Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

This is an interesting article. Perhaps I may give too much credit to some here to call them rational...however lets see if this fits the profiles parading here. And how well do they identify with it.

www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/why-...y-theories.html?_r=0



In 2006, the political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler identified a phenomenon called the “backfire effect.” They showed that efforts to debunk inaccurate political information can leave people more convinced that false information is true than they would have been otherwise. Nyhan isn’t sure why this happens, but it appears to be more prevalent when the bad information helps bolster a favored worldview or ideology.

What conspiracy are you talking about specifically? Are you talking about ISIS still?

Do you realize how many declassified and leaked Pentagon papers...

www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads...-final-version11.pdf

...predict and effectively welcome the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, such Defense Intelligence Agency documents identified al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”, and stated that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the terrorist efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

This is not "conspiracy". This is history.

"It's merely a label applied to certain stories, usually to distinguish them from stories which the user of the label wishes to promote or defend by limiting the parameters of debate. One proffered explanation...

I guess we are all getting to understand the mindset of conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracy theory, I said in my last standup show, is how idiots get to feel like intellectuals. I still believe this: conspiracy theory is primarily a way for people, mainly men, to appear in the know, to use their collection of assumptions, generalisations, straw men and false inferences to say, effectively: ah, the wool may have been pulled over your eyes, my friend, but not mine.

But there are other reasons why it’s so popular these days. It provides lonely men with an online community of like-minded lonely men. It’s comforting; it’s reassuring. It provides order in a disordered universe to imagine that shadowy forces organise horrific events, rather than to have to confront the terrible truth that death and destruction happen, all the time, apparently at random. And, as David Cameron pointed out this week in his speech on extremism, it creates a way into something else that’s becoming increasingly popular these days: antisemitism.

while the OP asking and answering : lemme post this conspiracy from FB 

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12227010_1200801093280787_2246012502639813648_n.jpg?oh=13a956c2cd3b1f5542f2f1ddda06a638&oe=56EB6A12

[color=rgb(26, 26, 26)]What conspiracy are you talking about specifically? Are you talking about ISIS still? [/color][color=rgb(26, 26, 26)][/size]Do you realize how many declassified and leaked Pentagon papers..
[/color][color=rgb(33, 60, 69)] www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads...-final-version11.pdf [/color][color=rgb(26, 26, 26)]

This is not "conspiracy". This is history.




TD , the OP was not looking for answers  ::LOL:: [/color]

I remember in 2013 when it was revealed NSA spies on the world and everyone was shocked and hyped, the conspiracy theorists that have been saying this since 80s/90s rolled their eyes.

Food for thought....

The Inner Worlds of Conspiracy Believers
“Arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists tell you more about the believer than about the event,” Goertzel adds.


He says that although these people are highly doubtful and suspicious of government and other bodies of authority, they will accept any source that validates their preconceived conspiracy views whiteout any proof or substantiation. ...
It seems likely that conspiratorial beliefs serve a similar psychological function to superstitious, paranormal and, more controversially, religious beliefs, as they help some people to gain a sense of control over an unpredictable world

I can't make this stuff up...just spooky.

Conspiracy theory believers share psychological traits


Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition.

Kid , there is a diff between improbable and real ... :