People who dont understand what an Argument from ignorance fallacy is, mixed with lack of education, critical thinking skills and the wanting to possess special knowledge...

Just look at people like Terrance Howard.

A genuinely stupid person...

Deep need to possess special knowledge...

Cant actually understand math at a deep level or put in effort to get a math degree...

Invents his own theory of mathematics 1x1 = 2 and thinks math and science experts are a cabal of idiots.

"conspiracy theory" is a definition coined in a cia memo concerning the kennedy assassination. it can be used as a shortcut to tar and defame anyone who has unpopular inconvenient opinions, views or data. it's so much easier than having a debate and treating a person as an equal. applying the label assumes superior or even perfect knowledge about an event, it is a mammalian dominance pose, bolstering itself with status to dismiss others. it is without a doubt the cheapest and most effective technique to apply to a gullible audience invested in preserving the status quo.

I'm not sure why you are being down voted, you are correct, before that most modern conspiracy theorists would just be called crazy, the term was made in order to create an association between suspicion of the government and the aforementioned crazy people

Thank you! I've been waiting for a good write up on conspiracy theories!

Definitions and usage of words change over time, but yes, "conspiracy theory" labelling has been used to discredit those deemed undesirable or deviant by governments.

I believe the downvotes are because people are interpreting this as a message they should engage people making bad faith arguments as though they were equally willing to engage in honest objective discourse. His point can be true while that particular subtext can rub people who interpret it that way the wrong way.

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Examples like these are comforting but others are much less so. Most recently Dr Oz has been in the news after losing a midterm race. At the start of his career he was lauded as an academic surgeon, but he has since embraced a number of ideas that led David Gorski to label him America’s Quack. That highly qualified individuals with impressive credentials can nevertheless adopt pseudoscientific beliefs has even led to the idea of a Nobel disease:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

The point is that while various attributes (such as education) provide some protection from unsupported beliefs, it is not perfect. In fact it may even be worse than this, since Uscinski is quoted in the article as claiming we all probably entertain some conspiracy theories.

Ok but what if there's a bigger, more precise database of violence-prone people that can be individually targeted via online radicalization? And they're "deployed" when certain important people need to be derailed/stopped from carrying on with certain events? As in, the Paul Pelosi attack. I wonder if the House Speaker was supposed to do something around this time and some dark org data mined useful nutjobs in the area (or willing to travel, idk how close that Canadian lived). Whenever an election is coming up, these random attacks spike and I'm beginning to think they may not be as random as originally thought. I wish someone had a graph with this because it's not just a pattern I see in the US. No, it's not /s, but r/conspiracy wouldn't let me post because my acc is new xD And no, I'm not one of them, the Earth is round and I'm doubly vaxxed and boosted, ty very much. I just needed to put my thoughts out there on that!

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No doubt, I'm definetely oversimplifying. Il go into some depth here since you had a great response.

I think it usually comes down to two main things: some sort of bias and lack of critical thinking in a certain area.

I think wanting for special knowledge is the most common bias. But there are near endless biases: religion, politics, tribalism, etc. I think being stupid is the most common reason for lack of critical thinking but bias often drives inconsistent epistemology.

I like to use my own conspiracy prone relatives for examples. They demand double blind clinical research for anything they dont like, yet are convinced by the slightest anecdotal evidence for virtually any idea that confirms their biases. Its a matter of bias and epistemological inconsistency. Ex. The US govt sent something to india for covid relief and didnt release the details. To them, this is proof that the US govt is shipping ivermectin to India because they know it works, yet is hiding it from their own population. An argument from ignorance is sufficient 'evidence' in this case, but the same person says epidemiological studies arent enough to prove adverse effects of the carnivore diet(even though tons of clinical research does exist). Shout out Joe Rogan for the misinfo on that one. The standards are scattershot.

They often take partial truths to illogical conclusions driven by their bias and lack of knowledge. Example people like Kanye:

Fact: Jews per capita are often wealthy people, own a lot of businesses and banks and often successful people. Conspiracy: well... theres a lot, im sure uve heard many Result: rampant anti semitism and a world war.

