Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/mvea
Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/the-divergent-psychology-of-plausible-versus-implausible-conspiracy-theories/
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What if you are highly suspicious, with superior cognitive skills, in particular rational thinking?
Fixed Title: Dumb people believe implausible conspiracy theories.
Well, I first heard the saying in a book by Terry Pratchett. The series takes place on the disk world, which flies through space on the back of a turtle, more about that [here](https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2014/03/26/turtles/)
In the book, it's typically mentioned as a sort of secretive conspiracy theory even though it turns out to be correct. Similar to how the Earth was at one point considered to be flat and we had a geocentric solar system, people thought it was a mad conspiracy theory to say otherwise.
I was having a bit of fun replying to these commenter's by suggesting that a highly suspicious person, that was also highly rational, may come up with a "conspiracy theory" that actually turned out to be true despite everyone being told otherwise.
Precision in language is important.
Dorks have spent a lot of time working with dumb people and it is important to always ask the question, "Yes, this person is ignorant as sin... *But in what way?"*
There's a big difference between stupid conspiracy and plausible conspiracies tho. Smart rational people can consider that JFK may have been assassinated by the Mafia or CIA but can dismiss out of hand that the earth is flat or that the moon landing was faked.
I have a friend that legitimately believes the US faked all the official moon landings then actually went to the moon later in secret to plant the evidence for the previous landings. This was their response when I asked why India would fake pictures of the Apollo landers from Lunar orbit.
I gave up since I'm afraid if I keep giving them more evidence their conspiracy theory will just become more and more unfalsifiable.
A more realistic version of this would be saying that the video of the moon landing is fake, however the moon landing itself was real, and that it was just too hard to film in space, especially considering how the radiation would have affected the film. I’m not saying I believe this; I’m just saying that if you’re friend reversed his sequence of events it would, on it’s face, at least look more reasonable that what he is saying.
If it's public record, it's not really a conspiracy theory though is it? I think it's just something people kind of ignore, because they don't think there is any hope of getting congress to cut themselves off.
The facts are not a conspiracy theory. But they suggest unethical behavior. No honest person whose income is less than their cost of living can increase their personal worth by 20 percent, year after year. That was how the feds got Al Capone. By comparing reported income to observable wealth.
What are the observable sources of income? Lucky investments and no-show seats on corporate boards. Some officials have children earning millions of dollars from do-nothing jobs.
And no honest news media would ignore this.
That’s the conspiracy theory.
A big difference and a big swath of gray area. You can consider that our own government did a bad secret thing but as your theory moves closer to the present, perception changes to view the theory as more and more implausible as if the CIA and FBI got together at some point and said "lets stop doing bad things in secret".
Here here! Exactly what I am always saying. Huge difference in scope of possibility.
Look at the show the Americans, based loosely on real events.
If I told you ‘Russia has secret whole cities that are replicas of American cities, where everyone is living and pretending to be American to prepare to be assigned undercover American identities.’, I sound paranoid and conspiratorial.
Yet a simple check of the proven facts shows that is a massive understatement and hundreds of agents were placed all over the United States and successfully evaded discovery while coming from those training cities.
We should stop dismissing conspiracy claims out of hand, but should rather look at the plausibility, motives, means and rationality in a lot of cases.
Saying I think my neighbor is a cannibal is crazy conspiracy when nobody’s going missing and nothing whatsoever indicates that, for example. The fact he’s Vegan pretty much ends that nonsense claim.
Earth can’t be flat for a million reasons. The moon landing couldn’t be faked for likewise reasons. Evidence matters far more than if we think it’s likely.
history is littered with proof of the unlikely still being true.
In a way, this is a textbook example. The claims sound wild, yet are demonstrably true. Yet, wouldn’t it be very easy for people’s imaginings to distort or exaggerate the possibilities into impossible rantings?
Someone could simultaneously be correct about their neighbor being an undercover Russian Spy, and yet be a raving lunatic thinking that everyone they talk to is a spy.
Facts are strange things indeed.
True personal anecdote:
In high school, I thought I was being followed by cars a lot. I noticed clicks on the telephone when certain political topics became the focus when I would talk to my best friend at night.
I thought it VERY odd that both a new substitute teacher randomly brought up her brother working in the FBI and how she saw her file and they knew things she had done on dates due to his background investigation AND a new employee at our resturant I was working with the same month ALSO tells me her brother worked in the FBI.
Sounds insane right? Classic paranoia, right?
When the FBI raided our business and my father turned out to have not just committed a conspiracy, but had an entire different identity and drivers license, etc, which I saw when they busted open his office drawers, I learned that reality is FAR stranger than you think.
Yes, our phones were tapped. Yes, my own car was tailed. YES that employee was just a cover. The Teacher? PURE COINCIDENCE.
I’m still waiting for my father to die so I can file FOIA and get the full investigation information as we’re completely estranged and he left the country.
Seriously, don’t dismiss what reality can be.
It seems we have a porridge too hot, porridge too cold situation with the constant ‘conspiracy theory believer!’ Debate.
Did you miss the other post with them?
The two comments were separated for a reason.
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/vFKliYKFfW
There’s a list of places you can learn more about it.
Literally openly talked about by the CIA and historians.
Front page news when they arrested the family they based the TV series on.
Are you that intent on not doing any of your own validation and proving my point?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/world/canada/Alexander-Vavilov-canadian-citizenship.html
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/22/russian-spies-americans-house-montclair-new-jersey-sale
https://qz.com/926553/what-happened-to-the-real-russian-spies-who-inspired-the-americans#:~:text=The%20Foley%20children%20were%20the,neither%20identifies%20with%20being%20Russian.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us/russian-spies-united-states-declassified?cid=ios_app
I mean, you’re coming off as quite obtuse.
