Conspiracy Theorists and Other Nut Jobs

[Peter Polack]

I want to tie in to the thread about Animal Life Around Fahnestock State Park.

monadnocky spoke of the conspiracy theorist who was convinced there were hundreds of mountain lions in the state of NH but claimed the authorities were trying to hide the fact from the public, even though the C.T. couldn't prove the animals' existence nor the conspiracy.

I've been running into conspiracy theorists a little too often lately, and I don't get them. Do they have some sort of mental defect?

The most recent is a coworker. He has severe back pain and has seen all the specialists. His injury and his pain is clearly real. He's convinced they're hiding a solution to his problem. If that were his only C.T., I'd let it go.

But, he's also of the school of the "100mpg carburetor that exists but the government bought the patents so it will never reach the public..." . You've probably heard this one.

Then there's the "there's a cure for cancer but Big Pharma will not release it because they make more money on long term therapies rather than this supposedly existing magic pill.

Yesterday we got into a debate over whether you should warm up your vehicle before you drive it. Well, it's winter in Connecticut and therefore cold. Who wants to get into a cold vehicle? He argues he "was a car mechanic" so he "knows" it's better to warm the car up. I cry baloney; people don't warm their cars up in temperate weather (spring and fall)-because when they get in the car, they're already comfortable! The only reason they warm up their car is because they're cold. Then they use the same excuse in hot weather to run the A/C. I've checked all the reputable on-line info on the subject and it all says the same thing: warming up the car comes from the old, carburetor days; something to do with fuel richness. Today's fuel injected cars don't require a warm up due to computer control. At most, 30 seconds of a warm up is okay to get oil circulating. Show him the documents-he won't even look at them.

As a side note, I notice people like this listen to a lot of talk radio and don't read much.

Can anyone explain the behavior of these nut jobs? Steer me in the direction of a book on the subject, please...

[e-RICHIE]

Can anyone explain the behavior of these nut jobs?

There's too much stored energy with nowhere to spring back to atmo.

[sbornia]

Don't have personal experience to share, but I enjoyed the book "Them" by Jon Ronson.

[Sbti]

Truthers, Birthers, Baggers, Buffoons, Anti-vaxers, Ebola's going airborne any second. Yes, whack-job-ism is a mental defect.

[Tom]

I work with a guy that claims he knows that dinosaurs and people lived on earth at exactly the same time because there's footprint evidence. This is an otherwise very intelligent person. I can't tell if it is a very well crafted joke or he's finally gone totally loony.

[monadnocky]

Say this to yourself right now: I am wrong.

Uncomfortable, isn't it? So uncomfortable, in fact, that the vast majority of us would prefer to do almost anything to avoid experiencing those associated feelings. In many cases, the most psychologically efficient way to avoid feeling this is to "double down" on our beliefs - that is, when presented with yet more evidence, even compelling evidence that runs counter to our argument (or even our belief system), we dig in our heels even more. I think that conspiracy theorists take this to an extreme degree - that is, at some point, most of us with an intact cognitive system, when presented with enough evidence, would finally throw up our hands and admit that we are wrong. Not so people with a certain psychological structure - they're just simply unable to do this. It's too threatening to the self, too psychologically annihilating, to do so.

Richard Dawkins (yes, I know) wrote wonderfully about this phenomenon in one of his books. Granted, his larger argument was a little... well, controversial, but I think the story highlights the way our minds work:

In a story about the nature of evidence in science and how (theoretically) enough of it (or lack of it) should be able to change our minds regarding a given topic, Dawkins tells the story of an esteemed cell biologist who pretty much made his career investigating the Golgi apparatus (a structure inside the cell that's integral in the cell's packaging system). This guy had spent a lifetime looking for some type of evidence that the Golgi apparatus did anything, because forty years ago it wasn't so clear that it was anything but vestigial and we didn't have the tools back then to investigate it. As such, Mr. Big Shot Biologist believed that it did absolutely nothing and had spent his career saying so.

