Bad Thinkers

AProudLefty said:
Agreed. Some of them have a severe case of paranoia. I was caught into conspiracy theories myself due to growing up in a Fundamentalist Christian home. Things like Freemasons and the Illuminati are real and they manipulate the media and the world.
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Which brings up another aspect. There's the lone conspiracy theorist working in a shed and living in a culture that believes conspiracy theory. It's one thing for a lone person to think the world is being run by Lizard People and another for a child to be raised and told by every adult that the world is being run by Lizard People.

I've mostly studied the lone conspiracy theorists, not the cultures; psychological vs. sociological. The sociological would go towards explaining different views of cultures within the US such as gang-bangers in the inner cities or racism.
 
AProudLefty said:
Maybe. But what about the Manson family? :whoa:
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The Manson family was a cult. Just a smaller version of the Branch Davidians, militias and other groups that self-isolate and have a skewed sense of reality. More sociological than psychological even though I wonder about the psychology of people who join cults. Being raised in one is a different matter as previously mentioned.
 
christiefan915 said:
It's an opinion piece so don't shoot the messenger. It's also a long article so I added the link.

"Meet Oliver. Like many of his friends, Oliver thinks he is an expert on 9/11. He spends much of his spare time looking at conspiracist websites and his research has convinced him that the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, of 11 September 2001 were an inside job. The aircraft impacts and resulting fires couldn’t have caused the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to collapse. The only viable explanation, he maintains, is that government agents planted explosives in advance. He realises, of course, that the government blames Al-Qaeda for 9/11 but his predictable response is pure Mandy Rice-Davies: they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Polling evidence suggests that Oliver’s views about 9/11 are by no means unusual. Indeed, peculiar theories about all manner of things are now widespread. There are conspiracy theories about the spread of AIDS, the 1969 Moon landings, UFOs, and the assassination of JFK. Sometimes, conspiracy theories turn out to be right – Watergate really was a conspiracy – but mostly they are bunkum. They are in fact vivid illustrations of a striking truth about human beings: however intelligent and knowledgeable we might be in other ways, many of us still believe the strangest things...

My claim is this: Oliver believes what he does because that is the kind of thinker he is or, to put it more bluntly, because there is something wrong with how he thinks. The problem with conspiracy theorists is not, as the US legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues, that they have little relevant information. The key to what they end up believing is how they interpret and respond to the vast quantities of relevant information at their disposal. I want to suggest that this is fundamentally a question of the way they are. Oliver isn’t mad (or at least, he needn’t be). Nevertheless, his beliefs about 9/11 are the result of the peculiarities of his intellectual constitution – in a word, of his intellectual character."

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/bad-thinkers?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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And we have one for a president.
 
domer76 said:
And we have one for a president.
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Agreed.....which is the problem. It's one thing for nutjobs to be in their basements typing one-handed about WTC #7, Obama's birth certificate and the Moon landing hoax, but it's another when that nutjob is elected to national office, much less POTUS.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
The Manson family was a cult. Just a smaller version of the Branch Davidians, militias and other groups that self-isolate and have a skewed sense of reality. More sociological than psychological even though I wonder about the psychology of people who join cults. Being raised in one is a different matter as previously mentioned.
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Yep. Good call, Dutchy.
 
christiefan915;3790443 the assassination of JFK [url said:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/bad-thinkers?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/url]
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There are many holes in the official explanation of JFK's death. Doesn't prove it was the mafia or whatever, but certainly skepticism is warranted about the Warren Report.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
While I enjoyed the perspective of the article, I think the author is, to some extent, reinventing the wheel when it comes to conspiracy theories.

Yes, conspiracies exist. The US conspired to kill Osama bin Laden. The US had secret program to build an atomic bomb.

OTOH, conspiracy theories off skimpy or refutable evidence, cannot be proved and can bounce around for half a century or more (Protocols of Zion, JFK and the Moon landing). Real conspiracies are revealed within a few years; Watergate, Monica and Bill, CIA in Iran, etc. Conspiracies require smart people to keep their mouths such out of patriotism. Conspiracy theories require thousands of people to be stupid or keep their mouths shut about illegal actions, anti-American plots and corruption.