I've thought a lot about whats the problem with their thinking. I think the problem occurs when biases are stronger than your epistemology.

A common bias is wanting for special knowledge. These same people constantly fall for the "They don't want you to know this" type videos and literally fall into nft scams, and day trading scams, religious scams, you name it.

Whether its pure stupidity like Terrance Howard or taking facts and applying inconsistent epistemology like my relatives, the conspiracy is driven by bias and lack of knowledge in basically all cases.

Poor understanding of science is also super common. For smart people like Oz i think its excessive bias creating inconsistent episetomology(with some dishonest grifting on top), but its hard to know. The less intelligent or educated they are, the easier it is to see what makes them tick.

IMO its a scale of bias to epistemology. Stupid people don't need a lot of bias to tip that scale the wrong way, and smart people can still be really biased.

believing the earth is round and being vaccinated does not automatically make you a sane person

“Everyone believes in at least one or a few conspiracy theories.”

I am getting pretty tired of this bullshit. Do I hold some beliefs in some conspiracy? Sure, I'll cop to that. But it requires some dishonest equivocation to make that stick.

First, there is a large gap between "belief" and "Knowledge." I "believe" that today is going to be slightly warmer than yesterday, based on what I saw on my weather app yesterday. If it turns out that it's actually colder today, then I am not going to defend that belief, I'm going to discard it. In other words, I treat my beliefs as provisional, as most of us do. In contrast, an Evangelical Christian does not treat his belief in his salvation as provisional, yet because the English language doesn't make a distinction between the two uses of the word "belief" we somehow end up in the same epistemological category. My "faith" in the accuracy of Yahoo Weather is not of the same character and degree as that of the Evangelical's belief in eternal salvation.

Whatever "belief" I hold in a conspiracy theory is just my best guess based on what I know to be true, and other beliefs which I hold, some strong (my belief in the universality of gravity, or the earth's shape*), other's casual (my belief that large news media outlets make editorial decisions in accordance with the values of their owners). So, sure, I believe in some conspiracy theories, but my belief in them is subject to change as I learn more, or as my beliefs in other supporting ideas to that theory change.

The discussion is confusing enough without muddying the waters with sloppy language and easy equivocations.

​

[* largely spherical]

So, let me weigh in on this, because I think your theory isn't far from the truth.

There is an increasingly common belief in the idea of stochastic terrorism (the idea that if you reach enough unhinged people with enough propaganda, and if you can create enough emotional arousal in that group, one (or more) of them will eventually act in a way that, while not entirely predictable, will be violent and it will be against your target.

I believe that stochastic terrorism is a thing, and I believe that it is the aim of many of the backers of right wing fringe media.

It is only natural that the far right effluvia would ramp up near critical times, such as elections, and that would naturally increase the chances of such attacks.

Unfortunately, my belief in the theory of Stochastic Terrorism is just that, a belief. There is absolutely no scientific evidence (to my knowledge) that such a thing really exists. SO far, all I have read about it has been speculative. So If you were to gather data, in a scientific manner, I would be really interested in seeing it.

It's the same slave minded attachment you always see in groups with these sorts of rhetorics. Both an incessant need to feel like they have a great knowledge of their world and their environment, and to prove that they're right they convince themselves they're being oppressed. This is the sort of political decision that will tear this civilization apart by the seams..

haha, also true.

Thanks for taking the time to reply - it’s a topic that interests me too. However I’ve come to slightly different conclusions. First I think that conspiracy theories can be accounted for by the psychological function they perform rather than the fact people are susceptible to cognitive biases. In this I mean they make you feel better or perhaps resolve a conflict (which also feels good). Some examples:

1. Covid origin conspiracies or anti-Semitic conspiracies give the holder special knowledge or prestige but can also give a sense of order which may be reassuring (over randomness).
2. Jan 6th conspiracies among Republicans allow the holder to avoid unpleasant facts about Trump or some of his supporters. These would be difficult to reconcile with their worldview but conspiracy theories provide a way out. Claims about voting help them too.

