I think there are levels to it. Some people will take everything they see at face value. That goes for both sides. Critical thinking is lost on most.

This post was edited by XEnvy on Sep 8 2021 10:44am

what would you estimate my IQ score and educational level are based on a single post i made to you that was a joke?

I’m just teasing. I’m sure you are intelligent

Where is the "blame sick 2021 society" option

I don't think there is any substantial population of people that "take everything they see at face value". If anything people are overly-critical in incoherent ways, and that makes them prone to conspiratorial thinking, and that leads them to miss the actual boring conspiracies.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Sep 8 2021 12:00pm

Like that birds aren't real?

More like that wars continue for decades because it's a way to funnel money to military contractors. That's not a shiny flashy theory full of lizard people or elites running the world, but it's the truth. It's the boring conspiracy that actually exists that plays out in front of our own eyes, but people like to ignore it.

Psychosis has only been weakly linked to belief in conspiracies, but personality traits (such as detached-avoidant, anxious, and narcissistic) have been more strongly linked--although, there's contention within the field regarding so-called 'personality tests'. I think Goom is right that conspiracy theories, or the propensity to believe in them, have been around since time immemorial and I know the researcher Karen Douglas did a good deal of research on people who believe in conspiracy theories and found similar historical trends.

I also think IceMage's point that not all conspiracy theories are equal, and that there are times where all of us may find ourselves in a 'cart before the horse' moment in our believes, but there's a significant differentiating moment that happens at that juncture for people. Do you then reevaluate your claims with openness to being wrong? Or, do you do what conspiracy-minded people do and double-down on your beliefs?

I think it comes from the fact that people don't have access to all the information so they try to fill in the gaps. Some get way too overboard with it and many have their own agendas in promoting them.

Conspiracy theory is the word elitists have trickled down & coined and used to cover up the sociological notion of conflict theory, elite bias, deviance or a system that serves to protect the few that rule over it. A year "before covid" one could be a "ocd" certified crazy germaphobe in "isolation" & the next they are taking protective measures for healthy "social distancing", doctors would be doing the very thing they were persecuting their patients or clients for & wouldn't be the 1st time.

How quickly the paradigm's false dichotomy is revealed when they can spin even the nomenclature to persecute the truthers.

Only those with a strange form of Stockholm syndrome(mostly vaccinated unfortunately) would romanticize their capitalist overlords & regurgitate misinformation from mostly their televisions as though they were doing something productive like a mother penguin. They're pharmakeia indoctrination calls this "mirror neurons" or learning by shaping but in really it's just a hijack of the their mind through malevolent spiritual forces emulating the self who would also have the innocent think they are merely their flesh and not a living soul there within with the power to imagine, create, and live as a unique benevolent being instead of a number in part of a robotic malevolent slave system.

This post was edited by lodd222 on Sep 11 2021 02:36pm