Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2024
- A while ago, I made a video about illiteracy, and one of the comments on the video was that the opening statistics were incredibly depressing, even for me. Ahem 10% of Americans believe that the Earth is possibly flat. 12% of Americans believe that the US government is mandating fluorescent light bulbs because they make people easier to control. 35% of Americans believe that the FDA and the drug companies in America are sitting on the cure to cancer.
So what causes some people to be more susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories? There appear to be a number of cognitive, social, cultural, political, and historical factors involved. As ever, it's complicated. Here, I explore some of the scientific research on these factors.
Intro 00:00
Current Statistics 00:52
conspiracy or Conspiracy Theory? 01:45
When Conspiracy Theories are dangerous 06:22
Who is susceptible? 09:45
Economic/cultural factors 10:16
Evolutionary factors 10:40
Personality, cognition, group cohesion 12:43
Anxiety, lack of control 17:22
Pattern recognition 19:20
Conclusion 24:50
Patreon: / georgrockallschmidt
Twitter: / grockallschmidt
Sources:
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www.npr.org/2014/06/04/318733...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...
arstechnica.com/health/2023/0...
www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...
pforlife.com/borax-conspiracy...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...
books.google.com/books?id=ngl...
psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-8...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
www.apa.org/news/press/releas...
www.apa.org/pubs/journals/rel...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
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www.psypost.org/2022/04/peopl...
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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.psychologistworld.com/sup...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... - Розваги
The Best conspiracy theory is the one from south park. That the US government is supporting conspiracy theories because it makes them seem more capable then they really are.😂
Makes sense
Most conspiracy theories are based on the idea that a government could run FEMA death camps or plant a camera on every sparrow if they so wanted to without someone speaking out. When in all reality, they could barely run a FEMA camp program if they tried and someone would leak knowledge of it(probably on accident).
The FEMA death camp theory is a perfect example of how a conspiracy theory forms. The theory started when someone posted a photo of white train cars with slats on the side, vaguely reminiscent of a cattle car. They surmised that these must be for people (thanks to the air slats) and that they were putting god loving Patriots into death camps in order to kill all the gun toting free thinkers to leave a more easier to control population.
The white train cars in question are for transporting automobiles, and the air slats are so that whoever drives the automobile into the train car doesn't die from lack of ventilation. It takes literally zero evidence to create a conspiracy theory. South Park hit the nail on the head.
that's literally what we did in the cold war, we talked about starwars defense systems, going to the moon, building super massive super colliders, and all sorts of things that we tried to get Russia to compete with in an attempt to outspend them and dismantle their stability. we did. but the national debt got out of control here and... well thank goodness we don't have any budget issues to this day.
No doubt
In my opinion the Chinese weather balloon that was sent to spy on America is the funniest
I’m sceptical of conspiracy theories. After all, they were invented by lizard people.
This, but unironically. When the facts challenge power, the only option is becomes to convince us that they're fake.
I'm skeptical until a few months later when they're proven true
Lizards People is a allegory
Becaus the are Cold Blooded aka ruthless killers
Lizards also have Cold Blood
Lizard people. As if. Everybody knowsssss they are sssssssnake people.🙂
Before you ssssssay , snakes are lizardsss. That's what the snake people want you to think.😊😊😊😊😊
@@TheMysteryDriver Most of them aren't proven true because they're insane. Did you even watch the video?
I think the problem with conspiracy theories is that every example is lumped together. There is a huge difference between concerns of government-sponsored criminality and modern tall tales. The crazy ones get the attention or divert from related concerns.
But that's just a conspiracy theory.
A conspiracy theory that's proven is simply called a conspiracy.
Did Big Conspiracy pay you to say this? I enjoy grassroots conspiracies, not the artificial ones THEY are feeding you
Yep, it's page one of the CIA/Mossad handbook. Create nonsense like flat earth and lizard people, to discredit the stuff that is true.
I whole hearted believe Q anon stuff was signal boosted by media to make the Epstein business seem more farfetched by association. Sure, Epstein was real and real important people went to his island, but the crazy Q people who believe the vaccine kills you and that the rich eat babies also believe it, so, y'know.
Well pushing the term conspiracy theory was to lump it all together and muddy the waters
It is hard to fool a person. But it is much harder to convince that person that they have been fooled.
You mean “it’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled”. Mark Twain.
@@earthsmoke9450 Tomato tamato.
This video has been demonetized (limited or no ads). Apparently UA-cam cannot tell the difference between conspiracy theory content and this video, which discusses the science behind conspiratorial belief. Rather than chopping out large portions of the video, I have decided to upload the entirety, as I think this topic is important.
If you'd like to support the channel, please consider checking out my Patreon:
www.patreon.com/GeorgRockallSchmidt
Cheers,
Georg
State of the art algorithms at their finest...
Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
Conform better.
