Thinking Like a Conspiracy Theorist

Ray Briggs
Is the media lying to us all the time?

Blakey Vermeule
Isn’t it paranoid to think we’re controlled by unseen forces?

Ray Briggs
What does it mean to “do your own research”?

Blakey Vermeule
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs.

Blakey Vermeule
And I’m Blakey Vermeule, sitting in for Josh Landy. We’re coming to you via the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Ray Briggs
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus. where I teach philosophy and Blakey teaches in the philosophy and literature program. Thanks again for helping out again, Blakey.

Blakey Vermeule
My pleasure. Today we’re asking what it’s like to think like a conspiracy theorist,

Ray Briggs
Oh, I would never want to think like a conspiracy theorist. Their thoughts are riddled with errors. They ignore contrary evidence if it doesn’t fit with what they already believe. They think they’re experts on things they know nothing about. And they project malicious intent onto events that have perfectly innocent explanation.

Blakey Vermeule
But we all make mistakes in our thinking. Psychologists tell us that everybody is susceptible to cognitive biases. And if you think you’re immune, then that makes you even more susceptible.

Ray Briggs
Wait, you’re saying there’s no difference between me and the person in a tinfoil hat, who’s making endless internet posts about how the Earth is flat and how we’re secretly being ruled by lizard people?

Blakey Vermeule
Look, not all conspiracy theories are so far fetched. A lot of them are a matter of historical record. Government health organizations deliberately infected poor rural black men in Tuskegee with syphilis as part of a medical experiment. The NSA paid internet companies tens of billions of dollars to spy on ordinary Americans. And if you tried to talk about any of that, at the time, your friends would have handed you a tinfoil hat. But it was all true.

Ray Briggs
Okay, fine. Sometimes the government and corporations lie to us. But a lot of conspiracy theories go way beyond that observation. People think that there’s one global conspiracy that explains everything from scientific predictions about climate change to the economy to the war in Ukraine. They’re not carefully weighing the evidence at all.

Blakey Vermeule
But how are ordinary people supposed to weigh evidence these days? The Internet is a firehose of bad information. And it all sounds plausible. There’s just too much to audit everything.

Ray Briggs
Okay, yeah, there’s a lot of information, but you have to take some personal responsibility for your beliefs. Whatever happened to basic critical thinking, or checking for obvious mistakes? A lot of people don’t even bother.

Blakey Vermeule
Critical thinking is great. But it’s also extremely hard to do. When you’re surrounded by companies that are competing for your attention, and trying to make you click on things out of fear and outrage. It’s like trying to stay on the wagon, when all of your friends are big drinkers.

Ray Briggs
Well, if your sources of information are bad, you should just seek out better ones—you know, get your news from somewhere reputable instead of InfoWars or something.

Blakey Vermeule
How do you tell which news outlets are reputable? It seems like you’d need some independent way of knowing whether they’re lying to you. But they’re your source of information about the news.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, you can’t know for certain, but you should still try to do something. You know, fact check articles before you share them. See if they’re published by a source with its own fact checking standards. Don’t look at sources with a strong partisan bias.

Blakey Vermeule
That’s great as far as it goes. But no amount of legitimacy is enough to guarantee that someone is trustworthy. Especially someone with enough power to be shaping the news in the first place. The world is run by oligarchs, and we are being lied to all the time. Disinformation is the fifth Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Ray Briggs
Whoa Blakey, you know, you’re kind of starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist yourself!

Blakey Vermeule
Okay. But I do believe that all of us can be conspiracy theorists under the right circumstances.

Ray Briggs
You really think I could be a conspiracy theorist? But I’m really careful. I follow my evidence where it leads. What are the circumstances that would do that to me?

Blakey Vermeule
Under circumstances of chaos, oppression, deceptive authorities, and bad evidence, you might question whether what you’re being told is really the truth.

Ray Briggs
Okay. Yeah, I see how in in those circumstances, I really would have to question everything, including journalism and science. But luckily I’m not in those circumstances now.

Blakey Vermeule
Can you really be so sure? The problem with conspiracy thinking is that it is very easy to detect in your political opponents, but almost impossible to detect in yourself or in your group.

Ray Briggs
You know, I bet our guest will have something to say about that. It’s Christopher French co-author of “Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience.”

Blakey Vermeule
I’m really looking forward to talking to him. But first, we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Sarah Lai Stirland, to investigate conspiracy thinking around voting and elections. She files this report.

Sarah Lai Stirland
If you follow the 2022 midterm elections, you probably heard about confrontations at ballot boxes in Arizona.

CNN
Two men—armed, wearing tactical gear, watching voters. According to complaints filed and referred to the Department of Justice last week, one voter complained he was called a mule.

Sarah Lai Stirland
That was a reference to a movie called “2000 Mules” that came out in May.