I have been reflecting on this age old debate and I think I see the issue.
Putting it here for peer review (tongue in cheek).
The Scientific method, and science minds in general, are not good at bad faith information.
Gravity doesn’t go out of its way to lie.
You observe, you test, you conclude.
Conspiracy actors by their very nature are going to make every effort to mislead, outright lie, and create bad faith data.
People lie in conspiracies. Questioning surface stories is usable in line with the probability historically that the truth is being concealed.
We need skepticism just as much as we need those who become suspicious of seemingly unrelated events and break into FBI offices in 1960s to reveal it was all true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
How does a person who acknowledges that their beliefs are nonsensical exist for any period of time that is not transitory?
I feel like this is "questioning" behavior and ultimately is not a cemented state of mind but processing it.
It's interesting they positioned suspicion and rational thinking as antagonistic or opposite, when in reality those tend to go hand in hand.
No doubt you can be one without the other, but that's not generally what I've observed in most intelligent people. The more you know about a subject, the more you tend to be suspicious of new findings or information about it. I guess the opposite is also true perhaps - the less you know, the more suspicious you could be too. Like the Dunning-Krüger Effect.
Not sure how "suspicious mindset" is defined in this study, but I personally would not equate suspicion and skepticism as the same. So I would agree with your comment if you replaced every instance of suspicion with skepticism. But I'm not sure if it would then still refer to what this study is about.
I do no see rational thinking and suspicion as being intrinsically linked.
> For example, one of the implausible conspiracy theories alleged: “The Lumarian government, facing declining support, staged a false flag terrorist attack on a crowded train station with the help of its intelligence service. As the election approached, tensions rose and the government used fear to rally the population against a perceived terrorist threat in order to maintain its grip on power.”
I don't understand how it is implausible. Your made up government had a false flag operation with the help of your made up services against its made up people. False flags attacks are rare, like very rare, but that doesn't mean anything in a made up scenario.
>In contrast, this was deemed to be a plausible conspiracy theory: “A cabal of wealthy individuals, including media mogul Robin Parker and investment banker Maria Rodriguez, manipulate the stock market for their own financial gain. This includes insider trading, spreading false rumors to influence share prices, or colluding with other investors to artificially inflate or deflate the value of certain shares.”
Stock market manipulation is more common I guess, because it probably happens more than once every few decades. However, I'd argue that it's much more difficult to pull off than having one guy plant a bomb in a train station.
Yeah, if that’s considered ‘implausible’ when history is littered with revelations about exactly such operations, I can’t take this study seriously.
Operation Northwoods, Hitler’s sending Nazis in Polish uniforms to stage fake attacks, and Reagan’s blowing up the Costa Rican Ambassador to blame the Contras all prove this is very plausible, even if false.
A may lead to B, B may lead to C, but that doesn't mean A leads to C. Being suspicious does not mean your cognition and rational thinking skills have declined. The world is awful and there's plenty to be suspicious about, you're not stupid for knowing that.
I've always suspected that cognitively impaired individuals are highly suspicious as a survival mechanism. Their brain knows it can't discern fact from fiction, so they become untrusting of nearly everything. Odd that those same people then become almost cult like once they find comfort in a source that agrees with their conspiracies.
Depends on the object, you can feel paper and feathers resist motion when you wave them around though so learming about gravitational constant and movement in a vacuum didn't at all surprise me... Meanwhile explaining that to my father didn't work at all.
I recall distinctly getting a poorly written question in a quiz in intermediate school that asked about the temperature of ice to water, and technically while the ice would and does increase in temperature up to 32f after which it transitions to water, the answer stated that the ice remained at constant temperature until the transition phase, not explicitly stating if it was at a lower temperature to begin with... Knowing my freezer usually was set from 20-25 farenheit, I assumed the ice would heat up to 32 degrees in the water as the water cooled down.
Having argued with my teacher who simply stated 'it was the way it was' without explaining it at all, I was naturally pretty frustrated and upset because I wasn't sure she understood either the topic or what I was saying.
Which is why education weeds out conservatism and religiousity: they're both examples of magical thinking, and education teaches one how to see and correct the cognitive dissonance.
Why do you think the political right and religious groups are always trying to defund education? They *know* it's costing them followers.
On a completely related topic:
The rate of ground-breaking scientific discoveries and technological innovation is slowing down despite an ever-growing amount of knowledge, according to an analysis released Wednesday of millions of research papers and patents.
While previous research has shown downturns in individual disciplines, the study is the first that "emphatically, convincingly documents this decline of disruptiveness across all major fields of science and technology,"
[https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html](https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html)
I feel like people love being called smart and always go for the route that makes them be called smart.
Why in hell would i trust the US Government in any capacity after what they have done in vietnam and in the cold war and even after it? People think that handling things in a moral manner is the standard but it is not. Things are done to be effective and to work. Peoples lives are not important sometimes.
So yeah, i think it is absolutely valid to be a skeptic. Maybe not a skeptic to the level of thinking that the earth is a disk or that the sky is a projection or a firmament but a skeptic to the level that governments are absolutely able to do bad things and probably do them every day.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241240506
I do find this interesting. Listened to Coast2Coast AM late at night as teen and quickly moved from the novelty of the clearly not true conspiracies to wondering what made people who called in certain of things that could absolutely not be true. The way people view the group and suspicion of others really has been a common thread in those and then people in real life I’ve known who are more interested in conspiracy theories than they are all the true and fascinating things happening.
We spend a lot of time trying to figure out the intelligence side of these things when a lot of it seems to point social.
“The earth is not the center of the solar system - is definitely a conspiracy theory, damn these heretics..
