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Flawed Conspiracy Theorist logic

Hercules56

Penultimate Amazing
Joined
Aug 4, 2013
Messages
11,410
Had an encounter with some Global Warming Deniers today. Something struck me about their tactics and logic, that I think apply to many other CTists.

#1- Attack the opposition. The guys I was talking to referred to Liberals as "gullible" and "authoritarian" and "sheep".

#2- Lay seeds of baseless speculation. The guys I talked to asked "who is funding these climatologists who believe in man-made climate change???". They had no evidence of any funding sources that would lend to their motivations being dishonest or nefarious, but they still left their little baseless speculation for people to play with.

#3- Make it about Freedom of Speech. The guys, claimed this was about Freedom of Speech. Not science, or data, or facts, or research. They argued that disputing or disregarding their ideas, is an afront to free speech, and America was supposed to be all about free speech. So I guess we should therefore listen to their ideas, just because.

#4- Disregard consensus. The guys claimed that it doesn't matter that most climatologists and related scientists believe that man-made climate change is real. The mere fact that some obscure meteorologist or civil engineer or dentist thinks that climate change is a natural, cyclical event or isn't even happening, is enough reason to doubt the whole thing.

Seems that all conspiracy theorists use these tactics in one form or another. Whether its 9-11 Deniers, Holocaust Deniers, Moon-Landing Deniers, Flat-Earthers, they all use these tactics and flawed logic.

Why is this? What is it about the psychology of these tactics that CTists find so appealing?
 
Had an encounter with some Global Warming Deniers today. Something struck me about their tactics and logic, that I think apply to many other CTists.

#1- Attack the opposition. The guys I was talking to referred to Liberals as "gullible" and "authoritarian" and "sheep".

#2- Lay seeds of baseless speculation. The guys I talked to asked "who is funding these climatologists who believe in man-made climate change???". They had no evidence of any funding sources that would lend to their motivations being dishonest or nefarious, but they still left their little baseless speculation for people to play with.

#3- Make it about Freedom of Speech. The guys, claimed this was about Freedom of Speech. Not science, or data, or facts, or research. They argued that disputing or disregarding their ideas, is an afront to free speech, and America was supposed to be all about free speech. So I guess we should therefore listen to their ideas, just because.

#4- Disregard consensus. The guys claimed that it doesn't matter that most climatologists and related scientists believe that man-made climate change is real. The mere fact that some obscure meteorologist or civil engineer or dentist thinks that climate change is a natural, cyclical event or isn't even happening, is enough reason to doubt the whole thing.

Seems that all conspiracy theorists use these tactics in one form or another. Whether its 9-11 Deniers, Holocaust Deniers, Moon-Landing Deniers, Flat-Earthers, they all use these tactics and flawed logic.

Why is this? What is it about the psychology of these tactics that CTists find so appealing?

They have "Special Knowledge" and you don't. Who doesn't want to be on the inside and in the know?
 
Had an encounter with some Global Warming Deniers today. Something struck me about their tactics and logic, that I think apply to many other CTists.

#1- Attack the opposition. The guys I was talking to referred to Liberals as "gullible" and "authoritarian" and "sheep".

#2- Lay seeds of baseless speculation. The guys I talked to asked "who is funding these climatologists who believe in man-made climate change???". They had no evidence of any funding sources that would lend to their motivations being dishonest or nefarious, but they still left their little baseless speculation for people to play with.

#3- Make it about Freedom of Speech. The guys, claimed this was about Freedom of Speech. Not science, or data, or facts, or research. They argued that disputing or disregarding their ideas, is an afront to free speech, and America was supposed to be all about free speech. So I guess we should therefore listen to their ideas, just because.

#4- Disregard consensus. The guys claimed that it doesn't matter that most climatologists and related scientists believe that man-made climate change is real. The mere fact that some obscure meteorologist or civil engineer or dentist thinks that climate change is a natural, cyclical event or isn't even happening, is enough reason to doubt the whole thing.

Seems that all conspiracy theorists use these tactics in one form or another. Whether its 9-11 Deniers, Holocaust Deniers, Moon-Landing Deniers, Flat-Earthers, they all use these tactics and flawed logic.

Why is this? What is it about the psychology of these tactics that CTists find so appealing?
That sounds right, these do seem like common tactics of CTists. As to the psychology of it, here is what I came up with after one minute thinking about it:

#1 seems like an important part of CT belief systems. They have to explain why so many people disagree with them, without admitting that those who disagree might be right. "They're all stupid and/or evil," does the trick.

