Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Here's what the science says

But what is evidence? A photo of a sea monster in a Scottish lake can be evidence. Or a NASA photo of a large face on mars. In both cases misidentification of objects is probably involved.

Then there is a category of evidence that is difficult, time-consuming and/or non-intuitive to understand, e.g. climate change.

Anything else is just a "coincidence", "planted", conspiracy", "don't confuse co-relation with causation", whatever "razor"...

Epstein story has been a conspiracy for 20 years, obviously the evidence was mostly broadcasted in conspiracy channels. And what came out would be smeared, discredited, to cause uncertain around it

And sometimes rightly as journalists, and families, were life threatened if they pursued the story

I think the more likely explaination is that:

- it gives them comfort that bad things happening are attributable to evil forces, rather than to chance or systemic variables and incentives aligning in a bad way

- it gives them purpose and strokes their ego, that they are in on it, while the rest of the people are blind to the truth

- it gives them a sense of community, with other people that believe the same thing

Take anything crazy that has happened in the past decade on the international stage, you will have people jumping up within hours that have an conspiracy explaination, despite there not even being clear facts about what actually happened. People saying that don't do that because they suspect it may be true, they do it because having any explaination no matter how bad gives them something, they wouldn't have if they just waited for further information.

Highest +ve and -ve correlations with conspiracy thinking:

  Table 3
  =====
   .56  Social Threat
   .42  Delusion Proneness
   .40  Anthropomorphism

  -.17  Tie: Cognitive Reflection / Control
  -.25  Active Open-Minded
  -.26  Trust

  Table 4
  =====
   .38  Schizotypy
   .35  Unusual Experiences
   .34  Tie: Paranoia / Psychoticism

   no third place -ve
  -.07 Agreeableness
  -.15 Humility

I don't think so. The government calling something a conspiracy theory does not discredit a theory automatically – in fact it could lead to the polar opposite. If your theory is legit and other people can check it objectively a government calling it a conspiracy theory likely leads to more eyeballs checking that thing and if it is not someones anti-government-fan-fiction it might gain traction. The best move a government can make when someone has a legit conspiracy theory that has some factual basis is don't make any public statements about it.

Conspiracy narratives (the word theory should be reserved for things that can be actually replicated) are good when the government wants to muddy the waters, but to do so they don't have to call things a conspiracy theory, they just have to sow the right seeds and let the right people disocover it.

That being said, when I hear conspiracy theory, I typically think about people who have a believe, ignore objective facts that don't fit said believe and cherrypick "evidence" that does. And half of those people don't believe this themselves, they are in it for the greater fool. It isn't called a conspiracy theory, because it is a theory about a conspiracy, it is called a conspiracy theory, because every fact speaking against it can be explained by a big enough conspiracy.

That doesn't mean there are no real conspiracies and actual historic, scientific and/or journalistic ways of pinning those down. It just means that what we commonly call "conspiracy theorists" aren't good at not lying to themselves (something good journalists, historians and scientists are good at).

My understanding of "conspiracy theory" is "things that idiots believe despite the fact that they don't possess any proofs to justify their belief", not "things that are incorrect" (and wikipedia seems to say the same thing).

Real conspiracies exist. They are NEVER discovered by conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theorists just invent theories that they want to believe, and the chance that they end up inventing something that is true is 1 over 10^30. Inversely, proper investigation, usually done by institutional organisms (the same one the conspiracy theorists are criticizing all the time) is what uncover the real historical conspiracies.

The problem with conspiracy theories is not that they are true or false. The problem is that people who believe in them are idiots: they don't have any element that allows them to conclude what they conclude with certainty, and yet they are convinced it's true. These people are dangerous: they are anti-scientific and driven by emotion and by what is more convenient for them to believe. These people are like the stereotypical mobs that burned the witches: they don't care about truth or justice, the world would be a better place without them.

So, I think we should be careful when explaining that real conspiracies have existed: even if, by chance, a conspiracy theorist turns out the be right, this person is still an idiot for being convinced by something without having any proofs.