As I was researching various extremist hate sites like the falsely named "Jews for Palestinian Right of Return", most of which are run by the same people registering multiple sites which constantly reference each other in order to build a false legitimacy, it occurred to me that there's a slight but very significant difference between being a legitimate detective and being a fringe conspiracy theorist.
It's all about seeing patterns for what they actually are versus seeing patterns which aren't really there. The difference is one of degree, not of kind. But it ends up turning reality on its head, making the true, false, and the false, true. But how do we tell the difference between the two? That's the $64,000 question.
I think some key terms should be named here as we go forward:
Cognitive Bias
Epistemology
Research Methods
Gnosticism or Secret Knowledge
Logical Fallacies
False Conspiracy Theories
Criminal Conspiracies
Obviously this is a huge issue which one Facebook post isn't going to adequately address, but we can at least try to start the process of understanding what false conspiracy theories are and how people process information in ways that inoculate them from believing in them or towards believing in them.
In other words, this is both a cognitive issue as well as a sociological issue. I personally don't care much about individual conspiracy theories as much as I do about why and how people come to believe in them. Some are quite harmless, like not believing we landed on the Moon, while others are incredibly dangerous, like the anti vaccination conspiracy theory which costs people's lives.
Also, as I posted above, there are real criminal conspiracies which have happened many times throughout history and to this day, such as Watergate, Tuskegee medical experiments, the Holocaust, etc. So I'm not in any way saying that no conspiracies have ever happened. That's a charge which is typically laid down by fake conspiracy theorists in order to discredit anyone who disagrees with them. That, by the way, is itself, a classic logical fallacy. That's why I put the term in the list above.
Anyway, this post is already too long and I've got a lot more to address about these phenomena, which I'll be writing on my blog, and then posting here and on Twitter. This has been a lifelong interest of mine, primarily because I come from a family which leaned/leans heavily towards conspiratorial ways of thinking, and I learned early on how dangerous that is on multiple levels, not just cognitively, but emotionally and spiritually as well.
Lastly, the takeaway from all of this is this:
It's OK to not know everything. You'll be fine with your limited knowledge.
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