#2 probably works psychologically because as long as there are any unanswered questions (and there always are), there is always the possibility that the answer is nefarious. If they describe the possible nefarious answer vividly enough, it can seem much more likely and plausible than the evidence allows.

#3 I'm not as sure about. It always seems so pathetic and weird to me. "The law says I can't be arrested for saying what I'm saying!" Congratulations, dude. Awesome job voicing opinions that are not illegal. I'm proud of you. Why am I supposed to care?

I guess if they can successfully make the debate about freedom of speech, they are often saying something sane. And I suppose it feels like if they are right about their freedom to promote CT beliefs, then that is relevant to the debate about whatever theory they are promoting. Of course, the right to promote a theory is completely irrelevant to whether the theory is true.

#4 is almost the definition of a CT. So, what makes someone buy into CT's? I think there are a lot of answers to that one you can find here and elsewhere.
 
Isn't "Flawed Conspiracy Theorist Logic" a tautology? The word "flawed" is redundant.
 
One of the great certainties of life is that if you patiently explain why a conspiracy theorist's claim is highly implausible, using reasoning, examination of evidence and maths, the conspiracy theorist will respond with something like "All I ever hear from you is insults".
 
One of the great certainties of life is that if you patiently explain why a conspiracy theorist's claim is highly implausible, using reasoning, examination of evidence and maths, the conspiracy theorist will respond with something like "All I ever hear from you is insults".

A certain conspiratorially-minder member here has already repeatedly criticised those who 'believe in numbers'.
The thing is, though, that it is a characteristic of CT thinking to respond to factual disagreement in an emotional manner. Part of the psychology of conspiracy thinking is that their identity is very much bound up in the ideas they espouse. Any criticism or attack on those ideas is perceived as an attack on that person's very identity, and the threatened ego lashes out in response to that.
 
They have "Special Knowledge" and you don't. Who doesn't want to be on the inside and in the know?

If they have Special Knowledge, and want to educate the masses, why be so rude about it? Why get so defensive? Why be so accusatory?
 
A certain conspiratorially-minder member here has already repeatedly criticised those who 'believe in numbers'.
That's something that seems common for the Anti-Science crowd, they seem to have got the sum of their understanding of a subject from a pop-science book then build their whole, shaky, framework on that set of deliberately simplified and analogised knowledge.
 
It's about not thinking much at all in the clever disguise of appealing to be a deep thinker.

I recall long and repetitive videos on the evils of the EU and how it's a Illuminati type cabal. The Kennedy stuff and the faked moon landings.
If one knows nothing more than what these videos showed it appears mostly plausible under a smokescreen of mystery that cannot be broken yet.
But they carefully never stated it was the utmost truth in most of them.

The one that tipped the scales to something was wrong was the Obama is gay, Joan Rivers was killed for revealing it.

First, who cares unless the goal was to smear Obama. Second, what can the death of her do to change anything? His term was done and he was just another guy except with good bodyguards. It's all pointless but made up to be huge news and a credible construction.

Other vids related all came down to a " smear Obama " twist on the most basic of looking into the BS it seemed to be.
I was no fan nor hater, just bored watching videos.
( Later events proved clearly a president could be far worse than Obama by light years of magnitude.)

It's about being a sheep in the know, just watch and believe. No effort at all.
 
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If they have Special Knowledge, and want to educate the masses, why be so rude about it? Why get so defensive? Why be so accusatory?

Because when they "explain" it to you, you refuse to listen! They are inviting you to be on the inside and you keeping on bringing up (ir)rational reasons to not believe.

:whistling
 
On the "Free Speech" one, it's a simple deflection. When they're refuted, it's not because they might be wrong, it's because you're trying to silence them. For some people being disagreed with is the same as being muzzled.
 
Thing about Logic is it works on the GIGO principal:Garbage In,Garbage Out. You have bad premises, you will have bad conclusions.
 
I think a lack of humility has to be mentioned when talking about the flawed reasoning of conspiracy theorists.

People simply overestimate how much they think they know about the world. Some of us still believe wet hair causes the common cold. Many younger people seem to have been conditioned to think that firing a bullet at a car will make it explode (can it?).

Many people did not know what a coronavirus was before COVID-19 emerged. Much of the cynical speculation about the disease could have been quelled had people simply read a little bit on current events back in the SARS days or had some basic medical knowledge. They aren't the same condition, but we at least have something familiar to work with. Precedent seems to soften otherwise crazy speculation.

