Carleas wrote:What specifically changed your mind? Or what generally changed about your mind that made you change your beliefs?
I've often been conspiracy-adjacent. I'm a Mulderite: I want to believe. But I can't recall any that have fully convinced me. I briefly entertained 9/11 conspiracy theories, but abandoned them as inadequately defensible (there is a strong presumption against them, and the evidence looks like noise in a messy event). UFOs are a given, but alien visitors are still unlikely (though less so with the recent Pentagon release).
But I get the impression that full on conspiracy thinking rewrites ontology in such a way that it makes being convinced otherwise very difficult. Maybe that's not such an issue in childhood, when your ontology is still in flux?
Do you think that conspiracy thinking is a style of thought, or is it more like an article of faith, where everyone has their own and finds everyone else's facially absurd?
Bob wrote:The 9/11 thing went away quite quickly when I realised how much had to fall in place to make something like that work.
Ecmandu wrote:9/11 is straight forward
Ecmandu wrote:Some ideas out there are just that. Ideas, not theories.
Ecmandu wrote:Conspiracy theories are largely a replacement for a feeling of lack of agency.
Continuing on the above, one characteristic of conspiracy theories is the institutional distrust: the system isn't just taking our agency, it's also lying to us about it, and it's using lies to get the sheeple to keep it going. That pattern fits a large number of beliefs I would call "conspiracy theories". Do you agree?
It also fits all sorts of events at local to national and international levels that are generally accepted by people who are not labeled conspiracy theorists. I have been not responding to this thread, which is a kind of generalized ad hom, though to the ether and not any individual person, since my responses would be off topic, but I think the self-congratulatory nature of the thread would be better served if you were also making it clear why a vague term that is essentially irrational - since there are conspiracies - and I think in some ways the general evidence that what gets categorized as a conspiracy theory cannot be true is based on unfalsifiable premises. LIke, if it were true it would come out to general knowlege. There's a lot of intuition in that estimation, but further, it is not possible to find counterevidence of that.Carleas wrote:Continuing on the above, one characteristic of conspiracy theories is the institutional distrust: the system isn't just taking our agency, it's also lying to us about it, and it's using lies to get the sheeple to keep it going. That pattern fits a large number of beliefs I would call "conspiracy theories". Do you agree?
WendyDarling wrote:So you don't believe the history books that Julius Caesar was murdered by means of a conspiracy?
Karpel Tunnel wrote:I have been not responding to this thread, which is a kind of generalized ad hom
Karpel Tunnel wrote:if it were true it would come out to general knowlege.
WendyDarling wrote:Carleas, was the Roman senate involved in a conspiracy to kill Caesar as it is evidenced in our history books, meaning that conspiracies do happen in theory and fact? Answer the question, either you believe that that conspiracy in fact happened or you don't.
Also, conspiracies are supposed to remain theories never to be fleshed out with beyond a shadow of a doubt evidence as designed by the conspirators.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ), also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved one real and one falsely claimed confrontation between ships of North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved that the US government lied to justify a war against Vietnam.
People in other threads considering or directly believing in what get called conspiracy theories. I used to be immature, irrational (like those guys in thread X or in the world in general) and whatever other adjectives were used here, but then I outgrew it.Carleas wrote:Karpel Tunnel wrote:I have been not responding to this thread, which is a kind of generalized ad hom
Against who?
Karpel Tunnel wrote:if it were true it would come out to general knowlege.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'that' in 'that's true.' If you mean that if a conspiracy theory were correct it would come out in general knowledge, that is precisely what I was referring to as an unfalsifiable (or as a rule confirmable) hypothesis.That's true, and then it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory. That doesn't mean that there aren't currently conspiracy theories that most people reject and that some people believe fervently. And, I assume, people who once believed and no longer do.
As I said to Ecmandu, "conspiracy theory" is a compound noun: it has a meaning distinct from the parts of which it's composed. Something can be a 'theory' about a 'conspiracy' and not be a 'conspiracy theory'.
Gloominary wrote:Do you still believe in Russiagate Peter, or have you outgrown it?
WendyDarling wrote:Carleas, was the Roman senate involved in a conspiracy to kill Caesar as it is evidenced in our history books, meaning that conspiracies do happen in theory and fact? Answer the question, either you believe that that conspiracy in fact happened or you don't.
Also, conspiracies are supposed to remain theories never to be fleshed out with beyond a shadow of a doubt evidence as designed by the conspirators.
So this assumes that people with power actually take seriously the best arguments for a conspiracy AND there is no marginalization of people and ideas not fitting the mainstream. We know that what get treated as conspiracy theories SOMETIMES after a great amount of time in some cases, finally come to light. Your assumption is that they all would. That is not falsifiable. And it presumes that some group of scientists and detectives are sifting through the evidence with great resources with no bias.phyllo wrote:As I said to Ecmandu, "conspiracy theory" is a compound noun: it has a meaning distinct from the parts of which it's composed. Something can be a 'theory' about a 'conspiracy' and not be a 'conspiracy theory'.
What sets a "conspiracy theory" apart from a "theory about a conspiracy"?