2000 Mules
What is a mule? A person picking up ballots and running them to the drop boxes.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Here’s the movie central premise: left-leaning groups cheating elections by collecting and delivering thousands of votes with forged signatures to ballot boxes in swing states. The movie uses geotracking data from cell phones and video footage in five swing states to make its claims. But election experts and technologists rejected the movie’s deceptive narrative. Multiple news organizations report that the data in 2000 meals just doesn’t add up. Even Bill Barr the former Attorney General under President Trump thinks this narrative is misleading, as he told the January 6 committee.

Bill Barr
My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud. I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the “2000 Mules” movie.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Nevertheless, conservative politicians and activists across the country seized on the movie’s claims. they mobilize supporters to monitor ballot boxes to stop the alleged activity.

Stephen Porchaska
People have been organizing to try to watch drop boxes to prevent these so called mules from dropping off ballots when when the reality is there’s not really evidence to support that that is a widespread phenomenon.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Stephen Braska is a PhD student at the University of Washington. He’s part of a group called the Election Integrity Partnership. And he studies how groups amplify conspiracy theories and disinformation online.

Stephen Porchaska
People are—they’re not just like passively receiving this information. They’re collaborating in both making it and then acting on it.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Digital and social media, he notes, enables activists to embellish the inflammatory narrative.

Stephen Porchaska
One of the things that does make the modern context a little bit different is the way that these platforms can provide a literal platform for conspiracy theorizing. It also allows for manipulation, and in a much more direct way than previously had been easily available.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Multiple articles have documented flaws in the US voting system, which leads to the question: in a complex world, just how are we supposed to quickly tell when something is a harmful conspiracy theory and when it’s not?

Thi Nguyen
One of the reasons conspiracy theories are dangerous is they’re so close to genuine rational belief.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Thi Nguyen is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah. He studies online communities, trust, and influence—and how influencers can manipulate that trust.

Thi Nguyen
Actual reality involves his careful management of who to trust that involves substantial trust.

Sarah Lai Stirland
He knows that conspiracy theorists trust only a select group of people, and they find reasons to distrust institutional sources of information.

Thi Nguyen
Conspiracy theories restore us to the idyllic world, where we get to think for ourselves and make things clear and explain everything within our grasp.

Donald Trump
It’s rigged.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Bloomberg News found that conservative candidates routinely saw much higher social media engagement from election conspiracy posts than from any other kinds of posts. What these read election candidates didn’t say, was that all the claims in 2000 meals had been debunked.

Susan Benesch
Often conspiracy theories are what we would call dangerous speech.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Word choice and choosing when to speak out is important too, says Susan Benesch, founder of the Dangerous Speech Project. That’s a group of researchers who study the typical kinds of speech patterns and contexts that precede mass violence

Susan Benesch
When they serve to teach people to regard another group of people as a mortal threat.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Benesch says that when that happens, it gives individuals a justification to attack. That’s what we hear in “2000 Mules.”

2000 Mules
They have ruined election day in the United States of America. That’s provable. And that’s enough for me to fight the left with every fiber in my body.

Sarah Lai Stirland
Still, in 2022 voters rejected the conspiracy theorists. And Benesch says that’s significant.

Susan Benesch
The results of the midterms present a rare opportunity in the sense that they have convinced significant numbers of Republican leaders that dangerous lies are no longer a good way to get elected. But they need to be pressured to speak out publicly.

Sarah Lai Stirland
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Sarah Lai Stirland.

Ray Briggs
Thanks for that fascinating report, Sarah. I’m Ray Briggs and with me is my Stanford colleague, Blake Vermeule, sitting in for our usual co-host, Josh Landy. And today, we’re thinking like a conspiracy theorist.

Blakey Vermeule
We are joined now by Christopher French. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Goldsmiths College at the University of London, and co-author of “Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience.” Christopher, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Christopher French
Thank you very much. It’s good to be here.

Ray Briggs
So Chris, you write about conspiracy thinking, but what first got you interested in that topic? Do you have one of those ranting relatives who likes to spout nonsense around the holiday table?

Christopher French
I’m afraid I don’t actually, no. My interest in if you like, kind of weird beliefs, or at least what I perceive to be weird beliefs, goes back quite some time. I mean, when I was younger, when I was a teenager, and even into early adulthood, I actually believed quite a lot of paranormal stuff. And it was actually when I was doing my PhD in a completely different area, somebody recommended a particular book that they thought I’d like it was called parasitology, science or magic. It was by a psychologist called James Allcock. And it was the first kind of skeptical treatment of all this stuff that I’d ever come across. And I really did like it and find it very compelling. And then what started off as a hobby, actually became a bit more of a serious research interest until basically that became what I was known for. And it was a few years back that I took on a PhD student, a very bright PhD student by the name of ROB Brotherton. And he wanted to study the psychology of belief in conspiracies. And that’s what really got me much more interested in the whole area. And, of course, a lot of conspiracy theories, not all by any means, but some of them do involve a paranormal component. And a lot of the psychological factors that underlie belief in conspiracies are also relevant to belief in the paranormal. So now, there’s a lot going on there.

