The Earth is flat, but NASA, for some reason, hides this fact from us, and uses high-resolution techniques to design images that show that the Earth is spherical, and these technologies are so accurate that they can fool all the experts in the world, the Japanese of them, the Indians, and the Arabs, they - I mean those in NASA - They own billions of dollars, especially since this agency in particular has another precedent in falsifying the descent of humans on the moon, and who knows? Perhaps it is an attempt by world Masons to control humans without their knowledge, do you know that the "CIA" was the one who carried out the events of September 11? Yes, do not you believe that? Didn't you watch this last video showing a little explosion before the planes came? Governments conspire against their people to teach them fear and submission, which is a very reasonable idea, right?
What is conspiracy theory?
In fact, we cannot give a specific definition of what "conspiracy theory" means. For example, there are countries that are already trying to delude their citizens that there is a threat to their safety. A drug company may conspire to pass a treatment of its own even though there is something better than it. When it comes to a specific set of convictions, the problem is not whether or not this actually happened, but in the mechanism of believing this, take for example the idea of evil. Usually, the promoters of the conspiracy theory are convinced that there is an “evil” entity that tries to sow corruption in the state / The world, only for the purpose of corrupting, often that is a form of "evil" that is not usual in our normal life, it is natural that one of them conspires only for some political interest or for the purpose of utilitarian in general, for example money.
Another noteworthy point of the characteristics of the conspiracy theory is its quality (1) , where its promoters in general assume that these conspirators are skilled in a way that exceeds the natural grades, where they do not leave behind any indications that indicate their presence, or their plans, as well as they always use high-precision techniques Humans may not know anything about it yet, because it is perhaps from the development of intelligence agencies, for example, while we do not meet that in the real world. There are plots, of course, but they join within the normal range of political or intelligence work, and from time to time - perhaps after regime changes - new interpretations and evidence emerge. Upon its occurrence.
In addition, the promoters of conspiracy theory do not build theories, but only track anomalies of what we might call the “official narrative” (2) , and then connect the points with each other to arrive at the idea of the conspiracy, which is usually not verifiable or Negation, in the sense that they are allegations of such magnitude that we cannot deny them through any evidence, for example, we say that “the bad guys in the state administration - or even the opposition - want to overthrow the homeland for some reason.” This is a claim that we cannot find anything to deny, but hundreds can be gathered Evidence to prove it is similar to saying that “the good ones are the ones that God passed away” or “the old world was the most beautiful” ... etc. These claims are basically not suitable to be allegations, you can achieve a greater understanding of this idea by reading an earlier report by the author entitled "susceptibility to denial."
Consequently, conspiracy theory, as we would like to talk about here, is a hidden state that cannot be demonstrated, and therefore it appears in the form of a group of holes if we look a little at the official claim, and in his book (3) "The culture of the conspiracy: an apocalypse version of contemporary America." (A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America) Michael Parkon combines the characteristics of the conspiracy "culture" in three important points that the promoter of conspiracy theory is convinced as a rule in the background of his ideas, namely: nothing happens by chance, nothing is as it appears, And everything is related.
However, what raises the scientific question here is the number of those who are convinced of these ideas. For example, in a public poll (4) in the United States of America, 36% of people were convinced that the events of September 11 are an internal conspiracy by the US government, 20% of whom are convinced that there is Aliens are indeed, but NASA, in cooperation with the CIA, hides the news, 37% of them are convinced that climate change is a false claim to control citizens. In the Arab world, similar allegations abound, currently about the flat Earth, and the forgery of NASA to land on The moon, of course, along with allegations related to Zionist plots, or the killing of Arab presidents, such as Abdel Nasser, Sadat, or Yasser Arafat, for example.
In this aspect, social psychology intervenes through several experiments to confirm that the tendency of human beings to ideas such as these is primarily related to a number of characteristics of human societies, which - perhaps - were the remnants of a cautious lifestyle that humans lived in savannahs 80 thousand years ago, in order to understand this. We will start by setting an example, to compare two famous events, the first is the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, and the second is the attempt to assassinate Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, in Addis Ababa in 1995.
Why do so many people believe in it?