This describes what people get out of believing in conspiracy theories but it doesn’t say how belief in conspiracy theories is maintained when there is so little (no) evidence for them. In this I think it’s possible that (cognitive) biases do not cause people to believe conspiracy theories but are instead utilised (not necessarily deliberately) to maintain the conspiracy belief. Here I’d generalise this to other deeply held beliefs, which is where individuals like Oz come in (although many tip over into outright conspiracism too).

In short people try to maintain a core set of beliefs about the world and desire consistency from events, because maintaining core beliefs feels good and having a world of facts that do not contradict them feels good too. Cognitive biases work to achieve this. However knowledge of cognitive biases and arguments can also be used to attack (all the) counter evidence/arguments. In this way otherwise thoughtful, intelligent people can cling to conspiracy theories. Educating them on critical thinking is therefore not always effective because the critical thinking strategies can be employed with a desired goal (to maintain those core beliefs). It can therefore be hard in practice for critical thinking to overcome biases because we can be biased in our critical thinking too.

The problem I feel is that what was once a conspiracy theory many times turned out to be confirmable fact - too many times, so it is left up to the conspiracy theory itself and the data available that can be looked at objectively to determine the level of "craziness" tin foil hat wearing allegations being made in any given conspiracy theory.

One thought originally from Mark Manson is that for every "crazy idea" called a consipiracy theory there is some part that could very well be true. E.g.,

• It's now considered a strong possibility that Covid originated in a lab, though we don't know intent.
• There are actual papers questioning 5g health effects. It could be possible. That doesn't mean it 'causes' Covid, but it could theoretically affect the immune system for some people. No strong evidence yet, but also no negative proof.
• It is well known the pharmaceutical industry, being profit focused, is often not as interested in a cure rather than a perpeputal medication.
• Media profits off fear, so there's been a lack of perspective on Covid, which some Governments have used to negative effect such as decreasing liberties.

Those ideas are often under "conspiracy theories". That's why it's more useful to find common ground and ask for foundations of ideas rather than othering and dehumanizing because someone doesn't have perfect thought.

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At the time that you composed this message, did you realize that you are projecting your heuristic based beliefs onto millions of people that you've never met, and did you notice that there are a variety of other cognitive errors in your text?

Conspiracy theorists are surely dumb, but all people are, and are unable to realize it. And if anti-conspiracy theorists refuse to improve, why should conspiracy theorists improve?

>1. Jan 6th conspiracies among Republicans allow the holder to avoid unpleasant facts about Trump or some of his supporters. These would be difficult to reconcile with their worldview but conspiracy theories provide a way out. Claims about voting help them too.

This is true of the other side as well, but to differing degrees and in differing ways, and the interest levels in the truth seem very similar.

Not to worry though, pre-planted memes (subconscious heuristics that control reality perception) to the rescue: "both sides", "false equivalency", etc.

Humans are a very interesting species - so much potential, but trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of wilfull delusion and silliness.

I agree,

As Jeremy Bentham says: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to de"

But i think cognitive biases perform those psychological functions you mentioned. They help people feel vindicated or superior, or good or belonging to a tribe, and they help us avoid the pain of things like cognitive dissonance, even if short sighted. That is exactly why we have biases, the same reason you mentioned

I think we are actually saying almost the exact same thing.

​

> In this way otherwise thoughtful, intelligent people can cling to conspiracy theories. Educating them on critical thinking is therefore not always effective because the critical thinking strategies can be employed with a desired goal (to maintain those core beliefs).

I think i mean the same thing by biases and you do by core beliefs. I refer to them as biases because just that word implies an irrational stickiness to the belief. But really i think we are saying close to the same thing.

I think that generally if people are more knowledgeable, have a sound epistemology, and are strong critical thinking they will generally need an even higher level of bias(or unwillingness to let go of core beliefs) to maintain extremely irrational beliefs like conspiracy theories.

I also think a core aspect of critical thinking is not letting your biases inform your beliefs. Unlike intelligence, which is basically horsepower. You can have lots lot of horsepower, but its more about getting the power down in the right direction. People who are smart but lack critical think are just spinning tires.

The definition from google: "The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence."