Blakey Vermeule
Chris, we’ve talked a lot about whether it’s rational to believe a conspiracy theory. But we’ve never really defined what exactly a conspiracy theory is, how, how would you define it?

Christopher French
It’s incredibly sort of those very slippery concepts that on the surface, we all think we know what a conspiracy theory is, when you dig a little bit deeper, you realize it’s actually quite tricky. The kind of conspiracy theories that psychologists have become particularly interested in, we’d know there’d be like for an operational definition. So we saying that really, this is what we mean, when we’re talking about a conspiracy theory, we’re talking about a sinister plot by extremely powerful individuals that’s being hidden from the rest of us, so that they can benefit either by kind of World Takeover or achieving their genocidal aims or whatever else it may be. But basically, it’s going to be to our detriment and to their benefit. And it’s going on behind the scenes, where it’s it’s being hidden. It’s often based on very kind of flimsy evidence. And as I say, in terms of our operational definition, it would be a an idea that’s actually unproven. It’s an idea that’s being pushed. But if we got to the point where it was proven, it would start being a conspiracy theory, and it would become an established conspiracy.

Ray Briggs
That’s a little bit different from the paranormal activity that you started with, which doesn’t require any conspiracy. What’s the connection there?

Christopher French
Well, the connection for me is that I just have a more general interest in the psychology of what I see as being kind of very weird and extreme beliefs. Now, of course, the point you were making earlier is that there are some some conspiracies really do take place. And so we’re not in a position where we’re saying, Oh, no conspiracy is ever happened. Of course they do. And there are powerful people and they are plotting for their own ends behind the scenes. At the level of kind of global takeover and this kind of thing. That’s where things kind of get really interesting, and I would certainly argue that those kinds of claims are not substantiated, but really it’s that more general interest in in The Psychology of weird stuff.

Ray Briggs
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about conspiracy thinking with Christopher French from the University of London.

Blakey Vermeule
Do you believe any conspiracy theories? Or do you think they’re all totally irrational? What makes someone believe a conspiracy theory in the first place?

Ray Briggs
Truth, lies, and conspiracies—along with your comments and questions, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Weird Al
Seems a little crazy / But someday I’ll prove / There’s a big conspiracy.

Ray Briggs
What is it like to put on that tinfoil hat and see conspiracies everywhere? I’m Ray Briggs. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Blakey Vermeule
…except your intelligence. I’m Blakey Vermeule, sitting in for Josh Landy, and we’re thinking like a conspiracy theorist with Christopher French from the University of London, co-author of “Anomalistic psychology.”

Ray Briggs
Got questions about why people love conspiracy theories? Email us at comments@philosophytalk.org, or comment on our website. And while you’re there, you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Blakey Vermeule
Chris, we’ve got a lot of listener questions for today’s episode, so we’re gonna dig right in right away with those. Wendy in San Francisco asks, I’ve noticed that my friends who tend to believe conspiracy theories, their 911 truthers or COVID deniers, etc. Also believe that they are smarter than everyone else. They like clues dropped. This is the appeal of Q anon that engage them in the process of figuring it out. What do you think about that?

Christopher French
That’s absolutely right. Yeah, there’s good evidence to support the idea that one of the factors and it is only one out of a whole multitude of factors. But one of the factors that attracts people to conspiracy theorists, is that sense of superiority, that sense that you see the way the world really is not like the sheeple around you? are basically I mean, a lot of conspiracy theorists take the view that if you don’t actually accept the conspiracies that are putting forward, you are, you have one of two choices, you’re either sheeple, you’ve been taken in by the conspirators, or you are part of the conspiracy yourself, I often get accused of being part of conspiracies. And if that’s the case, I wish the government would send me the money because it doesn’t seem to be coming through.

Ray Briggs
So Chris, you said that one of the factors in believing conspiracies is this thinking you’re smarter than everybody else. What are some of the other ones?

