Semi-related: I'm currently interested in how people get into the seemingly closed and endless maze of believing in things that are relatively provably incorrect or at odds with their own interests.

My daughter has recently been diagnosed with an eating disorder, and she cannot get past wanting to lose weight, no matter that she's in hospital due to her heart rate having slowed down to alarming levels. She still wants it to go slower, as a challenge, as a goal, to show how strong she is in fighting her own body's will to live.

It's fucking crazy, but it's her reality. I do not understand how this kind of fantasy gets a foothold. I feel like the power of an idea is woefully underestimated.

Same goes with conspiracy theories. Maybe an idea has to fit like a puzzle piece into a real life scenario as a convenient surface-level explanation for something unpleasant or just unresolved.

I used to think the brain was a logic machine, but I think there are strong elements of it that are coping mechanisms. Cling to a fantasy that makes unpleasant thing less unpleasant. Don't know how that relates to potentially starving oneself to death, but that seems to be entirely on the table for ye olde brain.

Careful what you consider plausible folks!

• deepfriedchokes

  today at 10:07 PM

  Humans aren’t rational animals, they are emotional animals. They believe what they want to believe, emotionally. Body Keeps the Score kind of stuff, which focused on acute amygdala hijacking, but should have talked a lot more about continuous amygdala hijacking.

  I’m sorry about your daughter I hope she gets better.

• rdgthree

  today at 5:37 PM

  In my experience, I've found most deeply embedded self-destructive ideas to be rooted in fear.

  The brain and body are effectively locked in a paranoid "fight" state - "I know this behavior is unhealthy, but if I don't behave this way, then [insert irrational fear] will happen."

  If you can figure out what she is afraid of, you might be able to help her walk back the behaviors from there. But trying to correct the behaviors on their own is very hard. Since the fear is usually irrational, the behaviors may be a relatively rational response to said fear. They may hold the fear itself as table stakes - not understanding that they are afraid of something that isn't real (i.e. I will never find love if I'm not as skinny as the other girls on Instagram).

  Again IME - the feeling from inside the self-destructive brain is "I shouldn't be doing this self-destructive behavior, but I don't know another way to achieve X goal, and I absolutely need to achieve X goal." Asking the question "Why do you need so badly to achieve X goal?" is usually a good start to defanging the fear.

• justusthane

  today at 4:02 PM

  Wishing your daughter the best. I can’t imagine how devastating it must be to watch your child go through something like that and feeling powerless to help.

• esseph

  today at 4:06 PM

  I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter, and I hope.... yeah. I "hope" for you, best way I can explain it. One dad to another.

• RandomBacon

  today at 4:00 PM

  It's probably a mixture of A and B, and maybe some C, etc.

  I believe a necessary element is that people want to be "better" (eg. ahead, smarter, or etc) than others, whether that's having some sort of "secret" knowledge or just wanting to be a contrarian.

• throwaway8333

  today at 4:09 PM

  I've been through that. Even with a BMI below 18 when you already look like a walking skeleton and can't do more than a minute of physical activity without having to rest, you still continue seeing yourself in the mirror as obese, focusing in on small imperfections and exaggerating them to absurd levels. I really saw myself as fat, even though the weight was far below the normal range. You don't believe what other are saying because the mirror is objective and won't lie to you.

  It can be fixed though — the hospital stay after passing out from low glucose levels finally straightened me out, but she really needs to figure this out for herself. Good luck.

• Mouvelie

  today at 7:06 PM

  With our societal move away from religion, we lost (what I think is) the useful metaphor of demons to explain some behaviours and frankly, it is my theory that demons and ideas are akin to viruses : they come, take ahold of who they can, thrive where they can, to take everything they can until they can't.

  From the short post you shared, your daughter seems, for a lack of better words, possessed by this terrible terrible idea. Sadly, I have no idea (!) why some ideas stick to some whereas other won't attract ideas even close. But yeah, you are right, one should never consider their own thoughts to be absolutely true.