I kinda of agree with this definition

While ide say Oz is intelligent, i wouldn't say he has great critical thinking skills, and i wouldn't say his biases inform his critical thinking. An irrational intelligent person is definitely more difficult to debate and can be stubborn but i wouldn't call that person a critical thinker, as I think part of critical thinking requires deep introspection of biases, and consistent application of sound epistemology.

The conspiracy equation:

h = intelligence

c = critical thinking skills

b = bias

y = rationality

Y = B - HC^(2)

​

lol

good chat

What caused so many people to have essentially identical forms of interpretation though? Is it purely organic, or might journalism have played some role in this outcome?

the use of this frame argument has been remarkably consistent over the last ~60 years.

I'll make a few assertions:

goverments lie, conspiracies exist.

people look at an event, form a hypothesis of what happened, make statement to others.

government use agents to discredit hypothesis AND the persons making the statement.

this is a game of persuasion and deception to achieve an end. using considerable resources to create an illusion; "the means justify the end". the worst that can be said about conspiracy theories is that they are counter actions, operating on the same moral/ethical level. more often they are a guess at the truth, and therefore morally/ethically superior to the lie itself, an attempt to heal the damage done.

the real problem for a control system is that people don't believe everything they are told, and have valid reasons for doing so.

I, too, appreciate the thoughtful response. However, as someone with above average levels of testosterone (within the reference range provided by my primary care doc) any credibility your argument may have had goes out the window when you use buzzwords like “christofascist”… using bullshit jargon is masturbatory. Explain it to me in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an edgy leftist atheist that just discovered Richard Dawkins or not at all.

Lol u again

​

Im not sure how ur testosterone levels remove credit from a statement, that doesn't quite logically follow, but ok. I haven't checked in a while but i was high T last time as well. So... Nice? maybe that gives me credit back?

Sure you can ignore that word, it's well defined, but it is pretty unimportant to my point.

Tbh, i'm a centrist, and i didn't intend to get caught up on political bs, but its not a bold statement to say the evangelical far right and conspiracy go together like white and rice.

I think extremes tend to gravitate toward conspiracy thinking whether left of right. On the right, you have the Ruby Ridge/sovereign citizen types and on the left you have the animal rights/antifa/race separatist terrorists. I am, of course, simplifying things but my argument still stands. All of these movements, as you correctly pointed out, rely on some sort of conspiracy to prop up their cause. What is baffling in many cases is that the leaders and/or members are not the dumb yokels many would like them to be, but educated, rational people. It’s fascinating stuff, but also terrifying because people can, and are, very easily swayed given the proper motives.

Also, I am sorry for being a prick.

I am relentless in my pursuit of justice for all of humanity.

Also: did you notice that you didn't answer my question? It isn't only conspiracy theorists who are typically unable to defend their facts, it is almost all people, due to the manner in which the human mind evolved, combined with culture and educational curriculum.

For sure its definetely the extremes that tend to go that way.

Interpretations of what? Are you asking why people believe in conspiracy theories or why we label them that way? Or are you asking why large amounts of people believe in the same conspiracies?

> “Everyone believes in at least one or a few conspiracy theories.” > > > > I am getting pretty tired of this bullshit. Do I hold some beliefs in some conspiracy? Sure, I'll cop to that.

Did you just acknowledge something is true, and then call it bullshit?

> But it requires some dishonest equivocation to make that stick.

Your acknowledgement of its truth didn't contain any dishonest equivocation that I can notice.

> In other words, I treat my beliefs as provisional...

One example is not sufficient to prove a claim of comprehensiveness (which seems like what you are implying).

> ...as most of us do

This is necessarily extremely speculative, so stating it as if it is factual kind of casts doubt on the claim you just finished making to some degree.

> In contrast, an Evangelical Christian does not treat his belief in his salvation as provisional....

You have no way of knowing this without invoking the supernatural.

> So, sure, I believe in some conspiracy theories, but my belief in them is subject to change as I learn more, or as my beliefs in other supporting ideas to that theory change.

Your ability to execute this without flaw in an absolute sense or in comparison to all conspiracy theorists is unknown and unknowable.