Christopher French
There’s a whole host of factors, it’s interesting that up until probably about 15 years ago, there’s very little psychological research in this area. But it has become an incredibly hot topic. Amongst the kinds of cognitive biases, which seem to be the most important there are there are a number that have been looked at. I mean, one of the reasons we’re so successful as a species is because we are very good at making sense of what’s going on around us of finding patterns of observing things. And sometimes we we think we see a significant pattern there. And that’s obviously been incredibly useful. But sometimes we overplay that, we think we see meaning, when in fact, there’s just randomness, we make connections that aren’t actually really there. And that is a very important factor with respect to conspiracy isms, conspiracy type thinking. Other factors are something called it the intentionality bias, the idea that things don’t happen by accident, when things happen in the world around you. Sometimes they happen because someone made them happen with some intention in mind, but sometimes things just happen, you know, out of the blue randomly, but conspiracy theorists tend to have a much greater bias towards believing that things do not happen by accident. So again, they’re reading the meaning in that they think must be there. There’s also what’s called a proportionality bias. The idea that, when big, important world events happen, they can’t have small causes. They have to have big causes because they’re big events. So the idea that Diane’s car crashed in a tunnel in Paris, because her driver was a little bit tipsy. That’s not a big enough reason. There must be something more going on there. There must be some conspiracy behind it. She must have been assassinated, etc.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, so the these all sound like biases that like everybody is susceptible to to some degree. Is there something special that pushes people over into believing conspiracy theories that involves them having more of these biases than everybody else? Like how does that happen?

Christopher French
Once again, there’s, as I said, there’s a whole host of different factors that come into play, not only these inherent biases that we all have, but also there can be as certain kinds of personality factors. So I mean, an obvious one, which won’t surprise anybody is that you tend to score higher in terms of paranoia, if you are more inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, but also maybe like on a more positive note, people who believe in conspiracy theories show a greater openness to new ideas. And it might be because they were attracted to those unusual ideas in the first place, and actually spent time reading about them that they end up going down the rabbit hole. Also people who feel powerless people who feel like outsiders. And again, I think this gets back to the first point we were making. One possible motivation here is, if you feel that life is not all it should be for you personally, well, maybe there’s someone or some group to actually blame for that. And again, lots of conspiracy theorists involved putting the blame on the Jews, the Illuminati, immigrants, whoever, but you have an out group and an in group, and within that in group, you can, you can achieve quite a lot of status, the more you buy into the conspiracies, and Q anon is a kind of, if you like a participatory conspiracy theory, where people are actively involved in trying to sort what they see as being these cryptic clues that are being fed to them, and so on. So, yeah, there’s the social aspect, as well as an awful lot going on here. But if you find yourself in the appropriate set of circumstances, then, you know, there’s there is there is always a risk that people can go down that rabbit hole.

Blakey Vermeule
Could we dig into that a little bit more? Chris, I am very interested in how groups of politically like minded people attribute conspiracy thinking to people who don’t think like them. This is we’re in a in a state of incredible political polarization at the moment, and it’s true across the political spectrum. So Liberal Democrats tend to think that Trump voters are riddled by conspiracy thinking, whereas conservatives tend to think that that liberals are completely captured by a certain set of media biases. Do you have a way to help us think about that?

Christopher French
I think again, it’s certainly true what you’re saying. I mean, one of the leading researchers in this area, who’s a friend of mine called Joe, you sinskey, who is an American political scientist, and he’s written about this extensively, this party is an ship that comes in. I don’t think personally, it’s one of those things that I think we can all see it in our own thinking. I mean, I’m a typical kind of academic with a bias towards the kind of left wing views. And so I find it much easier to buy into the idea that President Trump may have colluded with the Russians to achieve the election result that he achieved a few years back. And, you know, turns out that there isn’t actually any direct evidence for that. But I find it much easier to believe that than some of the kinds of what I see is nonsense put out by the extreme right. And I think that’s, again, just this, we all have a bias that probably the single most pervasive and powerful cognitive bias that we all suffer from is confirmation bias, we are more inclined to accept evidence that supports what we either already believe to be true or what we’d like to be true. For a start, we’ll seek more of that evidence. So we’re actively seeking it and taking it in. But we’ll also have reasons for ignoring or playing down any evidence that seems to count against us. And of course, this is what can the conspiracy theorists do as well, but we all do it, we need to be aware that we’ve all got these biases. And it’s basically an attempt to try and have what to our minds is a kind of coherent and consistent way of view of the way the world works is trying to make sense of the world around us. One of the problems with conspiracy theories is that took two quotes a friend of mine, a philosopher, Steven law, he talks about intellectual black holes, there are certain belief systems, that once you get into them, it’s very difficult to get out in the same way that light can’t escape from a from a black hole. And conspiracy theories are a kind of prime example of this because any evidence that appears to count against your conspiracy, no matter how strong Well, the argument is, it was put there by the conspirators, you can ignore it. You don’t need to take it seriously. Any evidence that supports your view, no matter how we can flimsy Well, that’s the evidence you’ll pay attention to.

