[Confession] Inside the Mind of a Conspiracy Theorist

Here's something based on my experiences and observations, and I'd really appreciate it if anyone had any feedback on it. I'd like to get this out there to whoever may need it, I feel it's the right time and pretty important.

For outsiders, it can help them understand the inner workings and underlying rational thought processes that we use. For people trying to make sense of everything, it is my hope that it can perhaps help people on a personal level. This one is the more personally oriented one, while the other write-up (linked to below) is the more long-term/big picture perspective.



Inside the Mind of a Conspiracy Theorist

I have a lot to say, probably more than I can type here and more than you want to read. (Also see the companion writeup “Beyond the Scientific Method: Shifting into the New Age”. Either one can be read first, depending on which seems more interesting.)

First some background on myself. I'm in my 20's, have university degrees (involving science/math/engineering). Raised christian, current orientation/religion would be too difficult to describe here, but you can take a guess after reading these. Raised conservative, but I can't accept any of those labels....everyone makes good arguments. The reason for this vagueness will become apparent soon.

Which (conspiracy) theor(y)(ies) do I subscribe to? None. Which do I believe in? All of them.

Furthermore, I recognize I am quite biased, reactionary, irrational, easily mislead, and possibly bigoted. (These are nothing but conspiracy theories, right?) I recognize that it is in fact impossible to know these traits about myself objectively, much less magically will them away. Instead I attempt to develop models (theories) of these traits in order to undistort the perceptions I have. These models are variable and unknown, and must be constantly updated. Furthermore, I must constantly and eternally fight bigotry because that is the single most dangerous trap, the ultimate conspiracy, if you will.
I'm going to write this very information dense, and it will seem like there are leaps in logic, because I won't necessarily build things up point by point. You might have to fill in some gaps. This is known on my part. In the context of the entire message, when using the reasoning I'm discussing, it will (should) make sense.

The term "conspiracy theory" is a very bad term. It doesn't really have to do with conspiracies. It has more to do with possibilities. And the term 'theory' is used a little bit loosely too, hypothesis would be better. But theory could potentially be ok. In fact, in my (biased) point of view, it shouldn't even have a name. Instead there should only be a name for non-conspiracy theorists, such as "subscribers" or "believers". Among the people out there actually making the theories, it's just normal...there is no special name for it. In other words, labels are usually reserved for specific things, such as "buddist", "liberal", "nazi", "academic", "steeler's fan", etc. Such labels denote certain attributes. However, there are almost never labels that denote everything but a specific attribute.

From a "conspiracy theorist's" point of view, the official story is one possibility. There are an infinite number of possibilities. It doesn't make sense to give a special name to everything except the one special case. The official story could be 99.99% right, but not totally right. It could be 57% correct. It could be 22% correct. It could be 0.01% correct. It could be 57% correct and one theory of what really happened could be true, but it could also be a different 57% correct and an entirely different theory could be true. In fact, the odds that any one person or organization is completely correct is pretty much zero. There is a continuum. A conspiracy theorist recognizes (a) there is a continuum of possibilities, (b) the likelihood of anyone being completely right is almost zero, and (c) all theories are recognized to be possibilities, not certainties. The last one is what I think most people have problems with. Most people are certain about their personal view of the world, and therefore when someone says they believe some version of something happened, they transfer their personal certainty onto the person making the claim, and are shocked at what they find. On the other hand, from the other person's view, it was implied that their theory isn't gospel. They probably don't even totally believe it themselves! They don't expect the other person to take it that way.

The problem is the differences of the underlying thought processes. "Believers" or "subscribers" are fundamentally process oriented. In other words, to them, the important thing is the thought process of deductive reasoning. They use it to arrive at a relatively certain conclusion. Deductive reasoning takes premises and rigorously develops them by rules of logic to arrive at a certain result. Deductive reasoning doesn't give unambiguous results. There is a 1 to 1 mapping of premises and conclusions. While "subscribers" have truly mastered deductive reasoning, they are unfortunately uncritically accepting of the underlying premise or premises from which they base their deductions on. These are not consciously observable. They stem from their childhood, social norms, and form the foundation of their lives. As I mentioned previously, it's not possible to be objective about yourself. You can't use deductive reasoning to discover the basic premises you hold, because that deductive reasoning would have to assume other premises. As is well known, deduction can't prove itself. The only way to obtain premises for use in deduction is through induction. Induction means that it happens so often that you take it as truth. This goes back to the upbringing and social norms I talked about. These have been repeated so many times through our lives that we take them as truth, then build our deductive premises from there. For example, if your village practiced a certain religion for the last 100 years, inductively you understand that is correct. Then you use that foundation to deduce other things about the world. There can be no other way. How does one throw off such an upbringing? Well, if he goes to school for 18 years, then another type of premise is unknowingly inducted into him. He learns that academia and governments actually hold the ultimate truth, and one's foundation for deduction should in fact be academic ideologies presented to him. You see, people can't simply not hold any premises. To do so would be to admit he knows nothing about the world. He knows nothing for certain. Anything is possible. This generates extreme fear in a person, the fear of the unknown. To simply admit that one truly cannot be certain of anything basically means that the rational mind, the greatest tool discovered by man, must be cast aside. Some other unknown thing is in control, leading to some unknown destination with unknown consequences.

