further support their views, without looking at anything else.
I know it is easier said than done, but it is a start.
Personally I think the COVID19 vax is the correct action to take, i have also read at least one of the "anti-vax bibles" to get an idea of their views (I found it mostly misinformation)
You mention you are not a "flat earther", why is that? What made you decide that this "theory" was wrong, yet you support others?
Lets look at an example of serous conversations people have had with me: "Flat earth theory."
OK, do you believe in gravity? Given gravity is uniform, this generally should lead to round objects in space. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
So they argue about Gravity... and if it is "real"..
Go to the sink, get water, pour it slowly, what shape is formed.. explain in scientific terms why it is round, but the earth is not....(surface tension, minimum surface area). Could this force impact planets as well absent "Gravity"?
What other planet in the universe is "flat" besides the earth?...
Comfort. "There is an (evil) organisation in charge of things, don't worry, we know what's going on. there's no chaos or ineptitude."
Long story short, the comedian Sinbad hosted a Sinbad the Sailor movie (or movies) on some cable channel, and for the skit he was dressed in clothes similar to those a stereotypical genie might wear. IIRC there was one segment where a kid came on board his ship, and very well could have been Jonathan Brandis trying to cross-promote a show he was also on.
But "the internet" took this memory, combined with a vague similarity to the old Shazzan cartoon, and a vaguer similarity of that to the movie Kazaam, and decided there was a movie called "Shazam" starring Sinbad which explained everyone's vague memory of these sketches. I myself had this vague memory, so at first I found the idea of such a movie very plausible. Searching for evidence, however, turns up nothing, and then you find two prevailing schools of thought: One, that there was a movie, but it was so bad it tanked Sinbad's career, and because of that and/or Jonathan Brandis's death was completely removed from circulation and scrubbed from internet references. Or two, that the movie was real and pretty good, but only existed in a parallel universe, and some of us mysteriously got our consciousness transplanted from bodies in that universe to identical ones in this universe which has merely a few banal differences like that.
The second is not too unlike a lot of internet philosophy discussions, but the first is a good example of a conspiracy theory. The idea of a movie being so bad it's scrapped and all copies destroyed isn't too far fetched, so it takes a little bit of research to uncover a complete lack of any corroborating evidence, and the denial of those involved, to see that the theory falls apart.
When facing doubts about your own memory and experience, it can be tempting to accept an explanation that a prominent group in the community is giving you rather than doing your own research and forming your own opinions. I would not be surprised if it were a naturally evolved mechanism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-did-it-take-sinbad-to_b_9...
Though you could probably chalk it up to more of a cosmic Mandela Effect sort of thing.
It's funny how even the slightest bit of uncertainty can make ideas so compelling. It is still by far my favorite "Mandela Effect" example, possibly due to my having been personally affected [or afflicted?].
Edit: Funnily enough, one of the linked articles you provided contains a link which goes to the interview with Sinbad in which he first cast doubt about the conditions in Bosnia, but it just redirects to the WaPo homepage. As does the result when I search for the article in Google. Google's cached version still works, however.
"This reasoning, however, only emphasizes how conspiracy theories helped ancestors survive in a Pleistocene environment, and does not hold implications for possible psychological benefits in present-day society [20]. If anything, the evolutionary perspective implies macro-level societal benefits, by explaining why people possess mental systems that make them sensitive to signals suggesting possible collusion. Consistent with this perspective, citizens display stronger conspiracy beliefs in high-corruption than low-corruption countries [21,22]."As AI becomes even more omnipresent, mysterious, and godlike, we may find that an organized defense of our sanity becomes essential.
Otoh, there's always the empirical approach.