  Sorry that you got this lesson is such a hurtful format. Hope your daughter gets better.

Some relevant cognitive biases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_projection_fallacy

https://www.lesswrong.com/w/typical-mind-fallacy

• heresie-dabord

  today at 4:15 PM

  > Conspiracy belief is a growing issue, thanks to an “expanded marketplace for conspiracy theories” online and on social media platforms, Pennycook said.

  Biases that are strengthened by for-profit disinformation business.

  Which raises an interesting point: In another time is sociological history, fringe thinking would have had to overcome a much more robust social challenge.

  People "on the edge", who might have re-calibrated effectively, have become less likely to self-critique.

  • potato3732842

    today at 4:33 PM

    >Which raises an interesting point: In another time is sociological history, fringe thinking would have had to overcome a much more robust social challenge.

    In a world of razor thin survive/starve margins there's more incentive to keep things stable on the day to day and if that means we all gotta convince ourselves the king is ordained by god and Saddam did have WMDs (or whatever) then so be it, at least you all get to work the fields in relative harmony and importantly not starve, not having dissent is more important than getting to the truth on any one issue.

    As society gets richer we need (in the strict "bottom of the pyramid" sense) social cohesion with those around us less so we're freer to adopt beliefs from wherever even if not shared with those around us.

  • bokoharambe

    today at 4:21 PM

    I really don't think it's about social media. Conspiracy theories were a big deal on the leadup to the French revolution (look up the Famine Pact and the Great Fear), and there was no social media back then.

    The conversation that no one wants to have is that American society is in a similar process of collapse, and conspiratorial thinking is only gaining traction because no one trusts that the state holds the general interest anymore. The real social challenge to overcome is government legitimacy.

    If in our time conspiracies are perpetuated because of for-profit incentives, it is only because profit is what our society is structured around at a fundamental level. When the time for collapse has come, it brings itself into being by means of any and all existing institutions.

    EDIT: and for the record, it's not about cognitive biases either. No one here has a real historical perspective.

• fuzzfactor

  today at 4:54 PM

  I would say lack of awareness or even absolute delusion can thrive without any particular bias.

  • Sharlin

    today at 7:37 PM

    Yes, but when reading these sorts of news it's a good habit to spend a moment reflecting on one's own potential cognitive blind spots as well.

Can't this statement be generalized from "conspiracy theorists" to "most people"? E.g, "Religious people unaware their their religion is in the minority"? Unless a person has subjected their belief to rigorous scrutiny and debate, they will probably be unaware about how many people in the world agree or disagree with it.

• kemayo

  today at 4:13 PM

  I think the more interesting one is "religious people unaware their religion is in the majority".

• Lendal

  today at 4:14 PM

  I don't believe rigorous scrutiny and debate would have this effect at all. Most people would just get defensive and entrench. There has to be another way to reveal reality to them that doesn't result in their entrenchment.

  • antisthenes

    today at 5:43 PM

    > There has to be another way to reveal reality to them that doesn't result in their entrenchment.

    Before you reveal anything to them, make sure you are actually revealing reality and not just your version of the story.

• arp242

  today at 4:48 PM

  There are degrees of things. It's true that many people have some beliefs that are unconventional, irrational, or even radical, but many also realise at least to some level. There are many religious people who will admit they can't prove any of it.

  Similarly, in general people tend to overestimate how much people agree with them, but you can overestimate by a little or by a whole lot.

  It's my general observation that many conspiracy theorists are far more sure of "the truth" as they see it than the average person. This is also why so many keep banging on about it in any venue, whether appropriate or not.

Here's an idea: treat conspiracy theory as theory, an explanation of a set of facts, rather than as social contagion or pathological disorder. Allow open discussion of all sides of an issue, admit controversial facts, and structure the discussion in such a way that truthfulness and explanatory power rises to the top. I'm picturing some kind of hybrid of Reddit and Wikipedia.