Why I don't believe people when people say AI will destroy us or take over the world. Maybe by mistake. AI can't even tell when a video is legit about why conspiracy theories are bad vs actual conspiracy theory.
My conspiracy theory is that you knew this would happen and would be the perfect way to promote your patreon.
Disturbing studies show that studies are disturbing.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you
It just means you are probably wrong, even if you could be right
That joke isn’t tired AT ALL.
Watch out for that Chinese weather balloon. And don't forget Russia is out to get you!
Im inside of youre walls
That’s exactly what they want you to think.
I don't care about the shape of the earth, because whether it's round or flat, I still have to pay my rent this month
Don't forget you still have to pay your taxes to fund your warmogering in Ukraine, Palestine, Syria and China.
Now get back to work and carry on thinking about how dangerous conspiracy theorists are.
Your a deep thinker, you must be a teacher or scientist.
Conspiracies happen all the time, it's just when they're finally aired out they get rebranded as corruption.
The problem is that wackos with idiotic beliefs get lumped in with people who believe that conspiracies exist. Like, Flat Earthers, Creationists, anti-vaxxers, etc., are psychos with idiotic beliefs. Believing that oil companies are colluding to raise gas prices and stymie the implementation of green energy is just the cynicism of experience.
Truth 😂
Not really, most of the time. Actual corrupt things that happen tend to just bore people, usually. You have to put in something spicy like the military, aliens, or erm, Jews to get folks really swivelling their eyes and shrieking.
Yep - great point!
Thank you.
SHORT VERSION. People distrust government they know government has a purpose. They don't disagree with that. But government is not always looking out for the interests of it's people. Which causes people to a reaction distrust.
I'm still waiting for the gov to look out for my interests. Let me know when that actually happens.
@@TheMysteryDriver well i got a functioning healthcare system. Reliable infrastructure such as roads sewage and fire departments. So im good.
Does an ant trust the hive? I think the dynamic is less personal and more robotic.
Humans, being some of the largest organisms on the planet, don't gel well with the essentially insectoid superorganism structure they inhabit. A part of us hates it hates it hates it, mammals are territorial creatures, they only need 15-20 people and a lot of room to themselves. And then you take into the account that humans inhabit different hives that compete with each other, with thermal, nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons in their arsenal. That's a long way down from our humble roots being ape-like creatures swinging in air, hopping from branch to branch.
@@varvarvarvarvarvar thee unconscious collective mind of humanity is against us.
@@MATT-2042 There's a name for this mind, it's the freaking nanomachine of DNA. We share DNA with ants and the hive must be a typical design for a social superorganism? Will we become more like bees or will we fight our ground back and become more like bears but in space? Food for thought.
Btw, Nabokov made a note that animals that specialize on eating social insects are _very_ freaking odd. The same appears to be true for humans who pray on masses of average people. Odd ducks with their _lodges_ and stuff.
Clever misdirection, Georg. Don’t think we don’t see the Jon Voigt double negative denials. We all know in our hearts that you live in Jon Voigt’s woods and are on the take to cover up his involvement in 9/11.
Well, this changes everything...
Indeed the jig is up.
@@xyaeiounn
Always hide in plain sight. I once made a joke about wearing my bosses knickers to the guys at work. It made me laugh because little did they know....
lol @@xyaeiounn
Socrates would be a conspiracy realist
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Great content. I've always felt so compelled to pursue the greatest interests of mankind, to wit. A way to be influential, powerful and protected. The need for a singular world order. The inner me is gasping to find out knowledge about the human race and about the things that not everyone is destined to know. I wish to blossom into the enlightenment that our forebears wanted so desperately for us to gain.
That feeling is understandable, it's just you being an advanced human. If you really seek enlightenment you can achieve that and so much more by joining the Illuminatus Brotherhood. I know it sounds mythos, but there are ways to get in.
hi, is it even possible to join? i always thought it's meant for certain people in the upper class.
Well it is, there are ways you can actually get in. It's not just open to everyone, but then you can always try to know better and inquire whether or not you are eligle. anyways, you can inquire into Anthony Rogers Szymon online, will probably help you understand better.
Fascinating. Thanks so much for the reference, I just looked him up and left him a message already.
What follows my comment is a stream of conspiracy enthusiasts offended because they think that their particular favourites are being 'lumped in' with flat earthers.
Oh, the amusing lack of self awareness.
Seriously. People who think that covid was manufactured in a biolab in China think they're somehow better or more serious than people who think the world is flat.
I like the idea of a pigeon thinking it's manipulating Skinner to feed it by performing a certain action. The crazy thing is, it worked from the bird's perspective. I do A, I get B.
That's just what the pigeon wanted Skinner to think. The consensus view of the scientific community today is that the pigeons successful conspired to contaminate BF's data but he rejected that conclusion because he wasn't aware of the secret power of the Columbia livia community.