A "theory about a conspiracy" can be shown to be true or false based on some reasonable evaluation of evidence. It's abandoned when evidence against it is presented.
"Conspiracy theories" are not falsifiable.
Evidence that confirms the theory is the truth being revealed.
Evidence that undermines the theory is fabricated by the conspirators and shows the extensiveness of the conspiracy.
WendyDarling wrote:Answer the question, either you believe that that conspiracy in fact happened or you don't.
WendyDarling wrote:Also, conspiracies are supposed to remain theories never to be fleshed out with beyond a shadow of a doubt evidence as designed by the conspirators.
Gloominary wrote:After that I became more skeptical of conspiracy theories my government and MSM peddle.
Karpel Tunnel wrote:People in other threads considering or directly believing in what get called conspiracy theories.
Karpel Tunnel wrote:If you mean that if a conspiracy theory were correct it would come out in general knowledge, that is precisely what I was referring to as an unfalsifiable (or as a rule confirmable) hypothesis.
It's implicit even in your OP. A loss of faith. This presumes that the conclusions are faith based. IOW even though they mount arguments, really they did not reason, underneath this they actually just made a leap of faith. You didn't say, in the OP, that 'these people are wrong', you framed their belief as faith based. Though other posters whose responses you took as fitting the OP, went even more clearly into ad hom territory.Carleas wrote:Yes, I think those people are wrong. That isn't an ad hominem argument. You'll note that I didn't use the words "immature" or "irrational". Indeed, I have entertained the possibility that it's my shift in belief that is irrational (or at least first-order irrational, driven by unconscious second-order reasons).
a conspiracy theory is easy to hold when one is a child because it seems to,
just seems to explain some of the mysteries I we see as children.....
But I get the impression that full on conspiracy thinking rewrites ontology in such a way that it makes being convinced otherwise very difficult. Maybe that's not such an issue in childhood, when your ontology is still in flux?
K: I lost my faith in conspiracy theories once I grew up... I no longer needed them to make sense of the
world...conspiracy theories are a means of understanding the world and placing oneself within that
world... quite often those who believe, will call other who don't believe, as being naïve...
which is a way of saying those who believe are not naïve. it is a means of justifying one
place in the universe..... for example, let us say, I hold pretensions as to being a genius
or someone who could run a corporation or company... but the reality is, I am a low level
hack... I can justify my position by holding to conspiracy theories about the Jews for example....
The way you're describing it, conspiracy thinking might be rational towards a different end: as protective of a person's sense of self or worth, or a form of learned helplessness that dampers risk taking. Adaptivity must be a primary function of belief formation; accuracy is only instrumentally valuable. Goddamn that's depressing
Bob, it sounds like you experienced the change as simply being susceptible to reason. I think I experience it that way too, and it's blinkered me to the possibility that other people aren't similarly susceptible to reason.
Sure, though this is irrelevent. This thread doesn't mount any arguements of critique the beliefs, it is specifically about diagnosing the psychology of the people you and Peter et al disagree with.Feeling personally attacked when someone criticizes your beliefs or talks about the possibility that they could be wrong or that other may have been convinced that they are wrong, does not make those criticisms or discussions ad hominem.
Karpel Tunnel wrote:If you mean that if a conspiracy theory were correct it would come out in general knowledge, that is precisely what I was referring to as an unfalsifiable (or as a rule confirmable) hypothesis.
I am sure a bunch of people did have good reasons. And others had extremely good reasons to investigate. But the general response is to shut that down.I think that I was imprecise. What shifts something from a conspiracy theory to general knowledge is that the conspiracy theory is shown to be correct, by the accumulation and exposition of reliable evidence. Gloominary provides a good example of this with the Gulf of Tonkin example. If, prior to the release of the Pentagon Papers, someone believed based on the publicly available information that there was a government conspiracy to defraud the public in order to get us into a war, it would have been a conspiracy theory, in part because we didn't have very good reason to believe that.
I think that's a bit different. I do see the no true scotsman, but that seems different from the assertion that if isn't accepted it isn't true. Also that if it is not accepted then no one has good reasons to believe it. This presumes that any true theory will be confirmed. I think that is unfalsifiable. I think it also includes a lot of not demonstrated assumptions about society's openness to all ideas, regardless of how uncomfortable.I do think this reveals a weakness in my position: it's a a no-true-scotsman argument, where belief on bad evidence is part of what defines a conspiracy theory, and so conspiracy theories are by definition not support by evidence. I think this is the same "unfalsifiability" you have pointed out.
Or not. I think it is a presumption to assume that truth wins out, period.So too can something be a conspiracy theory, and someone's belief in the conspiracy theory be attributable to unreliable conspiracy thinking, and yet the set of facts alleged in the conspiracy theory may be true, and upon being supported by more reliable evidence, would become general knowledge.
Karpel Tunnel wrote:I do see the no true scotsman, but that seems different from the assertion that if isn't accepted it isn't true. Also that if it is not accepted then no one has good reasons to believe it. This presumes that any true theory will be confirmed. I think that is unfalsifiable. I think it also includes a lot of not demonstrated assumptions about society's openness to all ideas, regardless of how uncomfortable.
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