
Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories - jpatokal
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/why-rational-people-buy-into-conspiracy-theories.html
======
jamieb
FTA: "Kathryn Olmsted, a historian at the University of California, Davis,
says that conspiracy theories wouldn’t exist in a world in which real
conspiracies don’t exist. And those conspiracies — Watergate or the Iran-
contra Affair — often involve manipulating and circumventing the democratic
process."

So the answer to the question "Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy
Theories" is "because sometimes they are true."

FTA: "if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel
the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another. "

FTA: "“The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other
conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies
conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England."

Note how we suddenly switched from discussing people who think a theory is
"plausible" to "belief". There are certainly nutjobs who swallow implausible
theories whole. These people are not rational. Those who commit the crime of
conspiracy would love to tar those rational people who find such theories
plausible with the same brush.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
One thing I find interesting about many conspiracy theories is that they are
effectively true, even when the conspiracy is false. Many seem to involve not
a group of cohorts acting in agreement but a group of influential people with
aligned interest acting independently.

~~~
qbit
That's exactly right. You don't need a conspiracy when interests align.
Especially when the interested parties have a lot of power.

~~~
Perceval
This is more or less Gramsci's theory of hegemony. Hegemony, distinct from
coercion, is the production of "spontaneous consent" for the policies of the
"ruling class" through the means of civil society, intellectuals, and culture.
By shaping how people perceive their interests, there's no need to coerce
behaviors or acceptance of policies.

------
etherael
> But recent scientific research tells us this much: if you think one of the
> theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the
> others, even though they contradict one another

Believing a thing is plausible doesn't necessarily mean believing it is
actually true, ergo there's no contradiction in believing many contradictory
things are "plausible" until the question is properly settled.

I always see this kind of shit from mainstream propaganda trying to ram home
the party line and paint dissent as somewhere between crazy and eccentric,
it's getting really old.

~~~
moens
This. The more amazing thing is how many people believe that any content
published in the NYT/MSM is largely true and unbiased.

------
lightyrs
Ah, just on time... Another, "If you don't think like we do, you're insane"
article from the greatest evidence of modern journalistic decline we have
before us, The New York Times.

Begin the shift towards painting opponents of PRISM as conspiracy theorists.
Oh, and I read in the NYTimes that conspiracy theorists are really suffering
from personality disorders. It's in the DSM6!

~~~
ww520
Isn't NYT a quasi-PR-department of US government? See Judith Miller. Expect
more damage control articles from NYT on the current fiasco.

~~~
lightyrs
Yes, precisely. But that's a conspiracy theory so you must have a personality
disorder :(

------
ecmendenhall
I wrote my undergrad thesis on conspiracy theories (in Turkish politics)[1],
but it includes a section reviewing academic literature on conspiracy theories
and a lot of resources in the bibliography.

Karl Popper wrote briefly about conspiracy theories in "Open Society and its
Enemies."[2] It was part of a larger argument about emergent vs. planned
orders, but I think it's a very good point: many conspiracy theories arise
"from the mistaken theory that, whatever happens in society – especially
happenings such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages, which people as a
rule dislike – is the result of direct design by some powerful individuals and
groups." It's simply hard for us to accept that improbable, harmful events are
the result of lots of unplanned actions rather than one malevolent design.

[1]:
[http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/14...](http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/144909/1/azu_etd_mr_2011_0141_sip1_m.pdf)
[2]: [http://ovo127.com/2011/01/24/sir-karl-popper-the-
conspiracy-...](http://ovo127.com/2011/01/24/sir-karl-popper-the-conspiracy-
theory-of-society/)

~~~
jacques_chester
It's an extension of the Animistic Fallacy[1].

Flash of lightning, rumbling thunder: Zeus threw a thunderbolt. Same thing
scaled up -- we look for one or a few humans causing events.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animistic_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animistic_fallacy)

------
vy8vWJlco
_" Confirmation bias - the tendency to pay more attention to evidence that
supports what you already believe - is a well-documented and common human
failing."_

... Search bubbling doesn't help.

 _" Not only does more exposure to these alternative narratives help engender
belief in conspiracies, he says, but the Internet's tendency toward tribalism
helps reinforce misguided beliefs."_

... In other words, just read the New York Times (or BoingBoing, since it's
Maggie Koerth-Baker) and ignore everything else.

