“For the truth is that life on the face of it is a chaos in which one finds onself lost. The individual suspects as much, but is terrified to encounter this frightening reality face to face, and so attempts to conceal it by drawing a curtain of fantasy over it, behind which he can make believe that everything is clear.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset
Conspiracy theorists can be some of the most exasperating, frustrating and annoying people you will ever encounter online and in person. A few of us even know some of them or run into them at family gatherings. After listening to them ramble on, for hours if they are allowed to, we always walk away shaking our head, wondering what kind of idiot pill they must be taking to think the way they do. And that’s about all the significance they play in the day-to-day life of the average first-world citizen. We see and hear their crazy spin on such uncontroversial topics as the moon landings; the Bermuda Triangle; the spherical shape of our planet, the efficacy and safety of child vaccines; and, of course, what really happened on 9/11 and who was behind it. However, many other conspiracy theories branch off from these more weird and wild ideas which we don’t find so implausible, such as the possibility of secret government operations on our own citizens, carried out by three-letter agencies and paid for by black budgets which we are told are being done for our own safety. Those we might not be so sure about because we know that these kinds of conspiracies have really happened. Or the idea that large pharmaceutical companies or major cable companies are colluding to fix prices for their goods and services, basically creating hidden monopolies which unfairly pillage the pocketbooks of consumers. Or that social media platforms are actively searching for and deleting any content which disagrees with the political beliefs of its board members. When we hear something like that, depending on our own politics and exposure to social media, we might tilt our head and think “Yeah, I think that might be true.”
And that’s exactly how it all starts. Because while I just said that conspiracy theorists seem like a strange kind of people we only infrequently run into, the truth is, that is only what we pretend is the real picture about them. The truth is that, unfortunately, we all have a proclivity for falling for nonsense and the demographics of conspiracy theorists is much broader than just a few crazy relatives.
“Conspiracy theorists are often caricatured as a small demographic composed primarily of middle-aged white male Internet enthusiasts who live in their mothers’ basements. But polls tell a different story: conspiracy theories permeate all parts of American society and cut across gender, age, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status. About a third of Americans believe the ‘Birther’ conspiracy theory: that Barack Obama is a foreigner who unconstitutionally usurped the presidency. A similar amount believes the ‘Truther’ conspiracy theory: that the Bush administration either carried out or knowingly allowed the 9/11 attacks. Decades after the fact, between 60 and 80 percent of Americans agree that the assassination of President Kennedy was orchestrated by a conspiracy and covered up by the government. When asked about four specific conspiracy theories, a 2012 national poll found that 63 percent of respondents believed at least one. Based on this, it is safe to say that almost everyone believes in at least one conspiracy theory and many of us believe more than one.” (Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent – “American Conspiracy Theories”)
We have met the enemy folks, and they is us. So it is in all of our best interests to bone up a bit on this subject. Unless we are very self-aware and active thinkers, the way our brains work and the way we receive and interpret new information is almost guaranteed to put us on the road to being a conspiracy theorist of one kind or another, even if we would never self-identify as someone who believes in oddball conspiracies.
Despite what some might think, conspiracy theories and their proponents are nothing new in history and are not the result of the Information Age or the stresses of modern life or technology. Conspiratorial thinking has been with us for centuries, probably going all the way back to when Ugg the Caveman couldn’t start his own fire and started telling everyone else that the tribal leaders were purposefully withholding the secret of making fire for their own selfish gain.
