Conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking are around us all the time, from eccentric
friends who question whether we landed on the moon to the fact that a majority of Americans
believe that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only person involved in the JFK assassination.
Let's take a look at how conspiracy theories work.
Before we begin, we should clarify the difference between a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy.
A conspiracy is a fact about the world, a situation for which there's good evidence
that two or more people worked together -- conspired -- to commit an illegal or immoral act.
A conspiracy theory, on the other hand, is an allegation or claim that an event was caused
by a conspiracy.
A conspiracy is something that is known as a result of investigating the causes of an
event; a conspiracy theory is the result of rejecting the evidence that explains an event.
Actual conspiracies include the plot of Roman senators to assassinate Julius Caesar, the
1953 Iranian coup that overthrew the democratically-elected prime minister orchestrated by the U.S. and
the U.K., the Watergate break-in, and any time two or more people get together to rob
a bank.
Let's look at five common characteristics of conspiracy theories.
First, the presupposition that nothing ever happens by accident, that chaos or randomness
does not, and cannot, explain significant world and historical events.
Most conspiracy theorists would accept that any one of us could get hit by a car while
crossing a street due to completely accidental or random causes, like the driver having the
sun in their eyes for three straight seconds right as you crossed in front of him.
But the conspiratorial world view is that events of major significance, at least significant
to humans, never occur this way.
More on why this is later.
Second, the idea of a small group of people in power pulling the puppet strings behind
the scenes.
A good example is the old anti-Semitic canard of Jewish control.
The core here is that there's a cabal of Jews controlling events in secret for their
own benefit.
So it's been said that Jews control the media, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, Hollywood,
that they were behind historical wars and revolutions, and even that they seek world
domination.
The most influential expression of these ideas is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The text was a hoax plagiarized from earlier sources, first published in Russia in 1903
and purported to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders at the end of the 19th century
conspiring to take over the world.
It's been debunked many times, but its popularity and influence continues to be significant.
Henry Ford funded the printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed in the U.S. in
the 1920s, and it was cited in Hitler's Mein Kampf and in Nazi propaganda.
More recently, it was referenced in Hamas's Charter and continues to be read in multiple
languages.
And this is a feature of most conspiracy theories, that a small and powerful group (supposedly
the Jews in this case) have orchestrated a big, nefarious scheme behind closed doors.
A third common trait of conspiracy theories is that "official" stories are considered
to be propaganda used by those in power to brainwash most of the public.
Think about the Warren Commission Report, the 888-page document submitted to President
Lyndon Johnson in September 1964 concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted entirely alone
in the assassination of JFK.
Attacking the Warren Commission and its report is a key feature of JFK assassination conspiracy
theories.
One of the main points is the single bullet theory, often ridiculed and called the "magic
bullet theory," which the Report used to explain how one of the three bullets fired
by Oswald hit Kennedy's neck and Texas Governor John Connally's chest, wrist, and thigh.
The supposed implausibility of the same bullet behaving this way is commonly cited and was
even the focus of a key scene in Oliver Stone's JFK and a parody scene in an episode of Seinfeld.
To any of you wondering whether only magic could explain what the bullet did, this has
been modeled and analyzed many times and found to be completely consistent with the laws
of physics!
Fourth, skepticism.
Now, this is actually pretty interesting.
Conspiracy theories often appeal to our usual sense of skepticism, but take it to an irrational
extreme.
They take advantage of the fact that it's easy to sow doubt in us simply by asking questions
that appear to expose inconsistencies in official accounts of events.
Consider NASA's footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Conspiracists love to point to the appearance of a waving American flag as the pole is being
fixed into position by the astronauts.
They say, there's no wind on the moon, so how could the flag possibly wave?
This is a perfectly reasonable question.
Of course, there's also a perfectly reasonable answer.
When the astronauts placed the flag on the ground, it vibrated the flagpole and flag
and the inertia in the vacuum of space led to some movement of the flag that looked like
waving.
Also, the astronauts accidentally bent the horizontal rods holding the flag in place
several times, which created the appearance of a rippling flag in the still photographs.
Lastly, and very importantly is the the unfalsifiability of conspiracy theories.
If you disprove any specific point or argument made by conspiracy theorists, they either
claim your "evidence" is fake and/or part of the official propaganda story, or they
accept it and immediately move on to the next point.
So to take the moon landing example, if you explain why the flag appeared to be waving,
a conspiracist might say, "yes, sure, but what about the fact that there is no blast
crater when the lunar module landed?"
Or, if you point to an aspect of the photos that disproves their point, they answer "those
images were doctored by NASA."
In this way, confirmation bias causes conspiracy theorists to take any evidence they encounter,
even evidence which contradicts their theories, and incorporate it as further proof of their
conclusion.
So why is it that some people buy into conspiracy theories?
We live in a world that is, in many ways, full of complexity and chaos.
Terrible things happen for no good reason, scientific explanations can seem completely
counterintuitive, and an event that changes history can occur by accident.
It's difficult for many people to accept that a lot of what happens in the world is
by coincidence or through causes outside our control.
Some of these people turn to conspiracy theories because they can provide reassurance that
what's happening in their lives, or the things they see on the news, have identifiable
and comprehensible causes.
There's been a lot of research, especially over the past 15 years, aimed at understanding
the psychology of those who believe in conspiracy theories.
Conspiratorial belief correlates with certain personality traits, such as intellectual curiosity,
a strong imagination, cynicism toward politics, and distrust of authority.
