Losing Conspiratorial Thinking #1 - It Can Be Both

Short: Many people I have met, that were leaning toward conspiratorial thinking, cited different explanations or causal effects regarding a given topic. Often they weren’t even wrong about these explanations. The effects just were not alone, and often had other effects overpowering them. It could be both things having effect: their explanations and others.

Our modern-day world brings about more and more complex developments, and for those lucky enough to live in democracies this means more talking, informing and convincing each other. So in general I take someone that is somewhat trying to inform themselves over someone who is not at all informing themselves. Gaining political support, however, in some ways is becoming easier by working with half-truths and redactions.

There is in general a demand for causal explanations, even by those that do fall for populism and fake news. And so the breadth of voters following these strategic conspiracies do tend to look for “proof” of their theories. With open discourse often actually succeeding in demanding serious evidence for one’s claims, people do frequently get in touch with credible science. Often however there tends to be a dessimination bias within these conspiratorially enclined circles.

If there ever were scientifically results supporting an anti-thesis to a braodly popular scientific thesis(e.g. climate change is man-made), these tend to spread through respectively supported communities of deniers of said broadly popular scientific theory. And with science being what it is - which is a very debate-happy bunch of people and not even close to as monolithic as most people would think - there is always (even good) research to argue against broadly popular scientific theories (e.g. climate change).

However with research of VERY abstract or multi-facetted topics (and there are almost only those left nowadays), science tends to subdivide itself. So when there is a good research stating that there are other causal factors to a popular theory (e.g. “There have always been temperature changes over time.”), this can be correct, and still there can be more and more impactful factors causing the opposite ([insert myriad of research examples here]).

Think of it this way. Me paying a subscription to rent the software and hardware to allow me to post this blog post costs me money every month. I don’t even generate any revenue with this website. How have I not become broke writing this blog? I even have more money now that when I started this blog. Well thank God I have a job that pays me more than I spend.

It can be both: the blog costs me money AND I am earning more money than it costs.

Thanks for reading, stay beautiful!