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LINK Why Aren't We All Conspiracy Theorists?

Turn conspiracy theorizing upside down and you begin to see solutions.

QAnon is now as popular as some major religions. That’s the finding of a study released by The Public Religion Research Institute. QAnon, of course, is a conspiracy theory centered on the idea that a cabal of Satan-worshipping, sex-trafficking pedophiles runs America. Another study found that 56% of Republicans believe that this theory is partly or mostly true. Facts like these underscore the importance of understanding how normal people become conspiracy theorists. But we also need to understand how others avoid this fate. When we study how minds resist the allure of conspiracy thinking, we discover overlooked ways to prevent cognitive contagion.

Asking “How does thinking go wrong?” has led to important discoveries. Such inquiries have shown that our minds are fundamentally lazy and like to take shortcuts. We’re hungry for confirming evidence and dismissive of inconvenient truths. When we reason, it’s often to protect our identities and rationalize self-serving delusions.

Findings like these paint a bleak portrait of the human mind. According to the now-standard view, our thinking is cynical, self-interested, and litigious. We’re seething cauldrons of biases and fallacies, many of them innate. Objectivity is a mirage; rationality, a false hope.

But if this is an accurate picture, why aren’t we all QAnon followers? Why aren’t we all in climate denial? I’d certainly sleep better if I thought climate change was a hoax; I bet you would too. So why don’t you and I believe that?

The answer is that some of us have a degree of immunity to the claims of climate denialists. You may be immune also to QAnonsense. The solicitations of Scientologists may strike you as silly, and belief in Bigfoot may strike you as bunk. If any of these things are true, you have a kind of resistance, or immunity, to some bad ideas. (None of us is immune to all bad ideas.) We’ll awaken from our post-truth nightmare when we understand mental immunity: what it is, where it comes from, and how to develop the mind’s defenses.

Sixty years ago, a psychologist named William McGuire discovered that minds behave as if they have immune systems. He established that you can expose minds to weakened forms of potentially mind-changing arguments and thereby inoculate them against stronger arguments. Since then, advertisers, religious apologists, and propagandists have leveraged his findings to close and manipulate minds.

Now, scholars are using inoculation theory to free minds. Some are inoculating minds against misinformation. Others are applying its principles to fight science denial. A new science is emerging: the science of immunity to bad ideas.

I call this new field “cognitive immunology.” It deploys a frame of reference that recognizes the ubiquity of infectious nonsense and treats resistance to it as a noteworthy achievement. Through this lens, senseless beliefs may warrant explanation, but acquired immunity to infectious ideas is especially salient. Cognitive immunology helps us understand what many minds are doing right.

Here’s the idea: false, baseless, and destructive ideas are mind parasites. Some are infectious and harm the minds that host them. But minds have defenses—“mental immune systems”—that offer some protection. These are natural systems, and we can study them like we do other natural systems. We can learn how they work and why they sometimes fail. Then, we can apply what we learn to prevent mental immune system breakdowns.

Cognitive immunologists are making strides. We’ve identified the mind’s antibodies. We know the basics of how mental immune systems work. (A healthy mind deploys questions and doubts to ward off problematic ideas; in unhealthy minds, this “mental immune function” is suppressed, misdirected, or hyperactive.) We’ve learned that intelligence does not prevent mind infections, and that critical thinking skills can be used in motivated and selective ways. We’re cataloguing species of mental immune disorders. We’re isolating mental immune disruptors (beliefs that interfere with healthy idea assessment) and designing mental immune boosters (instruction that strengthens our ability to spot and remove bad ideas). We’re even experimenting with mind vaccines.

We won’t achieve herd immunity to conspiracy thinking overnight. But there are grounds for hope. Thanks to the existence of healthy mental immune systems, we aren’t all conspiracy theorists. Our understanding of mental immunity is growing, and in coming years, we’re going to get much better at inoculating minds. The science of immunology has all but eliminated the threat to human well-being posed by smallpox, polio, and measles. Within months, it will probably rescue us from Covid-19. Someday soon, we’ll say the same of conspiracy thinking, science denial, and divisive ideologies: Immunology allowed us to conquer them.

HippieChick58 9 Aug 12
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16 comments

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1

Short answer: because we use our heads to think not to wear MAGA hats!

2

I don't buy the cognitive immunology. And mind inoculation? Let's see some evidence.

I do think that laziness is a problem, and I can even admit to being lazy myself on occasion. Adding to the laziness is the vast amount of information we are all subjected to on a daily basis. No one can possibly sort through all the info that is available.

The other point that has not been raised is that news that evokes emotions is addicting. All you have to do is get your sensational news out there, and people will be hooked.

And I am too lazy to go into detail on any of this.

1

Made a mental note while reading this last night and was again reminded this morning. Here is an important link: [npr.org]

I think that is an excellent idea.

@HippieChick58 Since Washington is the first state to make sex education mandatory maybe we need to adopt this program as well.

1

I would say, depending on your point of view, ideology and belief systems, we all are.

1

Conspiracy theories always bring down a group or person. They erode confidence. This begs the question: Is this a leverage point for our greater foreign enemies like Russia? Is some of this fueled by racism?

3

The bottom line is that real working intelligence, the sort that we use in the every days world, has little to do with brain power or problem solving skills, of which most of us have more than enough to solve most real world problems. It is much more to do with commitment, effort, and the skills which come with practice when you do commit.