Here we learn what we call the partiality of proportionality (5) (Proportionality Bias), and means that we as human beings tend to the big events returned to the big like her reasons, for example to now was killed John F. Kennedy replaced highly controversial in the United States, and although other presidents have been subjected to attempts by big assassination The magnitude of the "death" event itself for a public figure requires that its causes be huge as well, so it is certainly greater than political differences, or extremes of specific directions, but it comes to enlarging it and becomes a huge conspiracy, until we reach expectations that the aliens are the ones who killed Kennedy, Likewise, the situation is a bit similar to our example above of Abdel Nasser and Mubarak, and although there are several other different circumstances in both cases, the event of death itself causes people to be biased in estimating the cause.
This may be related, perhaps, but from a different point of view, to another important idea expressed by researchers of three important studies (6) with the phrase "I am more distinguished than to be deceived" (Too special to be duped), as this group of studies, published (October / October) the European Journal of Social Psychology missed the existence of clear links between the self-need for uniqueness, our need to be distinguished and appear as "defectors" from the flock, different from our ideas, and between the general conspiracy mindset. (Conspiracy mindset), or merely endorsing conspiracy theories beliefs surrounding us. Rather, the third study from that group indicates that those subject to the experiment who supported conspiracy theories were more likely to support those that were told that there were few people supporting them, which means that they turned More for their desire for excellence and a tendency to support anything that looks different just because it is different.
There are, therefore, internal reasons related to the nature of people who tend to conspiracy theories, perhaps this is confirmed by a previous perception of this study on the phenomenon of projection (Projection), in another group of studies (7) published in the British Journal of Social Psychology (British Journal of Social Psychology) ), (September 2011), the subject was asked about conspiracy theories on the contrary. For example, the question was not: “Was the descent to the moon a conspiracy by NASA? The Moon? "And so the questions continued about whether the subject could participate in such acts as counterfeiting AIDS, covering up aliens, falsifying climate change, or killing Princess Diana ... etc.
The results of the three studies came to indicate that the people who approved these proposals in the tests were actually more inclined to believe the conspiracy theories, which means that the social reaction of some people is just a reflection (Projection) of their ideas about themselves, as well as the first study confirmed that The group is a link between supporting conspiracy theories and an important psychological characteristic, which is "Machiavellianism" for some people, that is, intentional manipulation and exploitation of others to achieve self-interest only without any other considerations, and this is also linked to another study published last August in the same magazine (8). It indicates a connection between narcissism as a collective or individual characteristic and support for conspiracy theories.
Social infection
Very beautiful, now we know that the nature of some individuals has to do with supporting the conspiracy theory, but that in fact does not explain this high rate of support for conspiracy theories in human societies, here another theory interferes to explain people's tendency to believe the conspiracy theories, that theory relates to our tendency as humans to Looking for patterns in everything and anything, to understand that, let's consider one of the earliest experiences in social psychology, it is the experiment of Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel (9 ). Watch the following video with me to understand what I mean, and the question here is simply IS: Is there a story in that scene?
Of course, that was the answer - almost all - subject to that kind of experiment, everyone was able to create a complete story related to the movement of the ball and two-thirds, and each time one comes out of us with a different story. Of course, Haider and Smile intended the motions to appear to resemble a story, but the idea is not that humans have the ability to search for patterns, but rather their ability to create patterns, no matter simple, few, or abstract data, it is like finding a picture of a dog or cat , Or dinosaur, in the formation of clouds in the sky.
What we know, from an evolutionary psychological point of view (10) , is that this important human quality helped the first person to survive in times of its history during which all his concern was to set immediate plans to save his life from the predators that surrounded him in the ancient savannah forests, thereby bringing people together Always the most possible data very quickly and then fill in the blanks in the general structure of their ideas with the nearest plan and the most dangerous, in fact the contemporary marketing research (11) focuses on the use of this idea in particular to create incentives for customers to start or continue to buy specific products without others, as well Behavioral economics has contributed to the development of our understanding of human rationality and linked to all topics of this report *.