Ray Briggs
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about conspiracy theories with Christopher French from the University of London. So we’ve got a comment from Mel in central California. Mel writes, conspiracy theories are awesome. I love digging in to see how quickly one of the several common flaws will pop up. Will it be the lacking motive problem that too many people required to stay quiet to be plausible problem, etc. Conspiracy theories are important for their ability to sharpen our critical thinking. So Chris, what do you think: are conspiracy theories good for sharpening our critical thinking?

Christopher French
I certainly think that they can be. I mean, they have a certain kind of inherent fascination. I mean, we can see this by the very fact that there’s so often the subject of dramas, I mean, typically, in any kind of fictional account, it turns out that the conspiracy theorist who everybody viewed as being crazy is correct. They turn out to be the hero. In real life, it tends not to go that way. But yeah, they’ve got a kind of an inherent fascination. So they get people interested. I mean, I’m, I’m, again, one of those kind of people who is fascinated by these weird theories and these weird ideas. You know, you look at the kind of Satanic Panic back in the 80s, which seems to have been incorporated into the Q anon conspiracies these days. And it’s, it’s kind of taking your imagination, maybe to places you don’t really want to go, but there is something inherently kind of fascinating and entertaining, and then trying to work out. As that comment, there was great that, you know, where where does the kind of the flaws in the thinking kind of show through at what point and of course, with conspiracy theorizing, typically, you have to involve more and more people in the conspiracy for it to possibly be kept secret. And that becomes just unmanageable? Because we know in real life, that it’s actually very, very difficult to maintain that level of secrecy amongst all those people.

Blakey Vermeule
We have a question from Arthur in Washington, DC. And the question is, is there some kind of analogy or resonance between complicated multi Vaillant conspiracy theories, and the kind of deeply immersive video games that are now on the market where you navigate and or create a world and have to do your own research to figure out how to play the game? We seem to be psychologically and philosophically inclined towards this kind of immersive game playing, and we find it fun. And we like that there’s some causal logic behind the game. Do people bring this idea this sort of gamification of the world, to into the world to satisfy some of the same urges, do you think?

Christopher French
That’s a really interesting thought. It’s not something I’d ever thought about before I have to confess, but I can see where that argument is coming from. The idea that there is this complex intellectual challenge, I think maybe this is, again, why QR Nan has has kind of taken hold in those people who follow it, because certainly there we have got this notion of kind of layers upon layers and trying to crack the codes and trying to figure out what the what the clues mean. And certainly, you know, for those people who are involved, I think it becomes almost kind of addictive. And they get a great deal of pleasure out of putting forward some new explanation that might be then kind of go viral amongst the other followers of Q anon and so on. So that’s a really interesting suggestion.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I feel like this puzzle about where conspiracy theories come from is really compelling. And we got actually some other questions about that. So Harriet in San Diego asks, Why is it that in the US right now conspiracy theories have run amok and are driving politics? What is it about this style of politics that leads to people being distrustful of formal institutions, experts and official narratives, and a belief that a cabal of powerful people are conspiring to further their own ends at their expense?

Christopher French
Well, again, I mean, we can look back and quite easily identify some very powerful voices, including former president of the United States, who really embraced these ideas, and pushed them sometimes, subtly, sometimes not so subtly amongst his followers. And we’ve I think one of the things that I find kind of most concerning is this notion that we now live in a post fact world where the actual truth or falsity of what is being claimed what has been said, matters less than who said it, and are they are they one of us, and does it does it make me feel good? Does it fit into my worldview? I kind of find that very, very worrying. But I think the main point I want to make there is that these conspiracy theories have always been around for centuries and centuries. You know, we find that I mean, a lot of the Q anon stuff it’s just incorporated. previously existing ideas had been knocking around in clued in, as I mentioned earlier, the Satanic Panic and so on and so forth, and just kind of repackaged them and kind of put them out there. But that these ideas have always been around. And and I suspect they always will be because I think they are based upon the kind of biases that we have as a result of our evolutionary history.

Ray Briggs
So I’m curious about this idea that people don’t always totally believe conspiracy theories, but might buy into parts of them. Like, how should I think about that? Like, should I be worried about the damaging effects of buying into part of a conspiracy theory, even if the person doesn’t completely screw by it whole hog?

Christopher French
I mean, again, the whole this whole notion of just how dangerous are conspiracy theories? Is is a fascinating one, because on the one hand, you know, if your next door neighbor believes that the moon landings were faked, well, so what you know, on its own, it doesn’t really matter that much does it? One of the problems is that we know that if the one of the biggest predictors of whether you believe in conspiracy theory X is do you believe in conspiracy theory, why, even when they are totally unrelated, so the fact that your neighbor thinks that the moon landings were faked, means your neighbor is also more likely to believe other conspiracies, and some of those other conspiracies may actually be dangerous. So I mean, obviously, that the prime examples of dangerous conspiracy theories, not only for the person who believes them, but for wider society are the anti Vax movement. People who believe that climate change is a hoax, and therefore, they don’t need to kind of engage in any kind of steps to try and protect the environment. A lot of other kind of medical conspiracies, but some of them obviously, as we heard in the introduction, there, some of them are true. Some of them did turn out so you do you always have to be careful. And it’s it’s not easy. You have to learn to live with uncertainty. We’re not We’re not comfortable with uncertainty. I mean, there will be situations where I might in the past have rejected something as being too conspiratorial. That turned out to be true. But most of the 99% of what I reject as being too conspiratorial, I’m pretty sure actually is

Ray Briggs
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking like a conspiracy theorist with Christopher French from the University of London, co-author of “Anomalistic Psychology.”