Here is Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1951 speaking to Congress:
“How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.” (Congressional Record, 82nd Congress, 1st session (June 14, 1951)
Here’s a quote from a Populist party manifesto from 1895:
“As early as 1865-66 a conspiracy was entered into between the gold gamblers of Europe and America….For nearly thirty years these conspirators have kept the people quarreling over less important matters, while they have pursued with unrelenting zeal their one central purpose….Every device of treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being made use of to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and the financial and commercial independence of the country.” (as reprinted in “The Populist Movement” in Economic Studies of August 1896)
And here’s a bit from a sermon delivered by Jedidiah Morse in 1798 in Massachusetts:
“Secret and systematic means have been adopted and pursued, with zeal and activity, by wicked and artful men, in foreign countries, to undermine the foundations of this Religion [Christianity], and to overthrow its Altars, and thus to deprive the world of its benign influence on society….These impious conspirators and philosophists have completely effected their purposes in a large portion of Europe and boast of their means of accomplishing their plans in all parts of Christendom, glory in the certainty of their success, and set opposition at defiance…” (Jedidiah Morse: A Sermon Preached at Charlestown, November 29, 1798)
The fact is that its perfectly natural and ordinary for people to believe in conspiracies and we’ve been doing it all throughout history. As Jeffrey Bale wrote:
“…a belief in conspiracy theories helps people to make sense out of a confusing, inhospitable reality, rationalize their present difficulties and partially assuage their feelings of powerlessness. In this sense, it is no different than any number of religious, social or political beliefs…” (Jeffrey Bale, Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, 2007)
Conspiracy theorists, in the main, are not clinically insane or paranoid and most of them are not of low intelligence any more than members of destructive cults are. In fact, just like people who get recruited into cults, their intelligence isn’t going to help defend them from crazy ideas. Unfortunately, just the opposite is true. Education also is not a key factor, although it does play somewhat of a role in preventing the acceptance of completely loony conspiracy theories. In fact, there are some studies which have suggested that conspiracy theorists are a necessary element in any society and they play a sort of Freudian id to our collective ego.
“What makes the conspiratorial or paranoid style of thought interesting and historically significant is that it frequently tempts more or less normal people and has often been diffused among broad sections of the population in certain periods. Conspiracy theories are important as collective delusions, delusions that nevertheless reflect real fears and real social problems, rather than as evidence of individual pathology.” (Jeffrey Bale, Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, 2007)
In this video, I am not just going to harp on how stupid conspiracy theorists are and talk about why they are so dumb. The point of this is not to insult anyone. It’s to take apart why people fall into this mode of thinking and how the rest of us can avoid making the same mistakes. Because there is a larger and much more ominous danger to conspiratorial thinking than just having to avoid your Crazy Uncle Fred at family reunions. Conspiracy theorists at a national level can have devastating effects on our political system, our economy and our entire way of life.
“Dismissing conspiracy theories as absurd does not change the fact that they can consume a fair amount of that most valuable political commodity: the president’s time. To address the widespread belief that he was born abroad, Barack Obama had to put aside the faltering economy, two wars, and the national debt to hold a press conference for the sole purpose of releasing his long-form birth certificate. During the George W. Bush administration, the 9/11 Commission was designed partly as a response to conspiracy theories accusing Bush and Dick Cheney of staging the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. Bill Clinton consumed much of his presidency fending off allegations that he was part of a conspiracy to cover up illegal activities, including assassinating a colleague, Vince Foster. Ironically, the Clinton administration counterclaimed that it was the victim of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.'” (Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent, “American Conspiracy Theories”)
And far worse than wasting valuable time, just ask anyone who lived through the McCarthy years when the House Un-american Activities Committee was in full bloom, if you want to see how easily people’s professional and personal lives can be ruined overnight by some wingnut in government who becomes overly paranoid about communists or immigrants or terrorists. Those are not just harmless little ideas that don’t amount to anything. Those are the kinds of ideas that can change the course of an entire nation or even start a war.
So even though something sounds plausible, how do you know when you are hearing total nonsense? Well, in this day and age especially, it’s not easy. I have made a number of videos discussing conspiracy theory and critical thinking and I’ve linked to the playlists on these in the description to this video. It takes active thinking, an inquisitive mind and a willingness to ask questions to stay on top of things in this chaotic Digital Age. Of course, these are the three things any conspiracy theorist will tell you they have in abundance, so there must be some other element too. And there is. Let’s go ahead and talk about this in some detail and see if we can’t sort some things out.
What is a conspiracy?
Let’s start with what is a conspiracy?
Conspire means “to make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act.” (Oxford Living Dictionaries website)
A conspiracy is “the action of conspiring; combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose.” (Oxford English Dictionary)
So we see that it requires two or more people working together in secrecy in order for a conspiracy to exist at all and as part of its meaning, they are working on something bad. A bunch of your friends getting together to throw you a surprise birthday party may be conspiring according to some other definition of the word, but for our purposes we are talking about nefarious or sinister activities.
