Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

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I have a friend like that. He has M.A. in computer science, is pretty smart overall, but believes all the dumbest conspiracy theories, including the contrails one.

It's fascinating and scary at the same time. It's what happens when you do motivated thinking for decades. He believes in all the alt-right crap about "gender ideology", "fake climate change", "fake pandemic", etc. He just completely ignores any data that contradicts what he thinks.

In middle school he "just" disliked gays and was pretty normal overall. Now there's no subject on which you can talk with him without some batshit insane views.

A big part of this is splinters of American culture war that spreads over the rest of the world as a side-effect. I can understand why some people in US think cancel culture and wokeness went too far. But then you have people repeating the same "antiwoke" alt-right points imported from USA in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church and president together with main bishop go on anti-gay hate campaigns on state TV. And somehow it's still the alt-right that fights for "free speech", when they have no problem with "go to jail for blasphemy" laws.

Once you buy into this culture war and decide you're on one side - you interpret all new data accordingly. So you cannot believe in climate change, cause that's what leftists do. So if you see climate change - it's because NWO causes it with contrails. Trump is your guy cause he hates gays. So if he does things that benefit Russia - it's his brilliant plan to deal with Putin that you simply can't understand yet.

Always add more hidden variables that make your worldview consistent.

I dont think conspiracy theories are for dumb people. I think its mostly for people that dont feel understood. They see the world is telling them a narrative but despite this narrative, they have no great job, no great life partner or no great status in their community, they feel there must be something that is preventing them from getting these things. They go in search of an explanation and find it. They get hooked on the simplicity of these narratives and find them so satisfying.

Conspiracy theories are for people who need to believe there is order and purpose in the universe. They need to believe someone is in charge pulling the strings because the alternative, that it’s all just chaotic randomness, is too hard to deal with.

I believe in order and purpose, I have a fairly strong spiritual practice. I pray, I meditate, I view my life as a journey, I believe I was put here for a reason.

I'm don't believe in conspiracy theories however, because I'm mature enough to accept that sometimes bad things happen for reasons other than "evil underground cabal of satanists".

especially this one - these people seem like they're in denial about their actions causing climate change causing their catastrophic weather, so they invent invisible bogeymen to blame.

I imagine that when they get dumped by their girlfriend, they'll blame it on George Soros manipulating her via 5G raditation instead of "well maybe she didn't like you being an abusive alcoholic who cheated on her?"

I know several people who are smart, happy with their jobs, and are massive conspiracy theorists. I think they have a kind of Dunning-Kruger syndrome: they are very successful in their fields, which leads them to believe that any explanation that makes sense to them must be true. It is the case some of the time, but occasionally it tricks them into believing in stupid theories that do not really make sense. Some Nobel prize winners famously went down that hole, who were very successful and admired before turning bad.

> they have no great job, no great life partner or no great status in their community, they feel there must be something that is preventing them from getting these things

My friend works in IT and earns probably in the 99th or 98th percentile in the country. It's not that. In fact I don't think economic wellbeing is related at all. Poland has been doing great economically for the last 30 years, and yet the conspiracy theories are spreading.

I mostly blame social media. Previously if you wanted to know how the climate works you looked it up in encyclopedia, watched some TV or asked a teacher. They mostly weren't spreading bullshit.

Now you search internet and there's so much bullshit confirming all your wrong ideas you can spend weeks reading just that.

PiS state media absolutely destroyed my grandpa. In the recent years, he went from being someone whom you could talk to to someone that only speaks about how Tusk is devil and so on.

I used to live in Brazil, and I saw a similar situation: a significant chunk of very intelligent and competent, high-earning, IT workers were very much into those theories.

I also know a huge amount of conspiracy theory believers in the medical area. Also otherwise competent.

If anything, the correlation with loneliness or low status was reverse: the richer and high-status, the more blatant and visible those beliefs were. People in low-prestige professions, or poor? It was very rare to see them talk about it.

The theories are often complex from the standpoint of how they work, or even the motivations. They are simple un how they assign blame. We all like having goodguys and badguys neatly separated with a single linear function. That is much more appealing than admitting we are all partly to blame for pretty much everything that affects all pf us, and that even the worst actors often have some good motivations and qualities. In addition to the appeal of simple humans, the complex conspiracies seem to appeal to people with very good pattern matching intelligence. Also, sometimes, conspiracies are real, and that doesn't help.

> in countries where you go to jail for criticizing Catholic Church

I'm yet to hear of such a country. Aren't you thinking of lese majesté laws that some countries like Spain and the Netherlands have?

"Insulting the religious feelings" is the phrasing here in Poland. It's almost exclusively prosecuted when the hurt feelings are on the side of the vast majority = Catholics.

There's about 50 people sentenced per year.

My point wasn't that, my point was that people supporing these consider themselves "fighting for free speech" because they want to be able to insult minorities.

Couldn't find a single instance of someone being jailed under this law

Italy still has blasphemy laws; although it has been decriminalized, you can still get an administrative fine. It also still has lese majesté laws.

Fines are not jailing.

You can search for blasphemy laws here [0]. I just looked for countries that are predominantly Catholic.

Only obvious one where this may be currently enforced is El Salvador? Though I can't quickly find any recent examples, so maybe that's not true. And places like Monaco still haven't repealed those laws. Edit: also Poland – from a sibling comment.

[0] https://end-blasphemy-laws.org/countries/

While this website claims several countries have statutes that allow incarceration under blasphemy convictions, I couldn't find a single instance of a person being jailed in the past few decades under any of them.

Yes, restricting scope to jailing for criticizing the Catholic Church, I only see suspended sentences and fines in places like Poland. Expanding to other religions, there are people currently in prison for Quran burning, and religious prisoners in NATO countries (Turkey).

Ah so if we are talking about what I was talking about yes but at the same time there are things I wasn't talking about that are different. Noted.

No-one in at least a century has been sent to jail for criticizing the church in holland; and especially not the Catholic church.

Lese majeste laws have nothing to do with religion

I'm curious: did he used to have a talent for humor too?

What was once used to create a laugh, the absurdness of tangents and conspiracies, is now serious because it's attributed to a virtualized antagonist, who is manipulating our lives and making fun of it, by exploiting collective behavior, pulling the strings.

It's us that do not see we are manipulated, and that we are propelled to invest towards what's not in our own interest, taking them for a ride to an unwanted future. They must feel their control over their own lives is being taken away.

Perhaps like the jews knowingly went to the slaughter, and they could not be convinced to revolt themselves and fight for their life?

If you mean that he used the conspiracy theories to sound funny and edgy - maybe? Hard to tell what he believed when we were in middle school and what he just said for lolz. Now he does believe in all that shit.

The latter part of your comment was hard to parse for me, I can only say that some Jews did revolt (for example in Warsaw Ghetto). But I'm not sure what was your point with this analogy.

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