Blakey Vermeule
Why do people have such disparate views of reality? is disinformation on the internet to blame? Should we teach more critical thinking in schools?

Ray Briggs
Combating conspiracy thinking—plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher, when Philosophy Talk continues.

What makes someone think that whatever’s out there must be the product of unseen force?. I’m Ray Briggs, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Blakey Vermeule
…except your intelligence. I’m Blakey Vermeule, sitting in for Josh Landy. And we’re thinking like a conspiracy theorist with Chris French from the University of London.

Ray Briggs
So Chris, it seems like conspiracy thinking is on the rise, give us your most important tool for combating the kinds of cognitive biases that make us more susceptible to this thinking.

Christopher French
I mean, the first thing I’d have to say is that not everybody believes that conspiracy thinking is on the rise. If you look at opinion, poll data, you you’ll find that there’s some fluctuations, depending upon what’s topical, and what and so on, or even who’s in power at the time. But overall, those kind of levels stay about the same from one decade to another, which is quite surprising. It’s something that quite surprised me, when this was first drawn to my attention, but it does actually appear to be the case. Having said that, I think it’s true to say and fair to say that conspiracy type ideas have have entered the mainstream in a way that we haven’t had before. So we’re all more aware of them, including the media that there are a lot more articles about them and so on so forth. Now, in terms of trying to combat them, I think the the most important thing to try and do would be to give people critical thinking skills to the extent that we that it’s possible to do that. It’s not really a matter of telling people what to think it’s more trying to help them tell how to think in terms of pointing out the kind of errors that we’re all prone to we’re all susceptible to and even knowing about them isn’t enough on its own. And to prevent them having an effect, they still will, but they’ll maybe have less of an effect. And so critical thinking at an early age teaching those kinds of skills is is one way forward. There are other aspects as well. I mean, there’s the idea of of trying to what’s called pre bunking where you warn people about a particular conspiracy theory on why it’s not true, maybe before they’ve even been exposed to it. But if they have been exposed to it, then debunking actually can be quite effective. There was there was a bit of a worry in the kind of academic world at one point that maybe debunking sometimes backfires. And it’s like, there’s literally something referred to as the backfire effect, where when you try to debunk a false claim, it kind of has a short term effect, but then later on, people remember the claim, but forget the debunking. Now, it turns out our worries over that seem to have been a bit exaggerated and debunking can work if it’s done well.

Ray Briggs
So I saw a very funny thing on the internet, called “prospiracy theories,” which which basically took the line of you know, people are trying to get you to believe that the earth is flat, and everybody’s covering it up, don’t trust them. And so like painting conspiracy theories as themselves conspiracies, I think it was it was a joke. Is there any value to that as a serious tool? Or is it? Is it just sort of a joke?

Christopher French
Well, I mean, to me, using humor to try to, I think using humor to try to combat conspiracy theories can actually be sometimes more effective than 1001 syllogisms. You know, it’s one of those situations. There are a couple of comedians in this country, Mitchell and Webb, David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and they’ve got a couple of sketches on conspiracy theories, where you, they start off with these three people in a, obviously a secret bunker, plotting various conspiracies. And just by treating it with such humor, you realize the absurdity of what’s actually being suggested in a way that maybe doesn’t come across if you read a dry academic paper. So I think that can be effective. But also, I mean, I think it’s important to not come across as laughing at the silly people who believe the conspiracy theories, they’ve got their own reasons for those kinds of beliefs. And if someone believes something really passionately and strongly, try and respect them, try to understand where they’re coming from, and try to just say, Well, have you thought that maybe this is what’s really going on? Or this is an alternative explanation. But it’s difficult, it’s not easy. And I think the really, we ought to aim our efforts, not at the kind of extreme believers, because we will never ever pull them out of the intellectual black hole. But it’s the people who’ve maybe heard that, oh, is it the case that can, you know, vaccinations can cause autism? Is that Is that true? You know, and you can then try and say, Well, no, actually, there’s been lots of studies that show this and there’s no evidence for that at all, and try and prevent that person from going further down the rabbit hole.

