What kind of person is drawn to conspiracy theories?

[Carl-Richard]

I have a theory (not a conspiracy theory): the people who get strongly drawn to conspiracy theories are the same people who get drawn to supernatural ideas, like God creating the universe from their own predetermined plan (not simply evolving spontaneously through "natural law").

They are fine with explaining reality top down through an elaborate narrative. There is a seeming plan behind everything, behind world politics, behind alien invasions, behind wars, behind ancient history, and they all connect to a grand meta-narrative of control, of manufacturing, of conscious creating, rather than natural systems acting spontaneously.

Those who criticize conspiracy theories point out how that level of organization, of top-down control, is unlikely if not impossible, because of the natural tendency towards spontaneous order and the infeasibility of controlling complex systems. In the "naturalist critique", everybody is a victim of systems, even the supposed people in power, while in the conspiracist's mind, the people in power are the controllers of the systems and the powerless are the victims.

Whether one is more correct than the other is actually hard to say, and a naturalist that claims otherwise would then become a conspiracy theorist in their own right, thinking they have the level of insight and knowledge to be able to predict complex systems.

 

As for myself, as a general predisposition, I've noticed I'm fine with either (naturalism or supernaturalism). While for example Bernardo Kastrup says he is strongly opposed to supernaturalism simply as a personal predisposition (which is why he says he sees no point in doing philosophy if nature is not simply naturalistic; no "God" at the top planning it all, intervening into nature and changing the natural course of things).

But I would also challenge this idea of naturalism, that you could still try to deduce the "laws" behind God's planning so to speak, and it won't be a completely pointless endeavour, simply a more interesting one. Like trying to understand the psychology of God rather than the "physics" of God.

Edited 7 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

36 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

While for example Bernardo Kastrup says he is strongly opposed to supernaturalism simply as a personal predisposition

He can lay down reasons why he is against it (I dont think it is just bias)

My understanding is that It mostly has to do with the fact that once you push your priors towards supernaturalism, the set that contains reasonably possible explanations for any given event or phenomena explodes and from then on the flying spaghetti monster wont just be a logically possible thing, but it can become a reasonable thing to consider.

And why is that bad? Well, its harder to pick between hypotheses.

We lack the tools to properly pick between hypotheses already and that just becomes worse once we extend that set of things that we consider.

 

But yeah, updating priors is what we need to do once we are confronted with things that cant be cashed out under naturalism.

36 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

But I would also challenge this idea of naturalism, that you could still try to deduce the "laws" behind God's planning so to speak, and it won't be a completely pointless endeavour, simply a more interesting one. Like trying to understand the psychology of God rather than the "physics" of God

One of the biggest challenges there is gonna be the problem of evil  (if you take God to be a tri-omni God). If thats not the case, then that wont be an issue.

Edited 7 hours ago by zurew

[Cred]

I have written about the topic here: 

One also has to be HSP and ADHD in addition to autistic to be able to come up with a conspiracy theory. 

Dependent on whether the autism dominates, or HSP dominates will change the "flavour" of the theory, with it being more material and logical when you are more autistic and it being more magical when you are dominant HSP.

ADHD is the necessity for unconventionality. 

The reason why you need to be HSP, is because a purely autistic person can only follow instructions. HSP has the ability to ruminate, due to the wiring of their brains, which includes more feedback loops. The ability of the HSP-autistic person is feed a thought back into itself, and coming up with a new thought in that way. When you do that for a long period of time, you will reach conclusions that are far beyond the established knowledge. there has always been these people, they just used to call them, magicians, shamans, and prophets, etc.

Edited 7 hours ago by Cred

[Cred]

48 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Those who criticize conspiracy theories point out how that level of organization, of top-down control, is unlikely if not impossible, because of the natural tendency towards spontaneous order and the infeasibility of controlling complex systems. In the "naturalist critique", everybody is a victim of systems, even the supposed people in power, while in the conspiracist's mind, the people in power are the controllers of the systems and the powerless are the victims.

The way I am currently trying to solve this conflict, is by trying to show, that reality has the attribute of self-similarity like a fractal. If one were to show this, the top down, bottom up distinction with collapse.

My best approach currently, but it is not finished and there are still loose ends, is the idea that reality has "field-like" properties on every level of granularity, and all of existence has "wave-like" properties on every level of granularity.