People who don't usually dabble in conspiracy theories still think the way Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself or how his bones looked in his X-ray images is supposed to mean anything. "Epstein didn't kill himself!" Okay who did? And wtf are you doing about it?? If you cannot give a straight answer, don't make a straight claim.

There was an idiot working security at an event last Sunday who pointed to ******* gas prices to say since Biden can't even fix gas prices everything else is moot. I asked him how exactly he thinks the president has anything to do with the price of gas in Indianapolis (I would have respected an actual well thought out argument, even if questionable), but the fool was walking away from me mumbling some incoherent ********!!

I think these little pet beliefs and misconceptions are so ingrained in most of us that we don't even try to examine how much of X subject we actually know. Of course when something weird happens to our computer or smartphone or kitchen appliance we typically will consult an expert. Folks need to start doing that for things they don't necessarily have a huge stake in or they'll keep "an open mind" :rolleyes: about everything.
 
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Most CTs fail, because they start out with a premise that "Group X (which I don't like) is powerful and has bad intentions for Group Y (which happens to be my group)".
Because of this, CTs start both with a premise and end with a conclusion before there is any data - information is sought only to fill in the blanks between Start and Finish.

The Magic of Q was to realize that if you dispense with Premise and Conclusion, you can fit way more people into your CT, letting them use the same info make a connection between their Premise and Conclusion.
 
A certain conspiratorially-minder member here has already repeatedly criticised those who 'believe in numbers'.
The thing is, though, that it is a characteristic of CT thinking to respond to factual disagreement in an emotional manner. Part of the psychology of conspiracy thinking is that their identity is very much bound up in the ideas they espouse. Any criticism or attack on those ideas is perceived as an attack on that person's very identity, and the threatened ego lashes out in response to that.

I agree.

If they have Special Knowledge, and want to educate the masses, why be so rude about it? Why get so defensive? Why be so accusatory?

CTers often tend to be a bit paranoid and feel victimized. They feel powerless and insecure so they gain comfort by being able to say "See? THEY are so strong that I can't do anything about it. It's not my fault I'm powerless. It's fill in the blank's fault." Then that feeling gets reinforced by having others tell them that they're right. They have this Special Knowledge that ordinary, less smart, people don't. They belong to a select group of smarter people who can see the Truth. That's ego boosting and makes them feel even better about themselves and more powerful/in control. They feel secure in that community. When that community is questioned, they feel attacked and become defensive. Defensiveness often manifests in anger.
 
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John Petrocelli has a new book out called:

The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bulls@*%t

Here's an excerpt, and it's beautiful:

https://lithub.com/why-flat-earther...ly: July 28, 2021&utm_term=lithub_master_list

As a social scientist, I take Kyrie’s claims very seriously. I don’t take them seriously because I think Kyrie is correct—I know his claims make as much sense as arguing that the Moon is made of cheese. I take them seriously because, as a researcher who studies bulls***t, Kyrie’s claims fit a pattern of behavior I see deployed over and over again. A belief in a flat Earth would make sense if there was genuine evidence of a worldwide conspiracy to fake decades of space exploration, a denial of many branches of science, or discoveries of new forces and laws of nature. But it doesn’t really take any of this—all it takes is a mindset that completely disregards truth and genuine evidence. In other words, all it takes is bulls***t.

Kyrie encourages us to seek the truth by finding concrete information and “doing some research.” That is a classic bulls***ter move—ignore the overwhelming and convincing evidence by implying the real answer is not based on commonly accepted evidence or is actually unknown. Although I won’t pretend to know what Kyrie meant by “research,” had he actually approached the question of the Earth’s shape scientifically, he would have determined that the answer is certainly not “flat.”

I'm buying this book.:thumbsup:
 
The best part of CT logic is "the absence of evidence does not mean the evidence isn't there, and someone is hiding or destroyed it!!"

:)
 
I recall reading somewhere or other (paraphrasing) "please don't use maths or formulae as these are often used to confuse."

IIRC Stephen Hawking was told by his publisher not to put equations in A Brief History of Time as you supposedly lost half your potential sales for each one. :eek:
 
There's a HUGE difference between denying global warming and believing in, for example, the fact that the mayor of Toronto smoked crack and beat up his sister's ex in jail to keep him silent about it.

The 2nd thing actually happened.
 