Psychological studies have found that belief in conspiracy theories also tends to correlate
with belief in creationism, the paranormal, superstitions, and New Age beliefs.
Conspiracism has also been tied to a tendency to see patterns where there are none.
A 2018 study by psychologist Joshua Hart gave cognitive tests to over 1200 American adults,
and also asked the participants what they thought about statements like "The power
held by heads of state is second to that of small unknown groups who really control world
politics" and "Groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate or suppress evidence in order to
deceive the public."
Those who agreed with the conspiratorial statements were much more likely to identify non-existent
patterns when shown randomized visual images, and they were more likely to interpret nonsensical
statements as profound.
So on portions of the test that had nothing to do with politics or conspiracies, the conspiracists
tended to attribute meaning and intention where non-conspiracists did not.
Some researchers have also suggested that conspiratorial thinkers suffer from what's
known as "proportionality bias." in other words, when someone has trouble believing
that an event with large-scale consequences can have a small-scale cause.
For example, that a lone gunman would assassinate JFK, that someone as famous as Princess Diana
could have been killed by a simple car accident, or that a mere group of 19 terrorists could
create the devastation of 9/11.
Assuming that these were all high-level government conspiracies would maintain the proportionality
between the causes and the consequences, and it's an understandable impulse.
But of course, significant events like these do often have spontaneous, small-scale causes.
Believing in conspiracy theories also provides an insider's sense of being "in the know."
Conspiracy theorists and their followers form groups that know "what really happened"
and "how things really are."
So although we can understand and maybe even empathize about what drives people to believe
in conspiracy theories, it would be a mistake to discount the dangerous real-life consequences
of many conspiracy theories.
Belief in conspiracy theories has led to physical violence and terrorism, such as the 1995 Oklahoma
City bombing.
Many people who subscribe to conspiracy theories have a misplaced distrust or animosity toward
institutions that in reality are beneficial to society, or in some cases they can even
develop a hatred toward entire groups of people.
Conspiracy theories about vaccines and autism have led people to not vaccinate their children
against deadly diseases.
And surveys have shown that people who believe climate change to be a hoax are far less willing
to reduce their carbon footprint.
The more complex a problem is, the more complex the solution tends to be.
So some people find comfort in falsely assessing problems to be more simple than they actually
are, because it would mean that the solution is simple.
If the MMR vaccine causes autism and the medical community is ignorant about it, then the solution
is simple: don't trust the medical community and don't use vaccines.
It's much less palatable to consider that autism has complicated genetic causes that
aren't yet fully understood, leaving us for the time being with no easy answers.
Of course, you might be watching and thinking to yourself, sometimes powerful people do
conspire.
Sometimes the public is being lied to by the powers that be.
Well, there's a difference between healthy skepticism and habitually getting caught up
in conspiracy theories.
One method you might use to tell the difference is to consider how implausible it would be
for a huge number conspirators to keep everything a secret.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
Physicist David Robert Grimes has developed a statistically-rigorous formula to determine
how long it would take for a conspiracy to be exposed, based on the number of people
that must have been involved.
Basically, the more people involved in the conspiracy, the faster a leak would have to
emerge.
Grimes calculated that the supposed moon landing hoax would require the involvement of about
411,000 people and would be exposed within 3.68 years.
A hoax about man-made global warming would involve about 405,000 people and would be
exposed within 3.70 years.
So yes, some conspiracies are real, but we often find out about them through people leaking
information.
And we need to be reasonable about how improbable it would be for there to be no leaks whatsoever,
over an extended period of time, from a supposed conspiracy that involves a great deal of people.
Another method for finding the line between rational skepticism and misguided conspiracism
is to employ a critical thinking principle known as Occam's razor.
Occam's razor essentially suggests that, all else being equal, we should favor explanations
that require the fewest assumptions.
If we already have a reasonable explanation for why something happened, there's no need
to invoke additional speculation.
If your dog has a history of digging through your garbage, and you come home and find your
trash can flipped over, it's unreasonable to start hypothesizing about who broke into
your house to tip over your trash can barring some specific evidence to point you in that
direction.
We can also identify improbable conspiracy theories by recognizing when a conspiracy
theorist is frequently and fallaciously appealing to vagueness.
They try to explain something complex by giving reasons that are even more complex and nebulous,
leaving endlessly branching explanations, without ever arriving at hard facts or evidence.
Skepticism deals with facts-- proving facts, describing facts, questioning facts, while
conspiracy theorists are generally more concerned with attributing motives and analyzing an
event in terms of its significance and how it fits into a larger narrative.
In contrast with rational skepticism, conspiracists tend more to understand and explain things
in terms of their meaning, rather than how they came to be and why.
But it should be easy to understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and why so many people
fall into this habit.
Many conspiracy theorists seem to feel like they're fighting in a war between good and
evil.
And as mentioned before, they often enjoy feeling like they're "in the know," which
can be validating.
Just think of all of the conspiracy theorists who go around calling people "shills"
or "sheep."
As humans, looking for patterns is in our very nature.
But it's possible to overdo it and connect dots that have no business being connected.
And like I talked about, there are studies pointing to the notion that there might even
be broader personally traits at play that cause people to go down this road.
We have to acknowledge that we live in an unpredictable world, filled with randomness,
coincidences, and accidents that can have hugely profound consequences.
And jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions about conspiracies is almost never going to
get us closer to understanding how things really work or solving our problems.
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