Pavlov's dog.
I like that Intro in the style of the "No jacket required" album by Phil Collins.
Conspiracy Theories are fun until someone becomes a terrorist or bully because of them
Or until they subvert an entire political party.
Or until they wake the dumb masses up from their mass brainwashing
Great stuff, Georg!
The Conspiracy Theorie I like the most is that one saying "Earth is not the center of the universe and spin around the sun, but the powerful hide it to the people for their own benefit"
lmao
Building 7 fell down for no reason at all.
your choice of footage is always really great. many quite beautiful/bizarre clips.
Yeah, he kind of pinched it from Adam Curtis but I'm sure even Georg would admit, it's better than watching 30 minutes of Georg. Excellent work Georg. Thanks as always.
Regarding the idea that there is clear enough distinction between real and imaginary patterns to use as an independent variable in research. That is just demonstrably silly. Every arrangement of things has a pattern and none of them are more real or significant on their own. Pattern become significant only via interpretation. There are a great many patterns of color and shape in every visual image of the jungle. The ones that say "Tiger!" are no more real than those that don't but they are a lot more significant to prey. So what the research shows, if anything, is that people who interpret in uncommon ways are more likely to also find significance in patterns that look like conspiracies. What marks conspiracy beliefs us irrational is not that they are acquired in a special way - they are not, they are acquired using the same epistemic practices we all use all the time - but how they are justified or not. And being about a conspiracy is not enough to warrant that a belief is epistemically unjustified. To see this, just remember Iran-Contra, the gunpowder plot, planned obsolescence and the documented fact that actors in the petrochemical industry have known about the climate catastrophy since at least the 70ties and worked to keep this out of public discourse.
I don’t know if I agree with this. None of the religious people I know believe in conspiracy theories but all my Atheist friends do except for two. Real crazy stuff too like Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece all happened during the Middle Ages, the late Middle Ages
The pigeon study reminds me of a 70's young adult book called "House of Stairs" where the pigeons were teenage orphans in a dystopian future
I loved that book! It’s been so long that I don’t remember the details, but they started by getting food pellets for doing simple, logical things, then the unspoken requirements got harder and harder. Eventually every member of the group had to do a different, nonsensical thing at the same time to get the machine to dispense any pellets. Meanwhile, they got fewer and fewer pellets, and the hunger started doing things to their minds.
Fascinating as always Georg. Thank you for what you do.
I've pointed this out before. Even though I really like all of his stuff, I really love when he uses old-timey footage to explain or to set the tone.
I’m 3 minutes in but I feel like it’s not a good start to draw distinctions between “conspiracy” and “conspiracy theory” and then boldly define conspiracy theory in such as negative way. On its face, and by using the fucking English language, I am perfectly capable of deducing the meaning of the term “conspiracy theory”. And somehow, he ends up doing it in a disingenuous way, by weaving his arguments into his own definition, while presenting it as objective or scientific.
20:40 i find it incredibly funny that birds formed what essentially is a cargo cult
I was looking for this comment. Well done! :)
Is it a cargo cult or is it pavlovian conditioning? Can something really be considered a cargo cult if it is entirely irrational but it actually results in the outcome that you want?
People believe in conspiracy theories because there are many theories that were considered conspiracy theories that we now know are real, theories are form from experience. Never mysterious forces..
@@yerabbit6333MK Ultra
@@yerabbit6333 🤣🤣 seriously?
Fun fact: the clip of Jon Voight dancing at a gay night club comes from an, as of now, upcoming, unreleased film project of Georg's.
Another fun fact: the scene containing the clip is 24 minutes long.
It's from the TV Show Ray Donovan.
Oh sure. Maybe no flat-Eathers *YOU* know fell off the face of the Earth..
A cool thing you can do with conspiracy theorists when they’re actually right is make them believe false conspiracies then you can disprove the false one you created and make the conspiracy theorist lose all credibility.
What the hell do you think the news media has been doing for the last one hundred years?
The book “Roswell inconvenient facts” by Karl Pflock, utterly debunks the “case”, with receipts.
It’s very useful in that it demonstrates the format or template, which all popular conspiracy theories follow.
That of conflation, innuendo, lie by omission, misinterpretation, subversion, Cold War propaganda, and outright BS.
Hello! Could I get the sources for your opening statistics?
You won't, because they're made up.
A: Is it a Pollock ?
B: Nah, just my shed's floor.
21:33 I'm happy you featured our Rob and Dean :)
Twirling, Twirling, TWIRLING!!!!!!!
My favorite!
“It doesn’t matter which of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed”
A refreshingly frank response there from senator Zero Ciero!
The Zombie Apocalypse analogy: almost all my life I wanted to convey exactly this. Amazing job as usual you rock
The truth is that everybody knows there are unstoppable cabals that they can't defeat but they need to justify their role in it by planting themselves as the heros.