> The discussion is confusing enough without muddying the waters with sloppy language and easy equivocations.

Or telling persuasive stories based on one's subconscious heuristic perception of reality, but here we are. Us humans sure have our work cut out for ourselves!!

I'm kind of referring to how it comes about that the majority can come to believe that something is necessarily and only a conspiracy, when epistemically the true state of affairs is not only known.

I believe it is due to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect

....combined with the power of mass media, and the possibility that the mass media is not completely independent (it is not difficult to identify instances of coordinated distribution of not-necessarily-factual claims of conspiracy theories across multiple supposedly independent channels).

> Those ideas are often under "conspiracy theories".

The mechanism by which certain ideas "fall under" the conspiracy theory category is interesting, because "fall under" is a cognitive function that occurs within the minds of individual humans. How do tens to hundreds of millions of minds come to believe the same things despite no proof existing? Is it purely coincidental?

If you consider how (comprehensively) it came to be that you believe this, what do you come up with?

I don’t know that there are that many things that the majority of people consider a conspiracy in terms that absolute. 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 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, only that it is extremely unlikely that most of these theories are true and that doggedly pursuing every statistically possible conspiracy is a waste of time. I would also suggest that since the overwhelming majority of popular conspiracy theories never actually reveal a conspiracy we just label any unlikely claim of conspiracy as such.

>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?

A lot of known cognitive distortions can converge. It's well known that for most people what they think of as truth comes essentially from who they trust. When a sufficient number of friends firmly believe something, it's fairly automatic to think it must be true. We evolved in a village and that's still how our minds work.

I think social media is essentially a vast psychological experiment. I wish there was more oversight and transparency there. I have some knowledge in both computer science and psychology and the power to influence in computer algorithms is quite frankly scary. One experiment showed a huge change in opinion created by just slightly lowering rankings of search results. It's only relatively few people that understand that their search results are tailored for them and other people may get completely different results - including in youtube.

I think it was close to criminal that the Great Barrington Declaration was shadow banned (removed from search results), and so not many people know that 60,000 scientists and health care professionals signed it. They thought there was scientific consensus based on their media feeds. On the other side, it was also easy for those disagreeing with general policies to find imbalanced "conspiracy" ideas like 5g harms or that Covid doesn't exist according to their own search results. We completely lacked good faith public discussion by disagreeing experts - most people had their information silos and so "othered" disagreeing views.

It's made me more cynical about the future and that good faith dialogue is possible. I hope I'm wrong.

Agree...this, and many other things. It is a complete shitshow. But, I think there's hope... This shitshow has so many holes in it, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the story straight, and a lot of young people seem to find the whole thing hilarious. Maybe some day a big meme war will break out!

Thank you, you've increased my hope metric.

There are many unseen opportunities I reckon.

If their epistemology is "warped", what's a non-warped epistemology, and where do we find it?

Thinking about recent news as an example, allegedly a tweet by someone with a $8 checkmark calling insulin free dropped the stock price of a pharma company. There was a graph and everything. This is a thing many thousands or millions of people now believe.

However, if you look at it carefully, you might discover that the most often used graph's y-axis is misleading, and it was only a 2% drop made to look much bigger. Or that the dip actually started a day before the tweet. Or that many pharma companies also dropped at the same time. Or, if you're brave enough, that the primary cause of high insulin prices is the FDA.

Believing in the "conspiracy theory"-like set of thoughts that journalists tell stories they like, journalists distort the facts all the time, and journalists hate Elon Musk can be highly predictive: It told me that something is off with this story and I shouldn't take it seriously, before I even had to check. Correctly so.

What was the reaction on popular subreddits instead? Immediate acceptance. Discussion of how this came to be. Calling stock valuations entirely fake. Vague death threats against Musk, Big Pharma executives, capitalists in general. Blaming the right wing. Predicting the fall of Twitter and legal action for this. Lamenting how easily large mobs can believe such brazen lies, ironically.