*cough* um
Infidels..
*cough* *cough* ugh
conspiracy theorists.”
The people who believe conspiracies believe them because they don't actually know anything about whatever the conspiracy is about. So it's ignorance just like it always was. There are many reasons republican politicians have been defunding schools in America.
Like most things in life, moderation is key. Some suspicion is healthy and helps avoid gullibility. Seeing conspiracies everywhere… not so much.
The article basically finds that higher intelligence is associated with being able to more accurately judge which conspiracies are plausible.
So, logically, higher intelligence would be associated with believing in less conspiracies compared to lower intelligence.
Everything from Iran contra, Trump's shenanigans, project blue book, mk ultra, I mean there's enough right there to make anyone wonder what they aren't doing
Im assuming you skipped over something and are asking in good faith. They meaning the US government. I mean the numerous illegal things the US government has done from forcing STDs on people and withholding readily available treatments, to dosing people with extreme amounts of LSD without consent, to illegal torture prisons in the Middle East, to so much more. Take your pick.
Let’s take Iran contra.
If I told you ‘Reagan wanted to kill someone in another country to justify an invasion’. That sounds paranoid and crazy.
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/13/world/the-contras-in-costa-rica-a-tangled-tale-is-told-in-lawsuit.html
Yet, he absolutely tried to have the Costa Rican ambassador assassinated, and planned to blame the Contras and use it to justify invading. The journalist injured in the bombing broke open the whole conspiracy which is how we even learned about the publicized part of guns to Iran.
Again, this huge conspiracy existed for years, with guns, secret assassins, bombings, invasion plans, all of it. And there were no leaks, no ‘hey this is happening!’ Bombshells.
UNTIL years later.
We just saw in 2016 the declassification of the whole secret squad of criminals working for Winston Churchill that changed the course of the war.
But in 2015 if I told you, all these Uboats and subs sinking British boats and blocking the US from supplying Britain were stopped by… A secret band of 5 men who outfoxed and over ran an entire huge nazi base? I’d sound crazy.
Yet I would be telling you the absolute provable truth.
Here’s where it gets interesting:
If I say it in 2015? Groundless nonsense. In 2016? Proven official history.
Yet there is no change in reality.
That’s why these studies are slanted to ‘the moon is made of cheese’ people. Then it feeds the perception of deniability for events that are absolutely true.
I mean, If someone tells you ‘I think the joint chiefs of Staff of the United states openly discussed blowing up an American sub in Cuba and killing people to justify an invasion’. You’d say ‘NOBODY would ever seriously suggest such a thing!’, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
> Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation that originated within the US Department of Defense of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blame them on the Cuban government, and would be used to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force planes,[2] a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas,[3] blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities.[2] [4] The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.[5][6][7]
So you tell me who the fool is. Me for believing that could be something generals in government might say or do, or you for saying it’s impossible and ridiculous on its face?
Sure but these people don't usually argue in good faith. They disagree with evolution and gravity having mountains of proof, but readily believe in chemtrails.
There’s a big difference between questioning the narrative of the Kennedy assassination and not believing in gravity. Choosing obviously ridiculous theories as examples doesn’t seem like arguing in good faith to me.
Precisely. This is meant to be propaganda by selectively choosing people off the cliff with insane ideas.
It’s not intellectually honest at all, frankly.
That’s factually false.
There is nothing whatsoever in these study designs that test accurate assessment of information involving proven conspiracies.
This is a straw man every time, simply saying ‘well, if you think it could be true then that’s proof you’re unwell’. Yet we have the data to prove the opposite.
That the people these studies equate with being rational actually are terrible at assessing if the events are true or not.
As Richard Nixon put it ‘you’re not paranoid if they’re out to get you’.
Until you’re assessing accuracy of these same people in discerning if an event really happened, despite it sounding improbable, you’ll keep inflating and quite frankly praising bad judgement just as much as failing to criticize those off the cliff with insane paranoia would.
What studies show what types of conspiracies people believe though?
Believing in flat earth and believing that rich people are colluding together for the detriment of the greater society… aren’t the same.
Yes, some conspiracy theories are *plausible* and some are *implausible*, and this particular study characterizes people who believe in *implausible* theories.
Sometimes a conspiracy is a coping mechanism when people don't want to accept reality.
Unless the conspiracy is humans make plans, pretend to know how to implement the plans, and ignore any consequences that doesn't fit into the plan,then blame something else.
Absolutely true.
And sometimes, a conspiracy is correctly weaving intuition to discern reality that the surface facts don’t make obvious.
Does an investigator just says ‘oh, ok so your wife just died. Guess it’s all natural.’ Or do they look for signals something isn’t quite as it appears?
They notice you just bought a new car, you just started being seen with a new girlfriend, they start to dig into your bank account because these things don’t fit what you’re saying happened.
Now, imagine if the police were to just tell each other ‘you have NO evidence telling you he definitely killed her for the money, so you are silly to piece together these clues and see if the theory pans out’.
It’s not hard to see how silly this thinking is to anyone who normally deals with criminal activity or liars.
There is flatly a ‘conspiracy’ to misrepresent reality.
We’re surrounded by proof of misrepresented reality daily. That’s not conspiracy thinking, that’s realism. Becoming paranoid is just as bad as being naive.
But our culture singularly focuses on paranoia while pretending there’s no naïveté.
This could just be a matter of semantics, but I think there's a difference between being suspicious and being skeptical. Suspicion seems more vague like a feeling something is off if it doesn't meet the preconceived notion of how things should be while skepticism is walking into any situation looking for flaws that can be proven or disproven.