When we look at this in the context of conspiracy theory, it gains some more added dimension. Joseph Uscinski said a conspiracy would precisely be “a secret arrangement by a group of powerful people to usurp political or economic power, violate established rights, hoard vital secrets, or unlawfully alter government institutions. Conspiracies are real and happen with regularity; Watergate and Iran-Contra are examples.” (Joseph Uscinski, “The Study of Conspiracy Theories”)
So what is a conspiracy theory? We’re sticking with Uscinski again when he described it this way:
“By conspiracy theory, I mean an explanation of historical, ongoing, or future events that cites as a main causal factor a group of powerful persons, the conspirators, acting in secret for their own benefit against the common good. This definition excludes theories positing benevolent actors toiling away in secret for the good of all mankind (i.e., doctors working in secret to save humanity from the scourge of cancer). Such theories seem to be the product of a very different set of factors and are rare compared to those positing an enemy.
“One important facet of conspiracy theories that often goes without much notice is that conspiracy theories are notions about power: who has it and how are they using it? Conspiracy theories accuse an implicitly powerful group of conspiring. Usually that group is already powerful, i.e., the president, a legislative body, industries or corporations, foreign countries, multinational groups, etc. Powerless groups are rarely accused of conspiring.”
What is a plausible conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theorist is someone who believes in conspiracy theories and by that metric, almost all Americans fit that bill to one degree or another according to national polling. A conspiracy is something that is real while a conspiracy theory is something that is being asserted as true but it may or may not be.
“…real conspiracies do exist, even though they do not conform to the elaborate and often bizarre scenarios concocted by conspiracy theorists. How, indeed, could it be otherwise in a world full of intelligence agencies, national security bureaucracies, clandestine revolutionary organizations, economic pressure groups, criminal cartels, secret societies with hidden agendas, deceptive religious cults, political front groups and the like?” (Jeffrey Bale, Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, 2007)
One of the biggest problems faced by researchers is the decision point between what is a true conspiracy and what is a false one. A conspiracy theory is just nonsense if it cannot hold up to an objective critical analysis and tangible evidence can be found which disproves it or important parts of it. One of the biggest problems in discussing this with conspiracy theorists is they deny or refute evidence based purely on their own personal prejudices and biases instead of using objective scientific or commonly agreed upon epistemological methods. In other words, they don’t want to believe they are wrong, so they will deny the validity of sources which disprove their claims and basically will act like a bunch of six year olds when they are challenged, often even restoring to just calling their opponents names because they don’t have any evidentiary counter-argument which hold water. Biased-based thinking and denialism are two of the biggest problems in dealing with proponents of conspiracy theories.
So there are really two problems: is the conspiracy theory objectively real and if it isn’t, how do you go about convincing a conspiracy theorist he or she is wrong? We’ll tackle that second part later. For now, let’s look at what would constitute a plausible conspiracy. And the word plausible is important here because using words like “true” and “false” can muddy the waters very quickly. If we say a conspiracy theory is true, then does that mean that all parts of it are true, from basic concept all the way out to all of its supporting facts and reasoning? Or is a conspiracy true when its basic concept is true but some or even all of the supporting data is not true? Can you disprove a conspiracy exists just because we can refute all the evidence a conspiracy theorist puts forward? The answer to all of these is “Maybe.” Conspiracy theories are better treated as a kind of spectrum from plausible to implausible and we should judge their veracity based on how much objective evidence exists to support the conspiracy claims.
A conspiracy actually could exist and be completely real and so well covered up, there is no evidence available to prove it actually exists. So just because we can disprove all the evidence someone presents for a conspiracy doesn’t mean there is no conspiracy. But we can get into the weeds on all this pretty fast too, because I can’t prove that blue smurfs don’t exist, but that doesn’t mean they are real. For all intents and purposes, when we run into conspiracy theories in our day-to-day life, we want some guidelines that will point us in the general direction of whether this conspiracy theory is even worth looking into and we need to be able to do that fairly quickly.
What we can do here is take a checklist put together by Michael Shermer and Paul Linse in Skeptic Magazine to judge whether something is an implausible conspiracy theory, and just reverse the points to gauge whether it is possible. Here then are the ten points that you can use to tell if something is plausible. Again, these are general points and each situation would need to be looked at individually.