Also, how can you have religious beliefs and belittle people who believe in bizarre conspiracy theories? Is it not just a difference of degree? But in that comparison, at least conspiracies are somewhat based in reality.
Because he's a hypocrite
But Jackson Pollock's paintings couldn't be truly random because he's a human being, making artistic decisions.
Psychology studies and concepts in general have a million things wrong with them.
Even if 'random' could be not the best word to describe the paintings, the fact there are statistical differences on how we perceive them means they are different. If you don't the word 'random', maybe we could use 'unstructured', 'noisy', 'chaotic', or 'whimsical'.
Have you ever seen Jackson Pollock actually painting? While his intent might not have been random, the technique he used most certainly led to random results. Its a bit like saying that the buckshot holes in a road sign aren't random because someone aimed the shotgun.
@@GloomDept Imagine two paintings: one done by Leonardo da Vinci, and another one by Pollock. Both of them have a out-of-place (that is, it wasn't what the artist intended) brushstroke. In which painting would that error be most obvious?
Randomness, In the physical sense of the word, is not a binary property. It exists in a continuum. In that sense Pollock's paintings contain more randomness.
The colloquial use of the word 'random' (as opposed to 'deliberate', instead of 'structured') maybe the culprint here
@@GloomDept I'm equating to phsycal randomness, because that what it is. I'm not making value judgements: i'm not saying randomness is bad, or that one artist is better than the other one.
Randomness has a precise meaning in physics, that links entropy and information theory. There are more macrostates of brushstrokes on a canvas that correspond to Pollock's paintings than to a Da Vinci's paintings, and that's equivalent to say that Pollock's work has more entropy (and information) than Da Vinci's work, and that's equivalent to say Pollock's paintings have more objective randomness (that is not the subjective randomness of intention).
Of course, Da Vinci's paintings have less entropy because he was more limited because realism. But i'm not making any unfair comparison because i'm not judging the aesthetic value or merit of those paintings. I'm just evaluating the information put on display.
If you converted a Da Vinci's painting into a digital picture and compressed it, the result would be smaller than if you do the same with a Pollock's painting.
A conspiracy theory is just a claim of potential corruption our criminal behavior going on. Depending where you look they can either be extremly nonsensical to extremely sensical.. which made it hard to talk about it cause they tend to have a very bad reputation becouse of the first one.. its also important to mention that at times conspiracy theories are part themselves of conspires trying to push agendas . So its also important to never let them get to your head even when they dont sound crazy
A very favorite fact of people who promote both credible and incredible political corruption claims is that the FBI and CIA invented and popularized the term conspiracy theory during the Warren Commission as a pr move. There's a lovely memo about it.
So, you're saying the conspiracies are real, but the theories aren't accurate.
No, a conspiracy theory is a specific _type_ of claim about a specific _type_ of corruption or criminal behaviour. "Conspiracy theory" is a sociological technical term with an accepted definition. Not every hypothesis-that-there-is-a-conspiracy is a capital-C Conspiracy Theory.
Cool story bro
Still waiting on evidence the election was stolen
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs let me guess, you conveniently decide which is which, so you can selectively dismiss arguments.
Never expected to hear a conspiracy theory analogy about dentist John Voight.
Curious is anyone has a link to the chart showing beliefs on different ends of the political spectrum?
The research on inducing superstitions in pigeons is my 2nd fave bird study set.
Nixon mask-wearers disturbing corvid nests to see if/how the social warning spreads to adjacent bird territories + generations is #1.
Knowing that there where and still are many real conspiracys throughout history does not mean that one thinks the world is a disc!
Right. Tell someone about Operation Northwoods or Operation Mockingbird and people will look at you like you're crazy but the American Gov have admitted to these. Not to mention MK Ultra.
NASA fund the flat earth society
That's the trick tho. Oh you talk about MK Ultra? YOU MUST THINK THE UNIVERSE IS ON A TURTLE
@@darkcoeficient What do you mean? Of course it's on a Turtle! How else whould it move through the turtleverse?
@@lootwigvanwegen easy! Turtle on Turtle action!
I don't trust ppl who aren't conspiracy theorists.🤷🏻
Conspiracies exist.
Conspiracy theories tend to generate entropy..
Conspirators seek to maintain secrecy.
Conspiracy theorists seek recruits to spread the theories(entropy)
Mind control seeks to limit freely generated thought.
Thought travels at the speed of light if not faster. (Just a thought🤔). It resonates to frequencies that manifests into possibilities.
That said, I was never here and this comment was never posted. The algorithm won't allow it.😎
The study about Jackson Pollock paintings and supernatural belief is kind of blowing my mind rn
My favourite part was the coded messages in the lava lamp telling me that Zoe Ball is the last matrilineal descendant of Mary Magdalen.
