Why do people believe in conspiracies?
First things first, I am talking about the regular folks who genuinely believe in conspiracies, not the ones who exploit this behavior for personal, political and/or economical gain.
I believe it is a look for patterns, derived from a fundamental (flawed) view that bad things can't be random, especially when they were told before that many of those things, like a global pandemic for example, were low probability. Also, a lack of understanding of math.
The issue, in my view, is that people model those things, in their heads, the wrong way. Let's say someone came after COVID saying it was definitively deliberate, since how else could such a low probability event have happened randomly? The problem is that, at any single point in time, there are lots of bad events that might happen, all of them with a low probsbility, let's say 1%. We don't know what will happen until it happens, so we can't single it out after the fact ocurring.
If we have 100 possible, independent bad things that may happen until this year finishes, each one with a 1% probability, what are the odds that at least one of them will happen? The easiest way is to calculate the probability of none of them happening, (1 - 0.01)^100, which is 0.3660 = 36.60%, and negate it, 1 - 0.3660 = 0.634 = 63.4%. So if 100 bad things might happen this year, each one with a 1% prob of happening, you can be very very sure that it is very likely at least one of them will actually happen, as 63.4% is a very high probability.
Cheers
Whenever the official story involves magic or impossible physics it's generally a good idea to turn to the conspiracy theory.
Having photographic and video evidence also helps.
well peace&love, sometimes because the official explanation is evidently false, so other people make up concurrent narratives that make more sense for someone, and those get called "conspiracy theories". See covid origins (just to mention a very recent one).
And because historically we know some very significant conspiracies actually happened so it's not like they shouldn't be happening right now as well.
It's not etiologic imho in general, only a small subset is an attempt to try to explain things have happened "for a reason".
Sometimes it's just about a generic mistrust of people in power , than can get to very weird opinions (chemtrails and so on).
But i mean when one of the most relevant states in the european continent fabricated documents to have legal claims to power (state of the church) and it was only discovered several centuries later that it was indeed a conspiracy, it's hard to claim that people imagining similar things could be happening right now or in the recent past are necessarily "dumb" or wrong.
Conspiracies happened in the past, so the mistrust is definitely justifiable. The logical conclusion is to never really trust anyone, government, randoms, or even people you know, and always assign an equal probability that if any single person in the world can do some bad stuff, they will eventually do. Somehow, I can't see how a society would ever work if it is based on general mistrust, even though it seems the only logical way to navigate the world.
People do tend to assign different probabilities based on things like closeness, being from the same background, thinking the same way, family, or sometimes just general charisma. This approach is obviously illogical.
The conspiracy guys here (luckbox excluded) don't believe the official explanation unless it comes from trump. Go figure.
People do tend to assign different probabilities based on things like closeness, being from the same background, thinking the same way, family, or sometimes just general charisma. This approach is obviously illogical.
Well, this depends on what the ends are. If the ends are to achieve the logos then yeah, such psychology at the group and individual level is counter-productive. If on the other hand, the "ends" are to move your genes on to the next generation, then having such "tribal instincts" makes sense. Especially considering that except for the last few hundred years or so, most humans lived their whole lives in small genetically related "tribes".
In fact the idea that one should be pursuing truth over tribalism is a very WEIRD concept, that very few societies (really just Western Europe) even follow to any degree. And pre-historically probably none did, as it was probably an inferior evolutionary strategy in the environment of the time.
What you consider a rational epistemology is actually the historical aberration.
because most of society are sheep and congregate in clicks, covens and in 'cults of ideology'
what is a conspiracy... two or more people making a plan or scheme and executing on it.
I hope that is simple enough for you to comprehend OP.
Well, this depends on what the ends are. If the ends are to achieve the logos then yeah, such psychology at the group and individual level is counter-productive. If on the other hand, the "ends" are to move your genes on to the next generation, then having such "tribal instincts" makes sense. Especially considering that except for the last few hundred years or so, most human
well take 9 11, you don't need to believe the official narratives to be tribal pro-west and hate muslims as inimical of your tribe and so desiring their extermination regardless of what "actually happened" on 9 11.
