Why do people believe conspiracy theories which makes no sense at all?

[Yavin Shikanoko]

Why do people always believe what they see ln YouTube or TV? Even if it doesn't make any sense at all, like people genuinely believing vaccines are going to implant them a chip to mind control them just because they saw it on a YouTube video with dramatic music and some dude ranting and using buzzwords to sound smart?

And assuming it was true, which is not, how they heck a global conspiracy, where every corporation is working together along some sinester government or something would let a video "exposing their secrets" stay on their platform?

[Iggy Wolf]

Originalmente postado por Acetyl:

Originalmente postado por Iggy Wolf:

What, as opposed to all the conspiracy theories that other people ALSO made up? The difference is, I'm not claiming my opinion as "TRUTH". That's why I started with "my personal take". You're free to disagree, but don't think that makes your opinion anymore valid. There is no one agreed upon definition of "conspiracy theory".

What some people consider as a conspiracy, others see it as the truth. And to even more others, they're skeptical of both because everyone is talking out of their ass. The difference between the skeptic and conspiracy theorist is that the former makes up their own mind and doesn't follow a herd. Group think is rarely the domain of "healthy skepticism".

The portion in bold is the source of the issue. Some people do actual research and don't think in black and white. The pursuit of truth and the absolute has left a reliance on he said she said long behind.

If someone does research for their own purposes, that's fine. Assuming of course they actually did proper research and not just based on what they saw on Youtube or other links shared by other people. As a history major, when I had to do research, I had to have primary and secondary sources to prove my thesis.

Said sources had to come from a verifiable and credible authority backed by empirical evidence. It's certainly MORE effort and time than your average conspiracy theorist might be willing to put the effort into, if only because the average thesis paper is usually 500 pages long (basically a book). And no one on the Internet is going to be going out of their way to put in THAT much time and effort just to "prove a point".

Especially when the goal is usually to just get enough other people to agree with you, by doing the minimal amount of research necessary. If they honestly and genuinely interested in revealing something, they'd do it like all other whistleblowers for companies and government conspiracies did.

They'd also understand the RISKS of doing that (see Edward Snowden fleeing to Russia to escape persecution for treason). Subtlety is key. Shouting it from the rooftops isn't exactly "subtle". Pursuing the actual truth and being a "revolutionary" is a thankless and risky task. You rarely get "accolades" or recognition for it. At least not without coming at a great cost to your own person and life. The movie "The Insider" showed the risks of trying to "expose the truth".

[👾]

Originalmente postado por Haruspex:

Some are just trolling. They don't actually believe it, but they think it's funny to spread it around.

Some have actual mental illness and paranoia.

Some are just sad, lonely people who feel like they have no purpose in life. Belief in conspiracy theories lets them feel special, like they're in on some secret that everyone else is ignorant to.

Somebody really doesn't like conspiracy theorists... But why does it trigger you so much? If it's just crazy people believing total nonsense, can easily just ignore them, no? You sound like you are very sure of yourself, I don't think anything would be able to instill doubt in you, right?

[Birds]

Originalmente postado por Iggy Wolf:

Originalmente postado por Acetyl:

The portion in bold is the source of the issue. Some people do actual research and don't think in black and white. The pursuit of truth and the absolute has left a reliance on he said she said long behind.

If someone does research for their own purposes, that's fine. Assuming of course they actually did proper research and not just based on what they saw on Youtube or other links shared by other people. As a history major, when I had to do research, I had to have primary and secondary sources to prove my thesis.

Said sources had to come from a verifiable and credible authority backed by empirical evidence. It's certainly MORE effort and time than your average conspiracy theorist might be willing to put the effort into, if only because the average thesis paper is usually 500 pages long (basically a book). And no one on the Internet is going to be going out of their way to put in THAT much time and effort just to "prove a point".

Especially when the goal is usually to just get enough other people to agree with you, by doing the minimal amount of research necessary. If they honestly and genuinely interested in revealing something, they'd do it like all other whistleblowers for companies and government conspiracies did.

I mean do you really have a casual JSTOR subscription, or one to the competing (often deeply mediocre in comparison) publishing libraries? $1000-$10,000 a year depending on what kind of intellctual risk they feel you pose?

If not how do you get these theses and do this research? Generous patriots the establishment has killed like Aaron Schwartz?

Otherwise your suggestions are preposterous; 'go to official sources for conspiracies' yeah right come on. Every time scholarship uncovers a UK conspiracy, usually by perusing the royal archives, there's a fire that deletes the evidence and a Cambridge Professor who goes to BIS parties that denies everything.