1. Proof of the conspiracy is factual and objective, with multiple parties or sources attesting to its veracity. Preferably, there is no need to “connect the dots” or strain to show causal connections between the conspirators, their actions and consequences. The evidence points clearly to one and only one conclusion which explains all the parts and random chance has been ruled out as a possible explanation.
2. The scope of the conspiracy is believably realistic within the means and resources of the conspirators to pull off. We do not need to assign any superhuman powers or abilities or influence to the conspirators for the conspiracy to make sense.
As Jeffrey Bale wrote: “…real conspiratorial politics, although by definition hidden or disguised and often deleterious in their impact, simply do not correspond to the bleak, simplistic image propounded by conspiracy theorists. Far from embodying metaphysical evil, it is perfectly and recognizably human, with all the positive and negative characteristics and potentialities that this implies.” (Jeffrey Bale, Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, 2007)
3. The conspiracy is straightforward and requires as few moving parts as possible to pull it off. The larger and more complex the machinery required to produce the results of the conspiracy, the less likely it is that it’s real or doable. Mathematically, the chances of a conspiracy failing become exponentially greater the more vast and complex it is; since random chance, accidents and other unforeseen circumstances have more opportunities to ruin the planning.
“Fortunately for the rest of us, even powerful human beings are inherently flawed creatures who regularly commit errors of judgement and other sorts of blunders. They have not only to cope with the formidable problem of unforeseen and unintended consequences, but also to contend with other powerful groups that are likewise vying for influence, broader social forces that are difficult if not impossible to control and deep-rooted structural and cultural constraints that place limits on how much they are able to accomplish.” (Jeffrey Bale, Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, 2007)
4. The conspiracy is small and tight knit. Statistically and historically speaking, people are notoriously bad at keeping secrets, especially when they have a guilty conscience, and it only takes one whistle blower to bring most conspiracies into the light and destroy them. The more people included in the conspiracy, the less likely are its chances for success or its plausibility.
5. The conspiracy is exactly targeted to a very finite and specific result in a targeted area or sphere of influence. The smaller and less influential the conspiracy, the better its chances of remaining secret and successful.
Again, according to Jeffrey Bale: “…most conspiracies are narrow in scope, restricted in their effects and of limited historical significance.” (Jeffrey Bale, Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, 2007)
6. The conspiracy is not built on sketchy or suspicious small events which build to a much larger one. The foundations of the conspiracy are practical and straightforward and will most often be very simple to understand.
7. The conspiracy is not just a random set of insignificant circumstances pieced together to form an uncertain and incoherent whole. It also does not require assigning sinister or ulterior motives to people or groups who have not done anything to deserve such a biased view.
8. The facts of the conspiracy are clear and objectively true, easily distinguished from opinion or supposition. The more conjecture is entered in to a conspiracy theory, the less plausible it becomes.
9. The conspiracy theorist is reliable and does not have a history of making biased or irrational claims and does not have any pre-existing prejudice towards the supposed actors or subjects of the conspiracy.
10. The conspiracy theorist has pursued alternative explanations and has sought to disprove his claims, taking in all the evidence and possible explanations and not discounting any information simply because it refutes or denies the conspiracy claims.
What is an implausible conspiracy theory
So if all of that is what we consider plausible, when do we know we can right off a conspiracy theory as total nonsense without having to get into stupid arguments or spend hours of time on the internet watching YouTube videos? There are quite a few markers that can tell us about the validity of the conspiracy theory itself and the person asserting it’s true.
For me, the first and most reliable indicator is the scope of the conspiracy. Richard Hofstadter described this all the way back in 1952 when he wrote:
“The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true. All political behavior requires strategy, many strategic acts depend for their effect upon a period of secrecy, and anything that is secret may be described, often with but little exaggeration, as conspiratorial. The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fare of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms – he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point: it is now or never in organizing resistance to conspiracy.” (Hofstadter – Paranoid Style in American Politics)
The second is the attitude of the conspiracy theorist towards the conspirators. They are often very black-and-white thinkers, with a strong sense of moral outrage, anger and even hate towards the conspirators. They speak in absolute terms of good and evil and even bring God into the mix. The conspirators are made out as representative of the forces of evil or Lucifer and the work they are doing to uncover the conspiracy puts them on the front lines as cosmic warriors preparing for the End of Days or the Final Battle. This kind of language is indicative of a delusional mindset but we need to be careful with this wording because I’m not talking about a clinical disorder. As Jerrold Post wrote:
“A delusion is a fixed belief held in the presence of strong contradictory evidence. This is a hallmark of the paranoid, who suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are harming or deceiving him.
