The rise of conspiracy theorists and entitlement culture

roundthebend

VimFuego said:

it's an interesting dichotomy, on one hand they are a lot less trusting of those in authority, but at the same time they implicitly trust someone on the internet, so long as they confirming a deeply held belief. I think a lot of it comes down to an inferiority complex, a dislike of those they perceive as better, as educated. Basically, it's a massive, digital chip on their shoulder. 

My youngest son (18) fits this description. I think it's similar to the far left, hippie, treehugger demographic - I completely sympathise with those political viewpoints, probably even identify myself that way, but there's been a significant proportion of those folk who spend too much time bashing the wealthy and blaming them for the ills of the world, and in the same breath demanding them to solve it too.

He also falls into the category of believing Barry on Instagram who shared a screenshot of a news article from 2017 that someone called "rebel_against_our_dictators" posted yesterday, rather than trusting the "evil BBC".

I feel sorry for him, despite also being massively irritated and stressed by him. He has just become an adult which is always a difficult time as the new independence can be overwhelming, but then his independence has been massively hampered by a virus which hasn't directly affected him.

I've been saying for years how SM is to blame for a lot of problems in society, especially kids who aren't able to rationalise what they see. Both my sons, the other is 21, believe they have entrepreneurial tendencies because they are copying various people on SM who claim to have freed themselves from the shackles of 9-5 jobs through some kind of get-rich-quick schemes. What they don't realise is that some of those are lying, and some of those succeeded through hard work which came naturally to them, so they don't really mention it. e.g. youngest son wants to starts Dropshipping. It's easy - no stock costs, no logistics costs, no staff costs, no R&D, etc. Every sale has profit, essentially. In theory that's easy money. And I'm sure he will earn a few quid at some point, but it won't be sustainable unless he learns how to choose the products well, how to market them, how to be ahead of the curve, build a brand.

SM enables smoke & mirrors everywhere you look. Sometimes it's deliberate, sometimes it's a result of the format being very fast-paced and encouraging fast scrolling through shallow posts of information.

As parents we have found it very hard, and I think our kids are some of the first to become adults through this SM age. I really feel for those with younger children now, many of whom will also be failing to notice the ills of SM and how it affects their parenting.

dano

It's a shame you don't have to take a test to use the internet, that would stop a lot of the nonscence.

LastMantra

A few of the people that I've met that are into conspiracy stuff certainly couldn't be called "thick". Certainly doing very well financially and in other ways.

RaymondLin

LastMantra said:

A few of the people that I've met that are into conspiracy stuff certainly couldn't be called "thick". Certainly doing very well financially and in other ways.

Like Trump?

Smart and money, you can have one without the other.  You can do very well financially and still be "thick".  Sometimes, being a bit too smart can be a hinderance.  Like if you have an idea, the smarter person would do cost analysis, risk analysis and basically more risk avert, the "thick" person would just go for it without much of a plan and sometimes, SOMETIMES, it pays off massively.

dano

The last 12 months has taught me that you can't reason with thick people, entitled people,  conspiracy theorists, covid deniers etc. They take what they see on FB, YT, Twitter etc as absolute fact as it supports their views.

I have  a good friend, he's not that bright, loves his covid denial and conspiracies. We were talking about masks a few months ago outside Tescos and I was explaining (as a scientist, engineer and technologist) how it is one tool to reduce risk / spread. I  rbriefly touched on water molecules size, airflow diffusion etc, nothing to hardcore. He just said '"it's bollocks I've seen videos, explanations, memes etc which debunk it". At which point I realised it's pointless trying to educate blinked, thick people.

I changed phones in September and purposely didnt install Facebook, honestly i don't miss it. I can have the occasional browse on my laptop if I need it.

VimFuego

RaymondLin said:

LastMantra said:

A few of the people that I've met that are into conspiracy stuff certainly couldn't be called "thick". Certainly doing very well financially and in other ways.

Like Trump?

Smart and money, you can have one without the other.  You can do very well financially and still be "thick".  Sometimes, being a bit too smart can be a hinderance.  Like if you have an idea, the smarter person would do cost analysis, risk analysis and basically more risk avert, the "thick" person would just go for it without much of a plan and sometimes, SOMETIMES, it pays off massively.

confidence, even if misplaced, can take you as far or further than brains. In fact, a tendency of smart people can be to overthink things, paralysis by analysis and all that.

LastMantra

RaymondLin said:

LastMantra said:

A few of the people that I've met that are into conspiracy stuff certainly couldn't be called "thick". Certainly doing very well financially and in other ways.

Like Trump?

Smart and money, you can have one without the other.  You can do very well financially and still be "thick".  Sometimes, being a bit too smart can be a hinderance.  Like if you have an idea, the smarter person would do cost analysis, risk analysis and basically more risk avert, the "thick" person would just go for it without much of a plan and sometimes, SOMETIMES, it pays off massively.