IMO, conspiracy theorists "think" that way because it's a coping mechanism. The world is full of chaos and that disturbs certain people very greatly. A conspiracy theory allows them to be "in the know", even if it's bad and/or there's nothing they can do about it (usually the case). If that is true, the conspiracy theorists have a mild to severe version of delusional disorder where they accept things that are not real and deny things that are real in order to maintain the illusion they have created.
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Add to that their ignorance of the term Occam's Razor.
 
AProudLefty said:
MKUltra being one famous example.
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I never heard of it so I looked it up. It was a secret government program that was kept under wraps for over two decades. It seems to be like the Tuskeegee experiment. IOW people knew about the programs but were lied to about the experiments and what they were for.

IMO a conspiracy theory is Arkancide, Pizzagate, UFOs (in the sense of being little green men) and the moon landings. The kind of theories where there is no proof and no way of finding proof; it's all in the minds of those who want to believe the worst of someone or something.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
While I enjoyed the perspective of the article, I think the author is, to some extent, reinventing the wheel when it comes to conspiracy theories.

Yes, conspiracies exist. The US conspired to kill Osama bin Laden. The US had secret program to build an atomic bomb.

OTOH, conspiracy theories off skimpy or refutable evidence, cannot be proved and can bounce around for half a century or more (Protocols of Zion, JFK and the Moon landing). Real conspiracies are revealed within a few years; Watergate, Monica and Bill, CIA in Iran, etc. Conspiracies require smart people to keep their mouths such out of patriotism. Conspiracy theories require thousands of people to be stupid or keep their mouths shut about illegal actions, anti-American plots and corruption.

IMO, conspiracy theorists "think" that way because it's a coping mechanism. The world is full of chaos and that disturbs certain people very greatly. A conspiracy theory allows them to be "in the know", even if it's bad and/or there's nothing they can do about it (usually the case). If that is true, the conspiracy theorists have a mild to severe version of delusional disorder where they accept things that are not real and deny things that are real in order to maintain the illusion they have created.
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This is a great explanation, thanks. :good4u:
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed.....which is the problem. It's one thing for nutjobs to be in their basements typing one-handed about WTC #7, Obama's birth certificate and the Moon landing hoax, but it's another when that nutjob is elected to national office, much less POTUS.
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That definitely tends to bring the crazies out of the woodwork, doesn't it?
 
christiefan915 said:
It's an opinion piece so don't shoot the messenger. It's also a long article so I added the link.

"Meet Oliver. Like many of his friends, Oliver thinks he is an expert on 9/11. He spends much of his spare time looking at conspiracist websites and his research has convinced him that the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, of 11 September 2001 were an inside job. The aircraft impacts and resulting fires couldn’t have caused the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to collapse. The only viable explanation, he maintains, is that government agents planted explosives in advance. He realises, of course, that the government blames Al-Qaeda for 9/11 but his predictable response is pure Mandy Rice-Davies: they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Polling evidence suggests that Oliver’s views about 9/11 are by no means unusual. Indeed, peculiar theories about all manner of things are now widespread. There are conspiracy theories about the spread of AIDS, the 1969 Moon landings, UFOs, and the assassination of JFK. Sometimes, conspiracy theories turn out to be right – Watergate really was a conspiracy – but mostly they are bunkum. They are in fact vivid illustrations of a striking truth about human beings: however intelligent and knowledgeable we might be in other ways, many of us still believe the strangest things...

My claim is this: Oliver believes what he does because that is the kind of thinker he is or, to put it more bluntly, because there is something wrong with how he thinks. The problem with conspiracy theorists is not, as the US legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues, that they have little relevant information. The key to what they end up believing is how they interpret and respond to the vast quantities of relevant information at their disposal. I want to suggest that this is fundamentally a question of the way they are. Oliver isn’t mad (or at least, he needn’t be). Nevertheless, his beliefs about 9/11 are the result of the peculiarities of his intellectual constitution – in a word, of his intellectual character."

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/bad-thinkers?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Click to expand...

Some people believe they can attain expertise on highly technical topics by reading obscure blogs on the interwebs.

The architectural engineering of the twin towers.
The science of climate change.
The epidemiology of a COVID virus.

These armchair experts believe they do not need years of specialized training in college, graduate school, and post-docs to have their opinions on scientific and engineering topics taken seriously.

Surprisingly, many of these self styled armchair experts wind up on jpp dot com.

I myself try to keep my mouth shut on topics I have no expertise in. You will not find me on many threads about stock market, mechanical engineering, or moonshine brewing.
 
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