(03-07-2024 06:22 AM)C2__ Wrote: [ -> ] (03-07-2024 04:44 AM)Gitanole Wrote: [ -> ] (03-07-2024 12:06 AM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ] (03-06-2024 11:41 PM)Gitanole Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah. I linked to this a week ago on another thread.
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Speaking of education, here's the kind of publicity for a university that money can't buy.
Interview with Tyler Owens, Texas Tech
https://twitter.com/brentsobleski/status...5142302759
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I didn't make a big deal out of it because there's no point in embarrassing his alma mater or his family any further. (And he's already done enough damage to his draft stock.)
Someone could pop out of any school and say something astonishingly ignorant. Societies provide education to help inoculate people against that, but results are never 100%.
Ignorance is, after all, the default setting. And there are those who would weaponize free speech. Since 1999 democracies have had to cope with deliberate poisoning of the information well.
Fortunately, conspiracism as a phenomenon is a subject of research. You can major in it, with reports like this as primary research documents.
European Journal of Social Psychology
Conspiracy theories are commonly defined as explanatory beliefs about a group of actors that collude in secret to reach malevolent goals (Bale, 2007).
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This emerging research domain has developed over the past decade and distills four basic principles that characterize belief in conspiracy theories. Specifically, conspiracy theories are consequential as they have a real impact on people's health, relationships, and safety; they are universal in that belief in them is widespread across times, cultures, and social settings; they are emotional given that negative emotions and not rational deliberations cause conspiracy beliefs; and they are social as conspiracy beliefs are closely associated with psychological motivations underlying intergroup conflict.
I fail to see the connection from simple ignorance to conspiracies. Is it a conspiracy in his mind that space wasn't part of the universe or real? No. He's simply saying he doesn't believe in space.
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To maintain a domed-flat-earth spaceless belief today as an adult, you have to believe that the entire scientific enterprise since the Renaissance is a deliberate, coordinated lie. It's not just the space agencies, Hubble, Salk and Darwin lying to you. It's Newton, Galileo, Herschel and even Aristotle. They're all in on the 'conspiracy.'
All of science, one big con? Rabbit holes don't get any bigger than that—yet this is what flat earthers are telling people.
So what bug crawled into the conspiracist brain and died? A lot of research has been conducted in the last decade. Here's a summary of the findings so far.
What researchers are learning about conspiracist ideation
Excerpt:
According to a 2018 study, people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to show personality traits and characteristics such as:
paranoid or suspicious thinking
eccentricity
low trust in others
stronger need to feel special
belief in the world as a dangerous place
seeing meaningful patterns where none exist
The strongest predictor of belief in conspiracy theories, according to the study, is having a personality that falls into the spectrum of schizotypy.
Schizotypy is a set of personality traits that can range from magical thinking and dissociative states to disorganized thinking patterns and psychosis.
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Preliminary research also suggests that belief in conspiracy theories is linked to people’s need for uniqueness. The higher the need to feel special and unique, the more likely a person is to believe a conspiracy theory.
The problem isn't believing in conspiracy theories makes you mentally ill. It's believing everything is a conspiracy. That's where some people really lose themselves and go off the deep end.
Believe me, I've looked into a number of conspiracy theories and a lot of them are very compelling and even damning if you weigh enough facts (i.e. a grain of salt eventually leads to a salt shaker). I won't get into which ones they are, if for no other reason than to not have this thread moved elsewhere (though that seems inevitable) but they become more obvious with the more research you put into them. But that doesn't mean they're all valid, and that's where a lot of people lose themselves at.
I think the linked articles above do a good job of defining and describing what they study. Context is everything. I encourage readers to take a look.
Here's a fascinating landmark study from the UK, 2012. You can download the PDF copy for free.
![[Image: princess-diana-death-headlines-1024x805.jpg]](https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/8/5050/files/2014/04/princess-diana-death-headlines-1024x805.jpg)
Dead and Alive
Researchers here found that those prone to conspiracist ideation will assert two contradictory beliefs as 'likely to be true'—provided
neither statement represents the consensus evidence-based view.
This is not how most people think. If Syracuse and Pittsburgh are playing next week, and I ask you to choose who is 'most likely' to win, you will choose either Syracuse or Pittsburgh. Logically, if one outcome is more likely, the other is less likely. You won't say 'neither' or 'both,' because that makes no sense.
Except to conspiracists. They find it much easier to assert two contradictory statements at the same time.
In the 'Dead and Alive' study just linked, British people were sorted into two groups: those prone to conspiracist ideation and those not. Everyone got a questionnaire asking them to rate statements as more or less likely to be true. Among the statements were assertions about Princess Diana's death.
Conspiracists, far more than people in the other group, disbelieved the well-known evidence-based reports. But when asked what the 'real' story was, they agreed to contradictory statements. They said it was 'likely' that Diana Spencer was already dead at the time of the infamous car crash. They also said it is 'likely' that she remains alive somewhere.
Obviously, both of those can't be 'likely' at the same time. What mattered most to the conspiracist group was that both stories contradicted the consensus view.
A similar study was run in the USA. The method was the same. This time the questionnaire had statements about Osama bin Laden's death. Conspiracists denied, of course, that he was killed in the SEAL raid on his house in Pakistan. They said it was 'likely' that he was already long dead. They also said it is 'likely' that he remains alive somewhere. Again: a logical contradiction.
There's more. Check it out. It's a fascinating read.
The identifying mark of conspiracism is not the occasional thought that someone somewhere might be up to no good. It's the habitual use of shadowy plots by a hidden 'they' as one's all-purpose explainer.
As C2 says, 'That's when things go off the deep end.'
![[Image: 1*8Ar5-s-uF2bcw3_hDXFzDQ.jpeg]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/format:webp/1*8Ar5-s-uF2bcw3_hDXFzDQ.jpeg)