On the other hand, the "conspiracy theorist" has "taken the red pill". Somewhere, they've fundamentally admitted they don't know anything for certain. As you can imagine, this can induce paranoia. When the rational mind is temporarily set aside, it becomes possible to see madness. Luckily, we need not grope around in the dark. We have tools available to us. We take our best tool and develop an advanced cognitive process. Through the conscious realization of our own previous flaws, we become able to tap into the hardware of our brains. Why? Because we aren't trapped in the strict process of deduction which was recognized as flawed anyway. It's like we were running a single-threaded algorithm previously on a cpu, but now we just fired up the graphics card. We're going to need it though because now we're going to face some pretty extreme statistical and pattern recognition challenges.

Instead of being fundamentally process oriented, specifically the process of deduction, "conspiracy theorists" are fundamentally observation driven. They uncritically absorb all data. They "believe" everything. But unlike the single-threaded deductivist, beliefs are not mutually exclusive. All beliefs are built up concurrently in parallel. It's ok if such beliefs, or theories, contradict one another. This is a statistical situation where there are only probable beliefs/theories. The top 3 theories could be contradictory for example. Maybe #3 is the official story, but #1 and #2 are alternate theories which contradict one another. They are based solely on trying to come up with theories to fit the data. In other words "the best guess based on everything you know".

What I've just described to you is known as abductive reasoning. Deduction was an exact processes yielding a single, certain outcome. While the process was exact, it was only as good as the premises it was based on. But it was impossible to deduce the premises. For that, the second method of reasoning was used, called induction. Through simple repetition, induction chose premises which deduction could then use. But we saw that was flawed too. Either you were isolated and believed whatever your village taught you, or you were formally educated and believed whatever official reports told you. These are great in academic settings where people are talking about the acceleration of a falling apple which can be replicated by anyone. But when talking about social or political stuff? It's not so great. Induction fails.

Abduction on the other hand can be defined as "the best guess based on everything you know". Induction could be viewed as a special case of abduction, because after you see something fall to the ground for the millionth time, you can safely say that everything you know tells you, inductively, it will happen again. But abduction is much more generalized. It has practical uses in artificial intelligence and law, for example. And also, as we've seen, in trying to form a basic view of the world without pretending you already know the starting point. What are the consequences of this? It means that (1) you won't arrive at absolute certainties, but rather likely probabilities, and (2) different people will necessarily arrive at different conclusions. Because they each know different things and have different experiences, and therefore they will make different "guesses". We can't criticize them for that, or laugh at them. In fact if you're doing it right, you yourself have questioned the potential insanity of your own mind. No, conspiracy theorists are highly tolerant people.

Another feature is the way they debate, or lack thereof. Most "subscribers" cannot comprehend how someone who presents their theory, and yet won't debate it, is in any way a rational person. From the other person's perspective however, it's not about debate. Debate is the deductive process of making sure that the conclusion follows from the premises. From an abductive perspective however, it is recognized that the theory is based on a person's unique data and conclusions. While it is recognized that there is only one objective truth, the process to arrive there is non-trivial and non-unique. Rather than point-by-point debate, it is instead a give and take scenario. People just share what they believe and why, and other people counter with what they believe and why. Instead of trying to disprove what they said, you add on to it! Remember, you believe everything, take in all data, build parallel possibilities. You are trying to figure out the truth for YOURSELF and using other people's brains to help you. To catch flaws in what you think; as a sounding board to build models of your own biases. They do the same. It's all about working together, sharing and adding. Debating is ok too, but it's sort of an abstract thing and not a personal battle. There is an implied mutual understanding about this. That's why when different people with different cognitive process try to talk, it doesn't work.