Blakey Vermeule
Maybe we could use me as a as an example of somebody who needs to be talked down from her conspiracy theory. And you can show me how you would do that. So I have become a bit of a climate Doomer. And I think that there’s a conspiracy of silence in the let’s say, the fossil fuel captured media to, to kind of keep the bad news off the front page. I mean, what but when I say that to my friends, they think I’m, you know, a little nuts and a little paranoid. And they use my fear of being a conspiracy theorist against me. And I’m wondering if you can help me think through how to how to go from here.

Christopher French
Oh, that was that was a particularly bad example. You’ve chosen that? Because I think you’re probably right. I mean, again, it’s getting raises an interesting issue of what do we call a conspiracy theory? I mean, why is it that the media, I don’t think the media is paying anywhere near enough attention to the climate crisis? You know, according to all the best evidence, we’ve got to sort things out literally, within the next few years, are we gonna get to a point of no return? So why isn’t this being headline news every single day until governments take appropriate action? But I don’t think that’s necessarily a conspiracy. If most of the mainstream media kind of don’t really fully recognize yet the urgency of that situation, then it’s not going to appear on the front pages. But there’s nobody. I think we can point to big oil. And I would say there’s clear evidence that as the tobacco industry did years ago, they were deliberately muddying the water putting out kind of misinformation disinformation. And the fossil fuel industry seems to be doing exactly the same with greenwashing with, you know, basically taking very little action while they’re pretending to take action. So just because it’s been labeled as a conspiracy theory doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true. And I think in this case, I would say that the kind of there is a definite media bias against reporting news that should be getting a lot more attention.

Ray Briggs
Yes. So this kind of brings us back to the difference between like conspiracy theory and just documented conspiracy. I like like he’s climate example. Because I do think it’s kind of a documented conspiracy, or like, I don’t know, maybe you need to be a bit more nefarious and have less buy in from everybody to be a conspiracy. But like, surely there’s in between territory where a theory is getting established? How do I understand like, when does something go from being a conspiracy theory?

Christopher French
That isn’t, is an excellent question and one, which I should have expected from a philosopher. Yeah, I mean, if you take something like, let’s take some of the kind of famous established conspiracy, something like kind of the Watergate scandal or whatever. I mean, obviously, once you get to a point where the people involved are confessing that there was a conspiracy, I think we could probably all accept, then unless we think they’ve been pressured or brainwashed into kind of making those statements, that would be enough for most people. I mean, even then, it’s a blurry line, it’s a blurry line, but we can be, we can all accept that there are some conspiracies that are established beyond all reasonable doubt. There are others that may be true or may not be true, we might want to withhold judgment on and that’s where that kind of uncertainty that we’re not really very fond of comes in. There are others, which we feel just, you may just call this prejudice, but the idea that the Earth, the world has been run by shapeshifting. Lizards, I don’t feel that I even need to kind of look in any depth at the evidence there. I just think it’s too far fetched to begin with. But even there, potentially, I could be wrong.

Ray Briggs
I have a question from Fanny and Oakland, who also wants to know about the difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, Fannie writes, a large part of the problem is that the media give them all legitimacy. By referring to them as conspiracy theories, theories, rights Fanie are subject to verification or rejection by evidence. And she says most of the things referred to as conspiracy theories are essentially faith based religious beliefs, with evidence categorically rejected. So that sounds like a kind of the opposite of what what we were suggesting, which is that there’s this continuum.

Christopher French
There’s a kind of interesting point being made. That was an interesting point to be made. But I mean, typically, the term conspiracy theorist of conspiracy theory, there are terms that are used pejoratively. You know, we don’t if you if you call someone a conspiracy theorist, it’s very, very rarely going to be a compliment. So I think that when the mainstream media kind of refer to conspiracy theories, typically, they are not kind of saying that they’re not good, I don’t think they are giving them any greater legitimacy. If they talk about conspiracies, then that’s a different matter, conspiracies implies this is something that has been, you know, established to be the case. In scientific terms, you know, a theory has a kind of particular meaning and in terms of what Fanny was talking about there, and I’d agree with her on that. For certainly inlay usage. I mean, just they’re very expression, oh, it’s just a theory, that that is used to kind of say, oh, that’s something that’s not been established yet. It’s not been proven. So I think we need to kind of be careful just about the way that people are using words. And, of course, conspiracy and conspiracy theories themselves, a kind of very slippery concept.

Ray Briggs
So if you have one piece of advice, for people talking to their relatives about conspiracy theories, what would you suggest?

Christopher French
So that’s a very good question. I think, really, I would say, and I guess this is something that I conspiracy theorists would blow out of the water instantly, I would say, look at the sources that the information is coming from. Are they kind of reputable established sources that you generally would trust? Or is this just an idea that seems to have kind of come from nowhere that’s been pushed by somebody who doesn’t really have any evidence to support it. So if you have a situation where a claim is coming from, say, an established university, if it’s a peer reviewed paper, etc, it is probably going to be more trustworthy than somebody who has just quote, done their own research on the internet.