But maybe the idea of conspiracy theories is a conspiracy theory to make people believe that everyone around them is into conspiracy theories 😂
bruh 💀
21.33: I didnt expect to see Rob Morrison and Dean Hutton from The Curiousity Show! I loved that show as a kid.
I really enjoy your essays. Informative, interesting, educational and mostly without prejudice. Intellectual without patronism. With plenty of humour of course too.
I'd be interested in your education. Of course, you have no need to share this but you are a natural communicator which I have the utmost respect for.
Best.
K
Because a secret grand plan is more comforting than accepting the reality, which is Chaos.
Reality isn't chaos. Reality is rich and powerful people doing what's best for rich and powerful people.
Posted it early but I think George Carlin had this figured out 100%. There's no grand conspiracies, just wealthy and powerful vultures who will always choose to do what's best for wealthy and powerful vultures.
At least for a certain type of person
They don't want you to know that one man with a gun really can make a difference
Thanks, Georg; I was having a bright, sunny day. And now it's raining.
3:06 I see you Georg Rockall-Schmidt. I see what you did there. That little old clip of a young, now cancelled conspiracy peddling celebrity. Very sneaky. Love it.
Sorry UA-cam screwed you over on this one. Your work is some of the best on this site, whether you're talking movies, serious topics, or ribbing Damian about the shit bucket.
The ludicrous ones obfuscate the real one. Convenient to brand people as crazy to keep doing shit behind the curtains.
And worst of all the crazies do it for free - even in the comment section of this video without realising what they're doing. Its tragicomic really.
The real ones are discovered by proper investigation.
@@juanausensi499 but still get discard as crazy ramblings. Which is why the actual crazy shit is given all the attention. That's the point I was making.
@@SPTX. You can't discard a conspiracy theory as crazy ramblings if sensible evidence is provided.
@@juanausensi499 Why not? Seeing the world we live in, it appears to me that evidence is irrelevant.
7:48
The box literally says don't let it come into contact with your skin!
What are we supposed to do against that level of willful ignorance! Superman couldn't make that carry!
It's crazy how conspiracy theorist are so much about not being manipulated by political agendas but not realizing how politically biased these conspiracy theories are
Another great video. I appreciate the wide gamut of topics you were able to cover and the truly indiscriminate range and demographics conspiracy theorists could apply to. Keep it up.
Actually he looked at a tiny spectrum. He made virtually no mention of the conspiracies from governments such as the Assad gassing his own people, Russian election interference, Chinese weather balloon, Gulf of Tonkin etc etc.
He just listed a load of trivial bizarre ideas that hardly anyone actually believes and that cause no harm, whilst ignoring endemic corruption.
Strange how people derive control from being among a select few that know about something that they can't control
Interesting video
Can't control? I always see them trying to exert control, albeit in delusional ways like Borax baths.
Don't people also derive control by knowing that things are the way they are and there is nothing more to the story?
@@charlescumming9019 Absolutely, I was just considering the contradiction in how some conspiracy theorists operate, I'm certainly not claiming that that's the only way people try to maintain control of their realities
Another factor that some might relate to (especially younger people imo), is the very human quest for penetrating the -Grand Mystery- and hidden truth. I certainly felt that that was what I was doing when "researching" (read: believing at a glance) conspiracy theories at 16-19. I think this is what draws myself and others toward genres like cosmic horror and weird fiction.
We allow ourselves to be lied to politely, euphemistically and often. I often see the argument that its all down to correct education and information, censorship of bad ideas, but I rarely see institutional betrayal trauma as a factor. It's obviously the largest factor, if all experts are unqualifiable and epistemically a person is relying on the trust one has in another's knowledge, which is all nonexperiential information- And your institutional forces are inaccurate and untrustworthy....it's all on the table...Nietchze is saying god is dead and the train means that we should take a second look at seances because science is magical and the future is terrifying and maybe just maybe alchemy can make a come back.
Except expertise exists. The system to recognize it is imperfect, but vastly better than what you see among people who have decided none of the systems for certifying expertise work.
This is a side effect of demagoguery. When people are convinced to accept nonsense as truth, then learn they’ve been fed nonsense, they don’t return to the systems that worked for them until the demagogue came along. They slump into a state of, “What is truth, anyways? Who can tell what’s real? It could all be real. None of it could be real.” Then they fall for any BS that appeals to their emotions, and everything slides downhill for a generation or two.
@@mrjones2721 You have never studied epistemics? I think that you don't understand the issue is that experts exist and we do rely on other people's specializations for knowledge and at some point when that trust is broken- We don't trust "experts"- Science becomes scientism. And what of all the experts who believe inaccurate things which exist outside of thier area of expertise? That's a fundamental issue with people being required to trust people who have highly specialized knowledge, break the trust and fail to be accurate- and it is entirely unsurprising when people choose the comfort of a demagogue.