“Does this mean that those who hold to that belief are clinical paranoids? Absolutely not. A group can develop paranoid ideas, including especially conspiracy theories, even though the individuals in that group are psychologically normal.
“Belief in an adversary, a rival or an opponent is central to political life. But when rivals become enemies we are entering the territory of paranoia.
“In the United States, Democrats and Republicans are (for the most part) not enemies. They are rivals, adversaries or opponents. Rivals for power are a necessary and inevitable feature of political life, but to the psychologically healthy political actor, their role is that of competitors, to be defeated.
“To the paranoid they are pitiless foes who must be destroyed lest they destroy. Huey Long would say to those who opposed him: ‘I’m not just going to beat you. I’m going to destroy you.'” (Jerrold M. Post, author of Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred)
And again, we can refer to Michael Shermer and Paul Linse’s work where they put these markers of implausible conspiracies into a ten-point checklist:
1. Proof of the conspiracy supposedly emerges from a pattern of “connecting the dots” between events that need not be causally connected. When no evidence supports these connections except the allegation of the conspiracy, or when the evidence fits equally well to other causal connections — or to randomness — the conspiracy theory is likely false.
2. The agents behind the pattern of the conspiracy would need nearly superhuman power to pull it off. Most of the time in most circumstances, people are not nearly so powerful as we think they are.
As Richard Hofstader wrote:
“The paranoid’s interpretation of history is in this sense distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he directs the public mind through ‘managed news’; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind; he has a special technique for seduction; he is gaining a stranglehold on the educational system.” (Hofstadter – Paranoid Style in American Politics)
3. The conspiracy is complex and its successful completion demands a large number of elements.
4. The conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets.
5. The conspiracy encompasses some grandiose ambition for control over a nation, economy or political system. If it suggests world domination, it’s probably false.
6. The conspiracy theory ratchets up from small events that might be true to much larger events that have much lower probabilities of being true.
7. The conspiracy theory assigns portentous and sinister meanings to what are most likely random and insignificant events.
“L. B. Namier once said that ‘the crowning attainment of historical study’ is to achieve ‘an intuitive sense of how things do not happen.’ It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him. We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.” (Hofstadter – Paranoid Style in American Politics)
8. The theory tends to commingle facts and speculations without distinguishing between the two and without assigning degrees of probability or of factuality.
9. The theorist is extremely and indiscriminately suspicious of any and all government agencies or private organizations.
10. The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all dis-confirming evidence for his theory and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence.
Why Do People Believe Conspiracy Theories?
We’ve already learned that all of us are susceptible to this way of thinking and there is no “conspiracy gene” or unique personality quirk that makes someone believe nonsense. So what factors are at play that get people thinking this way?
First off, we can talk about how we think about the world at large.
“Transcendentalists believe that everything is interconnected and all events happen for a reason, while empiricists think that randomness and coincidence interact with the causal net of our world, and that belief depends on evidence for each individual claim. The problem for skepticism is that transcendentalism is intuitive and empiricism is not.” (Michael Shermer and Pat Linse – “Conspiracy Theories,” Skeptic Magazine)
During the process of our evolution, we developed pattern matching skills and tend to think of the world in terms of cause and effect, so we assign meaning to those patterns. There is no face on the surface of Mars and there is no picture of Jesus in this toast, but our brains make us see those things because that’s how we have evolved to survive. We needed skills like that to spot lions and tigers hiding in the brush or to hunt hard-to-see fish in dark waters. So this has extended over the millennia so we see logic and causation in things that don’t have any such thing and this includes abstract ideas like history and religion. We want to put order into disorder and our brains are constantly struggling to make sense out of chaos. This unfortunately often leads us to assigning false causes or false agency to things, either because we don’t have all the information we need to make informed conclusions or we just make things up to fill in the uncomfortable void.
