All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
June 28, 2011 - Skeptoid
15:25
Skeptoid #264: Conspiracy Theorists Aren't Crazy

We usually dismiss conspiracy theorists as crazy people; but that doesn't tell the whole story. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Why Conspiracy Theories Are Normal 00:13:24
When someone asks me what's the most far-out conspiracy theory I've heard of, they always use the word crazy.
What's the craziest conspiracy theory?
Well, I've got to answer honestly, I don't believe any of them are crazy.
Conspiracy theories are one artifact of the brain functioning exactly as it's supposed to, and they impact all of us to some degree.
So either we're all crazy, or none of us are.
We're taking a deep dive into this up next on Skeptoid.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
I'm doing something else now.
I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind.
No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's HyperFixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from skeptoid.com.
Conspiracy theorists aren't crazy.
Today, we're going to descend into the darkest depths of the human mind to learn what makes a conspiracy theorist tick.
Or as some would put it, to learn why his tick seems just a bit off.
Is there anything we can learn from the conspiratorial mind?
And is there a method to its apparent madness?
The human brain evolved in such a way as to keep itself alive to the best of its ability.
For the past few million years, our ancestors faced a relatively straightforward daily life.
Their job was simply to stay alive.
Like us, they had different personalities, different aptitudes, different attitudes.
This was borne out in many ways, but the classic example that's often used is that something would rustle in the tall grass.
Some of our ancestors weren't too concerned and figured it was merely the wind, but others were more cautious, suspected a panther, and jumped for the nearest tree.
Over the eons and hundreds of thousands of generations, the nonchalant ancestors were wrong and got eaten just often enough that eventually more survivors were those who tended toward caution and even paranoia.
In evolution, it pays to err on the side of caution.
The brains most likely to survive were those who saw a panther in every breath of wind, an angry god in every storm cloud, a malevolent purpose in every piece of random noise.
We are alive today as a race, in part because our brains piece random events together into a pattern that adds up to a threat that may or may not be real.
As a result, we're afraid of the dark, even though there's rarely a monster.
Thunder frightens us, even though lightning is scarcely a credible threat, and we perceive the menace of malevolent conspiracies in the acts of others, despite the individual unlikelihood of any one given example.
Conspiratorial thinking is not a brain malfunction.
It's our brain working properly and doing exactly what it evolved to do.
So then, why aren't we all conspiracy theorists?
Why don't we all see conspiracies all day long?
It's because we also have an intellect and enough experience with living in our world that we're usually able to correctly analyze the facts and fit them into the way we have learned things really work.
It is, exactly as it sounds, a competition between two forces in our head.
One is the native instinctive impulse to see everything as a threat, and the other is our rational, conscious thought that takes that input and judges it.
Let's look at two examples that illustrate the ends of the spectrum.
David Eich is a British conspiracy theorist best known for his claim that most world leaders are actually reptilian aliens wearing electronic disguises.
When you pause a video, he points to the compression artifacting and asserts that it's a glitch in the electronic disguise.
However, he's out in the world.
He tours.
He writes books.
He has a family and is a member of his community.
He's not locked in an asylum, as we might expect from hearing his theory.
The reason is that he's probably not mentally ill at all.
His brain is doing exactly what it's supposed to.
He sees a group of powerful men, and the instinctive part of his brain suggests a sinister purpose.
Imagine yourself seeing the ministers of the G8, or some similar collection.
A thought passes through all our minds, something like this.
I bet they all know something I don't know.
I'd love to hear what they were talking about.
They're up to something.
That's the same thing David Eyck thinks.
It's exactly what our brains evolved to do.
Our brains all want to go there.
And then the intellect receives this warning and analyzes it based on its knowledge.
And we all have different knowledge built from different experiences.
One who has had negative experiences with authority is likely to gauge this situation differently than one who has not.
David Eich probably has some past experience that makes his intellect properly, if incorrectly, assign more credence to the threat than is necessary, overtly so in his particular case.
Most of the rest of us have rarely seen a news story where a secret collusion among world leaders was discovered.
So our intellectual understanding of the world has good reason to reject this particular instinctive threat as being improbable.
Thus, we conclude that it's probably just a group of business people doing what they have to do.
Now we all fall somewhere along that spectrum, and all perspectives are the result of our brains properly doing their job.
Take another example, this time of the Big Pharma conspiracy.
Our brains see a group of huge profitable companies in the same industry, and the pattern is obvious.
Instinct throws up its warning flag.
They're up to something evil, they are a threat.
That is the brain's normal and expected first response.
Next comes the intellectual filter to evaluate the reality of the threat.
Only this time, many more of us match the threat to things we've seen in the news.
There are genuine conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry.
Sometimes the rules for getting drugs approved have been bent.
Drugs have been taken off the market after initial findings of safety, many times.
In fact, the average person on the street probably knows little about the pharmaceutical industry, except for examples of such cases making it into the news.
In this case, the knowledge that many people's intellect uses to drive its conspiracy filter is likely to give this one a score of plausible.
Let's look at the results.
Suspicion toward big pharma is fairly widespread, while suspicion of reptoid aliens controlling the world is quite limited.