Ray Briggs
Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.

Christopher French
My pleasure.

Ray Briggs
Our guest has been Christopher French, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of London and author of “Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience.” And thank you for guest-hosting again, Blakey.

Blakey Vermeule
My pleasure. We’ll put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.org, and we may feature it on the blog

Blakey Vermeule
Now: a man so fast, “they” have tried to cover it up—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… Moments of doubt, half whispered rumors, blatant propaganda, things we wish were true, or are afraid are true, all codified, unverified, but normalized, and before you know it, we’ve accrued all sorts of notions some fantastic some practical- survival tips, how to cook tilapia in a bunker- and now we’re locked into our dreary scrapbooks. Layouts of Dealey Plaza, blurry photographs of the Gulf of Tonkin, yellowcake uranium forgeries. We got piles. We got tons. We never get tired of it. Conspiracies are true and not true at the same time. It doesn’t matter. They get us out of the house and into wars, that’s the important thing. Conspiracies give you that all important leeway in your personal beliefs, any uncertainty tempered by belligerent insistence. America loves a good confidence man, and we remain willing suckers to any slicker with a line of patter. “Do the research” is the Internet’s cry! Often posted by a guy about to blow his life savings on a magic coin that only exists on the Internet. Not just America. The whole world is a sucker. Centuries ago, we were all certain not certain that there was a superhuman wizard priest king called Prester John, and he had a kingdom somehow squeezed in between India and China. A letter from him asked Europeans to send armies to help defend his land of milk and honey, presently being besieged by various pagans. The letter, I must say, was not authentic. Yet, one of the reasons Columbus set sail was to find this hidden kingdom. We never found it, but we’re no stranger to other lands we’re never seen, courtesy of religion, myth, plain old cock and bull. We have Atlantis, Troy, heaven and hell, never verified and yet we know so much. We also have Fairyland, and UFO’s which might come from Fairyland. We don’t know. We have Odin and Zeus, and their Olympian and Asgardian baggage. We have exotic visions of the future, in movies, like Westworld, 2001 A SPACE ODDYSEY, Mad Max, Blade Runner- horrible places, really, why even go there? What do we care. We’ll be dead by the time the Trump clones are ready to rule. Right now, the main paranoid fantasy seems to be a reaction to the conspiracy theory that liberals are communists hell bent on bringing Chinese orphans over the Mexican border to addict us to fentanyl, and replace your uncle at his pipefitting job with a solar powered robot. That’s a lot to hold in the brain. To fight this conspiracy, we need to bring the country back to its former glory, which it actually, spoiler alert, never had. We seem to be taking our cues from Disneyland, before it got woke. The America of Davey Crockett and steam trains and big old gabled houses with a lovable Irish cook named Flossie. Swimming pools. Movie stars. it’s a hodgepodge, of UP WITH PEOPLE, history, spectacle, sports, and church barbecues, without the church part. This throwback world lies just beyond our ken with no messenger god, no Mercury or Papa Legba figure to bring us from here to there, this world to that. Again all we have is Trump. It’s like a poor man’s rapture, only it’s all end time all the time. But strangely, since this is a dream of our own making, we’re not really involved in the process. Trump will return with his army of do gooders, or make things righters, which includes, JFK Junior back from the dead, and also maybe Robin Williams, Dale Earnhardt, and Michael Jackson. They have all been seen. They’ll be rounding up pedophile libtards for prison or execution. Q Anon calls this the Storm. But the rest of us will be just watching, eating popcorn, for some reason, like it’s halftime at the Superbowl. That may be the secret sauce to this paranoid fantasy. It’s quite exciting but it’s not happening to us. We’re just watching. And suddenly we are no longer citizens. We are consumers. And I think that would be fine for a lot of us. Just give us a hot line where we can complain about how management is running things. And another hot line where we can complain-shame the complainers. Kind of like Twitter! And we’ll be fine. The conspiracies cancel each other out. Who needs democracy. Send in the clowns. Oh wait. Don’t bother. They’re here! I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco Bay Area, and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Copyright 2022.

Ray Briggs
Our Executive Producer is Ben Trefny. The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research.

Josh Landy
Thanks also Yiqi Chi, Merle Kessle,r and Angela Johnston.

Ray Briggs
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from the Partners at our online Community of Thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or other funders

Ray Briggs
Not even when they’re true and reasonable!

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can become a subscriber and gain access to a library of more than 500 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking,

Annie Hall
Max— Stop calling me Max. Why, Max, it’s a good name for you. Max, you see conspiracies in everything!