So, he's at some conference and some young buck Ph.D. candidate presents a paper that presents clear and compelling evidence that the Golgi apparatus is involved in cellular packaging. The older scientist walks up to the lectern and says (something to the effect of) "Well, clearly I have been wrong all these many years."

Although the story meant to highlight a larger phenomenon, I think it does point to the same peculiarity. Rare is the individual whose mind can be changed, even those who make a living in fields that require one as a prerequisite (e.g., science.) Conspiracy theorists take this to the nth degree, but if we think about it enough, we can all identify beliefs we hold that defy evidence.

[Too Tall]

Thanks Monadnocky.....i just now resolved your name man am i dense. I was not wrong, just unaware ;)

Please do not dissuade conspiracy theorists please! They are highly entertaining and much better than network TV.

Any opinions if tinfoil under my hat should be shiny side out?

[Matthew Strongin]

Thanks Monadnocky.....i just now resolved your name man am i dense. I was not wrong, just unaware ;)

Please do not dissuade conspiracy theorists please! They are highly entertaining and much better than network TV.

Any opinions if tinfoil under my hat should be shiny side out?

Always shiny side out. That gives the best reflective properties to deflect penetrating gamma-ray brain scans.

[monadnocky]

Thanks Monadnocky.....i just now resolved your name

yeah a little too derivative I guess
but we've moved - in the Concord area now.

[Too Tall]

yeah a little too derivative I guess
but we've moved - in the Concord area now.

No no I reckoned you were pragmatic to avoid the upcoming glaciation / polar flip. We follow your lead....

[Philster]

Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean people aren't out to get you. If 5 years ago you had described some of the things that our government has been doing, I would have said you are crazy.

[robin3mj]

Always shiny side out. That gives the best reflective properties to deflect penetrating gamma-ray brain scans.

Alternative hypothesis:
Dull side out makes you less visible to the black helicopters.
But they already know where you are anyway, so maybe a moot point.

Shiny it is.

[Saab2000]

Truthers, Birthers, Baggers, Buffoons, Anti-vaxers, Ebola's going airborne any second. Yes, whack-job-ism is a mental defect.

Ha! This is funny! Or not so funny... When the Ebola scare was at its peak in the US a couple months ago I was talking to one of our pilots in the crew room. This is a guy I flew with a number of years ago and he's pretty senior. To him the world exists in black and white with few shades of gray and there's really no room to discussion on anything because he knows it all.

A couple days prior to this conversation one of the Ebola patients had flown on an airplane, potentially exposing many people to the virus. Thankfully, if I remember correctly, nobody else got sick from that exposure.

He took the idea that the not-yet-symptom-exhibiting person had flown on an airplane to be the same as the virus having become airborne. I don't think he grasped the idea that airborne in this context means that the virus can be spread over distances through the air, like if you and I pass each other in the hallway and chat with each other and a microscopic droplet passes between us. He took 'airborne' to mean that sick people got on airplanes. I think he even used a phrase like, "Now that Ebola is airborne,...".

He's in the end stages of building a home in the hills of Virginia near Roanoke. Ridiculously beautiful and remote area and the language he was using implied that it was likely that within a month of that conversation we'd all be living a battle of life and death, with no jobs and society would implode because tens of millions of people would be dying of Ebola. But he'd be OK in his compound in SW Virginia because he had planned for this. Of course, he couldn't participate in this conversation without taking a few partisan political shots at members of a specific political party. I'll let you figure out which party and which politician was most guilty for Ebola.

