Looking for some anecdotes to give me faith that humanity isn’t totally doomed by stupidity. Examples could be either people you know personally or public figures.
I’ll start with the example of myself: in high school I read Chariots of the Gods? and thought it was a very cool and compelling idea. I didn’t look at it very critically, even though I noticed and puzzled over a couple of points of obvious nonsense, like when it said the area of the Great Pyramid divided by its height (or something like that) is equal to pi. I knew that an area divided by a length cannot equal a dimensionless number, but I just sort of scratched my head and moved on. After a few years I came to realize that nearly everything in the book is equally nonsensical. I had some other beliefs which I now consider loony, like that unexplained disappearances have happened in the Bermuda Triangle, and that a large unknown creature lives in Loch Ness.
I think it’s pretty common for kids and teenagers to be less able to (developmentally) and less skilled at (educationally) applying critical thinking. I read Chariots of the Gods too, though I don’t remember what I thought of it, I know I didn’t read it too critically. It was a book!
I would be really interested in hearing about adults who are ex-believers in conspiracy theories. It seems to me they’re always partly intellectual but partly social.
Not sure about CT conversion but disabused is “Pizzagate” believer Edgar Maddison Welch who now claims he “just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way.”
There are a few posters here who came in hot and heavy with some CTs and they were convinced of the folly of their ways. It’s rare, but it does happen.
Heck, I believed in a Kennedy Assassination conspiracy until my late twenties. It was only a question of whether it was the CIA or the Mob.
Lots of people abandon once-held conspiracy theories. It seems really common when people switch political affiliation and seem to adopt the conspiracy theories of their new tribe and repudiate those of the old one.
And sometimes, very rarely, the conspiracy theorists turn out to be right.
My Son has been playing around with CTs since a teenager. We’ve mostly endured his crap. As he’s otherwise an intelligent, socially acceptable and a fun adult person to be around.
Lots of times over beers or just in his soapbox mood it gets touchy.
I just say “Please, Son don’t say this outside the house, to strangers. We like having you at home not in a home.” That usually shuts him up.
I’m not sure I’d call them CTs. I read all those in high school also, but I was lucky enough to find debunking books (One was called Some Trust in Chariots) and never got in too deep.
But I’m not too hopeful about current CTers. I know someone was is a total anti-Vaxxer - forwarded an email with the vaccine shots include microchips, Covid vaccine will kill us, etc., etc. Three years later and none of this happened doesn’t seem to make her reconsider her positions. I think these people’s brains are wired differently from ours. Not counting those who push CTs for money, fame or power.
In what sense was there a “conspiracy theory” about the CIA deep-sea ship Glomar Explorer? AIUI, the claims about its involvement in a CIA project to recover a foundered Soviet nuclear sub were made by major mainstream news organizations based on standard journalism research, and were famously neither confirmed nor denied by the CIA.
Yeah, the CIA put out made-up cover stories for their activities, but IMHO a claim doesn’t become a “conspiracy theory”, in the usual crackpottery sense of the term, just because some official disinformation is contradicting it.
What’s generally meant by a “conspiracy theory” is a belief or set of beliefs that’s debunked by serious rational investigation rather than supported by it. In such cases, the crackpots go on believing the CT not merely because some official source is contradicting it, but because they’re obstinately ignoring all the other facts and reasoning that contradict it. The history of the Glomar Explorer allegations doesn’t fit that description, AFAICT.
Also, inherent in the word conspiracy - in both the crazy and non-crazy sense - is that someone is doing something illegal. The CIA doing an op against a Russian target isn’t illegal, it’s literally their job.
My brother’s girlfriend used to believe a lot of really wacko conspiracy theories. The thing is, when he met her, she had recently left a many-years-long abusive relationship, and was caring for both her parents as they suffered slow and painful deaths from various diseases. She really wasn’t in a good place, mentally. As she recovered from those experiences over the next year or two, she became less and less attached to the conspiracy stuff. My brother never really argued with her, but he made it clear that he thought CTs were a bit silly, and that he loved her no matter what she believed.
I don’t think you can really argue successfully with CTers very often. I think it’s more about social and emotional pressures than strict facts and logic.
I’m not sure that illegality is a necessary component of a conspiracy theory. I don’t think anyone would be doing anything illegal if NASA had faked the moon landings, or an international Jewish cabal were controlling Hollywood.
Not sure if this really qualifies as conspiracy theory, but one example that comes to mind of people being cured of craziness is this list of 15 celebrities who had joined the cult of Scientology and later rejected it. There’s also this list of 10 books, some (not all) of them by former cult members.
The popularity of this nonsense was enhanced by the book being made into a movie. Same bullshit, but the movie actually had a cool musical soundtrack.
The cornerstone of the Bermuda Triangle mythology was probably the famous disappearance in 1945 of five Navy torpedo bombers on a training mission designated as Flight 19. All five disappeared, and a larger aircraft that was sent out to search for them also disappeared. If I’m not mistaken those were supposed to be the planes that mysteriously re-appear at start of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Of course no one should seriously believe that aliens were responsible, but I don’t think the disappearances were ever fully resolved. The Navy initially concluded that the disappearances of the original five planes was due to a navigation error by the lead plane, but then backtracked on that. It does appear most likely that they got lost, ran out of fuel, and crashed into the sea, and the search plane apparently suffered an explosion of some kind. Still, a fascinating story that a lot of silly mythology has been built around. Other disappearances in the area are thought to be likely due to the fact that it’s a part of the ocean that can experience sudden onsets of severe storms.
There are many different CTs surrounding the Kennedy assassination. While some of them are obvious bullshit, one belief I still hold is that while many facts are definitely known, there are others that will probably never be resolved. Did Oswald act alone? Almost certainly yes. Had he been recruited by someone else? That’s the interesting one. He had Russian connections, of course, and lobbied on behalf of Castro’s Cuba for years, though he was never allowed to enter the country. And then of course there was the brazen shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby, leading to speculation that certain powers felt an urgent need to silence him.
What’s fascinating about the events is that it’s a factual reality that Castro really had it in for Kennedy, and apparently so did the Mob because they felt they had helped to get him elected, and then RFK, as Attorney General, went on an anti-Mob crusade. There is some movie that I saw a very long time ago that I thought made a fairly credible case that Castro had the Mob recruit Oswald as an easily manipulated and disposable patsy to carry out the deed. Not saying I believe this, but I haven’t seen a definitive reason that it can be rejected out of hand. CTs that the CIA was involved I think can pretty much be rejected as nonsense.
I recommend Mick West’s book ‘Escaping the Rabbit Hole’, which gives examples of people who have come to reject a variety of conspiratorial beliefs.
He uses pseudonyms in some cases, so if you were a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracist you might think they were made up, but there are plenty of named people in the book too.
He also gives suggestions on how to talk to, and convince conspiracy believers - you need to listen to them, and use honesty and respect - including admitting when you don’t have all the answers, and what you just don’t know.
Surely that would have been fraud of some sort? Taxpayers were paying for a visit to the Moon, and NASA deliberately didn’t do that, while spending billions of dollars.