I mean believing the official 9 11 narrative can help focus people against muslims i guess, but you don't personally need to believe any of that to be tribal anyway.
[note: i tend to believe the 9 11 official narrative more or less, so it's not me implying it's probably a conspiracy]
It's not "truth v tribalism", it's 2 different things altogheter.
Allying with people with cultural/genetical/memetical proximity is useful to achieve goals, yes. Shared lies can achieve group goals yes. That doesn't mean you have to buy any of that yourself individually.
Really the more interesting question is why don't people believe in conspiracies-- and I think the reasons are varied depending on the exact psychological makeup of the person in question-- but for those who want to consider themselves logical and well-reasoned people I really think it comes down to how people approach facts and whether they build their worldviews deductively or inductively.
The type of reasoning that the deductive types employ is the typical sort of reasoning you hear from debunkers..." Too many people would have to be involved..someone would talk", etc. They're starting with a preconceived view of how the world is and forcing their facts into that view whether they fit or not.
For inductive types they start from the bottom up and let the facts determine their worldview. It's more like "if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit"-+ which is perhaps not the best example here so perhaps magic bullet theory is better-- but it's more like if just a single thing doesn't make sense then you have to seek alternative explanations preconceived notions be damned.
Few conspiracies end up true, but enough do that people begin to indulge because it feels good.
Take a scenario that everyone knows about. There is a consensus. But just below the surface there are these enlightened rogues; the fringe of society, outcasts, pariahs, but they burden it knowing that they are the only bastion of truth left in the whole world. Sounds pretty enticing for a subset of personalities that include ******s and slightly above average intelligences that never quite reached their projected potential based around the time they scored a 31 on the ACT.
hear is food for thought...
'Conspiracy', and the usage thereof, is not in itself a negativism or less than... even though modern dialog would have you believe as such.
'Conspiracy' is merely a noun, a descriptor.
“Conspiracy theorist” shouldn’t mean guys on youtube who shout crazy things. It should mean someone who, they and their friends, conspire to accomplish a goal. In this way conspiracy theorists should be studied.
Having said that, most conspiracy theorists online, and by most I mean 99.9%, are saying things that are not just wrong but also harmful. A different question is why are people so drawn to awful and easily disproven conspiracy theories? and the answer is often that they don’t understand something so they turn to conspiracy theorists online to make their model of the world work based on their limited understanding.
Really the more interesting question is why don't people believe in conspiracies-- and I think the reasons are varied depending on the exact psychological makeup of the person in question-- but for those who want to consider themselves logical and well-reasoned people I really think it comes down to how people approach facts and whether they build their worldviews deductively o
Translation: I am sooooo mad at smart people!
The issue, in my view, is that people model those things, in their heads, the wrong way. Let's say someone came after COVID saying it was definitively deliberate, since how else could such a low probability event have happened randomly? The problem is that, at any single point in time, there are lots of bad events that might happen, all of them with a low probsbility, let's say
In my discussions on Covid origins in 2+2 BFI (admittedly not a place you should have high expectations) the lack of basic math skills that you mention was one major problem. The other one was total ignorance of why scientists thought Covid came from bats in the first place. You want to form strong opinions on Covid origins despite extremely limited math skills fine.....but you should probably at least be aware of the earliest paper that mentions a pneumonia outbreak in China linked to a novel coronavirus of probable bat origin that has 25k+ citations.
But in modern times there is very little social cost, especially in conservative leaning circles, to not being able to do basic math or being grossly ignorant on the basics, as long as you're able to strongly hold the politically expedient groupthink answer
According to Chomsky it's the smart people who fall the hardest for propaganda...go figure.
If Chomsky said that, he was cribbing it from Orwell ('Some ideas are so ridiculous that only intellectuals can be persuaded to believe in them'), of course without realising that he was the kind of intellectual Orwell was talking about.