CT nuts have a need to be absolutists.
They lack or deny the necessary ambiguity to functionally operate in a world of imperfect information.

Since the consequences of denying Climate Change are so much worse than just presuming it's real until the Data is unambiguous, one way or the other, the sensible, none-selfish path is clear.
Most CTs are just justifications for procrastinating.
 
CT nuts have a need to be absolutists.
They lack or deny the necessary ambiguity to functionally operate in a world of imperfect information.

Since the consequences of denying Climate Change are so much worse than just presuming it's real until the Data is unambiguous, one way or the other, the sensible, none-selfish path is clear.
Most CTs are just justifications for procrastinating.
Such conspiratorial nonsense also helps to massage their egos.
 
A great example of a recent, real-world conspiracy is the Hezbollah pager operation. 3,000 wounded and killing around 20. We have a vague idea how Mossad pulled it off, and it's an example that runs counter to the standard Occam's Razor theory due to the complexity, and audacity required for success. But it happened, and while nobody officially took credit for the sabotage you don't have to be a deep thinker to accurately guess the guilty party behind the attack. What CTists will ignore is the consistency of the entire operation. At no point are outside governments advised nor involved. No additional shadowy entities have been hinted as accessories, and no deeper conspiracies hinted at. And each pager has bee traced back to a lot number, shipment number, shipment date, point of origin, the factory, and the paper trial showing who bought the company prior to the order.

These facts are consistent with all historical conspiracies. The only thing consistent with the average CT is inconsistency, lack of documented facts, and often
 
Isn't "Flawed Conspiracy Theorist Logic" a tautology? The word "flawed" is redundant.
Thing about Logic is it works on the GIGO principal:Garbage In,Garbage Out. You have bad premises, you will have bad conclusions.
That, as a friend of mine once said, you can have flawless logic but if your starting premise is wrong, it doesn't matter how could your logic is.
Some recent observations about CTers. You know, just in general.

Dishonest and dumb as rocks, but convinced they are the smart ones in the room. Not bright enough to see how bad their thinking really is.
Nah and why folks think skeptics are all holier than though jerks. Smart people can believe all sorts of nonsense, one thing being smart does for you, it makes you better able to rationalize the nonsense you believe. Yes, there are plenty of conmen peddling conspiracy, and plenty of morons, but there are also plenty of relatively smart people who are logicking themselves into corners.

As for my own observation, I've seen a lot of anomaly hunting. Its all what about this thing that I think is weird. You explain that it isn't and they move on to the next and you explain that it isn't weird repeat and after a dozen anomalies they start back at the beginning, forgetting that they'd already half conceded the point. I've done that in real life with a couple of very intelligent almost 9/11 truthers. Hell, the whole 9/11 truther thing is 90% anomaly hunting. The forget the whole thing was an anomaly, there's gonna be a bunch of ◊◊◊◊ we've never seen because we've never seen anything like it before or since. Well except that one small plane that hit the Empire State Building in the 30s.
 
There is a difference between intelligence and education/awareness. You can be smart, but untrained in critical thinking, or not aware of this discipline and its techniques.
I think the main issue is that CT-ists reject the very concept of critical thinking and its usefulness.
 
There is a difference between intelligence and education/awareness. You can be smart, but untrained in critical thinking, or not aware of this discipline and its techniques.
I think the main issue is that CT-ists reject the very concept of critical thinking and its usefulness.
I'm unconvinced, I think they believe they are using critical thinking.

Also, another thing, there's a lot of argument from incredulity. I can't believe this random event could have happened so someone must be behind it. I can't believe this lone nut could have killed X therefore there must be a conspiracy.
 
A great example of a recent, real-world conspiracy is the Hezbollah pager operation. 3,000 wounded and killing around 20. We have a vague idea how Mossad pulled it off, and it's an example that runs counter to the standard Occam's Razor theory due to the complexity, and audacity required for success. But it happened, and while nobody officially took credit for the sabotage you don't have to be a deep thinker to accurately guess the guilty party behind the attack. What CTists will ignore is the consistency of the entire operation. At no point are outside governments advised nor involved. No additional shadowy entities have been hinted as accessories, and no deeper conspiracies hinted at. And each pager has bee traced back to a lot number, shipment number, shipment date, point of origin, the factory, and the paper trial showing who bought the company prior to the order.

These facts are consistent with all historical conspiracies. The only thing consistent with the average CT is inconsistency, lack of documented facts, and often
Even the proposed Operation Northwoods was expected to only hold for a few days, before the connections were made and the truth came out.
 