Anyway, if you can't trust Forbes, Fortune, Snopes, Business Insider, The Independent, Financial Times, all of whom wrote suggestive articles linking the tweet with the price dip, but never mentioning or downplaying any of the pertinent facts that are one google search away that clearly show this is mere coincidence, whom can you trust? And if someone says this is probably coordinated action instead of sites just copying each other - given that the existence of groups like JournoList where journalists collude with each other has leaked in the past - is he a "conspiracy theorist"? And if there are no trustworthy sources anywhere, how do you learn anything about the news?

Fret not: This is still useful information. When you know what liars want you to believe, you can get often indirect knowledge of that the truth must have been. If someone has a coin and wants you to believe it is biased, "this coin is clearly biased, I got 5 heads in a row" without specifying e.g. "5 heads in a row in the first 5 flips" tells you that the longest streak he could manage was 5 heads in a row, which means a pro-head bias can't have been very high. It also tells you that he had no easier/more convincing method to show bias, so it involved the hard work of flipping a coin (an expected number of) 62 times, and reporting the longest streak instead of the average. It's hard work to do the Bayesian updating math, but it tells you that you should consider it more likely that the coin is fair now, not less.

What conspiracy theorists often do is approximate this sort of thinking. When journalists tell them X is true, they look for reasons why X is false, or reasons to falsely report X is true now instead of earlier or later, and usually find some fairly clear-cut ones. Are they wrong to do so? They're in an adversarial environment. Such an epistemology makes sense.

What are you asking me exactly?

First, I accept the notion that people are influenced by the media to which they are exposed. If you don't believe this, then all the world's ad agencies would like a word with you. A preponderance of scientific evidence demonstrates that media exposure sways beliefs, whether it be the brand of tomato sauce they buy or whether African Americans commit crime at a higher rate or are more prone to violence.

Secondly, it is hardly a stretch of the imagination to conceive of the idea that the ownership of the media, especially the right wing media, would be would be predominately oligarchs who would welcome right wing violence against their political opponents, but would not wish to be connected to the actors who commit such acts.

Thirdly, it is similarly no stretch of the imagination to believe that the people who have committed such violence in the past have been avid consumers of far right media, the primary source of such false news stories as the "stolen election."

Finally, given the first fact, and the two entirely reasonable assumptions, it would seem to follow that there is some connection between the well documented increase of right wing violence and the prevalence of far right media sources. The fact that these right wing media sources have not toned down their rhetoric in the face of this increase means one of three things: 1)They don't believe that there is a connection, 2) They believe that there is a connection but the outcome has been undesirable, or 3) They believe that there is a connection and they are pleased with the outcome.

Option 1 and 2are unlikely; the aim of media is to influence. If they thought they were not influential they would do something different, and if they thought they were influential in a way that was dangerous, they would change as well. That leaves option 3. So, given the first fact, and the reasonable assumptions that followed, it appears that the oligarchs and I would be in agreement on the effectiveness of stochastic terrorism.

Unfortunately, the coincidence of the rise in right wing media outlets and the rise in right wing violence may be only coincidental. We can document correlation but not causality, so therefore, my belief is still just a belief, and a very provisional belief at that.

So we're back to where I started, I have a belief but with insufficient evidence to take it as fact. As I stated elsewhere in this thread, "belief" is a broad term. My belief in the universality of gravity is much stronger than my belief in next week's weather forecast. Both are subject to change, given compelling evidence. Though one will require more evidence than the other. The more strongly held my belief, the more I am likely to treat them as fact.

Either you didn't understand what I wrote or you are arguing in bad faith. I can't tell.

My point, which you are either unable to understand or simply refuse to accept, is that the word "belief" encompasses a wide range of things, some weakly held beliefs and others that are given the weight of fact. To treat both senses of the word as the same thing is sloppy thinking at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst, and the term for such a fallacy is "equivocation."

I like to take a bath in hot water, I make coffee with hot water. If I took a bath in water that was the same temperature that I made coffee with, I would end up in the hospital. "Hot" encompasses a range of temperature.

If you are unwilling to accept that some beliefs are held more strongly than others, then we really can't have an intelligent discussion about this.

You didn't address anything I said.

It's a decent story, I wonder how true it is.