They'd also understand the RISKS of doing that (see Edward Snowden fleeing to Russia to escape persecution for treason). Subtlety is key. Shouting it from the rooftops isn't exactly "subtle". Pursuing the actual truth and being a "revolutionary" is a thankless and risky task. You rarely get "accolades" or recognition for it. At least not without coming at a great cost to your own person and life. The movie "The Insider" showed the risks of trying to "expose the truth".

You're describing a CIA agent who's been identified as a Weather risk and dumped into my department.

[LQIM]

Being smart and being critical are not always correlated. There are smart people who aren't critical, and there are critical people who aren't smart

[Not Big Surprise]

Originalmente postado por LQIM:

Being smart and being critical are not always correlated. There are smart people who aren't critical, and there are critical people who aren't smart

some people are selectively critical too

[Morkonan]

Originalmente postado por Acetyl:

..
I don't follow.

I don't have anything further to say unless someone wants to ask me something about what I posted. <-- That's it. :)

[Iggy Wolf]

Originalmente postado por Birds:

I mean do you really have a casual JSTOR subscription, or one to the competing (often deeply mediocre in comparison) publishing libraries? $1000-$10,000 a year depending on what kind of intellctual risk they feel you pose?

If not how do you get these theses and do this research? Generous patriots the establishment has killed like Aaron Schwartz?

Otherwise your suggestions are preposterous; 'go to official sources for conspiracies' yeah right come on. Every time scholarship uncovers a UK conspiracy, usually by perusing the royal archives, there's a fire that deletes the evidence and a Cambridge Professor who goes to BIS parties that denies everything.


You're describing a CIA agent who's been identified as a Weather risk and dumped into my department.

That's how it works though. Do you think simply having only YOUR own opinion is basis for "evidence and research"? No one's talking about using the "official story" that the government writes. But not EVERYTHING is necessarily written by the government.

People do have their own personal interest in presenting a theory or argument. And those people at least got published and/or verified when they presented their OWN evidence and research to prove their arguments. You being skeptical of the research doesn't mean the research itself isn't valid.

After all, unless you can provide a valid COUNTERARGUMENT, then your opinion is worth less than squat. How do you think it works when professors and historians present a thesis? You think they just used only the stuff found on Youtube or "underground links" and people who presented to them personal accounts?

They had to reference and annotate a bibliography showing all the sources based on existing works of books and other sources of evidence written by other people in the past who themselves had evidence for their arguments. The alternative is being a quack pulling stuff out of your ass exactly because you DON'T have anything to defend your argument. Most conspiracies are based on rumors or hearsay.

[Birds]

The government is aware of just about everything when it crafts its narrative, so looking for ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in their story is usually pointless. Sure you might find one, but it's going to be filled in almost immediately. Even with hard evidence, they can just cover it up and people will forget in a decade or two.

Your concept of argumentation is literally a CIA op I helped develop. Here, arguments work like this:

"blah blah blah opinion, fact, therefore subjective conclusion."
"nuh uh, fact fact fact fact fact, subjective conclusion!"

and you'll never meaningfully convince anyone that their conclusions are anything other than subjective, unless you brainwash them into believeing your personal point.

The concept of an objective argument is facetious on its face.

[Iggy Wolf]

Originalmente postado por Birds:

The government is aware of just about everything when it crafts its narrative, so looking for ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in their story is usually pointless. Sure you might find one, but it's going to be filled in almost immediately. Even with hard evidence, they can just cover it up and people will forget in a decade or two.

Your concept of argumentation is literally a CIA op I helped develop. Here, arguments work like this:

"blah blah blah opinion, fact, therefore subjective conclusion."
"nuh uh, fact fact fact fact fact, subjective conclusion!"

and you'll never meaningfully convince anyone that their conclusions are anything other than subjective, unless you brainwash them into believeing your personal point.

The concept of an objective argument is facetious on its face.

By that logic, then so are any conspiracy theories themselves that are presented. It's one thing to be a skeptic. It's another thing to be a cynic. Yours takes the latter approach, that people might as well not even try or bother. But it also means that people shouldn't take ANYTHING a conspiracy theorist might say at face value either. Because that means they're probably "in on it" or are simply bullshitting everyone and know it. So in the end, a person should make up their own mind anyway. Guess what, THAT is ultimately the crux of my argument.

The "conspiracy" isn't meant to be anymore believable than the "official story", because the conspiracy could easily have similar holes in its own logic. And whoever is pushing it might have their own bias and/or goal in mind. I'm not asking people to believe one way or the other. I'm asking them to make up their own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ minds. That's in contrast most of the time to the conspiracy theorists who would like to people to believe EXACTLY as THEY do. They're not friends of the "truth" either. They're just opportunists.

