Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

Consider the following theory:

> "There's an all-powerful, all-knowing entity watching everything you do and recording all your actions, and depending on that behavior you will be either rewarded with a post-life heavenly bliss, or a post-life eternal hellish punishment. A guaranteed way into heaven is absolute loyalty to your feudal lord and payment of a portion of your income to the church and its priests."

Yes, the original 'conspiracy theory' was religion. Just replace the supernatural entities with secret deep state cabals and black helicopters, or alien lizard-people and UFOs, it's basically the same kind of thinking.

Philosophically, there's no scientific way to disprove any of these theories, just as there's no way to disprove the notion that we're all living in a perfectly self-consistent VR simulation. Freedom of belief is also a human right, so whatever you want to imagine, go for it. (Note that believing that nothing exists until it is scientifically verified is also another of these belief systems, so don't start feeling superior, New Atheists).

Everyone is just looking for meaning, but with social media our shared sense of reality is at risk - https://www.climaticthoughts.com/peak-reality-is-terrifying/

There's an author, Robert Anton Wilson, who started writing an influential novel called the Illuminatus trilogy which is a pretty fun read but basically if the whole point of his work was anything it would be that if you aren't doing something of your own kind of conspiracy and you're instead obsessing over real or imagined conspiracies that other people are doing, you're wasting your time. It's a fun thing to tell someone who's ranting at you about something you've probably just heard before and already checked out as inanity if anything. The other fun thing to do is see if they accept that the moon is a hologram (You'd be surprised how many people agree to this notion)

He has a quote about belief as a whole:

"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended."

Well this explains the election deniers crazy batshit approach to ‘Stop the Steal’. It helps rationalize their belief that Trump flags and MAGA hats make an election. 60 rejected lawsuits doesn’t seem to break the fever. Why don’t we admit it’s a cult? This is how cults work, and they are dangerous.