Censorship, ostracism, and certain debunking styles are counterproductive in the sense that they harden the "conspiracy theorist" in his beliefs, confirming that "the establishment" is protecting sacred cows and forbidden knowledge. These approaches are unnecessarily combative and condescending. I think a more open approach is called for.

Sabine Hossenfelder handled "flat earth theory" in a way I found refreshing. She said, "Huh, this is interesting. I appreciate that they aren't afraid to question fundamental assumptions. That is a scientific attitude. But here's why I think they're wrong."

• intended

  today at 4:50 PM

  Well, what do we do about people who don't read the article? Even if you tell them what is being discussed, they will interject about their pet theory, and insist on having you discuss their PoV.

  Discussion about the topic is now hostage to whoever has the least understanding but the most willingness to interject.

  At that point, it wouldn't be surprising to find experts leaving the conversation, to form more specialized groups to discuss the topic.

  How would you solve this?

• Majromax

  today at 4:44 PM

  > Here's an idea: treat conspiracy theory as theory, an explanation of a set of facts, rather than as social contagion or pathological disorder. Allow open discussion of all sides of an issue, admit controversial facts, and structure the discussion in such a way that truthfulness and explanatory power rises to the top.

  That's well worth doing when evaluating the merits of a potential conspiracy theory for yourself. However, it's not evident that this approach will convince people who incorrectly believe conspiracy theories of their errors.

  Eponymous conspiracy theories have a built in 'immune system' to reject logical, scientific argumentation, since most if not all refuting facts can be attributed to the untrustworthy or malicious conspiracy itself.

  Ultimately, scientific argumentation depends upon all involved parties having a shared understanding of what observed facts are true or false, and if that agreement is not there then otherwise rational parties can still reach different conclusions with no persuasion possible.

  > Sabine Hossenfelder handled "flat earth theory" in a way I found refreshing. She said, "Huh, this is interesting. I appreciate that they aren't afraid to question fundamental assumptions. That is a scientific attitude. But here's why I think they're wrong."

  Was this approach persuasive to any 'flat earthers', or was it instead interesting to watch as a 'round earther'?

• regularjack

  today at 4:45 PM

  If you make outrageous claims for which there is abundant proof of the contrary (e.g. flat earth), it's on you to provide proof, it's not on me to pretend that you're not making outrageous claims.

I wonder if that was always true.

When I think of "classical" conspiracy theorists, like the JFK assassination or the moon landings, I think of somebody who believes that they have special knowledge that most people do not have. They believe themselves to be a valiant minority struggling against an oppressive force -- one that has gotten to practically everybody except them.

I suspect that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, and have categorically changed in the process. These beliefs aren't fringe any more. They may not be held by a majority, but they no longer need to seek out obscure chat rooms to share them. They'll be affirmed in the media, by politicians, and by many of their neighbors.

Science itself works off of "conspiracy theories" AKA "theories".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...

Were the challengers of Phlogiston conspiracy theorists? Better yet, Copernicus? Imagine you're a Tolimeic and you've been accurately predicting the positions of the heavenly bodies for almost a THOUSAND years. Your great, great, great, x10 grand fathers did the same thing and it's all perfect math and it has ALWAYS worked, QED. And this "conspiracy theorist" comes along and wants to rock the boat.

This is EXACTLY how scientific revolutions work and it follows that all human progress follows this model.

It's the entrenched Toliemics that are constantly shouting "you're a crazy!". And from first principles: they are wrong.

It's like the boy who cried wolf. The "conspiracy theorists" have won. The people you call crazy have beaten the "consensus" too many times to be written off. And it has always been this way.

And why do we have to add the pejorative "conspiracy". It's not even a pejorative if one examines it. Are we suggesting that humans don't conspire so the theory can't be true? Isn't that a disqualifying ad hominem? Shouldn't that be a red flag for the intentions this line of argument? I get really tired of "conspiracy theory" thrown around as a way to dismiss someone. Just steel man the arguments and I'll decide for myself how crazy it is.