Most people have a difficult time understanding how truly different the two different cognitive processes described here are. Deductivists/subscribers believe they are already taking all possibilities into account, and that all the different spurious theories simply have no weight and are therefore largely irrelevant. Perhaps the simple answer is that conspiracy theorists just can't distinguish between relevant and irrelevant facts? It's much different than that. The fundamental attitude of a subscriber is that in order for them to believe something, change their conclusion, or even take the time to look at the details of a possibility, they have to be presented with evidence. They say “prove it to me”. They've settled on an essentially logical conclusion, and do not come up with alternate explanations beyond that point unless compelling evidence is presented to them.

On the other hand, the “conspiracy theorist” never stops asking questions. Even when they are pretty confident they know what really happened, they inevitably question the official story – their personal official story. They are driven by the fact that they don't really know what happened.

Truth is not a right; it's a great privilege only gained by a few through hard work and brutal self honesty. It's immature to expect things to be proven to you. When one recognizes his abject ignorance, truth seeking then becomes a desperation. Instead of asking something to be proven to him, the ignorant should seek out those who he suspects know more than him and beg to be taught. Only those who hold unquestioned premises have the luxury of taking a passive role, everyone else must either take an active role or choose to be ignorant.

Continually asking questions, looking at the possibilities in every context, looking at the possibilities of those possibilities, and questioning one's own personal official theory is indeed a distinct feature of abductive reasoning. Over time, petabytes worth of information will be gathered, creating unforeseeable connections and patterns that the deductivist just cannot see, because he stops asking questioning once he has come to a conclusion. Further questions must have “proof” which may itself require these petabytes of information which they are lacking.

"Conspiracy theorists" are not a special group, they are simply responding rationally to their environment. Ironically, in my (biased) opinion, "non-conspiracy theorists" are the irrational ones.

Hopefully now you can understand the thought process better. As I mentioned, it's non-trivial to even know if you understood it. As you can imagine, changing a cognitive process isn't necessarily a conscious choice. But you can see some elements of it in this writeup. It's not really deductive. I don't list sources, rigorously build up an argument, and I don't leave you with a solid conclusion. I'll read (and believe) your response, but I won't necessarily defend what I'm saying in a point-by-point manner. This is not defective thinking, but simply the only choice I have as I sit alone in my island of uncertainty and doubt. I was always here, but I just didn't know it before. What else am I unaware of?

Truth to me is a little like the life process,it moves,it flows ,sometimes you see it often you don't.

When you have the thirst for truth it can become more and more into your being until all you can see is the truth of things.

This is the truth behind all things at all times.

Sick of living in a dream and a false reality it is important to see ourselves as basic products of these lies,where we have been overly influenced and the lies may of infected our sanity.

See the truth with in and with out and cover up nothing.

Except ourselves totally for what we are.......part zombie,part awakened to whatever degree.

No one needs to prove anything to anyone as it is next to impossible to convey my truth to someone else as the way I see it,truth flows and moves,isn't static and is next to impossible to pin down and explain.

Truth is seen and the more that see it the more people awaken.

If I could explain truth then I would write a book and explain it,but this isn't as easy as it sounds.

Anyone else have any other feedback?

You are aware that 'abduction' means kidnapping. I think you are using it in it's latin sense--'leading to'.

Best guess based on everything I know. This removes certainty from truth. Once you know the truth you stop thinking. But if you don't really know the truth, or if you know it 'approximately' you don't stop thinking. Abductive thought involves always questioning your assumptions. Could Truth be like Happiness? Not a destination, but a journey?


Hatha

Hatha,

I didn't invent the term or concept, you can read more about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

You make a great point about certainty causing thinking to stop, but never being certain means you never stop thinking.

I'm still absorbing the concept of absolute truth you are talking about.

Also, thanks for the thoughtful responses.

Vacuum

Outstanding essay. Lots of food for thought. Think for yourself and draw your own conclusions or have others pulling your strings.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hatha Sunahara

Could Truth be like Happiness? Not a destination, but a journey?


Hatha

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Yes.

Conclusions are just an excuse to stop thinking.

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."
- Daniel Boorstin

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
-Benjamin Franklin

I personally make the distinctions as follows..
1. those who being ignorant of history and human nature, BELIEVE their news sources without exercising critical thinking.

2. Those who BECAUSE of their grasp of history and human nature are distrustful of information sources and insist on fact checking.
the latter group is derided as "conspiracy theorists."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JDRock

I personally make the distinctions as follows..
1. those who being ignorant of history and human nature, BELIEVE their news sources without exercising critical thinking.

2. Those who BECAUSE of their grasp of history and human nature are distrustful of information sources and insist on fact checking.
the latter group is derided as "conspiracy theorists."

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and...

3. Those who are someplace in between.

Those are the ones I'm dedicated to bringing over to our side.