Then there was the 2012 study by Michael Wood, Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton titled “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories” which “showed that many people who believed in a conspiracy theory also believed in other conspiracy theories which logically could not also be true. For example, those believing Osama bin Laden was dead before the Navy Seals entered his compound also believed he was still alive. This finding suggested that belief in conspiracy theories was not so much about the evidence or logic of any specific conspiratorial explanation, but rather about instinctively denying official stories and implicating powerful actors. The implications are that (1) evidence and logic do not drive belief in conspiracy theories as much as conspiracy theorists would argue, and (2) there is an underlying worldview in which official stories are fake, powerful actors are conspirators, and events and circumstances are the product of vast conspiracies.
“The major take-away from these studies is that some people are more prone to believing in conspiracy theories than others. To consider this in a more neutral light, some people will believe in any conspiracy theory even on light evidence while others at the opposite end of the spectrum are naïve and will deny the existence of conspiracies even on accumulating evidence. If we treat this worldview much the same way political scientists treat partisanship or political ideology, then this conspiracy worldview helps individuals interpret information, events, and circumstances around them.” (Uscinski, “The Study of Conspiracy Theories”)
Any survey of Americans is going to, by necessity, include a wide divergence of race, education, gender, occupation and cultural background. So it stands to reason that such a variety of people would come to their beliefs for many different reasons. There doesn’t have to be a single explanation for all of this. Jonathan Kay, in his book “Among the Truthers” wrote:
“On a personal level, conspiracism is not so much a psychological ailment in and of itself as it is a symptom of a mind in flight from reality. That flight can be induced by any number of causes – including radical nationalism, tribalistic hatred, midlife ennui, narcissism, profound psychic trauma, spiritual longing or even experimental drug use.” (Jonathan Kay, Among the Truthers, 2011)
He breaks conspiracy theorists down into eight general categories:
- midlife crisis
- failed historian
- damaged survivor
- cosmic voyager
- clinical conspiracist
- the crank
- evangelical doomsayer
- the firebrand
The failed historian, for example, uses conspiracy theories as a tool to eliminate the cognitive dissonance they experience because history didn’t go the way their ideology demands. Their conspiracy theories rationalize their world view and they literally re-write history in their heads to fit with how they want things to be rather than how they really were.
The damaged survivor, on the other hand, is someone who has accepted a conspiracy theory because it gives them someone or something to fight back against for a condition they were victimized by, such as the parent of an autistic child who adopts the anti-vaxx conspiracy story as true so they can have some explanation for what is currently an unexplainable condition.
As I discussed recently after attending a Flat Earth Conference here in Denver, I found out that many Flat Earthers fall into the category of the evangelical doomsayer, where the existence of a Flat Earth is their only way of reconciling the bewildering complexities of our secular world with the good-versus-evil narrative contained in the Bible and other religious texts.
So people come at this from all walks of life and have very little in common. There is one observation about them, though, which I thought was useful from Phil Mole, a freelance writer in Skeptic Magazine:
“Throughout the fringe movements I’ve seen – whether it’s the 9/11 Truth movement or New Age theories, or Holocaust revisionism – the people tend to have something in common: They think they’re smarter than the average person. And often they are smarter than the average person. They usually have some professional success under their belt. They’ve earned a degree. They think they’re entitled to interpret things the way they see it – that they can declare everyone else to be wrong. The fact they happen to be smart doesn’t deter them from conspiracy theories. Just the opposite. It enables them. It shields them in their own mind from criticism. They think that the reason these other people are criticizing them is, ‘They just don’t get it. They’re not as smart as I am. They don’t know the things I know.'”
In terms of addressing the mental health question, we’ve already made it clear we all have a proclivity for falling for bad ideas but here is some more from Jonathan Kay about this specific point:
“The telltale indicator of a genuine clinical insanity lies with the structure of the conspiracist narrative. Sane conspiracists subconsciously erect a rigid mental firewall that insulates their real day-to-day lives from the life-and-death implications of their fantasies: The resulting doublethink allows them to sleep at night and maintain productive, functional lives without succumbing to the dread fear that their government will punish their truth-seeking activism with murder. (Indeed, one of the great ironies of the Truth movement is that its activists will hold their meetings in large, unsecured locations such as college auditoriums – even as they insist that government agents will stop at nothing to protect their conspiracy for world domination from discovery.) Truly disturbed conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, can’t sustain that firewall. They weave themselves into the fantasy, usually both as hero and target.” (Jonthan Kay, Among the Truthers)
And it should be noted that while conspiracy theorists can sometimes get very riled up and become insulting, derisive and even physically threatening, in the main their intentions are not bad.