• sharkjacobs

  today at 4:35 PM

  The "conspiracy" part of "conspiracy theories" is that other people are deliberately and knowingly concealing the truth for their own ends.

      - "The moon landing is faked" : the conspiracy is the media campaign selling this fake lunar landing
      - "Princess Diana’s death was not an accident" is a royal assassination coverup
      - "Dinosaurs never existed" means an anti-religious conspiracy of scientists and experts pretend Dinosaurs exist as an attempt to discredit the bible
  

  The difference between theories and conspiracy theories is that Copernicus' opponents didn't actually secretly know that his theories were true

• roxolotl

  today at 4:32 PM

  Responses like this muddy the waters by trying to equate the reality that understanding changes overtime with what are opinions that are largely unfounded.

  There are two big differences between scientific consensus and theory building and conspiracy theories. First the scientific method tests these theories. This approach tests theories and continually responds as new information arrives. Second the theories are useful. Science’s goal is to estimate reality to the point that it is useful.

  It is not a disqualifying ad hominem to say “you provide no nor respond to evidence and your theory doesn’t provide a useful testable hypothesis.”

• krapp

  today at 4:36 PM

  >This is EXACTLY how scientific revolutions work and it follows that all human progress follows this model.

  No, it isn't.

  Scientists attempt to disprove their theories using hypothesis and observation, and adjust their models of reality based on what the evidence shows. Conspiracy theorists state their assumptions a proiri and refuse to adjust their models based on evidence to the contrary.

  Scientists are the ones saying the Earth is round, conspiracy theorists are saying it's flat. These are not the same.

• exe34

  today at 4:30 PM

  Back on Earth, we get about 1 good theory for every 1000 "conspiracy theories" (in your nomenclature).

  Yes they laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the clown.

• ks2048

  today at 4:28 PM

  Of course it all hinges on what one considers a "conspiracy", but from my view the of the word, NO the conspiracy theorists have not won - the earth is not flat, the moon landing was real, aliens and reptile-man hybrids are not running the show.

The dichotomy of conspiracy theory / not conspiracy theory is semantic poison. This entire article is reinforcement. Do you see it?

Are you the kind of person who believes convincing sounding research from an Ivy League school posted on social media and wikipedia articles? Is your epistemology based in socialmediaism?

• intended

  today at 4:32 PM

  Do you know that we've seen a difference in how information cascades through conspiracist networks vs science oriented ones?

  If you want a better differentiation, is computer science the same as magic? Is there no difference between the skills someone develops as a professional and expert in their field, and the lay person? Everyone has the same level of ability and willingness to understand a subject?

  For example, did you read the article before commenting?

If I was wealthy conspiracy theorist I might even build an AI molded after my beliefs and call it the "source of truth"

The paper linked in the article is paywalled, but after a bit of sleuthing I found a full access pre-print (I assume hosted legitimately)

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/d5fz2_v3

The section on measuring over-confidence is interesting, specifically how they address the shortcoming of self-reporting confidence (if you're bad at the task in the first place, you're also going to be bad at estimating your performance, where the act of estimating resembles the task itself).

Another fun activity is to visit the appendix (p. 47) which lists all of the True and False Conspiracies used in their assessment.

I can’t remember where I heard it, maybe a Joe Rogan clip, but he made a good point that believing that there are _no_ conspiracies is also an extreme viewpoint that is obviously wrong, given that some conspiracy theories eventually turned out to be conspiracy facts.

• arp242

  today at 4:53 PM

  I don't think there is anyone who believes there are no conspiracies.

  The terms "conspiracy" and "conspiracy theory" have very different meanings. This is essentially just a linguistic sleight of hand, not too different from when creationists say "evolution is just a theory". "Conspiracy theory" is somewhat unfortunate term.

  • clickety_clack

    today at 5:40 PM

    Isn’t it the “deep state” and “government coverup” type of theories that are conspiracy theories? The flat earth thing is an example of that, where the theory is that “they” (the government or big globe or whoever) are trying to convince you that the world is round when it’s actually flat.

