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Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

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Re: Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

#71

Post by searine »

photochemsyn wrote: post #33
searine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, the original 'conspiracy theory' was religion. Not really. The religious experience tends to operate differently than conspiracy in terms of the psychology and neuroscience at work. As the article describes, conspiracy is mostly a defense mechanism for the ego. It gives people agency in a chaotic world. It rationalizes the chaos into a simple narrative. These serve to reinforce the current executive self as it…

The notion that religious stories provide models for decent human behavior is fairly solid, but then so do other forms of literature (be like Frodo, for example). This is called the 'utilitarian' argument, I believe. As far as the nature of reality, I like this quote: "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." ― F…

>The notion that religious stories provide models for decent human behavior is fairly solid, but then so do other forms of literature (be like Frodo, for example). This is called the 'utilitarian' argument, I believe.

There are other aspects to the religious experience that differentiate it from other external models for the self. Things like feeling an overwhelming sacredness, performing ritual, a feeling of mysticism.

I don't doubt people model themselves off of fictional stories, but few if any are going into ecstatic trances over Sam asking about po-tae-toes.

Re: Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

#72

Post by Dudeman112 »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #18
Dudeman112 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's no scientific way to disprove any of these theories And yet probability theory has a lot to say about the likelihood of theories and epistemology has come a long way in the last century Not every likely (or unlikely) hypothesis is as likely (or unlikely) as each other

> And yet probability theory has a lot to say Would love to see your experiment design for testing with the null hypothesis "there is no god" ... personally, I'm an atheist, but that's still a belief-based position.

You don't need a "there is no God" experiment, at least if the only god that's actually on your hypothesis space is the abrahamic one

All other hypothesis win over an omnipotent god. That model has infinite complexity and allows every law of nature to be broken due to infinite power being an intrinsic part of that entity. You need infinite evidence to even start considering it over every other non infinitely complex hypothesis that doesn't imply everything we know about physics being wrong

And they don't even give it a good excuse unlike, for example, living in a simulation

As for the other gods... Well, whoever thinks they are likely will have to give at least some epistemologically valid argument for them. Which for the most part they don't, although I'm willing to be convinced otherwise

People require more evidence to believe a bench is wet than they do to believe in most religions. I'll convert once there's good arguments to convert, until then I'll chuck gods in the generic set of "unlikely stuff that needs more reason to be considered", which is quite the big set

Re: Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

#73

Post by motohagiography »

notacoward wrote: post #70
motohagiography wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who studied those things would understand that an ideology and a belief are separate things, where one is, literally, artifacts of the iterated logic of an idea and possible conclusions, whereas a belief is an underlying premise or axiom. Not all beliefs are ideological, and not all ideologies are beliefs, especially when they are just conclusions. Category errors are funny, but clearly not everyone is in on…

I knew someone would focus on that irrelevant bit. If you think the distinction matters, note that OP was about ideas, not ideologies, and you were the one who conflated the two. The category error, if any, is not mine.

Hence what makes the views so irreconcilable. If words don't mean anything, nothing does. I can see the appeal of ruling out reality as irrelevant, but it's not consistent. My beef is with a common anti-belief, which is there is no truth, as it's the founding idea in a pernicious ideology that has produced this anti-conspiracy hysteria, which is the explicit effect of iterating affirmative conclusions from this negative premise.

The OP's entire problematization of conspiracy theories is insincere. Without a mutual understanding that originates from a belief in the possibility of both truth and meaning, we're just animals without humanity to one another. I acknowledge these distinctions because those stakes are too high to be so intellectually careless as to ignore them.

Re: Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

#74

Post by jstarfish »

silicon2401 wrote: post #46
jamal-kumar wrote: post #8

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 s…

> 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 That's an incredibly practical insight IMO. It's true: the more you focus on achieving your own goals, the less you care about what else is going on in the world; the most that you care about is overcoming obstacles, but that's the case re…

There's an even more practical aspect to it-- conspiracies involve multiple parties. In trying to take one down, you have neither sovereignty nor numbers on your side. You have n opponents you have to indict through legal means, but they only have one...and have already proven they are willing to use illegal/unethical tactics to achieve their goals.

So even if you're absolutely right about whatever you think is going on, it's a losing proposition to take on someone else's conspiracy as a pet crusade.

Re: Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

#75

Post by Apocryphon »

dwringer wrote: post #66
Apocryphon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really wanted to give that conspiracy theory some legs, you could tie it to Sinbad (during the 2008 Democratic primaries) debunking Senator Clinton's claims about the alleged action they saw during a fateful 1996 USO tour to Bosnia- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-did-it-take-sinbad-to_b_9... Though you could probably chalk it up to more of a c…

Ahh, so the plot thickens... It's funny how even the slightest bit of uncertainty can make ideas so compelling. It is still by far my favorite "Mandela Effect" example, possibly due to my having been personally affected [or afflicted?]. Edit: Funnily enough, one of the linked articles you provided contains a link which goes to the interview with Sinbad in which he first cast doubt about the conditions in Bosnia, but…

Linkrot is the Mandela Effect-maker of the internet.

Re: Psychological Benefits of Believing in Conspiracy Theories

#76

Post by etherael »

nineplay wrote: post #53
etherael wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth values of the narrative in question doesn't actually change the point the article makes, though I suspect this is because they're accidentally right rather than they went out of their way to make allowances for the fact that many conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Believing that the greater social structure of your society is controlled by conspiring entities who tend to work in their mutual self inte…

> Most humans just don't care and aren't capable of parsing the truth value of the questions raised, they're just interested in their status within those structures rather than the nature of them. Good job, you've successfully identified the core belief of almost every conspiracy theorist. A big part of the reason conspiracy theories are so appealing is that it gives the theorist has the happy thought that they and t…

Anybody who rejects the hypothesis that some tribal group to which they belong is how the truth is discovered and defined, and accepts the reality that it must be investigated without reference to the narratives and worldviews of said tribal groups including their own, is capable of parsing the truth. They might not arrive at the right result, but they're at least capable.

If a person can't do that though, then they're not even trying to parse the truth, they're just engaging in tribal in-group signalling with their peers, which as far as I can see is the vast majority of what humans do to the exclusion of all else. The supermajority of humanity waving red or blue flags and shouting their slogans hasn't sat down and actually analysed any of the underlying issues, that's not what their displays are about.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's always the way its seemed to me, I've never witnessed that tribal in-group signaling being subject to any kind of critical analysis whatsoever, and any attempt to engage in such isn't seen as an attempt to find out what's true, but an attack on their tribe.

This isn't even limited to the more popular tribal in-groups. I am certain that you could find an Alex Jones infowars type who, if you sat down and earnestly attempted to engage in a dialogue with them about some belief they held that you could prove outright empirically was false, they would not view that dialogue as a mechanism for finding the truth, but once again, an attack on their tribe. This just seems to be the way the vast majority of humans work, and it kind of makes sense in a context of collectives engaged in constant struggle against each other for dominance in brutal and messy ways.

Nuanced views are a luxury few can afford, and a neat way to end up outcast and subject to the depredations of any of the aforementioned dominant aggressive collectives. Before you know it, they're forcing you to drink Hemlock.

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