Edit: Oh, and the Alex Jones reference at the end is a nice _ad hominem_ too -
as long as we're counting logical fallacies - since _nothing_ he has ever
cited could possibly be accurate because: _blow-hard,_ and _conspiracy_. Also:
_creationism_ , because: _complicated!_

~~~
mpyne
"Tribalism" is not incorrect though. You mention Bradley Manning in hacktivist
circles and they'll nearly unanimously tell you that man is a _hero_ who
didn't do anything wrong at all.

And then Snowden comes in and goes out of his way to mention in his interview
that, 'oh by the way, I carefully chose specific things to leak as I didn't
want to risk national security, I just want to help my country'. Gee, who does
_that_ sound different from?

But it won't matter that Snowden has chided Manning, because Manning is part
of the tribe, and it's not enough that the tribe upholds his _principles_
(which they surely share), but the tribe must also uphold all his _actions_.

I grew up for years only seeing this kind of tribalism amongst the GOP
supporters (the types who idolized Rush Limbaugh despite his divorces and drug
use, or claimed that waterboarding is OK because Ashcroft said so). It's quite
disappointing to have seen that become such an issue outside of the GOP as
well.

~~~
pessimizer
A lot of people prefer indiscriminate leaking, and feel that any national
security cost is worth it. Just because Snowden thinks of it differently
doesn't mean that we now all have to think of leaking that way - that's
tribal.

~~~
pessimizer
“I don’t desire to enable the Bradley Manning argument that these were
released recklessly and unreviewed,”

------
IanDrake
The one thing about conspiracies I always consider is the number of complicit
persons involved.

Take, for instance, "9/11 was an inside job". People were really taken off
planes somewhere, then the planes where remote controlled, a missile hit the
pentagon not a plane, demolition charges were set in the buildings, etc...

The man power needed to pull that off greatly exceeds the number of people
willing to kill their own countrymen for money, political zeal, or fear.

~~~
mtowle
Lol. It's not like you're going to tell the cogs what the machine is up to.

>The one thing about conspiracies I always consider is the number of complicit
persons involved.

Yeah, this is like the ground level of thought on these topics. Let's not turn
our backs red.

~~~
moens
No slight intended to Mormons in general, I have a number of Mormon friends...
but: I live in "Mormon-ville," and there is this weird thing about Mormons:
they have a lot of bankruptcies. It seems to me like a lot. I am just the
onlooker and have no evidence, but it appears to me that 1) get loan from
national bank branch staffed by Momons, 2) default, 3) go before Mormon judge,
4) get lenient bankruptcy terms, 5) get another loan again soon from, you
know, a Mormon lending officer... sooner than I could get it anyway.

My personal observation is that there are _a lot_ of people in on the
conspiracy or whatever you want to call it, and that as long as it stays
within maybe "statistical anomaly" levels, it is a good income generator for
the people of Utah.

~~~
mtowle
It took me a while to understand your point, I think because I assumed you
were challenging my comments. Once I understood, though, I found this to be a
very well-positioned anecdote. And having belonged to a Mormon Boy Scout
troop, I don't doubt the truth of it for a second. Identity is a powerful
construct. Plus, the bigger your 10%, the better, right? Call it reclamation.

------
danso
I'd like to think of myself as thinking rationality, but I think my unerring
faith in Hanlon's Razor causes me to be reflexively skeptical of all
conspiracies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

~~~
Afforess
Isn't that just as bad as someone who is naively trusting of every conspiracy
theory they hear?

~~~
mpyne
Well, it would certainly at least make a better fitness function for a genetic
algorithm.

~~~
throwaway2048
One has to question why belief in superstitions is so universal across human
cultures to begin with, don't be so quick to dismiss it as reducing your
fitness. People did not have a logical understanding of why something like a
rat king[1] was bad, or that lighting three cigarettes with one match was
bad[2], but through the lens of superstition and "knowing" something bad would
happen even without any higher understanding, it may have saved them.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_(folklore)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_\(folklore\))

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_on_a_match_(superstition)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_on_a_match_\(superstition\))

------
awicklander
2010 Conspiracy Theory: The US government is intercepting every online and
cellular communication of it's citizens.

2013: Conspiracy Fact: The US government is intercepting every online and
cellular communication of it's citizens.

Sometimes theories prove to be true.

------
drawkbox
In a world where self interest drives most survival, conspiracies exist even
in small areas like groups of people at a job, committees, small tribal
groups, wall street, corporations (enron), even reality TV shows. Add power
and lots of money to that and you get more.

By nature/survival people try to get ahead by cheating. The one thing is for
sure, the word 'conspiracy' shuts off people's brains, they don't have to be
massive.

If I ever committed a crime with a small amount of people with a big payoff, I
would hope that it seems like it would take a massive amount of people and
that it be classified a conspiracy. It would be so much easier to get away
with it. Even feeding into it being a conspiracy to encourage people to look
the other way.

Yet on the flipside we can believe a group of terrorists conspire to take use
down from shadowy caves like a comic book or some government organization is
targeting us. Everyone believes in some conspiracies and usually it is
relative to cognitive bias.

------
ethanazir
I just watched a North America nature show with a group of hawks who conspired
to catch game. It had video of several of these big birds working in concert
to flush and kill amongst thorns and bushes. Unbelievable theory: those video
producers must have conspired; patching together clips to make me believe it.