    Note that the article we’re discussing specifically mentions “people who believe in conspiracies” in the first line.

    • arp242

      today at 6:02 PM

      > Note that the article we’re discussing specifically mentions “people who believe in conspiracies” in the first line.

      Which obviously refers to conspiracy theories in this context. Words can have more than one meaning (again: see "theory", among others).

      Watergate was a government cover-up. No one denies that happened. Or Iran-Contra, or the Snowden leaks. Or the WMDs in Iraq.

Love the use of ‘false conspiracy’ which has been an increasingly popular phrase in conspiracism research.

• js8

  today at 4:32 PM

  Right. I think a "conspiracy theory" is more than just a theory about some conspiracy. I think an important attribute of conspiracy theories is that they are unfalsifiable. Any piece of evidence or witness against them is either labeled to be in the conspiracy or being fooled by it.

  Conspiracy theories are thus logically self-consistent theories, which effectively exclude all evidence against them as invalid. Therefore, it's impossible to counter them rationalistically, they can only be countered empirically.

• bell-cot

  today at 4:18 PM

  IIR, it was the Bavarian Illuminati who first used that phrase - as part of a double-false-flag op (run through their Society For Truth, before they lost control of that front org to the Invisible Emperor's Legion of Elba).

  /s?

Giordano Bruno wasn’t killed for no reason.

NSA spying on most of the internet traffic was a crazy conspiracy theory before Snowden.

• godshatter

  today at 10:29 PM

  You're being down voted because some people actually were aware of the extent of the data the NSA was hoovering up and wouldn't have thought of it as a crazy conspiracy theory. Your average Joe on the street though would have thought this was crazy until Snowden made the extent of it known to a far wider audience, so I agree with your point.

• griffzhowl

  today at 4:05 PM

  Not if you believed Bill Binney, who was the technical director responsible for designing the surveillance programs, but blew the whistle when they were set on US citizens after 9/11

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o...

• arp242

  today at 5:01 PM

  It really wasn't. No one knew the exact extent and no one really knew anything for sure, but belief about this was fairly common in the early 2000s (esp. after 9/11) and even 90s. But again, we didn't know for sure.

• SirFatty

  today at 4:07 PM

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

• krapp

  today at 4:08 PM

  NSA mass surveillance was literally a gag in the Simpsons movie years before Edward Snowden.

• dboreham

  today at 4:15 PM

  Um no. I've sat in numerous meetings through the 1990s where the discussion went like "so should we do X thing to make our system more secure?" "nah, the only relevant attacker is the NSA and we're never going to keep them out regardless".

• cubefox

  today at 4:08 PM

  Some have also argued that the academic theory of "systemic racism" (as opposed to conventional racism) is a conspiracy theory. It's an invisible force that can be postulated to explain any form of discrepancy. "Group X performs worse than group Y? Must be due to systemic racism!" Basically the opposite of alleged Jewish "nepotism". Unlike racism, systemic racism cannot be observed directly, and its existence is only inferred from its hypothetical effect: group disparities.

  • Sohcahtoa82

    today at 4:25 PM

    Systemic racism is real. Obviously, it's not going to written into laws, and the people engaging in it probably don't think they're doing it, but all it takes is looking at statistics to see it.

    • cubefox

      today at 4:27 PM

      Statistics only show group disparities, not that those are caused by things like "systemic" racism, nepotism, etc.

      • Sohcahtoa82

        today at 7:27 PM

        Group disparities are basically the definition of systemic racism.

        • cubefox

          today at 8:33 PM

          No, because systemic racism is supposed to cause and explain observable group disparities. If they were identical, there could be no causal relationship, because nothing can cause itself.

• mc32

  today at 4:08 PM

  Lots of “so-called” conspiracies end up being true in one sense or another if not exactly matching a sometimes misled conspiracy.

  I mean, take a look at the freaking Epstein episode -what the fick is that all about? If that’s not the “swamp” calling the shots, I don’t know what in hell is.