[Birds]

That's the argument people presented based on newspaper false releases, especially the decision to print certain falseties about JFK's death in the newspaper, and also to print falseties which counteracted the falsities the Russians were printing in our papers.

People won't believe you no matter what you say, so it doesn't really matter. The only real point is to edge Russians out of our media sphere.

There was a 1-3% correlation between these conspiracies and random acts of violence based on them, and a <1% corerlation between false releases and peoples belief in them.

The last time any data surveying was done there were indications that 11% of acts of violent terror (ie mass shootings, random bombings, serial kidnap and torture, etc) led directly back to a false conspiracy release. This has been largely ignored by the establishment, as the newspapers were so ineffectual how could the internet be worse?

So people are making up their minds, and they choose death.

[Lokaror]

People in general like to cling to conspiracy theories to make sense of an otherwise disordered world. It is more comforting for them to believe there are a relatively small amount of bad actors pulling strings rather than the truth for the majority of these cases, that humans by and large are not as advanced and rational as they would like to believe. Political leanings skew this, as the "bad guys" are now responsible. The fact that there are things that were thought conspiracy and were actually true fuels this.

[Xero_Daxter]

If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys? Checkmate!!!

[Birds]

Originalmente postado por Lokaror:

People in general like to cling to conspiracy theories to make sense of an otherwise disordered world. It is more comforting for them to believe there are a relatively small amount of bad actors pulling strings rather than the truth for the majority of these cases, that humans by and large are not as advanced and rational as they would like to believe. Political leanings skew this, as the "bad guys" are now responsible. The fact that there are things that were thought conspiracy and were actually true fuels this.

This is just an intellectualism fork. Tons of agents fall for it; smart people are the target audience.

You're imagining a connection where there isn't any, and using that imaginary connetion to convince people that A. everyone else is stupid and B. that they the listener aren't, as long as they listen to you and take your ideas seriously. Which since you're leaning on imaginary concepts they naturally believe in and have been taught all their life to believe (ie the government is a headless blunder) they'll naturally fill the gaps in with examples that prove the point, such as most politicans being completely ignorant of the world . . . when a camera is looking.

[Iggy Wolf]

Originalmente postado por Birds:

That's the argument people presented based on newspaper false releases, especially the decision to print certain falseties about JFK's death in the newspaper, and also to print falseties which counteracted the falsities the Russians were printing in our papers.

People won't believe you no matter what you say, so it doesn't really matter. The only real point is to edge Russians out of our media sphere.

There was a 1-3% correlation between these conspiracies and random acts of violence based on them, and a <1% corerlation between false releases and peoples belief in them.

The last time any data surveying was done there were indications that 11% of acts of violent terror (ie mass shootings, random bombings, serial kidnap and torture, etc) led directly back to a false conspiracy release. This has been largely ignored by the establishment, as the newspapers were so ineffectual how could the internet be worse?

So people are making up their minds, and they choose death.

Not sure how you assume they choose "death". What, because they didn't take someone at their word? The JFK assassination has plenty of conspiracy surrounding it. I'm not sure any one particular answer would ever answer everyone's questions. But then, I doubt anyone's losing sleep over NOT knowing the real answer.

Perhaps "ignorance is bliss" and for some people, the less they know, they better they're off. The people "choosing death" are probably the ones who WOULD risk diving deep enough that they end up "knowing too much". But most conspiracy theories today aren't based on genuine interest or concern about JFK's assassination or the truth behind 9/11.

No, they go more like "there's a cabal of cannibalistic pedophile politicians trying to turn our kids gay and then kidnap them and eat them" as constantly presented by QAnon, who also happen to consider Trump their Messiah.

And of course the "Flat Earth Society", in which people have themselves convinced that a massive conspiracy is behind trying to keep the truth of the Earth being "flat" as a lie. I've always appreciated "Occam's Razor" for a reason. That it's better to believe a simple explanation than try to weave a web of interconnecting points to arrive at some insane conclusion because someone thinks there's a magician behind the curtain for EVERY aspect of society. If someone wants to be taken more seriously, they can start off by NOT shouting from the rooftops that the "sky is falling" like they're freaking chicken little. People tend to not to pay attention to people who yell at them.

[EpirusWarriorμολὼνλαβέ]

Because its easy to dismiss it without addressing it. Work like just like a logical fallacy, just clump it together with any of nonsense and bs, to paint a invalidated picture /ridicule it,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_fear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
without actually addressing any point in .. call it conspiracy. Brush pain anything you dont like with same label, that you cannot address because the low IQ to address it and dishonesty , place it in ridiculed category, call it a day. Basic 101 how logical fallacies work.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/061/297/nickcage.jpeg