I basically agree with two main points above. One: it makes the conspiracy theorist feel intellectually superior for being able to see through the smoke and mirrors and groupthink and not be part of the poor deluded “sheeple” and two: it gives the world and life a sense of order and reason. It’s not all just an unpredictable accident.
If you guys don’t hear from me after this that means the Reptilian Illuminati got to me. Someone contact David Icke. He’ll know what to do.
For every dingbat who spends a huge portion of his life constructing an elaborate foundation for his pie-in-the-sky theory, there are a thousands sub-dingbats who casually scan his ravings and call it “research”.
Lazy and simplistic is an apt description.
It’s lazy because they can’t be bothered to look up the real information; it’s simplistic because they tend to pick their postulates as they go.
It doesn’t really matter how complicated a stew they make from it or how long they take toe construct the theory; it’s not real intellectual work if you just make it up as you go.
I can see that someone would start with a lazy, simplistic explanation and then become wedded to it. I’m pretty sure that the Dunning-Kruger effect is hard at play among conspiracy theorists. People tend to be wedded to their ideas but some people and ideas tend to form strong bonds. Then when the conspiracies are questioned, ad hoc explanations are added. But so many ad hoc duct tape explanations are added that it ends up being quite extensive, more work than starting properly.
The same aunt I mentioned up thread thought that the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir was about the economic resource of wool. Which, yeah, lazy; “It’s the wool, man! It’s all about the wool!”
Have there been people who have abandoned conspiracy theories? Was it like leaving a cult?
Starting with your number two - man has always tried to understand the universe through constructing narratives. Be it myths stories told around the campfire, or religion stories, or even science as we know it today, IMHO this is human nature - to try to understand the universe.
Now, regarding number one - to me this is the crux of the OPs question. For many people, their self image is predicated on their ability to understand what other lesser humans don’t understand. This works just fine in motivating people to educate themselves and achieve meaningful careers in traditional fields. But for the CT folks it’s as if their wiring is off. They are applying their intellect and study abilities, and serving their self image of understanding what other lesser humans don’t, but they are just barking up the wrong trees. And because they tie their CTs so much to their self images, they are very resistant (that’s an understatement) to abandoning them.
I notice that in quite a few cases there is a religion-replacement undertone. These are people who want to believe in very powerful forces that can do unbelievable things. Now, these forces might be evil but lots of religions have prominent evil gods that are worshiped in some way.
It seems disquieting to some people that everyday events “just happen” without a much bigger plan in effect in the background. They feel reassured if there is something bigger making these things happen. The more they believe, the happier they get.
Note that questioning these beliefs get reactions similar to attacking a person’s religious beliefs. They take it quite personally. They generally don’t want to let facts get in their way.
Some sort of disability being involved does make sense. My brother, the pain in the ass, became a conspiracy theorist around the time he went on disability.
This is according to our sister, above whose garage he lives.
The OP asked how people came to believe the cockamamie theories that they do. I can tell you how my CT friend came to believe what he does. He had a pretty dysfunctional childhood, shuttled between divorced, alcoholic, indifferent parents, with a brief stay in a reform school. Ran away at the age of 16. He fell in with a group of vagabonds, societal outcasts who hated “The Man,” and who panhandled and resorted to petty crime to survive. They took him in and gave him the first real family he’d had. They fed him all the CT crap they believed in and, out of gratitude and an unconscious desire to belong, he swallowed it all. I have wondered what he might have been able to accomplish in his life if that hadn’t happened. It has crippled him in so many ways.