Even the proposed Operation Northwoods was expected to only hold for a few days, before the connections were made and the truth came out.
There is an irony here because Northwoods was a white-paper assembled for the Kennedy NSC as part of Operation Mongoose, with the goal of invading Cuba:


Over the past fifteen years historians have slowly come to a consensus that the Cuban Missile Crisis was JFK's fault, and Castro's invitation to install Soviet missiles was an act of self defense. After his death much of the Kennedy NSC files were buried because of this, and led to theories of a government coverup with the assassination in Dallas.
 
I'm unconvinced, I think they believe they are using critical thinking.

The two are not mutually exclusive. You can believe you are using critical thinking, whilst being wrong about that, but still not be unintelligent.
Also, another thing, there's a lot of argument from incredulity. I can't believe this random event could have happened so someone must be behind it. I can't believe this lone nut could have killed X therefore there must be a conspiracy.

Sure. However, it's perfectly possible for an intelligent person to argue from incredulity- perhaps more so, as a smart person would assume their disbelief in something was a smart conclusion.
 
The two are not mutually exclusive. You can believe you are using critical thinking, whilst being wrong about that, but still not be unintelligent.


Sure. However, it's perfectly possible for an intelligent person to argue from incredulity- perhaps more so, as a smart person would assume their disbelief in something was a smart conclusion.
Rejecting the idea of critical thinking is mutually exclusive with accepting it but doing it wrong.

The thing about argument from incredulity was meant a separate topic from whether they are intelligent or not. I was just noting that in my experience, it's a pretty common attitude among the conspiracy minded.
 
Speaking as a reformed CTist, we rely on confirmation bias for 98% of the crap we think is true. In the CT world, coincidences don't exist, and it is impossible for two or more things to be true at the same time. CTists hunt for anomalies in events to poke holes in "the official story", and then claim there are too many unanswered questions because the investigation didn't look into those anomalies. This has been true from the JFK assassination, 9-11, and Sandyhook. Almost no actual research is done by the average CTist except for reading CT books written by other CTists. You can count the number of JFK CT loons who've read the entire Warren Commission on one hand, and I feel like I'm one of only a few who's poured through the assassination files.

I've said before that I was indoctrinated into the JFK assassination CT by my father when I was six. Many CTists share a similar background. Dad was not the paranoid type, but had served in the US Army in the early 1960s, and lost many friends in Dak To in Vietnam, and had a reasonable mistrust in the government as a result. Being a CTist is fun because it creates the illusion that you're smarter/wiser than everyone else because you, "know a secret". My problem leading to my renouncing, escape, and declaring total war on CTists was the endless contradictions CTs force believers to accept without question. With JFK the suspected cabal behind his death endlessly changed, and this conflicts with actual murders where there is usually one suspect, or set of suspects because that's where the evidence leads. And then I went to Dallas to Dealey Plaza, and that was the final straw. That was in 1996, and since then I've turned away from almost all the magical thinking in my life that fed the CT-drivers in my head.

And CTists are no longer harmless. Pizzagate has a body count. The current President and his Cabinet are all avowed CTists, and their actions reflect this.
 
Rejecting the idea of critical thinking is mutually exclusive with accepting it but doing it wrong.

The thing about argument from incredulity was meant a separate topic from whether they are intelligent or not. I was just noting that in my experience, it's a pretty common attitude among the conspiracy minded.

Yeah, my main point was to take issue with the claim that CT-ists are stupid, as in unintelligent. I think that claim is patronising, arrogant and basically wrong.
 
Yeah, my main point was to take issue with the claim that CT-ists are stupid, as in unintelligent. I think that claim is patronising, arrogant and basically wrong.
They tend to be intellectually lazy, but not stupid. For the most part, I think CTs become popular not because of the event itself that is nominally the focus of the CT, but because of what the event is seen to have caused later. To give a recent example, the 9-11 conspiracy theories became popular due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that resulted. There were arguments to be raised against those wars (and in retrospect it is hard to point to any lasting benefits), but these arguments tend to be more complex. How much easier it is to just say that 9-11 was a false-flag, and therefore no wars should result. Back during the Vietnam War we would hear similar arguments about the Kennedy assassination; that he would not have gotten us involved and so he had to go. Again, there were valid arguments against being involved in Vietnam, but if you believed the CIA had JFK whacked, you could short-circuit to the claim that obviously it was illegitimate.
 

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