Most other conspiracies fall somewhere in between these two.
Whether it's David Icke seeing reptoids or your co-workers and neighbors shunning government-approved drugs, it's the same thought process, and it's the brain doing its job properly.
Like a classroom of students who all honestly studied hard and yet still got varying scores on the test.
Our brains are going to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes.
But they're all following the proper steps to get there.
Conspiratorial thinking is not necessarily, by itself, indicative of psychiatric illness.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
Ask your local public radio station to air the Skeptoid Files, a 30-minute radio-friendly version of Skeptoid that pairs two related episodes promoting real science, true history, and critical thinking.
And in these challenging times for public media, we're offering these broadcasts for free to radio stations, available on the PRX Exchange or directly from Skeptoid Media.
It's an easy ask.
Just send a quick message to your station's programming director.
By helping to bring the Skeptoid files to the airwaves, you'll help promote the essential skills we all need to tell fact from fiction.
Just go to your local station's website, find the programming director's email address, or just their general email address.
You can even use the telephone.
I know that might sound crazy.
It's an old legacy device that allows real-time voice communication.
I know that's weird, but hey, it's an option.
The world can feel chaotic, but you're not powerless.
When you promote critical thinking, you can help your community tell fact from fiction.
And that's how we shape a better future.
In uncertain times, spreading good ideas can make you feel helpful, not helpless.
Let's stand up for reason, truth, and understanding.
Together, get them to air the Skeptoid files from Skeptoid Media, available on the PRX Exchange, and they'll know what that is.
To determine when a person is over the line and should be treated, psychiatrists often look closely at the context.
Does the conspiratorial belief integrate harmlessly with this person's life?
Or does it dominate?
Has it caused problems, loss of job, loss of spouse, loss of security, or caused sociopathic behavior?
These are the types of things that differentiate a belief system from what we call an illness.
A person who thinks Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake is not ill, but a person who obsesses over it to the point of driving away their friends and family could well be.
The diagnosis is often delusional disorder.
It must be a primary disorder, which means that it's not a symptom of some other condition the patient may have.
It has to be the primary psychopathology.
There are six types.
First, erotomanic, usually seen when the patient believes some famous celebrity is in love with them.
Two, grandiose, claiming to be famous or ingenious, sometimes claiming to be a real famous person who's actually an imposter.
Three, jealous, when they believe their partner is unfaithful when it's not true to the point of irrationality.
4.
Persecutory, when they believe they're being spied on by the government or some evil force, often filing frequent police reports or making confrontations.
5.
Somatic, when they believe they have some undiagnosed or unique medical condition.
Or 6.
Mixed, some combination of the above with none predominating.
Such people could benefit from treatment, usually a combination of drug therapy and psychotherapy.
However, as we've discussed before on Skeptoid, getting them to agree to treatment at all is usually the primary barrier.
They believe their delusion is real.
They will present their evidence to prove it until the cows come home.
it's often impossible to get them to consider the possibility that the reality of what they perceive might be due in any degree to psychopathology.
But if you've had a conversation with a conspiracy theorist, and almost all of us have, you've met people who do not display symptoms of delusional disorder far more often than those who do.
The ordinary conspiracy theorist is an intelligent, sane, and generally rational person.
They are, in fact, unsettlingly less different from you than you have thought.
Now, not all detection of purposeful agency sees something evil.
For example, we now know that the sun, moon, planets, stars, and constellations are simply other bodies floating through space and doing their thing, much as our Earth does.
But early human cultures, who lacked better knowledge, suspected them to be purposeful entities that existed only to influence humankind on this one particular rock.
This brain function that kept our species safe from threats also formed the basis for pagan religions, the great polytheistic European cultures, and astrology.
Note that astrology still thrives today.
Astrology is psychologically similar to conspiratorial thinking.
Both represent the healthy brain's perception of purposeful agency in ordinary phenomena.
But one sees danger, while the other sees comfort.
All of our brains naturally take us there, and it's only our learned intellect that reins us back.
We're all hardwired to experience a deep-rooted excitement at the thought of opening a fortune cookie, though most of us have learned to put little stock in the fortune.
Embrace Your Inner Conspirator 00:01:58
And if handed today's horoscope, few can deny that their brain will go straight to their own zodiac sign to see what it says.
There's no need to be embarrassed about doing either of these.
It's one of the things your brain is supposed to do.
So embrace your inner conspiracy theorist.
Learn to identify and understand your own conspiratorial thinking, and you'll be better prepared to comprehend the position of the next conspiracy theorist you talk with.
When you dismiss someone as paranoid or crazy, remember, it might be you who's wrong.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Hello everyone, this is Adrienne Hill from Skookum Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and moose.
And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as $5 per month.
And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double doubles.
And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar.
Why support Skeptoid?
If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, Premium is for you.
If you want to support a worthwhile non-profit that combats pseudoscience, promotes critical thinking, and provides free access to teachers to use the podcast in the classroom via the teacher's toolkit, then sign up today.
Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
Next to giggling, of course.
Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
From PRX.
Export Selection