Psychologically speaking, it's usually a combination of a fear/dislike of authority and a superiority/inferiority complex. Religion is also a HUGE factor.

-The fact that most factual/scientific information comes from a small, sequestered group of academic elites, utilizes data that's not readily available, not easily understandable, and is difficult to replicate in non-lab settings naturally rouses people's suspicions. Common people tend to have a "I need to see it to believe it" mentality, so not being able to see it makes them unable to believe it.

-There's a sense of superiority that comes from "knowing" that something that the majority views as fact is false. It means you are the enlightened one. You are smarter than all the hoity-toity scientists and researchers with their jumped up degrees and qualifications. Such a mentality alleviates feelings of inferiority and inflates feelings of superiority.

-There is no limit to how far people will go to justify, validate, and equivocate their interpretations of the myths in their holy books. If blatant denial of reality is necessary, then so be it. Lying, cheating, or manipulating facts is no problem if you're doing it for a higher power.

I think your first bullet is far more spot on than the other two. While I am not religious, religion stems from something else, but I can see the two being linking, but I have met people who devoutly believe in some deity and still believe in the value of science, but they tend to understand both and make concessions from both ends, I don't think religion is as big of a factor, at least not in my experience, but you also live in an area that has a vastly different culture than CO.

The second bullet could be a personality thing such as was discussed in the video, that a lot of people feel like this small group of people is trying to use their knowledge to manipulate them, but that is more a reflection of them than of the people in those positions. It has specific name, but it goes that you will lie and cheat if you believe everyone lies and cheats, and I forget what it is called.


Funny enough this came out shortly after I finished a conversation with scorch who was contemplating the hypothesis and explanations put forth by flat-earthers because he feels that doing so gives him access to the other 50% of the argument, and I am like, there is no argument, there is no reason to even hold it in consideration because of the wealth of proof, and he is like, I can't trust NASA, look all these things they have lied about and I am like, that grid is not for a blue screen, that is not this that or the other thing. And I even pointed out that you could use two sticks and some math and would find the earth to be round. I even showed him a video of a youtuber who went out and measured it with a telescope, nothing that remotely required fancy lab equipment, but he was not convinced because it was all regurgitated information from school days, and I am like, I have had to do these test myself before and I have flown in and airplanes, and he is like, but this that and the other thing. I am sure the full comment thread is still there, but he bought himself some fancy gyroscopes to test it and I am convinced that he will get the results that flat-earthers say one should get if the earth was flat because of their really bad approach and general lack of physics knowledge.

Cause sometimes the obvious seems shady. And sometimes it's fun to question it or go along with the idea. However, for some that enables their personal irrational fears or questions and it snowballs into outright paranoia and distrust.

yeah, which I think was partly discussed indirectly.

I know several conspiracy theories, some of which might even be true and I consider them to be logically sound and totally possible. However, I can't watch the video you link, net issues.

One reason however; America is stupid.
Americans will believe anything they hear if its said on the news or from someone in a position of "authority".

Conversely Americans are also stupid, because they'll also refuse to believe anything, no matter how much proof you give them. So it depends on which stupid you find, but here in America, we got both kinds of stupid. Both kinds of stupid are why we have a stupid leader in office.

So in short; People are stupid. They don't know how to think for themselves to deduce information for themselves to be factual or not.

Most people who believe in it are not necessarily stupid, see comment on :scorch:, because he has built a good number of electrical devices, so he has some understanding of science. I think there is a lot more going on, than just outright stupidity.

No, stupidity as in, the ones who blindly believe are stupid, and the ones who refuse to believe no matter how much proof is given, are stupid. People see a conspiracy, and label it conspiracy theory and in their mind that means lies. Regardless of the conspiracy, if someone calls it a conspiracy theory, everyone else calls it a lie and dismisses you as a crackpot lunatic and won't even give it a moments thought.

Unfortunately there are people out there that manage to make convincing theories that are absolute bullshit. Its a goal for some people to make up the best lie, and some companies put out fake theories too just to make people dismiss the real ones. So I guess stupidity isn't the only thing that happens here. But Americans really do have a high rate of morons. Just look at who we got for president. The number one world idiot.

I think with conspiracy theories there is just a lot going, some people are extremely bright engineers and yet believe the earth is flat or that vaccines cause autism because of correlations and patterns, because they can't handle that sometimes things are just coincidence, even though there is a perfectly sound explanation for it and it requires fewer assumptions, they still believe it because in their mind coincidences don't happen even though they happen far more often than people would like to admit. You can find connections between anything if you look hard enough.


Yeah, but the alternative was not much better. Trump one because Democrats didn't want Hillary, so a lot of them decided not to vote. the Republican votes haven't changed in numbers in years, but the Democrats voting numbers have shifted a lot from election to election, but that is a different thing all together

Evolution programmed us to look for patterns. It saved us in the distant past and now manifests in us as religion and as belief in conspiracy theories because our lizard brains haven't caught up.

I think there is more of a cultural influence because back when global warming became a thing and when vaccines first became a thing they werenon partisan issues because people saw they direct effects of both and witnessed them first hand, but now there is Hollywood and a lot of other external media influences.

It is easy to say it is definitely this onereason, but it isn't so simple and that sort of thinking stems from a similar rational that the conspiracies come from in the first place

I think the explanation that people want easy solutions / explanations of situations in an ever increasingly complicated and fast world is the easiest way to describe it.

Maybe, but being that a good number believe in conspiracies that contradict each other at certain points, I don't think that is the cases, and video kind of had pointed out some of the reasons as studied by science.

So we can speculate all we want, but science has some pretty good answers that deal more with the psychology of it.