
Why people believe in conspiracy theories – and how to change their minds - CarolineW
https://theconversation.com/why-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories-and-how-to-change-their-minds-82514
======
wu-ikkyu
How is this not an appeal to authority hidden behind a strawman? Of course
many people have wild beliefs about people wanting to harm them; many times
they are wrong, sometimes they are right. It is the nature of fear to
overcompensate.

Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn
all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and
are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no
accountability exists?

~~~
krapp
>Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn
all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and
are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no
accountability exists?

No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting
it. You're the one building the strawman.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Does the author discern anywhere in the article on plausible
theories/historical examples vs. the outlandish theories? If so I must have
skimmed over it. If not, then how is it not implied?

~~~
krapp
Do they need to?

Why assume that, unless the author explicitly mentions the existence of
plausible theories and add a caveat that not all conspiracy theories are
absurd, they must be arguing for the condemnation of anyone who believes in a
conspiracy?

Why not discern the authors' intent from their actual words? Actual,
verifiable conspiracies do exist, meanwhile everything the article claims
about the nature of conspiracy theory is also true.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Yes, we should be specific in our definitions, otherwise the default would be
the dictionary definition, which would have included the previously "absurd"
theory (before Snowden) that the US government is performing dragnet
surveillance on it's own citizens.

------
jspash
I can honestly say that there isn't one popular conspiracy theory out there
that I believe in. BUT... being a programmer we are taught to look at all the
angles. All possibilities. Debugging is a series of discounting any and all
theories as to the cause of the bug - starting from the most obvious, of
course.

So why are believers of conspiracies not allowed the same leeway? Haven't
quite a few conspiracies ended up being true? Bilderberg, MK Ultra etc.

Take the infamous "car allergic to ice cream" story
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347852)
It sounds preposterous in a somewhat tin-foil hat kind of way. But if the
engineer hadn't followed up on it with an open mind, it the problem wouldn't
have gotten solved so quickly.

~~~
mikeash
The problem with conspiracy theorists isn't that they consider forbidden
ideas. It's that they dismiss better ones. For example, the idea that the
Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile on 9/11 is worth brief consideration. But
when you dig into it, there's no support, while there's plenty of support for
the airliner.

To use your debugging analogy, it's like speculating that the bug happens
because this particular variable holds 2 when it's supposed to hold 1. Then
you check and it actually holds 1. But instead of moving on to the next idea,
you decide that the CIA modified your debugger to lie about the value and
proceed under the assumption that it really is 2.

~~~
hungerstrike
> It's that they dismiss better ones.

OK but who is deciding that it's better? You are. Unfortunately, there's no
objective source for this :(

> But when you dig into it, there's no support, while there's plenty of
> support for the airliner.

But isn't support for the airliner relies on evidence that could easily have
been staged or falsified post hoc? Also, why not use WTC 7 as your example?
Similar buildings that caught fire didn't fall like they'd been demolitioned.

IMO if you don't have any doubts about the official 9/11 story then you are
not thinking about it enough.

~~~
mikeash
No, support for the airliner includes things like tons of people seeing the
thing fly over I-395 right before it hit the Pentagon. There's a taxi driver
who nearly got impaled by a lamppost the plane knocked over.

One thing I've noticed with 9/11 Pentagon conspiracy theories is that people
don't seem to understand the geographical context of the building. They talk
about it as if it's some isolated installation in the middle of the woods or
something. It's actually spang in the middle of the #6 largest metropolitan
area in the country. The path that AA77 flew took it right over one of the
busiest highways in the region. Literally hundreds if not thousands of people
would have seen a cruise missile if it had been one.

I've thought about this and looked into it extensively. I have not seen one
single reasonable piece of evidence to support any of the "alternative"
theories. Every one I've seen is based on speculation or outright falsehoods.

------
empath75
Conspiracy theories are fundamentally a religious idea and the result of
revulsion at the possibility that things might not happen for a reason.

It used to be that when an unexpected tragedy happened, people would look to
supernatural forces as the cause, and some flavors of conspiracy theory still
do this. You'll often find Satan used interchangeably with the illuminati or
masons or Jews, etc, among conspiracy theorists of a fundamentalist mindset.

But if you don't believe in supernatural forces, then you have to reach for
dark and shadowy organizations, like CIA mind control experiments and Russian
spies, or crisis actors or George Soros.

Anything so you don't have to face the possibility that terrible things
happened for no reason, or that worse, terrible things happened and your own
country or politicians might even bear some responsibility for it.

Fundamentally, people believe in conspiracy theories because they don't want
to really understand reality and be forced to act on that understanding.

The nature of the conspiracy theory itself is secondary to that, and arguing
against the particulars of one will, at best, push them into the arms of
another.

If you want people to turn away from conspiracy, you need to provide a way of
understanding and coming to terms with reality.

I don't think there's one right way to do that-- after all we've been trying
to figure it out for thousands of years.