The political inferrance and the common sense wisdom don't qualify your perspective as elegantly as you intended, it's actually offensive.
@@WhatdidtheCountessdo Soooo you and I agree. I’m not sure what your beef is.
@@mrjones2721 Epistemically, there are two kinds of knowledge - second hand and first hand knowledge. All second hand knowledge is based on trust of the interlocuter. I can be extremely well educated and considered competent in my specialization and that will not make me qualified to accurately gage anything outside of that locus.
This is a problem when the issue is reduced to how well someone is educated, or simply leaning on the idea of expertise without any context. If I say I know gravity exists- that's technically a lie- I don't and even if I were a physicist I would have to take a lot of space here writing about how gravity is presumed and not proven but there's a massive gap between that accurate statement and how as a physical being I instinctively want to say I feel gravity and am experiencing it.
Aka most "knowledge" is contextual and is deeply social. If everyone in my local town decided while I was in a coma that gravity is entirely an incorrect concept- It would be entirely arbitrary to me to simply agree to that new framework for physics- and I would until I left my town and found out that beyond my immediate local community everyone else still believed in gravity.
My bug a boo is that intelligent well educated people can believe incredible things like the Austro-Hungarian empire should be won back at the cost of genocide, but everyone ignores those guys and thinks that if this one counterintelligence officer had gotten into Art School WW2 wouldn't have happened. Very smart specialized people are no less susceptible to joining cults and I see the mistake made rhetorically over and over to claim the ignorance of working class people is why a bad person was elected or people do not understand how to practice safety in a pandemic, and it just gives those with a growing sense of persecution fuel, doesn't hold the experts accountable for why they are no longer held as credible.
Conspiracy theories almost always rely on the motte-and-bailey fallacy, where a collection of plausible or even empricially accurate claims are held up to defend and justify a much larger collection of increasing implausible or irrational ones. The consequence of this is that practical issues are transformed into more abstract ideological ones, and it becomes much harder to work towards reforms that could actually address the real issues that might be a part of the overarching theory.
I'm sorry but did you just mansplain conspiracy theories to me sir? The nerve of people.
Like China sending a weather balloon over to spy on America or Russia buying an election.
Just how dim do you have to be?
"Conspiracy theory" is an unfortunately chosen technical term. Because conspiracy theorists will take it literally and point to the fact that real conspiracies exist, and that people have theories about those, as evidence that being a conspiracy theorist is legitimate.
In Germany at least we've taken to calling them "conspiracy myths" instead, which I think better encapsulates the function they have for believers, too. They explain complicated messy reality in an emotionally engaging moral narrative with villains etc., the same way traditional mythology does.
@@GloomDept Please refer back to the definition of the technical term "conspiracy theory" given in the video. I am specifically talking about capital-C Conspiracy Theories. Not simply any hypothesis about the existence of a conspiracy. Capital-C Conspiracy Theories employ a specific kind of narrative that's _intrinsically, by its nature and structure_ worthless at actually explaining reality. That's why they aren't a legitimate point of view.
@@Eet_MiaBecause Deutschebank was corrupt as fck, and some agents were more corrupt than others. Although I’d like citations on their having the same agent, because that’s the kind of detail conspiracy theorists add to stories.
@@Eet_Mia Oh dear. Was my explanation too commonsense?
@@Eet_Mia Do you have something that’s not a video? I like having facts laid out in a way I can read at my own pace, not wait for the narrator to get around to telling me.
Nice little Russell brand cameo there...
What I want to know is whether they chose the name "PLOS ONE" for their journal specifically because it sounds so much like "plus-one". Why would they do that? Has anyone looked at their funding/motives?
a human problem that exacerbates this, is that people generally believe they have more control over there decisions/believes than they really do in practice. we are all susceptible to persuasion (not always a bad thing), but its not helpful to assume you had all the power in choosing
People seem to generally have a hard time being mindful of, recognizing, and acknowledging just how flawed their personal perception of a situation can be. They also generally don't want to accept that they might've been tricked or deceived into taking on particular world views.
Well yeah we're pigeons
@@smugmode to be clear, i see a lot of data from web/app usage. i interview people for user testing. its humans and pigeons
@@donnydogpiss4533 agreed. I think. i think this extends to general life too (not conspiracy theories, but on a more basic level, how you pick between one thing and another). it’s less that people are being tricked and more that the way you make decisions is a combination of many factors and the individual in the middle is only a small part of that. (i have seen a lot data from marketing/advertising, it’s remarkable how many people were reel off the tagline of an advert and claimed that it’s an idea they came up with themselves for example)
01:45 I would never believe such an unrealistic prospect.
18:25 now that's headgear
Operation Northwoods, Operation Mockingbird, MK Ultra, Operation Paperclip and the Tuskegee Experiments are some of the reasons people believe in conspiracy theories.