And I had another conversation with someone a couple years ago that went downhill very quickly when the subject of the president arose. In these circumstances I try really hard to avoid blatantly partisan statements of fact because the world is more nuanced than most of us are and I try to respect the positions of others. But this otherwise totally nice man who lives a nice life had views of the president that were incredible and no amount of rational talk could convince him of anything other than that our current president was probably the worst human being in history and that even events preceding his existence were still his fault, or at the very least the fault of his party. Simple things like the president's awareness or not of the US Constitution were indisputable, according to my friend, even in the face of the argument that the president taught constitutional law at Harvard. He just shook his head. I wasn't trying to convince him of the rightness or wrongness of the president's position on issues or even his interpretation of the constitution. That's a complex topic. But there was no room for complexity in this man's world view. Some of the things coming out of his mouth were astounding and he took them as indisputable fact.

I too wonder where we get our views of the world and what makes some of our views absolute.

I often drive home from work late at night, sometimes even after midnight. A push of the scan button on the AM radio in my car will let the radio stop at some stations where there's all sorts of conspiracy, from aliens in the White House to the White House organizing UN squads to remove your guns from your home to the idea that the world's glaciers are actually growing and that we're headed into a new ice age, etc. It's entertaining at times but the level of ignorance is alarming. I don't think this is new, but it is an interesting phenomenon.

PS - Don't take any of my statements above as an endorsement of one political party or a condemnation of another. That's not my point. My point is simply that we need to avoid seeing the world in terms of black and white. It's almost never quite that simple.

[Nierman]

Saab, we all know ebola is being spread through your chem trails.

[Jonathan]

Social Needia is such an effective distribution channel for conspiracy theories, as is Netflix. The food documentary business is a formula. All it takes is a wacky doctor, some flimsy science, a corporate villian, and a regulator controlled by lobbyists and you've got a whole new aisle at whole foods. And please, don't get me started on Fukushima water.

[Saab2000]

Saab, we all know ebola is being spread through your chem trails.

I once got a message from someone at another well known cycling forum asking about Chem Trails. I wasn't sure if he was joking or not but a message or two later it was clear that he wasn't and provided a series of links to internet articles 'proving' that chem trails are real. No amount of denial on my part could convince him that this wasn't going on. Hard to prove a negative....

Just do a quick search on Chemtrails and you'll see that most of the pictures aren't joke pictures like this one. There's a whole cottage industry on the subject of commercial airliners and chemtrails.

[monadnocky]

^^^ that pic made my day (so far- it's early).

Regarding that pic, remember this one? I'm VERY serious about this - many, uh, not so smart people saw this as proof that the Obamas were, in fact, Muslim terrorists. You know, because it was on a magazine cover.

I wish I was making this up.

original.jpg

[SlowPokePete]

Reminds me of a song by Beck...

"Everyone's out to get you, M__er F___er..."

Yikes! What was that?!?!??!?!

SPP

[Saab2000]

On my Yahoo! news feed a few years ago there was a link to an article about how the president was going to run for a third term and probably many more. That his experts had found a loophole allowing this. We all believe in freedom of speech and expression but some things lean in the direction of shouting fire in a crowded, dark theater. Now I don't believe most Americans seriously believe that the president is going to attempt to run for a third term, but I do with that Yahoo! wouldn't allow links to absurd articles on the fringes of normal news. Last time I checked the US Constitution had a presidential term limit of two (2) four (4) year terms and that hasn't really been seriously challenged by many people.

BTW, I don't believe in curtailing free speech, but I wish I didn't have to see ridiculous articles like this on a so-called mainstream site. It is insulting to my intelligence to have to read stuff like that.

This is a fascinating topic and as our society is extremely polarized politically I think it's very timely. I hate to keep coming back to politics but many of these conspiracy theories are active along the political fringes of society. This is not partisan. I've heard friends on both edges of the political spectrum say incredible (and not in a good way) things.

[vertical_doug]

Conspiracy exist because someone found a way to make money off it.
That's why you have so many conspiracies now, business is better at monetizing it.

I am confident with big data (internet footprint), I can craft a tailored made conspiracy theory which is just right for each of you and then target you with email. Check your inbox after reading this.