~~~
rangibaby
CIA mind control program was (is?) real though

~~~
soundwave106
One of the problems most conspiracy theories have is that they revolve around
complex plotlines, that are executed in a flawless fashion.

Very few things work out as neatly as a conspiracy theory in real life, and
the CIA mind control attempts (eg MKUltra) is no execption. For all the awful
details of that program, ironically one could argue that its most notable
consequence was to help create 1960s counter-culture. (Without Project
MKUltra, the life of Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter would have been very, very
different.)

------
js8
It's incredibly hard. I don't think you can convince strangers, you have to
get them interested a little bit and let their own curiosity work it out, at
their own pace.

I call conspiracy theories a "cancer of the mind". Anybody with opposing
evidence is classified either as a liar (co-conspirator) or a person being
manipulated by the conspiracy. Effectively, people who do that shut down all
the input, and so they can get any result they want. There is literally no way
out.

I think people should set up a "canary" in their minds against conspirational
theorizing. If the thing you're thinking is true requires conspiracy of at
least, say, 10K people, then a big red flag should come up, and you should re-
evaluate all the evidence.

~~~
Feliks
"The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than
130,000 people and cost nearly US $2 billion (about $27 billion in 2016
dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce
fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the
weapons."

Just to play devil's advocate, isn't this an example of tens of thousands of
people employed in a massive conspiracy?

~~~
Jtsummers
The canary doesn't trigger the response: This is _definitely_ a conspiracy and
so I should dismiss it.

The canary should trigger the response: This seems too fantastical, what other
evidence is there to back this up?

It's a heuristic, it will be wrong on occasion. But if it tends to be right
more often, then it's a useful heuristic for gauging how skeptical we should
be about a claim.

------
almonj
People believe in conspiracy because it is a real thing that happens. Human
beings conspire, manipulate and lie. You can say that most popular examples of
conspiracy theories are absurd but it does not make the concept itself
invalid. Believing that people never work together for various nefarious and
deceptive purposes is just as dumb as believing that everything is some kind
of conspiracy.

------
tw1010
There are conspiracy theories in history that did turn out to be valid though.

~~~
js8
Terminological remark. Conspiracy theory cannot be falsified, it is an
unwarranted belief in conspiracy that cannot be disproved, because all the
evidence against it is considered to be a part of the conspiracy.

There were though, historically, falsifiable theories about conspiracies
(perhaps best would be to call them "conspiracy hypotheses") and they were
shown to be true. These conspiracies reveal some interesting facts that can be
used to disprove other theories about conspiracies, for example, how many
leakers can an organization of given size expect in a certain period of time.
But that's sadly not what the believers in "conspiracy theories" are doing.
They are self-indulging in unfalsifiable beliefs.

~~~
dionian
Just because some crazy people reject falsification of some types of theories
does not make all theories effectively be falsified

------
durgiston
One interesting thing about conspiracy theories that I've seen is that people
with more education are more likely to believe them, and believe them
strongly. One theory for why this might be true is that education teaches you
to reason about and debate evidence, and with more education, you are able to
convince yourself more effectively that the conspiracy is true and that
countervailing evidence is false. This of course makes it difficult to
convince believers that they are mistaken...

------
rogerthis
Conspiracies are happening all the time. The problem is that most theories
about them are wrong.

~~~
progman
That's the point. You nailed it.

Many theories are wrong due to lack of knowledge which is substituted with
suspicions. That's the reason why conspiracy theorists are ridiculed so often.
Some conspiracy theories however _are_ true. If Pulitzer prize winners
Woodward and Bernstein hadn't believed in conspiracies Watergate would never
had been discovered.

I am amazed that there are actually people right here who stubbornly reject
the reality of conspiracies _at all_. Conspirators want people who don't
believe in conspiracies since deceiving such people couldn't be easier.

------
eutropia
My favorite response to moon landing conspiracy theories is the counter point
that we didn't have the technology to fake the live footage. It was actually
easier to go to the Moon than it was to fake it, given the video technology at
that time. There's a great YouTube video about this.
[https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs](https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs)

------
workerIbe
Conspiracies can be entertaining, one's own living "thriller". Some
conspiracies are true. Obsessing on them can be negative, one should be honest
when assessing probability. They should not affect the psyche at lower than
some pretty high threshold. I read a lot of Patterson, the plots seem pretty
fantastical, then a private sub Captain cuts a reporter into pieces and buries
her at sea...

------
trgv
I just don't believe there are enough sinister, competent people available to
carry out a large conspiracy while keeping it quiet.

