The author provides good edge cases where theories once labelled as conspiracy theories proved to be correct. The conspiracy was true. And since many legitimate theories, in science for example, turns out to be wrong, the author asks: "Why do people pick on conspiracy theories?"

I think there is a problem in wording here. A conspiracy theory is, literally speaking, a theory about a conspiracy wherein bad intentions have led to error, lies and falsehood.

The key here is the charge of bad intentions. When Lamarck formulated his nowadays (mostly) refuted theory of evolution, I doubt anyone ascribe to him bad intentions. He was acting in good faith and did what a good scientists should do: show his work, enable refutation and critique. When someone suggests that the Face of Mars was covered up by a conspiracy, it is no longer a question if there truly is a depiction of a human face on Mars or not, but rather about someone's bad intentions.

So a conspiracy theory is a moral judgement of some social actor masquerading as a theory of facts. Moral judgements can be good and proper, but they can also be bad and uncomfortable, and they can challenge the self-image and narrative of a given society. That is true regardless if the specific factual statements are correct. To throw out an "edgy" and admittedly dubious suggestion: if the degree of falsehood in the justification of the Iraq War had remained hidden, maybe current distrust in US/Western governments would be reduced and contemporary polarization and conflict would also be reduced. As I said, I do not claim this to be so, but if it was true, then with some utilitarian moral philosophy, we might say we would be better off if the conspiracy theory never gained a following. It is not about the facts, but about the disruptive nature of the implied moral judgement of the conspiracy theory.

Therefore some conspiracy theories are easier to accept. The occasional tinfoil hat and manic street preacher adds to diversity and a nice urban aesthetics. A revolutionary uprising and terror not so much.

So I think the author has a few good points to add, but that the author's argument is too narrow when the conspiracy is viewed as only a conflict over facts.

It seems like the article's problem is with the fact that they are being called "conspiracy theories".

The real problem seems to be with theories that (1) have very little or poorly-related evidence and (2) rely on some form of partisan or tribalist hate for their uptake.

It is true that conspiracies seem to figure prominently in this class of theories - for understandable reasons.

However, perhaps we should just propose to rebrand the class.

This comment intends to express no opinion as to the actual status of any specific theory that some may brand as "conspiracy theories".

This idea itself is more dangerous and irrational.

Certain worldviews spread virally not because they are true, but because they untestable and because they connect with elemental but fundamentally not rational aspects of our human biological makeup. We believe them not because they make sense or are probable, but because they exploit the way our brains work to overcome our capacity to think them through. In most cases this follows similar patterns, such as ideas that implicitly discredit our normal mechanisms for rationally judging thoughts, or far reaching explanations of that make sense of a confusing and increasingly complex world.

It would be really nice if we lived in a simple world where you could just let your brain engage with whatever whenever, where we were all strong willed philosophers of the human condition, bold pioneers investigating the very nature of truth, but that just aint it. We are all just people trying to live, imperfect creatures, and engaging with things we know will trick our brain in the name of intellectual honesty is just as dumb as shooting up heroin because doing so isn't morally wrong. Your not gonna go to a special world that other people are too afraid to discover, you are going to become a heroin addict. Neither are you going to help out your heroin addict friend by trying it out to better understand where he's coming from. It is uncomfortable and painful, but there are classes of ideas that we cannot afford to engage with, regardless if it makes us feel close-minded or not.

Conspiracy theories involve people accepting a hypothesis before they have reasonable justification, often because of bias or misinformation or some other prior conviction. These hypothesis usually aren't mainstream, and involve some sort of special, hidden knowledge but not always.

That doesn't mean they are wrong, it means we have no reason to accept those ideas as true. We are using poor critical thinking by accepting these bad hypothesis we call conspiracy theories. The door for good evidence is always open, the problem is these people usually don't even understand what that is or have any basic ability in science and math.

Its important not to dismiss unorthodox hypothesis, but its irrational to not apportion belief to the evidence. The problem is most conspiracy theorists are people who usually aren't even capable of understanding scientific evidence.

From a pragmatic sense you should mostly ignore those people. Putting the .010 batter in ur lineup just because you think his swing is unorthodox is still dumb. Yes they might get a hit, but we only have finite time and resources and until they learn how to swing a bat properly its not worth the time.

