New View on Conspiracy Theories

[Angrboda]

This is a theme that conspiracy theorists themselves make ample hay with. There have been legitimate government conspiracies in the past. Does that make it demonstrably possible that a government conspiracy of such and such could exist? Sure. Does the existence of other government conspiracies increase the likelihood of any specific set of facts being the result of a government conspiracy? No. This is the fundamental problem with conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, taking logic which is superficially appealing, and applying it in ways that are fallacious and lead to unreliable conclusions. (I attended a talk on the various ways in which conspiracy theorists' reasoning typically deviates from the norm of sound reasoning, unfortunately I've lost the notes on that talk. Conspiracy theorist thinking applies a logic all its own to ordinary events.)

(ETA: Thinking about this a moment, it's a given that human reasoning is flawed in ways which are justified by their utility to a social species of animals. Religion is a potent example of cognitive features of the human brain applied beyond the sphere in which they produce reliable and useful results. I wonder if the peculiar logic which seems to afflict conspiracy theorists might not be instrumentally useful in a more intimate inter-personal, social context. There are many times in which, socially, we need to draw conclusions based on incomplete and inconclusive information. Is the "conspiracy theorist mind" adapted to that context, and only errant when misapplied to these larger questions?)