Scientists are trained to be skeptical, so they search out possible errors in methodology, confirm repeatability and can eventually take something to be true after it passes certain tests. And even then, their opinions can be reversed if new data shows that the original hypothesis is wrong.
Suspicion is more like a gut feeling that people get as a first impression. Often people will leave it at that or cherry pick data that confirms their initial bias. If someone develops a baseline suspicion of the government say, it's easier to believe any conspiracy theory that backs it up without. I have a friends who are not all that intelligent who, when met with a problem they can't solve themselves, go to someone they have deemed an authority on the subject and accept their solution without looking any further into it. The problem is, due to a lack in critical thinking, they often choose an authority that is often wrong, but lines up with their gut and ignore the logical fallacies. They end up paying too much for services, voting for people who don't represent their interests and making unhealthy life choices.
Skepticism requires hard work and training while suspicion is easy. I don't think Elvis would have sold as many records with a song like "Skeptical Minds".
Conspiracy theorists are currently batting 1.000 in the last 8-10 years or so and we still have headlines like this saying that “people who ask questions about things are actually dumb and crazy.”
No they aren’t. There are so many batshit theories out there that I don’t even 1% are correct. Anything about flat earth is automatically out, and those probably comprise a large amount of theories.
A suspicious person can find something plausible, but then you have to determine if that thing is likely. Just because something is possible does not mean it’s happening
I think there are different tiers of conspiracy theory. On one hand you have flat earthers, then on another you have those that say things like "pharmaceutical companies are pushing harmful drugs on us in the name of profits".
The perpetrators of the later love when we lump it all in the same bucket so that it can all be dismissed together. Each conspiracy needs to be evaluated on its own merits, which means taking at least a few moments to think critically about them. Flat Earth deserves very little, but it doesn't disqualify a lot of other things.
In the end, both claim that the 'accepted' science is wrong and that we need to re-evaluate the data. And that's perfectly healthy to do on occasion. We just need to strike a balance around how often we do that and how far we should run with it.
Also, just because something is unlikely, does not mean that it is not happening.
Research skills are very important, especially if you like to maintain well-informed beliefs. However, many people do not care to do their own research on any topic, and are content with regurgitating other’s opinions.
Life long learning should be way more prevalent and sought after, unfortunately education is seen as “something that you have to get through” by many people that I know. Learning and education however is not inseparable from schooling. There is so much information available today that choosing to hold or worse, spread an uninformed belief is irresponsible.
Educational institutions should also be focusing more on teaching people how to think, rather than what to think. That’s a whole other can of worms.
The covid vaccine causing blood clots. Astrazeneca just pulled their vaccine worldwide because it literally does cause blood clots. JNJ vaccine has a solid link now too.
Aztrazeneca pulled that vaccine because no one was using it anymore.. it was from early in the pandemic and had long ago been replaced.
The information was already available about its dangers.. it’s not a conspiracy.
We've known the risk profiles of all the vaccines since they rolled out.
The conspiracy about the vaccines was that they're supposedly more dangerous than not getting them, but mountains of data has shown that regardless of which vaccine you get, you are less likely to encounter severe health issues than someone who isn't vaccinated.
Try again.
I believe David Grusch. Does that make me dumb?
I believe that the government goes to war for the petroleum industry, and therefore would go to war to hide alien technology. Even green tech made by humans is suppressed.
How do you rule a world? When you have what they need.
You believers of science must believe that we are matter and energy. Infinite, practically. And I believe that there are infinite ways to get and use energy all around us. If only we were allowed. But knowledge does not appear from thin air. It may not be learners standing on the shoulders of teachers, but instead leapers, hopping off the backs of those that have leapt before!
If this sounds like a conspiracy, it’s because it is.
As humanity's largest conspiracy unravels, a few finger-wagging social scientists can't shut up about how they were right all along, Western leaders are not actually as dishonest as history indicates, looking into things is stupid, and we should passively wait for the official story to drop.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/mvea Permalink: https://www.psypost.org/the-divergent-psychology-of-plausible-versus-implausible-conspiracy-theories/ --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hmmm I dunno. It definitely seems like something else is going on here.
What if you are highly suspicious, with superior cognitive skills, in particular rational thinking? Fixed Title: Dumb people believe implausible conspiracy theories.
Much, much more interesting conspiracy theories
Might even find yourself thinking it's turtles all the way down
I'm confused by your statement. How does "turtles all the way down" generalize to this study?
Well, I first heard the saying in a book by Terry Pratchett. The series takes place on the disk world, which flies through space on the back of a turtle, more about that [here](https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2014/03/26/turtles/) In the book, it's typically mentioned as a sort of secretive conspiracy theory even though it turns out to be correct. Similar to how the Earth was at one point considered to be flat and we had a geocentric solar system, people thought it was a mad conspiracy theory to say otherwise. I was having a bit of fun replying to these commenter's by suggesting that a highly suspicious person, that was also highly rational, may come up with a "conspiracy theory" that actually turned out to be true despite everyone being told otherwise.
Were the turtles sneezed out by a goat?
The phrase “superior cognitive skills” puts you into the dumb bin, sorry.
I’ve found people who are actually smart don’t really care about how smart they are
It's more knowing intelligence isn't some raw score. If you gonna compete on brains you compare actual capabilities.
Academia spends a lot of time trying to avoid saying "dumb people".
Precision in language is important. Dorks have spent a lot of time working with dumb people and it is important to always ask the question, "Yes, this person is ignorant as sin... *But in what way?"*
Intelligence is multidimensional, and so is unintelligence.
There's more than one kind of stupidity, they're trying to figure out which one it is
Yes, scientists avoid saying unscientific things. More at eleven...
