My mental model for "people who believe in conspiracy theories" has changed since I lost a few friends deep into them.

I think it's a refuge for distressed people. Some belief that unconnected terrible events are somehow all controlled and "part of the plan".

I still don't get it and likely never will, but it at least aligns with anecdotal cases I've experienced of seemingly normal people going a bit off.

I never understood 9/11 truthers until someone explained it that it was more comforting to at least believe someone was pulling the strings in the background because at least there was a plan, even if it was sinister, compared to accepting a militarily inferior enemy half way across the world can upend everything about your life seemingly randomly.

IMHO the whole point of 9/11 was to make Americans feel insecure and distrust their government

Go pick up a copy of "Through our Enemies' Eyes." It's an account from a CIA agent who did extensive research on the events and circumstances that led up to 9/11 and the actors involved. His conclusion: It's not really about that at all; the answers are much more personal than that.

There was a plan, and it was by Osama Bin Laden. But he was naive. He wanted the American people to question themselves why something like this would happen to them, then find out about all the horrible things USA has done to other nations. It was never about hating freedom.

I don't understand how the former is more comforting. Military inferior enemy with one successful attack is preferable. It is safer the sinister plan inside.

Observing a schizophrenic I knew made me realize people high in "intolerance of uncertainty" can probably discard reality checking to arrive at a firm conclusion. I googled that and found a psych paper claiming schizophrenics indeed tend toward high intolerance for uncertainty. It was a relatively new finding.

Astral Codex Ten posited that conspiracy theories are part of the Epistemic Minor Leagues [0]. In other words a way for people to flex the part of their brain that doing real research and discovery stimulates even if they don't feel they can belong to or contribute to "regular" intellectual activity like academic research.

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/epistemic-minor-league...

I don't think Trump believes in conspiracies, generally speaking. I think he simply finds them useful for manipulating large groups of people. I could certainly be mistaken.

i don't think he does either

plays along on the conspiracies as long it benefits him and shows him in good light

his psychopathy is a level beyond those of conspiracy believers

> Downvotes in lieu of logical argument in 3...2...

If you want a logical rebuttal, you have to make a logical argument, and not

> At least 70-80% of 'conspiracy theories' are true. Yes, even many of the 'crazy' ones.

I hate this position. Imagine someone ranting about MKULTRA if the CIA never acknowledged it. Imagine it was just some papers on the internet with no providence. I like to think of it as a matter of diversity of though. We need the "crazy" people to explore the really unlikely bizarre scenarios that MIGHT be true that most mainstream people will never even humor. At the end of the day reality is stranger then fiction.

Sure, 1% of conspiracy theories turn out to have some truth to them — but on the whole, if there’s no way of knowing in-advance which ones those are, I don’t know if “engage with all the conspiracy theories, spend time and energy attacking fictional problems and innocent people” is a better response than “reject all the conspiracy theories, spend time and energy on definitely-real problems, allow some dodgy organisations to get away with stuff”...

You also have the conspiracy theory that says that the most outlandish conspiracy theories are amplified much more than they naturally would be in an attempt to discredit all conspiracy theories. Which I do believe, myself.

The "crazy" people make it less likely that the bizarre scenarios that are real will actually be exposed, because the crazy people that do on rare occasions get one right usually are at the same time ranting about a dozen other things that actually are completely bonkers.

For instance if someone says they were abducted by aliens (from space), but they also say that COVID was designed by Gates and Fauci when they were roommates at Princeton to depopulate the world [1], and that Betty White was using Hollywood to promote the vast secret satanist pedophile network that traffics millions of US children each year, while her sister Barbara Bush did similar in the government, all at the behest of their father the satanist Aleister Crowley [2], and that in early January 2021 the military arrested Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Democratic governors, Fauci, Gates, etc and took them to Gitmo where they were tried and executed, and restored Trump to the Presidency but are using robots and actors to make it look like all those dead people are still running things because they don't want to tip off the people running the underground adrenochrome harvesting operations until the children have been rescued [3], I'm not going to take their alien abduction seriously.

If on the other hand Neil deGrasse Tyson said he was abducted by aliens I'd take it seriously. I wouldn't necessarily believe he was actually abducted by aliens, but I'd believe there was a high probability that he had a good reason to believe he was, and that would be something worth investigating.

[1] Yes, there are people who believe that, and yes, they really say it was at Princeton even though neither of them went to Princeton.

[2] That started appearing on fringe sites shortly after Betty White's recent death.

[3] Another real conspiracy theory.

Oops...I just realized alien abduction was a bad example, because it is not really in the same category as the other things I used for the crazy person's beliefs.

Those other things all involve belief in things they have been told but have not personally experienced. The alien abduction claim would be a claim that they have personally experienced alien abduction.

Everyone has some non-orthodox beliefs. I am sure I'm not exempt.

I'm not trying to describe someone who has a few odd beliefs, especially if they know they are a bit odd and can entertain good arguments.

I'm trying to describe where someone descends into the whole web of inter-related beliefs and accepts them with a religious determination, resisting even the suggestion they could be wrong.

the problem starts when you start preaching your beliefs onto others

I was about to point out the fact that all this guy's motivations seem to be mental illness YOLO and that it seems he recently lost his job. Kind of like the movie "falling down" but even more petty somehow