“…central in the processes leading to belief in conspiracy theories is a desire to make sense of impactful and threatening societal events….a main function of conspiracy beliefs is to provide causal explanations for complex events that are considered distressing by perceivers. Also other scholars described such a desire to increase understanding of events that are hard to comprehend otherwise as a core motivation to believe in conspiracy theories. Various studies reveal that feelings of being out of control, as well as the related concept of uncertainty, instigate some of the mental processes that are associated with conspiracy belief” (Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Eric van Dijk, “When consequence size predicts belief in conspiracy theories: The moderating role of perspective taking, 2013)
Summary
So long as there are people who do not understand what is going on around them and why, we are going to have conspiracy theories, which of course means they’re going to be around forever.
The way to avoid falling for nonsensical beliefs or ideas, including both destructive cult nonsense and irrational conspiracy theories, is to put your thinking cap on and use critical thinking to evaluate anyone’s claims against known evidence and good authorities. Good critical thinking isn’t just challenging the status quo or dismissing authorities because you think you know better. It consists of relentlessly pursuing the answers that encompass and explain all the evidence on a given subject. It consists of wanting to get the right answer, not wanting to “be right.” It also means being humble enough to admit that you’re wrong when confronted with conflicting evidence. These are all the earmarks of good critical thinking and they are also the things that conspiracy theorists consistently avoid.
There is no need to go online and fight individual conspiracy theorists with facts and evidence because they did not arrive to their conclusions through logic and they won’t give up their conclusions because of logic. For them, their conspiracy theory is an emotional investment which usually solves an important personal problem for them, so they are loathe to give it up and will actively resist efforts to change their mind. Arguing back and forth almost always just degenerates into name calling and bad blood.
Where conspiracy theorists are pushing destructive methods, such as anti-vaxxers who discourage children from receiving their standard immunization shots, we have to enforce legal or health regulations to bypass their poor science claims and make sure our society runs on sound, evidence-based science. There are just some people who are never going to change their minds and will fight back against perfectly safe and rational medicine, science and social evolution. To the degree they get in the way of positive forward progress, they simply have to be ignored or pushed out of the way. What we do know for sure from historical and demographics data is that while all of us have a tendency towards conspiratorial thinking, very few truly dangerous conspiracy theories have ever taken hold of the majority of a population. For the most part, rational thinkers almost always outnumber irrational conspiracy theorists on any one issue.
Where we find conspiracy theories infiltrating our government at any level, we must rally against them because if they are allowed to take hold, that is where things can go very far south very fast. Governments are just large groups of people and they can have any number of spooky or nefarious or nonsensical ideas and sometimes they get the power to act on them. There is nothing wrong with being vigilant, of having a healthy degree of skepticism about what our government is doing and in not putting too much trust in our systems and organizations. They are capable of catastrophic mistakes and blunders and these can have widespread repercussions.
So where you see nonsense, push back against it but don’t freak out too much. Conspiracy theorists have been around forever and they aren’t going anywhere. They will remain the low-hanging fruit of the critcal thinking world because their ideas are usually so easy to debunk and because they usually provide good practice for spotting logical fallacies and irrational thinking. To that degree, they are actually somewhat helpful. And to give them some credit, conspiracy theorists do help keep our governments and corporations more transparent and accountable to the general public.
And on that note, we will wrap this up. Thank you for watching.
Sources
American Conspiracy Theories, Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, 2014
“Conspiracy Theories,” Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer and Paul Linse
Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories, Michael J. Wood & Karen M. Douglas & Robbie M. Sutton, 2011
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, Richard Hofstadter, 1952
Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics, Jeffrey M. Bale, 2007
The Study of Conspiracy Theories, Joseph E. Uscinski
When consequence size predicts belief in conspiracy theories: The moderating role of perspective taking, Jan-Willem van Prooijen & Eric van Dijk, 2013
“Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by willingness to conspire”, British Journal of Psychology, 50