------
rangibaby
Would you think your friend was telling you the truth if he told you his alarm
clock had changed by itself? Someone had rearranged the things in his room?

~~~
JohnStrange
I would believe him by default, especially if there was a possible credible
cause or motive (e.g. your friend is a dissident in some less democratic
country). The alarm clock seems harmless, mine has done that in the past due
to faulty switches. As for things in the room, I'd advice him or her to use
reliable and consistent tests to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis, for
example by making pictures of the apartment, noting the position of objects in
the apartment and keeping the notes with you, installing a camera at the
entrance, etc.

The East German Stasi did things like that to a few select regime critiques.
For example: rearranging or removing towels, replacing freshly bought milk
with spoiled one, making medical doctors give you the wrong medication. These
incredibly evil practices were called _Zersetzungsmaßnahmen_ and only used on
a few hundred to thousands dissidents at maximum.

------
Dolores12
Why do you need change their minds?

~~~
js8
It can be dangerous, both for the believers and other people. Many terrorists,
for instance, are huge believers in various conspiracy theories.

~~~
TranceMan
And terrorism could be a conspiracy theory.

------
ponderatul
Why do you think about the incessant need for entertainment, as a source of
the irrational discussions you overhear.

Maybe the people there didn't even believe in what they were saying, they were
just entertaining the idea of this conspiracy to drag themselves out of the
quietness and worry free life that most of us live in the modern world.

------
basicplus2
Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get me..

~~~
krapp
On balance, even if "they" are out to get someone, chances are _you 're_ not
someone worth getting.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
If you have an identity, a credit card number, or a SSN, then you're a target.

~~~
krapp
You're claiming that literally every identifiable person in the world is a
"target," but that's a nonsensical claim.

A target of whom, and of what?

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Hackers, thieves, social engineers. Identity theft is at an all time high,
affecting 1 in 16 US adults every year and costs almost twice as much as all
other property thefts.[2]

[1][https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/02...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/02/06/identity-
theft-hit-all-time-high-2016/97398548/)

[2][http://www.businessinsider.com/bureau-of-justice-
statistics-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bureau-of-justice-statistics-
identity-theft-report-2013-12)

~~~
krapp
Fair enough, but that's not really conspiracy theory, that's just regular
criminal conspiracy.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
What is the difference between the two? It seems to me both of those things
are the same, except for maybe the former being of the future tense, and the
latter the present/past tense.

~~~
krapp
Obviously, given the nature of the article, we're not talking about easily
provable, verifiable criminal conspiracies. "Criminals exist" is not a
conspiracy theory.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Indeed, I just wanted to point out the fallacy of the commonly held sentiment
"you're not someone worth getting"

------
ForRealsies
How to Know You're in a Mass Hysteria Bubble
[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/164297628606/how-to-know-
youre-...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/164297628606/how-to-know-youre-in-a-
mass-hysteria-bubble)

~~~
igravious
Thank you for that timely link ForRealsies. Scott Adams has brilliantly put
into words what has been floating disconnected around my brain since the
realities of Brexit and the inauguration of the current POTUS.

I visited the UK for a conference at a university just before the Brexit vote.
Practically every "ordinary" person I talked to told me they were going to
vote leave. On campus it was a totally different story, like night and day.
Now, where the polarisation stems from is a different matter – same as in the
States – not being able to see it ahead of time is one thing, but thinking
your ideological opposite is stupid/racist/crazy/… after the fact is something
else entirely.

For a perfect demonstration of this head over to YouTube. Choose two media
outlets that differ in their attitude towards the current POTUS. (There are no
shortages on both sides.) Watch the coverage of the Veterans' Bill speech,
read the comments. On the pro-side there's "Seems reasonable to me." On the
anti-side there's nasty vitriol, ad hominem, and vilification. For the record
I am indifferent.

Same applies to UK media outlets and articles about Brexit.

I'm aware my comment hasn't addressed the original article which offers very
good advice. I once spent an hour pointlessly debating a Scotsman who turned
out to be a Truther (I'd never met one). After reading this article my tactics
will definitely change.

~~~
DonHopkins
>"For the record I am indifferent."

For the record: If you're indifferent about Trump at this point, it's because
you believe conspiracy theories and fake news and blatant lies.

Do you actually believe that there really were "some very fine people"
marching with the Alt-Right, Nazis and KKK in Charlottesville, and that the
anti-fascist protestors deserve some of the blame for Heather Heyer being
mowed down and murdered by a White Supremacist, or are you actually
indifferent about the Alt-Right, Nazis and the KKK?

And do you also believe PlannedChaos's claim that Scott Adams is a certified
genius? "Just sayin'."

[http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-
sockpuppe...](http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpuppet/)

>"I once spent an hour pointlessly debating a Scotsman who turned out to be a
Truther (I'd never met one)."

No Truther Scotsman would pointlessly debate you for an hour. He must have had
a point. ;)

