The Psychology Thread

That's another thing:

If "they" are so powerful, far reaching, and ruthless, how come does anybody know their plots? What's keeping them from silencing the "truthers", "they" seem to be more than capable and willing to.

Honestly, I think conspiracy theorists are just insecure.

They are insecure. They want to feel in control. They want to feel special. They want real life to have clear-cut good guys and bad guys.

Sometimes, it's also because they don't really want to believe something horrible happened. Case in point: a few Sandy Hook "truthers" swallowed that bullshit because they didn't really want to believe a bunch of schoolchildren were gunned down. They don't want to believe they live in a world where horrible shit like this can happen.

It's rather ironic that the people who come up with vast ridiculous conspiracy theories do so out of an attempt to simplify the world.

edited 27th Sep '17 8:33:18 PM by M84

I like how Alan Moore put it:

“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory.

The truth is far more frightening - Nobody is in control.

The world is rudderless.”

Steven Universe also brought it up:

You know, that sounds very Rick Sanchez-ish.

There's actually fanart that makes Pearl into Rick. (and Connie as Morty for some reason)

I had that thought myself, the first time I heard about the so-called "Gray Alien" conspiracy. Like, here's the most spectacularly unsuccessful conspiracy in all history: images of Gray Aliens are everywhere, everything from coffee mugs to TV comedies. You would have to live on an alien planet to not have heard about Gray Aliens.

How do people deal with reoccurring thoughts that don't seem to go away?

It depends on where the thoughts are coming from, pretty much. Trying to combat psychotic aural delusions with behavioural therapy alone is like trying to stop a lion with a stick: doable, but you need to be both really skilled and bloody lucky. Medication, yay!

Anxiety spirals respond quite well to CBT... unless they've got to cluster C proportions. Then you need a raft of time, therapy, social and medical treatments.

It seems like my anxiety towards those negative thoughts and even telling to go away is ironically enough bringing them back.

Judiciously applied displacement activity could be your friend. Difficult bosses, walking a confused (but happy) dog, finding a toddler who can harass you... anything unrelated to the issues, but that gets the cardio going to work off the extra hormones thumping about your system.

Unless the heart is already going a mile a minute: breathing exercises and singing along to slow-beat tunes — out loud or in your head.

edited 15th Dec '17 5:59:07 PM by Euodiachloris

Okay I will give those a shot.

I wanna go back to this for a second:

The thing is, conspiracy theorists don't have explanations. One of my mom's friends (who I think is a bad influence on her) is visiting for the weekend and I told him that I read that the Blue Planet Project he told me about last night was a hoax. When he naturally laughed it off, I asked if there was any solid evidence. All he told me was that he's "seen three". He couldn't produce any photos, footage, or anything of the sort. Then, I got into a debate with him on the "aliens built the pyramids" theory. Eventually, I asked him a very simple question: why would aliens come to Earth. He then proceeded to go on this long, completely unrelated tangent about Korea and the UN and EMPs and the Bible and stuff, barely (if at all) addressing my question. Then, my mom suggested aliens come here because they want our resources, so we spend some time arguing about that. Then, when I tried to argue that if aliens were sufficiently more advanced in technology than Earth was, they could simply synthesize anything they didn't already have, she very clearly got upset and ignored me. This is just a fraction of the madness I just spent Heaven knows how long going through in my living room.

It's been said that conspiracy theorists want to believe they have the answers, but once you start pressing them, it turns they don't really have any,

Any advanced, interstellar alien that supposedly wants whatever resources our system has to offer can access the entire Oort cloud with no pesky us to deal with. Every basic material Sol ever produced is right there in quantities that put our little rocky dot to shame, along with whatever stray material from other stars that got picked up.

Earth is peanuts.

They have a simple explanation that makes sense to them: aliens built the pyramids. They wont, of course, back this up with anything resembling rigorous facts, or a theoretical framework conistent with all the facts, because rigor is complicated, and complicated sets of facts and logic defeat the entire purpose of a conspiracy theory, which is to reassure simple minded people that they understand what is happening in the world better than the experts. The whole point is to make mainstream establishment explanations of things look dishonest and stupid, which cant be done if you follow the same methodology that the experts use.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but the guy I was talking with unironically used "facts" as a scare quote.^note Is it still a scare quote in a verbal conversation? You know, like how you do when you're making fun of conspiracy theorists?

Exactly. He's making fun of empiricism. Because obviously he knows better.

Hi,

Over in the US politics thread, we've having a discussion about how the alt-right easily indoctrinates children, and how people accept the alt-right's message in America.

Could you offer any views on this?

Related to (and ), I am curious as to why people (conspiracy theorists, Fan Dumb, etc.) seem to think they are always right or know better than actual experts (tautologies aside)?

edited 18th Dec '17 1:49:53 PM by MorningStar1337

Dunning-Kruger effect? As well as illusory superiority? Conceptually that is, I don‘t know about neurobiological aspects.

I'm still not exactly sure what the Dunning-Kruger effect is.

People who lack a skill in something also lack the ability to recognize their lack of skill. They're bad because they cannot even recognize what would be needed and thus don't realize their inadequacy; thinking themselves better than they really are.

It refers to the observation that people who aren‘t good at something often have a high opinion about their competence about that something. Presumably because you need to understand something to judge your competence about it.

So it's similar to the Giftedly Bad trope?

Not exactly-closer to 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. The Dunning-Kruger Effect essentially means that people who lack a skill or ability typically also lack the perceptive ability to recognize that; someone is not simply bad at something, but they have no way of realizing that, and when confronted with evidence contrary to their beliefs will generally retreat into an echo chamber or illusory script in their head. Hardly the only contributor to anti-science and anti-intellectualism, but certainly a portion of the lines of thinking that lead people to reject expertise in favor of what 'feels right'.

TL;DR...'People think they have a good bead on things.' They are frequently wrong, especially in counter-intuitive arenas.

edited 18th Dec '17 3:28:22 PM by ViperMagnum357