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Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#31

Post by 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.

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#33

Post by moens »

mtowle wrote: post #7
IanDrake wrote: post #5

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…

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.

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.

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#34

Post by schiffern »

mpyne wrote: post #27
Afforess wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Hehe, I love it. Translation: believe this because it will get you laid.

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#36

Post by Perceval »

qbit wrote: post #18
Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#37

Post by gojomo »

mpyne wrote: post #26
LowKarmaAccount wrote: post #24

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…

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

A variant of this theory is significant in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#38

Post by aaron695 »

ethanazir wrote: post #14

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.

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/

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#39

Post by simplexion »

LAMike wrote: post #25

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?

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".

Re: Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

#40

Post by skylan_q »

lightyrs wrote: post #6

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!

You actually buy into the conspiracy theory that the government is in bed with corporations and storing and combing through tons of our own data that we trust with these companies? Hahahahah! You're a real conspiracy theorist believer!
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