  • potato3732842

    today at 5:17 PM

    >I mean, take a look at the freaking Epstein episode -what the fick is that all about? If that’s not the “swamp” calling the shots, I don’t know what in hell is.

    And to muddy the waters even further, some people believe there is conspiring going on, some people don't. Some believe that it's so big everyone in DC is just kinda dropping it because they're all afraid they'll know someone on it or something like that. That is hugely different degree of "conspiracy theory" from the folks who believe something along the lines of the spooks have the list and are blackmailing everyone and of course there's beliefs everywhere in between. Some of the theories involve literal conspiring, many do not. The whole thing stinks to high heaven so much so that the idea that the official narrative is false is likely the majority opinion. Where do we even draw the line on what constitutes a conspiracy theory here?!

  • burningChrome

    today at 4:45 PM

    ALex Jones was talking about Epstein during the Clinton years and all these flights powerful people were taking to his island. It was an open secret Epstein had a thing for young women so naturally Jones start inferring that Clinton and others were pedos.

    Everybody labeled him a kook at the time, mainly because this was just one of the many outlandish theories he had on the Free Masons and Illuminati.

    • mc32

      today at 6:18 PM

      Alex Jones has a credibility problem. While he has used thinktank & other quasi-governmental institutions's papers to find nuggets of information he contaminates that with "interdimensional beings" blah... So yeah, frogs's hormones were out of whack and he predicted aspects of 9-1-1, government spying on citizens and some other things, he also has whoppers like sandyhook.

  • catlover76

    today at 4:15 PM

    [dead]

But why does it matter if you're on the fringe or not? Galileo was on the fringe, but he ended up wrong. Hitler was very popular and not a fringe person after he assumed power. Yet, he was pretty wrong.

Somehow I bet Kate Blackwood is certain that she's not on the fringe. She probably also thinks she's on the side of righteous change and history, something that already suggests she's not in the center of popular thought.

I'm sure she also feels that people who disagree with her are on the fringe.

• Hasz

  today at 4:10 PM

  Unfortunately, dismissing ideas based on who supports them is pretty common and used by people who are unwilling or unable to discuss the ideas directly. This is mostly used incompetently, but occasionally used maliciously.

  I think I see this most commonly in politics, where if <obviously bad> person supports an idea, then that idea must be also bad.

  • saghm

    today at 4:22 PM

    Reminds me of the classic https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...

  • bill_joy_fanboy

    today at 4:18 PM

    > This is mostly used incompetently, but occasionally used maliciously.

    It can also just be a good heuristic. If a person or group/org with a reputation for dishonesty tells you an "idea", it's reasonable to throw shade.

    > I think I see this most commonly in politics, where if <obviously bad> person supports an idea, then that idea must be also bad.

    The conclusion is not always this direct, but it is completely reasonable to question ~why~ the obviously bad person holds that idea. What do they gain from pushing the agenda? Some people are so intellectually dishonest that everything they say is suspect.

• msluyter

  today at 4:21 PM

  Is anyone arguing "all fringe ideas must be false" or, conversely, "widely accepted ideas are true?" That's basically just argumentum ad populum, and I don't think that's the argument of the paper. Rather, it's that those with fringe ideas tend to be over-confident in their beliefs.

  IME, a scientific/empirical mindset tends to lead one to a state of epistemological modesty, in which few things are unassailably true, and beliefs are provisional until disproven. One crucial feature of that mindset is the notion of falsifiability. Knowing if/how ideas may be falsified helps one avoid leaping down conspiracy rabbit holes. <- (A likely unfalsifiable statement!)

• intended

  today at 4:35 PM

  I mean, your comment is a good example of why everyone ISNT Galileo. The moment you read the article, the first thing that stands out is the similiarity with dunning-kreuger, not a defense of the tortured soiltary genius, whose time has not come.

• potato3732842

  today at 4:07 PM

  Remember back when libertarians had bumper stickers that said things like "married gay couple should be able to defend their weed with machine guns"?

