Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Justin's avatar

Yeah that concept creep around "conspiracy theorists" gets applied as a thought terminating cliche, or just a way to indicate a person shouldn't be listened to, without the need for an all encompassing conspiracy to actually take place.

Like, yes, it is a consipracy theory to claim the head of the NIH organized a campaign to discredit the lab leak theory and it's proponents, (not to mention the likely successful conspiracy by the people actually operating the lab to keep the evidence out of reach). But that conspiracy doesn't require the silence and pre-planned deception of hundreds of people, it is not "too big to fail". Reminds me very much of your original benign smoking example.

You see it all over the place now, "Racism" basically used to mean "hatred for another race" and all the emotion and disgust you would have towards someone who was that way might get transferred to someone who was against Afirmative Action. Similar for someone who is labeled a "predator" could be anywhere from a forward sexual person, to a creep, to an unwanted touch, to a full on rapist.

Expand full comment
Passion guided by reason's avatar

One dynamic I've observed, and use as a fuzzy "indicator" as you say, is that conspiracy theories tend to have a strong propensity to backfill any gaps of seeming contradictions, by just deepening the conspiracy. (eg: "You ask why none of X noticed? That's because all X were in on it!").

That is, rather than looking into every allegation, see how the person handles some question for which they don't have a stock answer to regurgitate. If they don't have "yeah, that part doesn't fit yet, it needs more investigation" in their toolkit, and instead quickly grab the 'expand the conspiracy tool', that's a clue. Or likewise, making a new but obviously bogus assertion, which even they might not want to be held to, in order to fend off disconfirmation.

Of course, this is more about the mindset of people who follow conspiracy theories, than about the theories themselves, but it gives one some measure of how seriously to take the allegations (eg: how much effort to make to check an assertion).

Expand full comment
3 more comments...

No posts