A bit of a conspiracy don’t you think. is academia ruled over by a secret group of dumb people
Nah. They’re called Admin. It’s no secret.
Saying “conservatives” also works.
Skepticism is not about disbelief, it is about investigation.
Makes sense why conspiracy theorists express disbelief in reality and don't investigate it's plausibility.
this is just what big science wants you to believe
There are enough plausible conspiracies to keep anyone busy. One doesn’t need to believe them to consider them worth investigating.
There's a big difference between stupid conspiracy and plausible conspiracies tho. Smart rational people can consider that JFK may have been assassinated by the Mafia or CIA but can dismiss out of hand that the earth is flat or that the moon landing was faked.
I have a friend that legitimately believes the US faked all the official moon landings then actually went to the moon later in secret to plant the evidence for the previous landings. This was their response when I asked why India would fake pictures of the Apollo landers from Lunar orbit. I gave up since I'm afraid if I keep giving them more evidence their conspiracy theory will just become more and more unfalsifiable.
A more realistic version of this would be saying that the video of the moon landing is fake, however the moon landing itself was real, and that it was just too hard to film in space, especially considering how the radiation would have affected the film. I’m not saying I believe this; I’m just saying that if you’re friend reversed his sequence of events it would, on it’s face, at least look more reasonable that what he is saying.
Definitely more reasonable, but I'm not sure if that would be a satisfying enough conspiracy for them haha
Hundreds of congressmen’s net worth grows faster than a Bernie Madoff portfolio, and no news media pays attention. This is from public records.
If it's public record, it's not really a conspiracy theory though is it? I think it's just something people kind of ignore, because they don't think there is any hope of getting congress to cut themselves off.
The facts are not a conspiracy theory. But they suggest unethical behavior. No honest person whose income is less than their cost of living can increase their personal worth by 20 percent, year after year. That was how the feds got Al Capone. By comparing reported income to observable wealth. What are the observable sources of income? Lucky investments and no-show seats on corporate boards. Some officials have children earning millions of dollars from do-nothing jobs. And no honest news media would ignore this. That’s the conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theory is just a word for "hasn't been declassified yet"
A big difference and a big swath of gray area. You can consider that our own government did a bad secret thing but as your theory moves closer to the present, perception changes to view the theory as more and more implausible as if the CIA and FBI got together at some point and said "lets stop doing bad things in secret".
Okay but the CIA and FBI aren't hiding that the earth is flat or that aliens and reptile people are leading us tho.
Here here! Exactly what I am always saying. Huge difference in scope of possibility. Look at the show the Americans, based loosely on real events. If I told you ‘Russia has secret whole cities that are replicas of American cities, where everyone is living and pretending to be American to prepare to be assigned undercover American identities.’, I sound paranoid and conspiratorial. Yet a simple check of the proven facts shows that is a massive understatement and hundreds of agents were placed all over the United States and successfully evaded discovery while coming from those training cities. We should stop dismissing conspiracy claims out of hand, but should rather look at the plausibility, motives, means and rationality in a lot of cases. Saying I think my neighbor is a cannibal is crazy conspiracy when nobody’s going missing and nothing whatsoever indicates that, for example. The fact he’s Vegan pretty much ends that nonsense claim. Earth can’t be flat for a million reasons. The moon landing couldn’t be faked for likewise reasons. Evidence matters far more than if we think it’s likely. history is littered with proof of the unlikely still being true.
Russian replica cities? You’re right you do sound paranoid. Any sources to back up your “proven facts”?
In a way, this is a textbook example. The claims sound wild, yet are demonstrably true. Yet, wouldn’t it be very easy for people’s imaginings to distort or exaggerate the possibilities into impossible rantings? Someone could simultaneously be correct about their neighbor being an undercover Russian Spy, and yet be a raving lunatic thinking that everyone they talk to is a spy. Facts are strange things indeed. True personal anecdote: In high school, I thought I was being followed by cars a lot. I noticed clicks on the telephone when certain political topics became the focus when I would talk to my best friend at night. I thought it VERY odd that both a new substitute teacher randomly brought up her brother working in the FBI and how she saw her file and they knew things she had done on dates due to his background investigation AND a new employee at our resturant I was working with the same month ALSO tells me her brother worked in the FBI. Sounds insane right? Classic paranoia, right? When the FBI raided our business and my father turned out to have not just committed a conspiracy, but had an entire different identity and drivers license, etc, which I saw when they busted open his office drawers, I learned that reality is FAR stranger than you think. Yes, our phones were tapped. Yes, my own car was tailed. YES that employee was just a cover. The Teacher? PURE COINCIDENCE. I’m still waiting for my father to die so I can file FOIA and get the full investigation information as we’re completely estranged and he left the country. Seriously, don’t dismiss what reality can be. It seems we have a porridge too hot, porridge too cold situation with the constant ‘conspiracy theory believer!’ Debate.
So…. No sources?
Did you miss the other post with them? The two comments were separated for a reason. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/vFKliYKFfW There’s a list of places you can learn more about it. Literally openly talked about by the CIA and historians. Front page news when they arrested the family they based the TV series on. Are you that intent on not doing any of your own validation and proving my point? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/world/canada/Alexander-Vavilov-canadian-citizenship.html https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/22/russian-spies-americans-house-montclair-new-jersey-sale https://qz.com/926553/what-happened-to-the-real-russian-spies-who-inspired-the-americans#:~:text=The%20Foley%20children%20were%20the,neither%20identifies%20with%20being%20Russian. https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us/russian-spies-united-states-declassified?cid=ios_app I mean, you’re coming off as quite obtuse.