Well documented events in history are reasons why we should believe the earth is flat?
@@kieranhurst8543 I never said the Earth is flat. What I was insinuating was that our government has lied to us and has perpetrated some pretty evil actions against the populace. Giving black people syphilis and telling them that they just have bad blood is evil. Wanting to kill Americans in a false flag to justify going to war with Cuba is evil. Actively controlling the narratives in the media is evil. Working with Nazis is evil. We don't even know all the crazy evil shit that went down with MK Ultra because the records were destroyed for national security. So can you show me a point in time were the government stopped lying and stopped being evil? The same shit is most likely still going on.
@@kyledutton6550you'll hate the government right up until someone you like is in power
And then when someone you don't like is in power, you'll go straight back to hating them
All good ones.
Also one of Kennedy's speech before he was killed warned people about a shadow government but I guess that didn't happened jk
The problem with "conspiracy theory" is who determins what is a conspirqcy theory and what is actual coruption.
People calling everything a conspirqcy theory is really stupid. Its like coruption möno longer exist, so just stop it.
Birds aren't real though
Very interesting!
Wait, it's a conspiracy theory that Bush knew there was no WMDs in Iraq? I thought that was commonly accepted fact now. The interviews they had Chaney giving up until the start of the war were absolutely absurd.
you know, mainstream narrative governs all, or else you'll be silenced. or some conspiracy theory like that
Georg gives the Iraq WMD situation as an example of an actual conspiracy, contrasting it against a 9/11 theory.
@@chronoplague 9/11 the coincidence theorists dream.
From indestructable passports, building 7, all cctv cameras not working at the Pentagon and a statewide mock terrorist hijacking exercise happening on the exact same day. All a series of terrible coincidences ofcourse.
@@JS-oh2dpwell said, WMD conspiracy was a thing proven true and doesn’t need to tie into the twin towers falling or any other theory for it to be true. The definition used for conspiracy theory is the problem.
@@chronoplague9/11 was clearly an inside job. Runs the gamut of allowed to happen to made it happen.
Because through incompetence or deceipt, nothing is as it seems, or as we're told.
Seems to whom? Told by who?
Nothing at all? Not only is that demonstratably false but geez, imagine going through life as an unironic contrarian to everything, you'd be absolutely insufferable to be around. It's just not healthy.
Only OGs know we've been to John Voigts woods before
I would not have expected such a wholesale dismissal of conspiracy theories and "conspiratorial thinking", and particularly of medical conspiracy theories, from the same Georg who also notably covered the American opiod crisis. Which was also a medical conspiracy theory, before it was medical conspiracy fact.
Maybe it's not really so absurd or foolish to sometimes see malevolent agency in governments and corporations and medical institutions.
Yeah I came to this channel from the video about Teflon, that video also proved that the government and corporations conspired to hide the truth. Georg is a boomer trapped in a younger body.
The american opioid epidemic is not a conspiracy, its just white collar crime. Like industries using asbestos even years after it was proven to cause cancer, or the soda industry constantly lobbying to make people think that fat is bad for their health while in reality its sugar.
Its just crime disguised in business interests.
Watching George turn into controlled opposition
This isn't the real Georg. He was replaced by an android.
In the video, Georg did describe the difference between conspiracy and conspiracy theory.
And George Owell was a conspiracy theorist.
What, specifically, are you referring to?
@@hastekulvaati9681 for the book 1984 can be seen as the direction we are going towards, what with all the Orwellien double-speak, newspeak, mass surveillance, memoryholing of the past, mass servalience, removal or freedoms, mass brainwashing and general propaganda. Orwel called it.
@@lemdixon01 Right, so you're saying Orwell wrote a dystopian novel whose themes you find prophetic. How does that make him a "conspiracy theorist" though?
@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs because the things which occurred in the novel involved intention to conspire whether an open conspiracy or otherwise if propaganda disguised the intent and the fact that these things in the novel which are coming true would suggest the same intention of leaders in the non fictional real world. Orwell had no concrete evidence so he had just theories that the ruling class would conspire in the way outlined in the book. He achieved this with something called intuition, which is something that a normie, NPC aka one of the sheeple would not posses or suppress or mistake for instinct.
Is it a conspiracy that I'm fairly certain this is a reupload?
the whole borax thing fills me with mirth.
how low can one go in being a complete crackpot?
It doesn't take conspiracy theories for me not to take some drug the FDA approved on emergency measures. Especially if you've ever heard of Thalidomide. Or read the statistics on how many drugs get their approval rescinded (close to 60%).
Thalidomide is safe and effective 😂😂
Well I don't see anyone mass-dying from the COVID vaccine, so I guess this was the 40% that worked..
How about after the drug has been out for years, with good results both in studies and in real-world use? Or is it still unacceptable?
@@mrjones2721 which drug? Define "years". Look up thalidomide at least if you want to be less ignorant.