If Chomsky said that, he was cribbing it from Orwell ('Some ideas are so ridiculous that only intellectuals can be persuaded to believe in them'), of course without realising that he was the kind of intellectual Orwell was talking about.
Propaganda is pushed by the rich so it makes perfect sense that those better off (whether we want to call the rich intelligent can be another debate) would fall for it... it's the whole "you can't make someone believe something that your job requires them to not believe_ cliche.
I used to take the perspective that people believe in conspiracies because they want to believe the world is orderly and so having a bad guy or some secret entity controlling it is more comforting than chaos.
Now I just believe that people generally have poor epistemic practices and it’s hard to get them to change those practices because they are so intertwined with normativity in general. For instance, if you tell a person that believes in conspiracies that they are misinformed, they might accuse you actually of being immoral rather than just stupid. They might say you are helping to cover up some wrong.
So in general folk epistemology is not truth tracking, and if it’s not truth tracking we would expect it to have blind spots, so that there is a large blind spot is actually logically expected rather than being abnormal.
Is it logically possible that a folk epistemology could be truth tracking? Sure, but the number of processes that are not truth tracking are much larger than the ones that are.
With a "folk epistemology" people are leaning heavily towards some explanation already. The actual conspiracy theory comes after the fact and is just a lame justification for believing what they want.
With a "folk epistemology" people are leaning heavily towards some explanation already. The actual conspiracy theory comes after the fact and is just a lame justification for believing what they want.
I do agree that’s the case, but that could already be factored into the folk epistemology. Take “common sense”, which is considered a virtue by most people in the US. “Common sense” is best expressed as believing in the most obvious explanation. But the most obvious explanation is not something objectively measured but rather intersubjectively measured. So when someone appeals to “common sense” they are appealing to what the culture/subculture broadly believes anyway.
Despite being noninformative and obviously subject to the pre-existing beliefs of the culture, in folk epistemology that might actually be a really good reason to believe something.
Really the more interesting question is why don't people believe in conspiracies-- and I think the reasons are varied depending on the exact psychological makeup of the person in question-- but for those who want to consider themselves logical and well-reasoned people I really think it comes down to how people approach facts and whether they build their worldviews deductively o
All else being equal deductive reasoning is going to give you the correct answer much more often than inductive reasoning. Because inductive reasoning relies on you having all the correct information and being able to process it correctly, which isn't very likely.
We see this in WW. In WW you can pretty much have a very high success rate finding wolves, just by deducing villagers will post more often, interact more willingly, and defend themselves much more vigorously. You dont even really need to read their posts at all to clear most people as villagers.
Whereas inductively, you closely read all of a villagers posts very carefully, and then you often see something that isn't really there. And you Lynch an obvious villager. This happens time and time again where the village "catches" someone who is an obvious villager, using inductive reasoning that isn't correct.
All else being equal deductive reasoning is going to give you the correct answer much more often than inductive reasoning. Because inductive reasoning relies on you having all the correct information and being able to process it correctly, which isn't very likely.We see this in WW. In WW you can pretty much have a very high success rate finding wolves, just by deducing villag
You don't need all of the information for induction. You just need all the salient information.
And plenty of wolves have been caught based off of a single wolfy post. Sometimes that's all it takes.
Propaganda is pushed by the rich so it makes perfect sense that those better off (whether we want to call the rich intelligent can be another debate) would fall for it... it's the whole "you can't make someone believe something that your job requires them to not believe_ cliche.
It's "their" not "your" and the phrase is "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Two types of people imo
1 ignorant (lacking education) and end up believing in something against the norm makes them feel special (like they have an inside track and are smarter than people think they are). As a coping mechanism they are convinced they are not the dull knife in the drawer because they know something that the so called smart people are wrong about.
2 articulate and well educated individuals who do not function well and/or have been bypassed (wrongly, in their opinion) by academics and/or other professionals. They know they are not respected by their peers, but think they are actually smarter, so they find solace in leading a less educated cohort of followers by being leaders in explaining and promoting a conspiracy.
They finally feel equal to some very bright folks, because many of those bright people are engaging them.
