Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

Isn't that experiment currently running?

I use the phrase "God hole", introduced by TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, to refer to the phenomenon mentioned in the article. If you're familiar with the show it may seem crass to use that phrase to generalize incredibly complicated philosophy, but it succinctly allegorizes many peoples desire to attach to something greater than them that provides a sense of belonging, identity, and purpose. For example, having been raised with no religion or "greater power", I "filled" my God hole with learning to program as a kid and particularly studying math as an undergrad - math and the processes required to understand and "do" it made me feel as close to a higher power as I can imagine.

How and why the God hole is filled varies wildly per person, but the desire to do so does seem to be ubiquitous. I've struggled a lot with nihilistic thought in the past - e.g "why do anything? If you look at a big enough picture the sun will explode and nothing will ever matter or be remembered". I speculate that a major downside of higher levels of consciousness/awareness, like those found in humans, is knowing their own insignificance and normality relative to the grand scheme of the universe. I speculate filling the "God hole" and the aforementioned nihilistic perspective is a direct response to that awareness. It could even be argued that, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's important for most people to fill their God hole so they feel like they should be doing _something_ as the species would otherwise die.

tl;dr if something that fills a "God hole" is an interface in the programming sense, conspiracy is one of many implementations of the interface

This gets me thinking of a recent example I was going "down the rabbit hole" reading about, which is the supposed existence and subsequent coverup of a mid-90's movie starring Sinbad and a kid, possibly Jonathan Brandis.

Long story short, the comedian Sinbad hosted a Sinbad the Sailor movie (or movies) on some cable channel, and for the skit he was dressed in clothes similar to those a stereotypical genie might wear. IIRC there was one segment where a kid came on board his ship, and very well could have been Jonathan Brandis trying to cross-promote a show he was also on.

But "the internet" took this memory, combined with a vague similarity to the old Shazzan cartoon, and a vaguer similarity of that to the movie Kazaam, and decided there was a movie called "Shazam" starring Sinbad which explained everyone's vague memory of these sketches. I myself had this vague memory, so at first I found the idea of such a movie very plausible. Searching for evidence, however, turns up nothing, and then you find two prevailing schools of thought: One, that there was a movie, but it was so bad it tanked Sinbad's career, and because of that and/or Jonathan Brandis's death was completely removed from circulation and scrubbed from internet references. Or two, that the movie was real and pretty good, but only existed in a parallel universe, and some of us mysteriously got our consciousness transplanted from bodies in that universe to identical ones in this universe which has merely a few banal differences like that.

The second is not too unlike a lot of internet philosophy discussions, but the first is a good example of a conspiracy theory. The idea of a movie being so bad it's scrapped and all copies destroyed isn't too far fetched, so it takes a little bit of research to uncover a complete lack of any corroborating evidence, and the denial of those involved, to see that the theory falls apart.

When facing doubts about your own memory and experience, it can be tempting to accept an explanation that a prominent group in the community is giving you rather than doing your own research and forming your own opinions. I would not be surprised if it were a naturally evolved mechanism.

> Accusing others of being "sheep" is solid confirmation

I absolutely LOVE when they do this.

Think about it for just one second.

Labeling someone a "sheep" because they were vaccinated, but someone who refuses to get vaccinated, like many others are not "sheep"? Perspective is everything?

Your point is spot on, once labels like "sheep" are used there is no point trying to further the conversation. They have taken their conspiracy theory views to religious heights and no amount of evidence can remove a religious view.

There is reason people use statements like "take it on faith".

The difference between a conspiracy theory and something that is not a conspiracy theory is that objective reality consists of things we can corroborate and substantiate.

Of course there are conspiracy theories that are true, but some guy sitting on the Internet is never going to learn about them. He’ll be dead before he does. Backroom deals are cut all the time but the peasants aren’t going to know about them. So why sit around and theorize and things you’ll never know?

All it comes down to is attempting to comfort yourself in an unstable world, conspiracy theories are the result of a brain that failed to understand reality. It’s collapsing chaos and collapsing complexity into something that makes sense at least to you and your friends. As well, often an attempt of pretending one has secret knowledge that the real peasants don’t have access to. A cheap and easy way to becoming elite, but based on nothing. Only those digging into conspiracy websites know the truth hidden from the public.

A lot, but not all, of the mainstream news is indeed substantiated and corroborated. That’s how we know the truth. It’s the best way that we know of at least. Conspiracy theories that rely on every single western and eastern media outlet to falsify Russian atrocities in Ukraine for example, it’s simply not possible. We can’t create causal links without evidence. I mean we can, but it’s meaningless until you substantiate it. So what’s the point? Just operate off of the evidence.

It’s just a lot less fun. And that’s really what conspiracy theories derive from other than a brain that failed. Schizophrenia is a cause as well. Desire for easy elitism with “hidden knowledge”. Or merely someone seeking a cheap thrill.