Because you either didn't understand what I wrote or you are arguing in bad faith. Nothing you said has any bearing on the gist of my post.

> Because you either didn't understand what I wrote

That is not a good reason for not addressing what I wrote.

Sir: if you do not respond to what I say, I am unable to take your seriously. Sorry!

> Fact -Testosterone levels are dropping globally every year. Fact- Altrazine is a pesticide that can turn male frogs to females. Conspiracy - liberal govts are putting shit in the water and food to lower testosterone and turn guys feminine, and thats also why gays and trans people are so common now, and men no longer act like traditional make 'me a sandwich bitch' types males. Proof the globalist and liberal elites want to lower the population, and fuck the world. Result- far right, masculine obsessed, christofascist, borderline incel conspiracy theorist. Reality- Testosterone levels dropping is explained extremely easily by obeistity rising, smoking dropping, and more sedentary work + lifestyles. > > > > I've thought a lot about whats the problem with their thinking. I think the problem occurs when biases are stronger than your epistemology.

This comment seems self-referential, and potentially self-refuting (in that you do not have the means to know the quality of thinking of conspiracy theorists, and you give no indication that you realize you are wholesale speculating).

I am under no obligation to address bad faith arguments, especially confused and easily dismissed ones. Bye.

Yours is a bad faith argument (we know this is true by virtue of me saying that it is true), therefore it can be dismissed.

Bye!

You ask me why I hold a belief, then when I take the time to tell you, you wonder if I might be lying about why I hold that belief?

No, I am referring to the distinction between belief and knowledge/truth. I don't doubt you believe the things you do.

I am still not sure what it is that you are wondering about. Do you wonder if it's true that the far right exploits Stochastic Terror or do you wonder if there is a distinction between belief and knowledge?

The two ideas are intermingled: there is the degree to which the far right exploits Stochastic Terror, and then there is the degree to which people believe that the far right exploits Stochastic Terror.

There are also many other related ideas, like to what degree is each of us guilty for contributing (via action, or inaction) to the suboptimality that exists in the world, to what degree are people capable of considering such ideas, etc.

Humans are a very curious species - so much potential, but so much hubris, delusion, and folly. What will they get up to next with their fairy-tale-based culture???!!

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Yes I think your use of bias to mean what I’ve called core beliefs is confusing given cognitive biases. But there is another equation. I think the strength of a belief (the degree of certainty someone claims for the truth or falsity of it) has 2 components. First the evidence they claim and second the importance to them that the belief is true or false. People believe true things and believe false things anywhere on these scales. When I use core beliefs I mean those beliefs that are far along the importance scale although they could be beliefs about almost anything. So someone can believe falsely that Rio de Janeiro is the capital of Brazil or falsely that Trump won the 2022 election but attach very different importance to these two beliefs. The problem is what happens when evidence and importance clash, which is something I think a conspiracy theory can resolve. Although it seems unlikely I would not even dismiss the possibility that someone would believe in a conspiracy to hide Rio as the true capital of Brazil!

Those who cite critical thinking as the solution to the problem of false beliefs are I think missing this other dimension. Critical thinking can allow you to address the evidence someone claims but it does not address the importance they attach to the belief. Even when someone has no grounds to believe something they can still believe it. I don’t know the answer here though, I’m merely questioning whether critical thinking is enough on it’s own. I have a favoured analogy here. The advocates of critical thinking (only) sometimes seem to me like the advocates of abstinence only as a way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. I’m not suggesting that abstinence only doesn’t work, just that I don’t think it’s something people do all that well!.

For the record, there is nothing credible that questions 5g health effects.

The word "credible" is a loaded, toxic term when it comes to evidence, kind of liked proof by intimidation. If you mean there's no high quality evidence showing harm yet I agree. That doesn't imply safety, as much as industry likes to insinuate. I thought it was all conspiracy too, until I saw enough decent scientists questioning possible mechanisms and asking for more research. The problem is that like pharmaceuticals, it's very hard to get funding for high quality research that would drastically affect an industry. So we're still at a "maybe", but definitely not at the levels conspiracy theorists say. Important not to succumb to black and white thinking.