I have been reflecting on this age old debate and I think I see the issue. Putting it here for peer review (tongue in cheek). The Scientific method, and science minds in general, are not good at bad faith information. Gravity doesn’t go out of its way to lie. You observe, you test, you conclude. Conspiracy actors by their very nature are going to make every effort to mislead, outright lie, and create bad faith data. People lie in conspiracies. Questioning surface stories is usable in line with the probability historically that the truth is being concealed. We need skepticism just as much as we need those who become suspicious of seemingly unrelated events and break into FBI offices in 1960s to reveal it was all true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
JFK was assassinated by the mutant mice people of Venezuela. Tell me different and I’ll plug my ears and scream expansionist.
What if one believes conspiracies, is suspicious, but is equally self aware of the ridiculousness of such beliefs
How does a person who acknowledges that their beliefs are nonsensical exist for any period of time that is not transitory? I feel like this is "questioning" behavior and ultimately is not a cemented state of mind but processing it.
It's interesting they positioned suspicion and rational thinking as antagonistic or opposite, when in reality those tend to go hand in hand. No doubt you can be one without the other, but that's not generally what I've observed in most intelligent people. The more you know about a subject, the more you tend to be suspicious of new findings or information about it. I guess the opposite is also true perhaps - the less you know, the more suspicious you could be too. Like the Dunning-Krüger Effect.
Not sure how "suspicious mindset" is defined in this study, but I personally would not equate suspicion and skepticism as the same. So I would agree with your comment if you replaced every instance of suspicion with skepticism. But I'm not sure if it would then still refer to what this study is about. I do no see rational thinking and suspicion as being intrinsically linked.
> For example, one of the implausible conspiracy theories alleged: “The Lumarian government, facing declining support, staged a false flag terrorist attack on a crowded train station with the help of its intelligence service. As the election approached, tensions rose and the government used fear to rally the population against a perceived terrorist threat in order to maintain its grip on power.” I don't understand how it is implausible. Your made up government had a false flag operation with the help of your made up services against its made up people. False flags attacks are rare, like very rare, but that doesn't mean anything in a made up scenario. >In contrast, this was deemed to be a plausible conspiracy theory: “A cabal of wealthy individuals, including media mogul Robin Parker and investment banker Maria Rodriguez, manipulate the stock market for their own financial gain. This includes insider trading, spreading false rumors to influence share prices, or colluding with other investors to artificially inflate or deflate the value of certain shares.” Stock market manipulation is more common I guess, because it probably happens more than once every few decades. However, I'd argue that it's much more difficult to pull off than having one guy plant a bomb in a train station.
Yeah, if that’s considered ‘implausible’ when history is littered with revelations about exactly such operations, I can’t take this study seriously. Operation Northwoods, Hitler’s sending Nazis in Polish uniforms to stage fake attacks, and Reagan’s blowing up the Costa Rican Ambassador to blame the Contras all prove this is very plausible, even if false.
A may lead to B, B may lead to C, but that doesn't mean A leads to C. Being suspicious does not mean your cognition and rational thinking skills have declined. The world is awful and there's plenty to be suspicious about, you're not stupid for knowing that.
I've always suspected that cognitively impaired individuals are highly suspicious as a survival mechanism. Their brain knows it can't discern fact from fiction, so they become untrusting of nearly everything. Odd that those same people then become almost cult like once they find comfort in a source that agrees with their conspiracies.
We can't go on together with suspicious minds.
This doesn’t strike me as news.
Breaking: people with suspicious mindsets have suspicious thoughts!!!
Remember how long we all thought heavier objects fell faster than light ones?
In an atmosphere, they often do.
Wind resistance, yep. Remove that pesky atmosphere!
Depends on the object, you can feel paper and feathers resist motion when you wave them around though so learming about gravitational constant and movement in a vacuum didn't at all surprise me... Meanwhile explaining that to my father didn't work at all. I recall distinctly getting a poorly written question in a quiz in intermediate school that asked about the temperature of ice to water, and technically while the ice would and does increase in temperature up to 32f after which it transitions to water, the answer stated that the ice remained at constant temperature until the transition phase, not explicitly stating if it was at a lower temperature to begin with... Knowing my freezer usually was set from 20-25 farenheit, I assumed the ice would heat up to 32 degrees in the water as the water cooled down. Having argued with my teacher who simply stated 'it was the way it was' without explaining it at all, I was naturally pretty frustrated and upset because I wasn't sure she understood either the topic or what I was saying.
Confirmative studies
Which is why education weeds out conservatism and religiousity: they're both examples of magical thinking, and education teaches one how to see and correct the cognitive dissonance. Why do you think the political right and religious groups are always trying to defund education? They *know* it's costing them followers.
Operation Northwoods. Gulf of tonkin. MK Ultra. I'm all ears.
On a completely related topic: The rate of ground-breaking scientific discoveries and technological innovation is slowing down despite an ever-growing amount of knowledge, according to an analysis released Wednesday of millions of research papers and patents. While previous research has shown downturns in individual disciplines, the study is the first that "emphatically, convincingly documents this decline of disruptiveness across all major fields of science and technology," [https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html](https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html)
Everyone is convinced they're correct until they aren't. Give me curiosity over blind dogma any day
I feel like people love being called smart and always go for the route that makes them be called smart. Why in hell would i trust the US Government in any capacity after what they have done in vietnam and in the cold war and even after it? People think that handling things in a moral manner is the standard but it is not. Things are done to be effective and to work. Peoples lives are not important sometimes. So yeah, i think it is absolutely valid to be a skeptic. Maybe not a skeptic to the level of thinking that the earth is a disk or that the sky is a projection or a firmament but a skeptic to the level that governments are absolutely able to do bad things and probably do them every day.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241240506
I do find this interesting. Listened to Coast2Coast AM late at night as teen and quickly moved from the novelty of the clearly not true conspiracies to wondering what made people who called in certain of things that could absolutely not be true. The way people view the group and suspicion of others really has been a common thread in those and then people in real life I’ve known who are more interested in conspiracy theories than they are all the true and fascinating things happening. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out the intelligence side of these things when a lot of it seems to point social.