Haha fair point. These ones though I wouldn't call thick, they seem pretty normal in all other ways. If anything maybe a bit too sure of themselves right enough. 

Probably just me that's even thicker. 

fob

Emp_Fab said:

Far too many people think that their uneducated opinions are of equal value to the accumulated knowledge of accredited experts.  When the hell did that deluded arrogance start ?

How can we stop this insanity ?  How can we stop people thinking that their opinions are just as valid as an expert's ?

What makes someone an expert? I was lucky enough, once, to be present when a number of highly accredited physics professors were having a meeting and the big bang was referenced as an exampe of something they all believed in. There was a cough and then a lot of eye rolling. One of the professors didn't hold to that theory and a surprisingly heated exchange started up. The dissenter quickly made his argument and challenged anyone to explain why it was wrong or any less likely than the BBT. No reply. It's just easy to accept the mainstream view - which could well be true - and not bother drilling down. As an aside, I really wanted to chat with this guy to see if he would explain his position to me in layman's terms. I didn't get to meet one-on-one at the time but, seeing how covid goes, I might be able to meet him later this year.

A long way of saying that a lot of facts, even scientific ones, aren't as rock solid as we'd like to believe.

'The government - our government - are spying on us!' Paranoid rubbish? Edward Snowden showed us otherwise. Now we just hope most of us aren't interesting enough to come into their focus.

Q Anon was an interesting one. The already mentioned pizzagate said there was a cabal of high level peadophiles operating above the law. It didn't go away and then a whole load of very strange theories were added to it: you think Hilary Clinton is a lizard? You moron! Did Jeffrey Epstein conveniently commit suicide? I think it's probably a conspiracy theory if you think others were involved in his death.

The bottom line is conspiracies exist. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

prowla

Is the idea that there are loads of conspiracy theorists a de-facto conspiracy theory itself?

PC_Dave

dano said:

It's a shame you don't have to take a test to use the internet, that would stop a lot of the nonscence.

And a spelling test

wolsnah

Without sounding too elitist, which invariably it does and I know it, I think it's social media, coupled tightly with computerised communication devices for the masses that don't really understand them. Social media wouldn't really exist in the same vein without such devices, but being a bit longer in the tooth and of a slightly geeky persuasion, computing devices were much more the domain of those interested in the underpinnings of the devices and those sorts of people were probably less bothered about trivial celebrity culture, conspiracy theories (debatable!), gossiping and rumour-mongering.

From my experience, the people back in the day working in such fields were the type that were familiar with research, validating references, etc. and wouldn't just take things positive and negative at face value.

I don't see how this would change without everyone's rights being affected and who would make the decision on who is allowed access to computing devices?

Gossip and conspiracy theories have likely existed for a long long time, but are no longer isolated to a local community group, which may been multiple disparate community groups but now gather together into a critical mass.

ThePrettyDamned

I think it goes beyond social media. It is in some ways the Internet crossed with capitalism.

I've said before, I use a tool called "track this". It basically floods your cookies with 100 tabs worth of stuff you have no interest in - the results are hilarious and, occasionally, shocking. 

You choose a "character" to become and everything online shifts - since I became a rich kid, I'm promoted Italian designer brands, a gold and aluminium credit card (that boasts about being 11g heavier than the competition) and the sources of news that are in my feeds are totally different - lots of telegraph, financial Times and a load of stuff I've never even heard of. 

It's not surprising someone might have their beliefs reinforced online, even without social media - the Internet tracks what you like and don't like, and gives you more of what you like. Eventually, it stands to reason all you will see is stuff you already agree with and thus perceive as truth. 

RaymondLin

Big Tech and social media plays a part but if you KNOW what they are doing, aware of why they are doing it and see through the entire thing, i.e. the platform is NOT the product, we, the user, are the product, the product for sale as data to the customers that pays Big Tech for our data.

Once you realise that and look at it from that perspective, then you, or at least I do, don't give a damn and know which ad is targeted (all of them) and which post on Facebook they promote.  The algorithm is design for me to spend more time on it and more money on the advertisers.

This is not to say it is a reason to start a revolution on big tech or regulation on big tech, there certainly is an argument to be made there and a separate topic altogether.  The point is if you know what social media is doing, and really start using real judgment and logic to tell what is a good source of news and what is not.  Then social media immediately becomes less of a problem.  

chillidoggy

Seems to me that everywhere you look there’s a bottomless pit full of ‘experts’ climbing over each other to reach the top and get their 15 minutes worth. 

And, as there’s so much old cobblers on the web, they need to be sensationalist and controversial otherwise their pitch will lost in the tumult of other old bollocks.

To a large extent this also applies to mainstream media, as well as the slack-jawed, brain-dead twats in the local pub to which Emp refers.

crunchman

This post will probably get me a record number of LOLs but I'll throw it out anyway.

When the scientific community presents something as fact, which people instinctively know is wrong, then it causes people to question the other stuff they present.