Maybe we miss out on that one rare hit, but we skip 100 bad outs and get a lot more hits in the long run.

There's conspiracy theories, and then there's conspiracy theories. What the article argues for is a very noble and utopian idea of "we should fight all disinformation by facts, logic, and reasonable debate" which fails spectacularly in real life, for two reasons:

1. You can't use logic to debate someone out of a viewpoint which wasn't based on logic in the first place.
2. A single troll can generate so much disinformation in a day, that it would take an expert literal years to properly debunk it.

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The author (not surprisingly) gives a more balanced assessment than the title implies, recognizing that many conspiracy theories are harmful to society. I wish he had spoken more of the costs of entertaining poorly founded theories that rile us up, because they gum up the public debate.

He says “Yet even these should not be automatically dismissed; someone should be evaluating them on their evidential merits.” If this is the center of his argument, of course I agree. Somebody should look it over seriously, somewhat in the way that Snopes does. The problem is, how do you know that Snopes did a thorough job and didn’t have a bias? It’s an important problem, almost the problem of our age. But having a million Facebook investigators watching the same 20 poorly researched videos is absolutely not helping.

> The people who believed that the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s were an elaborate sham orchestrated to justify a purge of Stalin’s enemies where called “conspiracy theorists”.

This is his other best point, that cases like this are not rare in history. Legitimacy is the glue that keeps society together, and what we might call “manufactured legitimacy” (to adapt the phrase by Chompsky) tends to be constantly created by those in power. And, to be fair, antivaxers think they are in that same type of a situation now (or at least a few do, I suspect most just see it as a way to shake a political structure they already have decided they oppose in hopes it will come crashing down).

Lastly, science tends to be entertaining innumerable hypotheses at once, and which ones are worth working on has a sort of ranking system with something like a serious challenge to relativity at the top and the idea that a confederate ghost shot JFK near the bottom. The author dislikes the term “conspiracy theory” because it is used to discount theories, but these days I feel it is almost a term that means we have to handle the dubious theory in question with kit gloves, since the goal is often not to establish our own assessment of its merits but to influence others who have already tied their identity up with this theory. This means we have to be much more circumspect and politically sensitive (as well as go on asides as we remedially explain 7th grade concepts) than we would if we were debating a real fringe hypothesis with a qualified advocate for it.

In summary I would argue that “conspiracy theories” should be investigated thoroughly by a few small groups of competent individuals and their findings and judgements not suppressed. At the same time, politically charged public posturing by people who have not put in the time to understand the arguments and evidence is swallowing society right now and swamping substantive political debate. The term “conspiracy theory” has come to be double sided; on the one side it is to scientific theories what a junk bond is to investing. On the other, while at times in the past it may have been used as a pejorative term by those in authority in order to suppress debate, now it is practically a badge of honor with political cache, such that it may well be elevated to serious debate whether it has a hint of merit or not. I think “conspiracy theory” has become a term that stands for too many contradictory ideas and while it’s fine to debate it, as here, when addressed seriously, for the most part we don’t have a lot of choice but to recognize that most online debate around conspiracy theories are disingenuous and are really trolling and political agenda pushing, and that they don’t deserve time-consuming, well reasoned responses.

Same goes for the reverse as well though. Do not dismiss everything as a crackpot theory without also researching in the same way.

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The reason conspiracy theories are so unproductive is that in general, pretty much no one is in a place to have the information to investigate their veracity. Watergate was worthy of derision from everyone not involved with the investigative process until information came out to verify it. Sometimes odd or irrational things are true, but we’ll have to accept being wrong about them until sufficient evidence is available.

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I think we need to drive home the definitions of these things. Any time a bill is written in congress, it is a DeFacto conspiracy. Theorizing about said bill is, by definition, a conspiracy theory. "Conspiracy theorists" are generally extremely imaginative to the point that they see meaning in vague, loose connections that often have no meaning -- and they have trouble seeing coincidence. To them, there's almost always some insidious reason for everything. So they see connections that might not be there, and they see evil intent in those connections.

In the process of this, they become incredibly active and dedicated to finding "proof". They dig up everything they can find. Sometimes, like a broken clock, they find something that might actually be worth investigating.