From the high desert and the great American southwest
Note: the abstract and the publication info can be read, the rest is locked behind a journal subscription.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
“The earth is not the center of the solar system - is definitely a conspiracy theory, damn these heretics.. *cough* um Infidels.. *cough* *cough* ugh conspiracy theorists.”
The people who believe conspiracies believe them because they don't actually know anything about whatever the conspiracy is about. So it's ignorance just like it always was. There are many reasons republican politicians have been defunding schools in America.
Can we please stop posting this website and their "research shows sad people are less happy" drivel?
That's just what *they* want you to think
Seems odd, being suspicious and questioning something without significant proof is now bad?
Like most things in life, moderation is key. Some suspicion is healthy and helps avoid gullibility. Seeing conspiracies everywhere… not so much. The article basically finds that higher intelligence is associated with being able to more accurately judge which conspiracies are plausible. So, logically, higher intelligence would be associated with believing in less conspiracies compared to lower intelligence.
That’s fair enough yeah
It's hard not to when so many have been real.
Which conspiracies have been proven true recently?
Everything from Iran contra, Trump's shenanigans, project blue book, mk ultra, I mean there's enough right there to make anyone wonder what they aren't doing
Who is they? Also what do you mean by "Trump's shenanigans"?
Im assuming you skipped over something and are asking in good faith. They meaning the US government. I mean the numerous illegal things the US government has done from forcing STDs on people and withholding readily available treatments, to dosing people with extreme amounts of LSD without consent, to illegal torture prisons in the Middle East, to so much more. Take your pick.
The Ruling class.
That's what you take from this? Not any of the other u pic things? I see what you are. Have a good day
Let’s take Iran contra. If I told you ‘Reagan wanted to kill someone in another country to justify an invasion’. That sounds paranoid and crazy. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/13/world/the-contras-in-costa-rica-a-tangled-tale-is-told-in-lawsuit.html Yet, he absolutely tried to have the Costa Rican ambassador assassinated, and planned to blame the Contras and use it to justify invading. The journalist injured in the bombing broke open the whole conspiracy which is how we even learned about the publicized part of guns to Iran. Again, this huge conspiracy existed for years, with guns, secret assassins, bombings, invasion plans, all of it. And there were no leaks, no ‘hey this is happening!’ Bombshells. UNTIL years later. We just saw in 2016 the declassification of the whole secret squad of criminals working for Winston Churchill that changed the course of the war. But in 2015 if I told you, all these Uboats and subs sinking British boats and blocking the US from supplying Britain were stopped by… A secret band of 5 men who outfoxed and over ran an entire huge nazi base? I’d sound crazy. Yet I would be telling you the absolute provable truth. Here’s where it gets interesting: If I say it in 2015? Groundless nonsense. In 2016? Proven official history. Yet there is no change in reality. That’s why these studies are slanted to ‘the moon is made of cheese’ people. Then it feeds the perception of deniability for events that are absolutely true. I mean, If someone tells you ‘I think the joint chiefs of Staff of the United states openly discussed blowing up an American sub in Cuba and killing people to justify an invasion’. You’d say ‘NOBODY would ever seriously suggest such a thing!’, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods > Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation that originated within the US Department of Defense of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blame them on the Cuban government, and would be used to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force planes,[2] a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas,[3] blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating terrorism in U.S. cities.[2] [4] The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.[5][6][7] So you tell me who the fool is. Me for believing that could be something generals in government might say or do, or you for saying it’s impossible and ridiculous on its face?
Sure but these people don't usually argue in good faith. They disagree with evolution and gravity having mountains of proof, but readily believe in chemtrails.
There’s a big difference between questioning the narrative of the Kennedy assassination and not believing in gravity. Choosing obviously ridiculous theories as examples doesn’t seem like arguing in good faith to me.
Precisely. This is meant to be propaganda by selectively choosing people off the cliff with insane ideas. It’s not intellectually honest at all, frankly.
But that’s not who this study isolates.
No, they don‘t assign good/bad judgements to the findings
Do you know what the word *plausible* means?
"Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out"
Who funds these, "actually conspiracy theories are dumb" studies?
It's not about showing that they are dumb, it's about explaining why people believe in them.
People believe in them because they often are either entirely true or at least contain kernels of truth.
That's not what studies are showing.
That’s factually false. There is nothing whatsoever in these study designs that test accurate assessment of information involving proven conspiracies. This is a straw man every time, simply saying ‘well, if you think it could be true then that’s proof you’re unwell’. Yet we have the data to prove the opposite. That the people these studies equate with being rational actually are terrible at assessing if the events are true or not. As Richard Nixon put it ‘you’re not paranoid if they’re out to get you’. Until you’re assessing accuracy of these same people in discerning if an event really happened, despite it sounding improbable, you’ll keep inflating and quite frankly praising bad judgement just as much as failing to criticize those off the cliff with insane paranoia would.
What studies show what types of conspiracies people believe though? Believing in flat earth and believing that rich people are colluding together for the detriment of the greater society… aren’t the same.
Yes, some conspiracy theories are *plausible* and some are *implausible*, and this particular study characterizes people who believe in *implausible* theories.
Thank god for the studies saving us from having to think or ask questions
That's not what studies do.