But of course there is only limited profit and power to be gained, in helping others who can do things for themselves, there is however vast profit to be made from indulging other peoples laziness. Every supermarket is filled with ready made meals, and every newspaper and web-page with ready made answers and opinions.

3

It not that complicated. Not everyone has the abilitly for critical thinking, this includes people who seem intelligent andmay even br successful folks like lawyers and doctors. They may have the ability to study and pass difficult courses and solve complicated problems, but that doesn't mean they have the ability for critical thought or abstract thinking. There are also the people who are born just plain stupid. They will be stupid untill the day they die. Both groups are easily manipulated, especially the stupid who are afraid of everything because they don't understand much of anything. Never forget 49% of the people have double digit IQs. There are also the greedy, who don't really care about anything except making as much money as they can right now and will let nothing, even global warming stand in their way.

8

Becuz I personally go to, for one example, the local Public Records files (building permits are public info) when I read about "Pizzagate", and learn that the entire building housing that pizza parlor is built on a concrete slab, no basement, (as are most commercial spaces), and then I think, well, gonna be hard to run a pedophile ring from a non-existant basement. Duh.

5

Not just people's minds are lazy but, for too many, the term covers the whole body. This post reminded me of a report on NPR this morning about Illinois schools introducing programs in HS to get students to learn to see false stories. I'll try to post it tomorrow.

3

Republicons want something and they want it right now. They also want to stay in office so they stay together in basic idiotic beliefs. I say it that way because I have not found any Democrats who are QAnon people. If they were they would switch and be a Republican. All of this took some time for people to be molded and it seems clear that the current group of Conspiracy Theorists have Clown Disease. The Clown is getting us right where he wants us and it is working because we no longer have anything taught in our high schools about American government and how it works. The popular thought is that if enough people want it "reinstatement" is a possibility. You can pray harder or just keep giving the Clown money. He might have money for when the creditors come calling soon, or he might start "January 6th Part Two."

Maybe, just maybe, they'll find enough to charge him with the attempted coup...

7

My favorite part of reading that was "QAnonsense" 🤣

Same!

Same here!

3

Memetics and its allied forced analogies are examples of our tendency to impose patterns on stuff, in this case culture. So use forced analogies to explain the false patterns seen by conspiracy theorists and suggest a cure? Yikes!

3

While your post expresses an ideal that would be attractive to every mind that is allergic to bullshit, I have difficulty with drawing too close a parallel between bodily immunology and cognitive immunology. I have seen countless minds who feel immensely threatened by engaging in critical thinking (and mine was once one of those minds). My intolerance of logical fallacies was more powerful than the fear put into my mind by a religious asshole when I was aged 10. My primary concern is that bullshit defense mechanisms of the American Deep South mentality will never give way to logic and reason - there is too much herd stupidity.

I'm in the deep South, more and more people are rejecting bullshit.
It's a slow process, but it IS happening.

@KKGator Thank you for sharing that news. 🙂

@creative51 That's no lie.

4

many incapable of honest thinking or unwilling to open their eyes to it, will just go with whatever they wish to think in order to justify to world to their way of seeing it. thinking reaches the preferred conclusion often.

10

I was immunized by attending the Clayhatchee Assembly of God Church for eleven years while attending school at the same time. I default believed the church, my studies showed the church wrong, which is why religion hates academics and science.
It also helps to not give a fuck about the ego self.
Don't let your ego become deluded that it's greater than the sum of all human experience and you're just naturally immune to the noise.
Most Qanon is also into the delusion of white supremacy and a noble South, both of which are serious mental conditions that the victim may never recover from because they've bonded the concept to their sense of identity, just as religion does.
Apes have a difficult time seeing themselves for what they actually are.

Hey, what did the apes ever do to you?

@Paul4747 As the one great ape said to the other great ape "When in America, speak Navajo!".

@anglophone According to the Illuminatus! trilogy, the gorillas and other apes are libertarians who can speak just fine, but choose not to. As one put it; "If word got out we could talk, the right-wingers would kill half of us and charge the rest rent to live on our own land. The Christians would try to convert us, and the liberals would try to teach us how to run engine-lathes for a living. Who wants to run a fucking engine lathe?"

@Paul4747 Ah, my ignorance is showing. 🙂

@anglophone Read it if you get a chance, do. Also the Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, both by Robert Anton Wilson. But read Illuminatus! first or you'll not understand half of the Cat's references.

But prepare to have your mind blown, as both travel through alternative conspiratorial frameworks and/or alternate quantum realities, and we're never meant to be quite certain which to believe.

@Paul4747 Thanks for the tip. 🙂

4

People are stupid. They believe in flying saucers, palm readers, fortune tellers, Scientology or any other bullshit religion. That's why they hate us Atheists so much. We are immune to conspiracy theories. I know, there are people in the Conservative Atheist group some of whom espouse conspiracy theories. I contend that most of them are frauds. They either don't believe the lies they are pushing or they are closet theists.

@TheMiddleWay I disagree. Atheist don't buy into the big lie of a god, they are much less likely to buy into these crazy nutjob claims. I wouldn't say immune. I wish there was a vaccine for that. Of course they wouldn't take it anyway.

@TheMiddleWay Any theory that would go against accepted church doctrine would be palatable to atheists. I don't even accept as fact Jesus existed or was anything but a fictitious character.

How about just plain old morons?

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