>I don’t know that there are that many things that the majority of people consider a conspiracy in terms that absolute.

Consider the lab origin theory of covid... the simultaneous claims across supposedly independent media (that it "is" [only] a conspiracy theory) and then the reaction to that by people on social media. I believe that a cause and effect relationship seems obvious.

>Unless you mean why the majority of people discredit some ideas as only being “conspiracy theories” when it’s impossible to know with absolute certainty that there is no actual conspiracy.

I am interested in why journalists are incapable of exercising basic epistemology. It is regularly claimed that they are some of the most competent people on the planet in this regard, and that we should trust their judgment because of it. This is clearly false.

>I would say that the majority of people wouldn’t agree that these ideas are necessarily and only conspiracy theories with zero statistical possibility of truth...

Engaged in highly accurate discussion like this and you will be accused of engaging in pedantry, or various other popular memes.

>I would also suggest that since the overwhelming majority of popular conspiracy theories never actually reveal a conspiracy...

What data source are you using, in fact?

> ...we just label any unlikely claim of conspiracy as such.

But what is the actual(!) reason(s) that people do this the same way? Is mass belief among humans purely organic, without exception?