In addition, human beings are social beings, meaning that we tend to believe the group’s opinion of what is reality or fact. Take, for example, that simple experience of a person suddenly standing on a street and then looking at the sky, here some will try to understand what is happening to look also at the sky And many experiments (12) have proven that the higher the number of individuals looking at the sky - interacting with a phenomenon in general - the number of new arrivals to participate in looking at the sky has also increased (from 4% to 40% when the number of people staring at Heaven 1 to 16), then it is a state of social contagion, the group pressed the reasonableness of the individual, and stopped, in order to follow the group.
There is no doubt that this does not depart much from a famous case in psychology that we call “ Confirmation Bias ” (13) (Confirmation Bias), which also helps explain the secret of people's acceptance of conspiracy theories and their assertion of their authenticity, whatever you try with them from a rational viewpoint, and affirmative bias means that Humans tend to collect data that only supports their ideas. It is similar to thinking about buying a red Kia Carens car. After you start thinking about this particular brand, you will slowly start to see more of it on the street. It will look like the streets. You were suddenly filled with red Kia Carens, they were originally the same rates, but you have developed selective attention to this type of car.
A baby crying for the purpose of crying
In the end, humans ’tendency to see a different reality depends mainly on our inability to make a quick treatment of the very complex nature of this reality, which results in several gaps. Then we fill those gaps through our own beliefs that only support our thoughts or convictions. The moon, for example, is a very complicated matter that requires high technology and complex physical equations. The easiest then is to have a conspiracy. To gain more detail from this point, you can review a previous report by the author on the relationship of humans to abstraction under the title "Did we evolve to love quantum mechanics?"
Conspiracy theory, then, is a complex case of different influences, preferably to be conceived as aadad who has specific rules to which its members adhere, and these rules have nothing to do with the rationality of the idea or its lack thereof, but only with the three beliefs that we have mentioned above, so the dialogue of a person who believes in conspiracy theory will not succeed if I relied on attacking him with scientific evidence, for example, he does not believe the science, or anything else, but only can - if you want - to achieve good results with him if you do not start to judge his ideas, since facing people with corrections of their false ideas will affect the opposite, will make them hold onto even more ideas, so - called reverse effect of output (14) (Backfire Effect).
Therefore, in an article entitled "How do you convince someone if the facts fail?" (15) Michael Sheremer points out that the best way to deal with conspiracy mindsets is to start respecting their opinions, not to attack them or to enter feelings into dialogue in any way. Your respect for her, as well as calmly explain to him that changing facts does not change his view of the world, and that this does not affect his beliefs in one way or another. Here some results may be achieved.
The major problem we face with the conspiracy theory is that it may itself be a conspiracy theory. Take, for example, the myth of vitamin B17 that fills the Arab world (16) these days, that myth says that drug companies conspire against people to buy expensive cancer drugs, while Cancer is a shortage of what is called "vitamin B17" found in cereals of specific types of fruits, and that eating them treats cancer, and the problem here is that eating these pills, besides that the patient may leave his course of treatment so the treatment system fails, causes a health catastrophe due to raising the levels of cyanide Toxic in his body, here the conspiracy theory is not only an idea, but it may turn into a deadly thing, similar plots related to sera and childhood autism (17) have missed our children an important opportunity to protect them from dangerous diseases.
In any case, conspiracy theory remains the subject of extensive research activity in recent years, especially with the passing of the world during a period of its history during which humans have lost their confidence in the system as an idea, as a narrative, and as a system of life, thus prevailing sophist convictions equal to the exception, no matter how Potentially, the norm. And what flat-land owners believe in, then, is not a scientific conviction, if it was so that their owners formed an organized group and funded a project to build a rocket and exit to see if the Earth was flat or not, so it is not related to science, and no scientific evidence will convince them basically whatever you try, the flat-earth community It is in a way a rejection of the global scientific and public system, rejected just because of rejection, it is a living representation of the contemporary problem of human beings, the problem of modernity, as a condition of a child crying just for crying.
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Margins:
(*): Perhaps to better understand the depth of that problem of conspiracy theory, whose interpretations are rooted in recent accomplishments to social psychology and behavioral economics, you can review two previous reports by the author, the first is “Nobel Economics 2017: Who Stole My Cinema Ticket The second is "Monopoly of Truth: Why are everyone around you crazy?"