Because these days a lot of them seem to turn out to be true.
All I learned from this video is to be wary of John Voight.
Isn’t there a thing about pollock paintings tho where he intentionally makes fractals?
Big topic boiled down and understandable. Great stuff.
I think George Carlin was generally right about conspiracies. They aren't real, exactly, but people in similar positions of power have like interests and they will always work to advance those interests. The famous "It's all a big club and you ain't in it," routine. If you assume the worst about people in general, you're rarely proven wrong and it's way more plausible to believe that people are vultures who capitalize on tragedy rather than form ludicrous conspiracies to inflict it.
Good points!
The indication that people who believe in the paranormal fail to see patterns that actually exist is extremely curious to me. I wonder if that’s been expanded upon elsewhere.
I drive past an Evangelical church every day that has a large banner hanging outside: 'The end of days is here! Are you ready?'
Weird parnoid beliefs can last thousands of years, it's just that we call them religion when enough people buy in.
Yeah end times... And that they often believe there's a super intelligent devil at large who's always trying to trick them but also leaves lots of cryptic clues in plain sight. I guess if you bring enough people up in that sort of environment a lot of them are going to be primed to see hidden conspiracies everywhere when they're adult.
Conspiracies can almost by like inception. And in some, there are so many layers and rabbit holes that reality starts to-if not already-unravel more and more, the more you can finding patterns that aren't really there. They're just coincidence. Weird, yes. A little too convenient, also yes. But still just coincidence.
If I believe and don't believe the earth is flat at the same time. Do I, or do I not belive the earth is flat?
Yeah its always been so curious to me that the people that are so certain and well versed in conspiracies often believe in almost every single on that exists and that they don't see the flaw in that type of thinking.
@@Eet_MiaWhere is the kernel of truth in the theory that Hillary Clinton’s campaign wasn’t ordering pizzas to feed volunteers, it was ordering children for the campaign-runners to have sex with?
And yes, most people who go down the rabbit hole do believe what they say they believe.
@@Eet_Mia That is usually how deception works though. Usually some truth sprinkled in the tsunami of disinformation. There are probably some conspiracy theories that are true Im definitely open to that. But it's pointless jumping to conclusions and putting together dots that aren't there before any real evidence gets you there.
@@mrjones2721pizza gate had literally hundreds of pieces of evidence. Your lack of research is not an argument or refutation.
George's closing comments on the basic psychological trappings of conspiracy culture is succint and valid. It cuts to the quick of it all. You will find no greater measure of the human need for agency - for a signal in the noise - for community, clarity, and order - than in the resurgence of crazy complots in an increasingly globalised, noisy, and chaotic world.
Watch out for that Chinese weather balloon - it's out to get you!
Some of these should be changed to conspiracy hypothesis. A theory has a different meaning than a hypothesis.
Agreed.
Apophenia - is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.
I tend to believe in conspiracy theories, because I've discovered that after I've been mocked and ridiculed over said beliefs for a few years, it's all of a sudden mainstream news.
I won't outright say you're full of it, but I am suspicious. At the risk of being one of those "internet argument' types, could you give a few examples of a former conspiracy theory (as defined by this video) that you believed, were mocked for, and then turned out to be completely correct?
@@mtgtraininggrounds6879UFOs
COVID
Bloody Sunday
British control of the IRA
I don't call them theories, at this point they are spoilers.
First it's "it's not happening you're just a conspiracy theorist"
Then it's "it's happening but it's super rare"
Last it's "here's why it's a good thing it's happening"
@@TheMysteryDriversame with Ukraine
Their are no notzees Putin made us make those documentaries about Ukraine's notzee problems
Then It was ok theirs a few but they're not involved in government or military stuff
Then it was ok they're notzees but they're good notzees
Now it's we give standing ovations to notzees and then blame Putin when we get caught.
@@TheMysteryDriver and you are wrong. typically if a conspiracy theorist is right about something it goes like this:
first it's "it's not happening you're just a conspiracy theorist"
then it's "huh, it's happening, but you were so annoying about beeing right, while not presenting any evidence to convince anybody reasonable"
Last it's "holy shit, will you please shut up and stop being so smug about beeing right about something by chance, even though, and i must repeat myself, you didn't have evidence, did a poor job of convincing people of your position, and beeing a nuisance about the topic from morning till afternoon. now please leave me alone, we need to fix this"
beeing accidently right in the end, doesn't make that your theory follows from the available information at the time the claim was made. obviously
@@JohnKobaRuddy I'm starting to think that you get your news about what's on the mainstream media from other conspiracy theorists, not from the mainstream media. Because that is absolutely not how the narrative about Nazis in Ukraine went.
There is a conspiracy that good ol' Georg is a deity with his ichor left displayed inside the Lava Lamp and that he consumes Hip Tang as his ambrosia to maintain his immortality