  Back in ye olden days if you said that someone was a conspiracy theorist it was a boolean that meant that they believed that literal conspiring was happening and now "conspiracy theorist" this whole diverse spectrum that people who believe various things are not exactly as portrayed exist on.

  Oh how the goalposts of fringe have shifted over time.

  Never mind how it shifts simply based on who you're asking. I'm sure there's beliefs that are fringe among the Cornell faculty who did this research that are wholly uncontroversial over in the maintenance department.

• mung_daal

  today at 4:20 PM

  [dead]

This paper runs very parallel to Dunning-Kruger, and it's surprising that nobody here has commented on it (although the paper itself DOES reference Dunning-Kruger). It's a bit sad, really. When you realize that most people that buy into this stuff are trapped by a lack of cognitive ability, rather than being rooted in malice. There's a dose of https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi... in there too, as even well educated, otherwise intelligent people can get trapped in these conspiracy theories.

"Conspiracy believers not only consistently overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests"...

Compared to:

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is defined as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability."

• intended

  today at 4:34 PM

  I saw that as well, it reminded me of dunning-krueger immediately. Although in this case, they assume not only that they reasoned correctly, but that their position is the median position for the population.

• fiddlerwoaroof

  today at 4:33 PM

  Although, from what I can tell, there’s a lot of new evidence that the Dunning–Kruger effect is an artifact of the experimental protocol and not some interesting fact about psychology.

This is tautological. They’re effectively defining conspiracy theories to be things which are not widely believed, and then proclaiming that the things which are not widely believed are not widely believed…

Okay?

Note that the study didn't test for mainstream conspiracy theories. In such a case I presume the conspiracy theorists correctly determine that their beliefs are mainstream.

There is then also the question of non-conspiracy fringe theories. Do people who believe them still think that they are mainstream?

[dead]

I constantly see beliefs dubbed as "conspiracy theory" later found to be actual true facts. Does that indicate that truth is sometimes on the fringe, and if yes, then what "fringe" really is?

Strange, I observed the very conspiracy culture absorb main stream governance and sociological narratives.

I do believe their coup worked. Next the views asserting this move into fringe conspiracy and the ouroboros continues devouring its own.

• PaulHoule

  today at 3:50 PM

  As I see it, Donald Trump was factually false but Kamala Harris was emotionally false. As a rhetorician, if I had to choose one or the other, I’d pick the first. [1] I am thinking a lot of how to explain the ‘emotionally false’ bit to those who don’t bellyfeel it but it will probably be another two years or so before I have an explanation that’s transmissible.

  [1] but I am not just a rhetorician!

  • pjc50

    today at 3:53 PM

    Isn't that entirely a product of which news channels the voters were watching?

    • intended

      today at 4:47 PM

      Yes. The left and center media is still traditional media with its broken business model and journalistic norms. They don't always live up to their standards, but that is entirely different from what Fox and the right created since the 1970s.

      Politically, they decided to eschew Bipartisanship, primarying anyone who crossed party lines. Along side this came Limbaugh and later Fox, which became clearing houses to "just ask questions". See the success in platforming things like Intelligent Design, or Climate denial, giving them the imprimantur of credibility and authenticity. Republican politicans would then follow up by pointing to the news reports and rumors and stall bills, which would then become fodder for the news cycle, closing the loop.

      There COULD have been independent thought and counter forces, but in the end consolidation of networks to stay afloat, and becoming part of the party means this is a pipe dream.

      This is the engine that keeps our current doom loop going.

    • PaulHoule

      today at 3:58 PM

      No. A facial expression that comes 0.5 seconds after it should can create a perception of inauthenticity as can the use of measured-seeming words. (Yet, an emotional expression that breaks gradually can be the most powerful of all —- Biden’s performance where he feels how “you’re fired” makes him feel or Pelosi’s tears at Trump inauguration 2 hit hard in a way that her usual mask never does)

      If there was anything characteristic about Biden to Trump voters it was that they didn’t watch or read the news much at all

      https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/democrats-need-to-face...

