I don’t think a conspiracy theory is necessarily a theory, it’s a compound noun. But I’m curious about the distinction between an idea and a theory. I have used “conspiracy thinking” to refer to a general type of thinking that is behind conspiracy theories more generally. That has the character of a theory, as distinct from the ideas of the specific events and the who did what why.
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?
Do you see the pattern in the moon landing, lizard men, and flat earth? Does 9/11 break that pattern, or does it fit the pattern but it’s just a coincidence?
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.
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’.
And as someone who rejects basically all of them, I see that as a meaningful category characterized by a pattern of rational failures. But as KT points out, there’s a lot of intuition baked into that claim and it may break down on analysis; for someone who accepts conspiracy theories as true, or some of them, or even one of them, I can see taking the position that there’s “no there there”. Thus my interrogation of Ecmandu and, now, you: do you accept as true something that others label a ‘conspiracy theory’? Do you reject as false something else that you or others would label a ‘conspiracy theory’? Is there a there there, and, if you answered yes to the previous questions, do you distinguish the conspiracy theory you believe as not fitting the pattern, or as fitting the pattern but being an exception to the rule?
And a related question, if you do see a pattern in ‘conspiracy theories’, do you think that it is or relies on certain common cognitive biases or failures of reasoning?
Against who?
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.
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.
I use to believe Saddam Hussein had ties with Al Qaeda and WMDs,
Turns out he never did.
I was deep into that one, most of us were.
After that I became more skeptical of conspiracy theories my government and MSM peddle.
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.
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.
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.
What makes you think that there was a conspiracy to kill Caesar?
What if Caesar faked his death so that he could retire and live comfortably in Spain? Was a body double killed? Was anyone killed? Who was behind the knife thrust?
How do you know what really happened? Why do you believe one narrative and not the other narrative(s)?
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.
I don’t know much Roman history, and I don’t have a strong belief either way about the assassination. Wikipedia says more 60 senators were involved, but I don’t know what sources they use to arrive at that. I have no idea what percent of the Roman senate that comprises, or what percent would pass the threshold to say that “the Roman senate [was] involved in a conspiracy to kill Caesar”.
But my wife and I conspired to throw my daughter a birthday party, so there you have a conspiracy I believe in. Please feel free to use that fact as a premise in some explicit argument (taking into account that a ‘conspiracy theory’ is distinct from a theory about a conspiracy).
My wife and I intended for our conspiracy to throw our kid a birthday party to be discovered on the day of the party. Perhaps you are talking about a different kind of conspiracy?
This is an interesting turn. I would describe this as a loss of faith in a particular ‘conspiracy theory’ that pushed you further toward what I have been calling ‘conspiracy thinking’. That’s not to say that it’s necessarily irrational or unjustified, but unexpected for me.
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).
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.
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. When the Pentagon Papers came out and we suddenly did have good reason, it becomes general knowledge and not a conspiracy theory.
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.
But then isn’t any cognitive bias susceptible to the same reply? Suppose some recognized cognitive bias leads us to conclude that X is the case 80% of the time, when it’s actually only the case 10% of the time. It’s still legitimate then to say that it is the cognitive bias that led us to believe that X is the case, and yet it is also true that X is the case.
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.
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.
As far as immature and irrational, well look through the quotes below and see if what is happening is not fairly framed as calling the people you (plural) are immature and irrational, including the presumption of faith as the cause of conclusions.
Peter K:
Though, oddly, it should be noted that Peter K is a conspiracy theorist, despite his blanket criticism of other conspiracy theorists, since he believes in a UFO coverup. Or perhaps I missed the ‘this is joking’ cues.
Now, note. You haven’t done the whole ad hom argument. Where you say that the other person’s arguments are wrong because they are (psychological trait or tendency or…]. But it’s how it functions in the forum. There are threads where people disagree over what might be conspiracies and now a thread is opened by skeptics diagnosing and claiming knowledge of the people who get called conspiracy theorists in general. Imagine a a social gathering like that, with one group, in the hearing of another, and third parties, saying, some even just as facts, others like you more exploratorily the psychology of the people they disagree with. Perhaps sometimes moving back to the discussions where arguments are made for and against conspiracy theories.
You again:
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.
In threads we have disagreed about potential conspiracies, I don’t think I accused you of ad homs. I think we made points on the issues. It is this thread I am talking about. In fact, I find this confusion on your part rather odd.
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’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.
Or not. I think it is a presumption to assume that truth wins out, period.
KT, there’s a distinction between the rational justification of a belief and the causal explanation for a belief. We have to be able to talk about the latter. The OP asks about how people changed their minds, i.e. causal explanations for a change in belief. A legitimate and reasonable response to that question is “I experienced brain damage” or “I got that brain damage fixed”. You can all that ad hominem if you want, I don’t think it fits any useful definition of that term. In any case it doesn’t undermine anything I’ve said here. My goal here is not to make a general argument against conspiracy theories.
I do not mean to assert any of those. Let me try to be yet more precise.
First, instead of “general knowledge”, I’m going to say “a theory about a conspiracy”. I make this change because 1) the facts alleged in a conspiracy can be true, and 2) the facts alleged in a theory about a conspiracy can be false. Contrasting conspiracy theory against knowledge misses the important qualities of a conspiracy theory.
Given that, I’ll say that a ‘conspiracy theory’ becomes a ‘theory about a conspiracy’ when the evidence about the fact claims at issue are supported by evidence sufficient to make their truth likely. They may in fact be either true or false, and they may even be more likely to be false than true, so long as their truth is supported by the available evidence.