~~~
aaron695
Not totally sure of your point, but yes nature documentaries are pretty much
always lies in the local footage sense and global scientific sense.

But it does lead to the interesting question have people who have subverted
the true science of animals and nature like David Attenborough do harm or is
it for a greater cause. Half relevant XKCD here
[http://xkcd.com/397/](http://xkcd.com/397/)

------
LowKarmaAccount
There are some theories that fall into a third category of "unlikely, hard to
prove, probably false but intensely fascinating." A good example is Julian
Jaynes's _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_
[1], which Richard Dawkins describes as:

"A book that is as strange as its title suggests. It is one of those books
that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in
between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."[2]

By the way, the Wikipedia page about Jaynes' book uses part of that quotation,
but cuts off the last sentence.

Dawkins provides a good summary of the book:

"Jaynes notes that many people perceive their own thought processes as a kind
of dialogue between the 'self and another internal protagonist inside the
head. Nowadays we understand that both 'voices' are our own - or if we don't
we are treated as mentally ill...

"Jaynes's suggestion is that some time before 1000 BC people in general were
unaware that the second voice - the Gilbert Pinfold voice - came from within
themselves. They thought the Pinfold voice was a god: Apollo, say, or Astarte
or Yahweh or, more probably, a minor household god, offering them advice or
orders. Jaynes even located the voices of the gods in the opposite hemisphere
of the brain from the one that controls audible speech. The 'breakdown of the
bicameral' mind was, for Jaynes, a historical transition. It was the moment in
history when it dawned on people that the external voices that they seemed to
be hearing were really internal. Jaynes even goes so far as to define this
historical transition as the dawning of human consciousness. There is an
ancient Egyptian inscription about the creator god Ptah, which describes the
various other gods as variations of Ptah's 'voice' or 'tongue'. Modern
translations reject the literal 'voice' and interpret the other gods as
'objectified conceptions of [Ptah's] mind'. Jaynes dismisses such educated
readings, preferring to take the literal meaning seriously. The gods were
hallucinated voices, speaking inside people's heads. Jaynes further suggests
that such gods evolved from memories of dead kings, who still, in a manner of
speaking, retained control over their subjects via imagined voices in their
heads. [2]

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-
Bicamer...](http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-
Mind/dp/0618057072)

[2]:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=yq1xDpicghkC&printsec=front...](http://books.google.com/books?id=yq1xDpicghkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+god+delusion&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tuy3UdehJ7LJ4AOczIDQBg&ved=0CDIQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=julian%20jaynes&f=false)
(page 392)

~~~
mpyne
Thanks so much for linking that... I think my own head just exploded from
considering what you just wrote.

~~~
gojomo
A variant of this theory is significant in Neal Stephenson's _Snow Crash_.

~~~
mpyne
It took me literally months on the Metro to get through _Quicksilver_ , so it
may be another year or so before I add another Stephenson book to my list. But
thanks for pointing that out as I'll definitely have to read it at some point.

------
SolarUpNote
Maybe it's hard to accept that the world is what it appears to be.

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jk4930
Forget this disinfo. Read Robert Anton Wilson and understand. ;)

~~~
moens
I haven't heard that name in a long time. That is some freaky stuff.

------
dsuth
The timing of this article, especially given the tone of NYTimes' coverage of
the PRISM event, is highly suspect.

/tinfoil

------
yread
I have my own pet conspiracy theory and that is that the people (I don't know
who, the usual conspirators?) are creating crazier and crazier conspiracy
theories to discredit the declining percentage of conspiracy theories which
are actually true. For example, there is a conspiracy theory that CIA knew
about 9/11 to some detail and just decided to let it happen, which may hold
some merit (i.e. while crazy it's the least crazy) and doesn't require
thousands of people keeping a secret. And then there are the others - it was a
controlled demolition, the plane didn't even hit the buildings, it had a
massive bomb on its underbelly and even more unbelievable crazy stuff

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LAMike
The only way anything big ever gets done is through conspiracy.

After all, a small group of individuals who conspire to achieve a goal is
basically the root of both progression and destruction right?

~~~
simplexion
No. That is a definition of "conspiracy" that is rarely thought of any more.
It is usually the last in the list of definitions in dictionaries. The most
understood definition is to work with other people, usually in secret, to do
something "evil".

------
mtowle
Fact: Nobody has ever conspired to do anything, ever.

------
natmaster
Because they're right? Have you heard of PRISM?