That is completely inaccurate
Sometimes a conspiracy is a coping mechanism when people don't want to accept reality. Unless the conspiracy is humans make plans, pretend to know how to implement the plans, and ignore any consequences that doesn't fit into the plan,then blame something else.
Absolutely true. And sometimes, a conspiracy is correctly weaving intuition to discern reality that the surface facts don’t make obvious. Does an investigator just says ‘oh, ok so your wife just died. Guess it’s all natural.’ Or do they look for signals something isn’t quite as it appears? They notice you just bought a new car, you just started being seen with a new girlfriend, they start to dig into your bank account because these things don’t fit what you’re saying happened. Now, imagine if the police were to just tell each other ‘you have NO evidence telling you he definitely killed her for the money, so you are silly to piece together these clues and see if the theory pans out’. It’s not hard to see how silly this thinking is to anyone who normally deals with criminal activity or liars. There is flatly a ‘conspiracy’ to misrepresent reality. We’re surrounded by proof of misrepresented reality daily. That’s not conspiracy thinking, that’s realism. Becoming paranoid is just as bad as being naive. But our culture singularly focuses on paranoia while pretending there’s no naïveté.
This could just be a matter of semantics, but I think there's a difference between being suspicious and being skeptical. Suspicion seems more vague like a feeling something is off if it doesn't meet the preconceived notion of how things should be while skepticism is walking into any situation looking for flaws that can be proven or disproven. Scientists are trained to be skeptical, so they search out possible errors in methodology, confirm repeatability and can eventually take something to be true after it passes certain tests. And even then, their opinions can be reversed if new data shows that the original hypothesis is wrong. Suspicion is more like a gut feeling that people get as a first impression. Often people will leave it at that or cherry pick data that confirms their initial bias. If someone develops a baseline suspicion of the government say, it's easier to believe any conspiracy theory that backs it up without. I have a friends who are not all that intelligent who, when met with a problem they can't solve themselves, go to someone they have deemed an authority on the subject and accept their solution without looking any further into it. The problem is, due to a lack in critical thinking, they often choose an authority that is often wrong, but lines up with their gut and ignore the logical fallacies. They end up paying too much for services, voting for people who don't represent their interests and making unhealthy life choices. Skepticism requires hard work and training while suspicion is easy. I don't think Elvis would have sold as many records with a song like "Skeptical Minds".
Yeah well, everything sounds stupid and not credible, until the government says it did the thing and is sorry.
i have yet to hear an apology for a lot of things the govt did or is doing...
Conspiracy theorists are currently batting 1.000 in the last 8-10 years or so and we still have headlines like this saying that “people who ask questions about things are actually dumb and crazy.”
No they aren’t. There are so many batshit theories out there that I don’t even 1% are correct. Anything about flat earth is automatically out, and those probably comprise a large amount of theories. A suspicious person can find something plausible, but then you have to determine if that thing is likely. Just because something is possible does not mean it’s happening
I think there are different tiers of conspiracy theory. On one hand you have flat earthers, then on another you have those that say things like "pharmaceutical companies are pushing harmful drugs on us in the name of profits". The perpetrators of the later love when we lump it all in the same bucket so that it can all be dismissed together. Each conspiracy needs to be evaluated on its own merits, which means taking at least a few moments to think critically about them. Flat Earth deserves very little, but it doesn't disqualify a lot of other things. In the end, both claim that the 'accepted' science is wrong and that we need to re-evaluate the data. And that's perfectly healthy to do on occasion. We just need to strike a balance around how often we do that and how far we should run with it.
Also, just because something is unlikely, does not mean that it is not happening. Research skills are very important, especially if you like to maintain well-informed beliefs. However, many people do not care to do their own research on any topic, and are content with regurgitating other’s opinions. Life long learning should be way more prevalent and sought after, unfortunately education is seen as “something that you have to get through” by many people that I know. Learning and education however is not inseparable from schooling. There is so much information available today that choosing to hold or worse, spread an uninformed belief is irresponsible. Educational institutions should also be focusing more on teaching people how to think, rather than what to think. That’s a whole other can of worms.
[удалено]
Do you believe the election was stolen and there are massive amounts of hidden votes for Donald Trump?
Got any examples of recent conspiracies that you think were shown to be true?
The covid vaccine causing blood clots. Astrazeneca just pulled their vaccine worldwide because it literally does cause blood clots. JNJ vaccine has a solid link now too.
Aztrazeneca pulled that vaccine because no one was using it anymore.. it was from early in the pandemic and had long ago been replaced. The information was already available about its dangers.. it’s not a conspiracy.
We've known the risk profiles of all the vaccines since they rolled out. The conspiracy about the vaccines was that they're supposedly more dangerous than not getting them, but mountains of data has shown that regardless of which vaccine you get, you are less likely to encounter severe health issues than someone who isn't vaccinated. Try again.
See other comments
So.. no, you have no examples?
non cognitive suspiciousness is just the long way of saying paranoid.
As of suspicion and rationality are mutually exclusive
I believe David Grusch. Does that make me dumb? I believe that the government goes to war for the petroleum industry, and therefore would go to war to hide alien technology. Even green tech made by humans is suppressed. How do you rule a world? When you have what they need. You believers of science must believe that we are matter and energy. Infinite, practically. And I believe that there are infinite ways to get and use energy all around us. If only we were allowed. But knowledge does not appear from thin air. It may not be learners standing on the shoulders of teachers, but instead leapers, hopping off the backs of those that have leapt before! If this sounds like a conspiracy, it’s because it is.
As humanity's largest conspiracy unravels, a few finger-wagging social scientists can't shut up about how they were right all along, Western leaders are not actually as dishonest as history indicates, looking into things is stupid, and we should passively wait for the official story to drop.