      Klein would say he got a huge amount of hate mail from people who said the Times was not putting up strident enough headlines (won’t use the F-word or N-word for Trump) but that the kind of people who read the Times weren’t that the kind of people who need to be persuaded.

      Psychoanalysis has been out of fashion for 50+ years but I also think a presidential candidate who looks like your mom evokes feelings of helplessness you had a a child which has to do why I couldn’t stand Clinton II and many blacks couldn’t stand Harris. In two years of chewing on it and people coming around I will have emotional and factual truth reconciled more than I have it now.

    • catlover76

      today at 4:01 PM

      [dead]

  • ryeats

    today at 4:07 PM

    Trying to understand this but what you said to me is essentially, she couldn't prove any of his statements false because she gave off the vibe of someone who was not authentic and trustworthy?

    • PaulHoule

      today at 4:17 PM

      Yeah, particularly if you ask young men, minorities, working class people, etc. But it is not so much ‘is that predicate false’ or ‘did they come to the wrong conclusion?’ but ‘how does it make me feel?’ ‘Illegal alien’ hits people hard because we all obey laws we don’t like. I hate seeing people walking in through the emergency doors in the subway because I am paying. Illegal aliens mostly keep their heads down to keep out of trouble but when you conspicuously defend people who commit terrible crimes you look unempathtic to victims. Empathy for the in-group but not for the out-group is a destructive force.

      A distinction we don’t make enough in politics, marketing, McLuhanism and more is between early adopters and laggards. Zohran Mandami played well with young cosmopolitans and people in racially integrated areas but Clinton and Cuomo play well with laggards in all-white and all-black areas because they’ve been around, so does Bernie Sanders. Walking into a group of black nationalists as a 22 years old vanguardist and getting rejected was part of my origin story as an activist and lead but spending years listening to those people and telling the story I saw turned things around.

  • intended

    today at 4:40 PM

    Trump and the Republican party do not exist in a vaccum. They exist in a party-media bubble that simply has different epistemological processes than what everyone else has.

    They platform narratives, and anyone not getting on board or supporting the current narrative is ignored and sidelined. This allows them incredible agenda and conversation shaping power.

    Its why Trump can do product promotions from the White House lawn, say the sky is green one day and pink the next, without any penalty, and be seen as the Hero.

    Its not rhetorical power, its Wrestling / Kayfabe converted into politics.

Article's author doesn't believe his awareness is on the fringe :))

The term "conspiracy theory" is a psychological kill shot designed to socially ostracize anyone who questions the mainstream (read: elite) narrative, instilling fear in questioning that narrative.

Yes, there are crazy people who think crazy things. There are also sane people who think "crazy" things might be true, but keep it to themselves out of fear of the social ostracization associated with being called a "conspiracy theorist." As designed.

• hackingonempty

  today at 8:38 PM

  The White House is pushing the "lab leak" consipriacy theory. https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19...

  Here's a good review of the science, which contradicts the assertions made above: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...

• krapp

  today at 6:43 PM

  My person in deity, the American government is currently run by anti-vaxxers, white supremacists and UFO grifters, and was elected by people who believed the weather was controlled by Jewish space lasers, COVID vaccines were full of mind-control chips and the Democratic Party ran a sex cult under a pizzeria. You need to update your priors.

  It's become de rigueur to virtue signal how radically untethered one is to consensus reality, to the point that even on Hacker News, which is ostensibly full of rational people, you'll get ostracized far more for believing in the mainstream narrative than for questioning it.

• potato3732842

  today at 4:43 PM

  The powers that be keep changing how conspiracy theorists are measured to hide the true rate of conspiracy theorist-flation!!!1!1!1!!

  Joking, but also not joking, back in the day a conspiracy theorist was someone who believed that something was explained by a literal conspiracy with literal conspiring going on. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry that thinks a press release isn't telling the whole truth gets to call themselves one. The reason the definition got watered down was for exactly the reason you state, various people found it useful to apply that label much more broadly.