The specific issue is the exclusion of God and the idea we all got here by chance through evolution.

There are a whole bunch of things about our universe that are incredibly finely tuned.  The idea that those values arose by chance is very difficult.

For instance, it has been estimated that the cosmological constant is tuned to 1 in 10 to power of 53

Oxford physicist Roger Penrose said that one parameter, the “original phase-space volume”, required fine tuning to an accuracy of one part in ten billion multiplied by itself 123 times.  It's impossible to write that number out in full – it would require more zeroes than the elementary particles in the universe.

Fred Hoyle (not a Christian) said the following:

“A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

There are a bunch of other interesting Fred Hoyle quotes:

https://www.azquotes.com/author/6972-Fred_Hoyle

That's just a handful of examples.

You then have other major questions, like how everything came from nothing.  What is the cause behind that?

How did life start?  That's a major one.

How did complex organs and systems evolve? 

How do you explain consciousness?

I'm not going to go through all the issues here, as there isn't space to do them justice.  As a good starting point, read Lee Strobel's book The Case for a Creator with an open mind.  Also, think about the totality of it.  If you think you can come up with some kind of plausible explanation for one of these incredible coincidences, however unlikely, what about all the other issues?  It may be possible for some of these things to have arisen by chance, but for that many things to have arisen by pure chance just would not happen.  The Fred Hoyle quote above puts it better than I can.

People instinctively know this.  In the Bible, Romans chapter 1 says: what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Elsewhere, the Bible says that God has put eternity into their hearts.  Deep down people know that there is more to life than the secular humanist world view they are presented with.  People also have spiritual experiences.  On this issue, they don't trust what they are presented with.  That then creates a wider distrust of the scientific community on other issues.

I don't want to get into a huge debate over this, as it won't help anyone very much, but I think it is a major contributory factor to why there is so much distrust of what is presented as fact.

VimFuego

personally I've never dismissed the idea of a super powerful cosmological entity capable of manipulating space, time etc. All I ask for is evidence of said beasty. Just because we can't explain it (yet) with science doesn't mean it's Dr Manhattan or Galactus.
EDIT: re spiritual experiences. I get them, everyone does. I've never ascribed it to a deity or possession of an immortal soul. They could be chemicals in the brain, or synapses or whatever. If it is a god, then again, show me the money!!!

Cirrus

The thing that stops me seeing extra significance in all those cosmic finely tuned balances is that it's the wrong way round.

You look at the way reality is and say "this could only work if the cosmological constant was *exactly* X or if this force perfectly balanced that force or whatever.

I say "These forces balance, and the cosmological constant is X, it could have been anything, but it was this, so the universe is the way it is. If it wasn't, it'd be like something else. And if it was a universe unconducive to complex life, well... that's not a universe I was ever going to born into, is it?"

SPECTRUM001

RaymondLin said:

LastMantra said:

A few of the people that I've met that are into conspiracy stuff certainly couldn't be called "thick". Certainly doing very well financially and in other ways.

Like Trump?

Smart and money, you can have one without the other.  You can do very well financially and still be "thick".  Sometimes, being a bit too smart can be a hinderance.  Like if you have an idea, the smarter person would do cost analysis, risk analysis and basically more risk avert, the "thick" person would just go for it without much of a plan and sometimes, SOMETIMES, it pays off massively.

I think this is all too true. I could never work in the City because a) it is not my thing, and b) because I am not smart enough. Or am I doing myself down - many of the people I have met who work in the large financial institutions come across to me as being really thick and with closed minds.

There are variations of what we perceive as being smart or intelligent. 

I once had an argument with a senior manager (I work in Music Publishing) who said that my Fine Art degree was utterly useless for my job. I countered that it had taught me to be self sufficient, plan ahead, see the end game, run a project, explain theory, run presentations, play guitar etc. He still didn't really get it - interestingly I am still there and he isn't.

On the conspiracy note, ironically - my father-in-law is (well was, he is now quite aged) an educated scientist with quite a few significant inventions and projects to his name. But is terrible for coming out with conspiracy theories alongside thinly disguised racism and sexism. 

fields5069

I like the post about God. I'm a humanist. Even if something created the Universe, the notion that we owe anything to that thing I find absurd. I don't even like atheism very much, since it seeks to fight against "something" when I'm sure nothing is there.

jdgm

Cirrus said:

The thing that stops me seeing extra significance in all those cosmic finely tuned balances is that it's the wrong way round.

You look at the way reality is and say "this could only work if the cosmological constant was *exactly* X or if this force perfectly balanced that force or whatever.

I say "These forces balance, and the cosmological constant is X, it could have been anything, but it was this, so the universe is the way it is. If it wasn't, it'd be like something else. And if it was a universe unconducive to complex life, well... that's not a universe I was ever going to born into, is it?"

Good post IMO.

Interesting article here - "how social media is warping democracy". 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/