That’s a very vague standard when worded precisely, and that’s OK. There are borderline cases, and that’s OK. But the fact that something changes from ‘conspiracy theory’ to not-a-conspiracy-theory with the introduction of evidence does not make the initial claim unfalsifiable: it can be falsified by looking at the evidence.
Sure. And I don’t have a clear solution for this. But 1) to whatever degree, this is also a social community so the two conversations running in parallel, it seems to me, ends up making this ad hom. 2) I think the discussion needs to be more concrete. Which belief? which means ‘which conspiracy’?’ We could also have the why do people believe authorities in general version, and go into that psychology, which obviously some conspiracy theorists and anyone believing in controversial for the mainstream opinions, also may do. I think both dicussions need to be careful because they end up being incredibly condescending and since the topic is general it’s fairly easy to paint with broad strokes and nearly impossible to contradict.
In a sense the psychology i this thread, the diagnoses, have as much support for them as what critics say conspiracy theories have.
These hidden things must be happening in the minds of conspiracy theorists (in general or all of them). I see little qualification in the thread about how many this would apply to.
There is no evidence presented that these diagnoses are the case. The participants here know what is going on behind the scenes in other minds. (as in the other minds in the problem of other minds). Now the thread starts with the idea that each will share what led them out of believing in certain conspiracies. But it rapidly degenerating into why people believe in them period and/or what diagnoses can we make about conspiracy theorist’s mental flaws.
It seems ironic in the extreme that people who are skeptics about conspiracy theories (except for Peter K regarding actual alien spacecraft since he does believe in that conspiracy theory) are drawing conclusions the way they are here. They see behind the veil.
Well, it asks how they lost their faith. How did you change your beliefs has quite a different openess. It does not presume the epistemology. The OP presumes that those who belief, belief because of faith, which would be a surprise, for example, to the many scientists in Architects and Engineers for Truth about 9/11 or for the whistleblower from NIST who approached the shoddy science he found and the pressure to accept that science by the body who came up with the official ‘scientific’ version of the event. Pehaps these people are wrong, but if they are wrong it seems likely to me it is not because they based their conclusions on faith, but rather there was something incomplete in their reasoning or data. Perhaps Peter K.'s conclusion about alien spacecraft is not based on faith, whether he is right or wrong.
I do not mean to assert any of those. Let me try to be yet more precise.
In practical terms it becomes a theory about a conspiracy when it is accepted by people and that process is not rigorously scientific nor is it rigorously legal. Paradigmatic, political and power concentration (in media for example) issues play into this all the time. Some things get through. The assumption it seems to me is that true theories (or better, well justified theories) will be given a fair case and come to light. I think that is unfalsifiable.
You’re conflating two things. Here you are saying that the conspiracy theory itself is falsifiable. I am saying that the implict and explicit claim that if it was true and also if the evidence was strong enough, it would become accepted. That is unfalsifiable. You can certainly point to conspiracy theories that were considered nuts and then became confirmed, and say, see even if it is extremely controversial it will come out. But that only shows (potentially, for example) that some get out.
It seems to me you didn’t respond to some things…
I think this is implict in the title of the thread and the op, as mentioned with losing faith.
Further the other posters very much implied these things and as the OP writer your responses seemed to accept these as on topic answers. I put some effort into quoting things that clearly fit that type of diagnosis and similar ones.
I could, of course, start a thread with the topic:
What changed your mind about the possibility or the what you now perceive as a fact that governments can marginalize data, whistleblowers, differing opinions, evidence, etc. to such a degree that a well justified position stays out of the mainstream, potentially permanently?
Or when did you lose faith in unfalsifiable belief that if something is true and important it will become consensus opinion amongst experts?
But I think such threads - which I would assume you would consider valid, even if I must get in there and tease out a better wording - will degenerate and perhaps they should. I thin in a sense they should because they function in the community as ad hom threads. I am sure universities have done research where they take a full on sociological look at CT believers and I would not rule out such a thing, even if it could be perceiving as as insulting. At least there you are dealing with data, rather than what is happening in this thread which is people who participate in parallel threads get a chance to say that they are rational and the others are not, they are mature and have grown up and the others have not because of the categories of believers they fall into.
I don’t believe that assumption is implied. Rather, if sufficient evidence comes to light and is given a fair case, then it will no longer be a conspiracy theory. So not, “X will happen”, but “if X happens, then Y”.
I take acceptance to be a type of evidence, e.g. if all we know about a claim is that 99% of all living humans accept that it’s true, we have a good reason to take its truth as a prior.
I’m not. I’m saying that the claim, “X is a conspiracy theory” is falsifiable by looking at the sufficiency and reliability of the evidence.
My opening paragraph was my response, and I have nothing to add.
Defensibility is based on those particular references one has chosen as defensible. When the ‘grounding’ of those references is eroded by time with no conclusive proof then it’s only natural that attention will wane as it does with any focus; except of course for confirmation-bias junkies. If it happens that the conspiracy is proven, thus brought to the level of actual proof, then confirmation allows for a kind of retroactive satisfaction.
Of course, there are those who profit from operating ‘between’ the conspiracy and the proof of it. D.C., the media, Pentagon, and others have been doing this for some time now. In short, they profit more from the general public not knowing either way. Needless to say, lawyers and other types enjoy since it gives them flexibility without the hindrance of conclusive proof.
Thus, it’s more losing faith in the earnest effort at truth. Again, truth is not profitable for some interests.
As long as recognizable limits of approbable reason can lead to a neutral assessment, that there may be a modicum of possibility of either position becoming even minimally possible, ( given the set assumptions that any possible state of affairs can become probable within those limited contexts); an absolute contradiction between fact and non-factual assertions can never arise.
The higher the stakes, the more inversely possibility and (im)probability can manifest.