Every time I'm talking about a "space", on this forum the last few days, what I mean is a bounded field, that allows for a standing wave, which is existence to exist. (everything metaphysically speaking)

Edited 7 hours ago by Cred

[Ramanujan]

Extraverted thinking types  in MBTI are the ones drawn to conspiracy theory. its 2026. the evidence is all over the place. if you still reject conspiracy theories in 2026 , you are a sucker

[Cred]

28 minutes ago, Cred said:

My best approach currently, but it is not finished and there are still loose ends, is the idea that reality has "field-like" properties on every level of granularity, and all of existence has "wave-like" properties on every level of granularity.

I just found out that something similar exists already and it's called "fields of sense" and is a part of new realism. Coincidentally, it was invented by a guy named Marcus Gabriel, who lives and teaches us in my city. A childhood friend who studies philosophy even knows the guy.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

the people who get strongly drawn to conspiracy theories are

Epistemic perverts

[Cred]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Epistemic perverts

Quote

So when examining a conspiracy theory, never make the mistake to ask what it says, ask instead what pattern it points to. when you don't see the pattern, this usually means that you have not looked hard enough or that your interpretation of reality is incomplete.

 

[VioletFlame]

Yes it's all superstitious & mythical thinking. Scientologists, for example, practically have the mental processing/mind of a schizophrenic. 

[Hojo]

People who are comfortable and still in survival mode, Always looking for boogeymen.

Edited 5 hours ago by Hojo

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Naturalist view definitely seems more grounded to me as it is much more rational and you ussualy need a solid evidence before making a claim, as opposed to supernaturalist claims where you can go haywire with it prior to having any evidence. It is a good thing to be biased towards that type of thinking, generally speaking

[Carl-Richard]

46 minutes ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Naturalist view definitely seems more grounded to me as it is much more rational and you ussualy need a solid evidence before making a claim, as opposed to supernaturalist claims where you can go haywire with it prior to having any evidence. It is a good thing to be biased towards that type of thinking, generally speaking

Not really. Tell that to multiverse theory enthusiasts (who are virtually all naturalists by the way; it's often used as a defense mechanism against the Fine-tuning argument). Not a shred of evidence for a billion billion hidden universes or whatever with all slightly different physical laws. And the very reason why Bernardo Kastrup entertains the supernaturalist position as a naturalist is because there is evidence that threathens his position.

Edited 2 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

14 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

And the very reason why Bernardo Kastrup entertains the supernaturalist position as a naturalist is because there is evidence that threathens his position.

Are your referring to the NDE stuff or are you referring to Sheldrake stuff?

I know one possible out when it comes to one of Sheldrake's studies - John Vervaeke managed to give a reply that is consistent with the naturalist view and once that additional thing was considered it rendered the ability back to just chance and it wasnt better than just guess.

 

I will look into that NDE stuff because that sounded interesting, and I am also looking into fine-tuning stuff , my issue there is just that there is a fuck ton of things that one needs to know to even have the ability to track  and to make sense of some of the arguments there.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by zurew

[Carl-Richard]

5 hours ago, VioletFlame said:

Yes it's all superstitious & mythical thinking.

Not really. It's about being top-down vs bottom-up, narrative-driven vs detail-driven, holistic vs analytic. You can be perfectly capable of rationality at either style. It's just a different orientation of the rationality, of what you decide to focus on. But of course, supernaturalism tends to appear at earlier stages of development, because cognition is efficient at dealing with narratives, less so with details.

Edited 23 minutes ago by Carl-Richard

[Willy Phallicus]

The naturalist and the conspiracy theorist are both half right and half wrong.

For example, the conspiracy theorist wants to tell us that planet durp is an absolute contrivance of elitist and evil Black Popes.  He is wrong about that but elitist, evil black popes do exist and humans are a resource like any other.

As for who is specifically drawn to them (based on your correlation) I'd say open minded people but that's a double edged sword.

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Are your referring to the NDE stuff or are you referring to Sheldrake stuff?

NDE stuff. I think most of Sheldrake's stuff (parapsychology and morphic resonance) is actually consistent with a naturalist conception of reality (Bernardo's conception; spontaneous at the bottom layer). He is mainly just challenging the idea that laws of nature are fixed (which doesn't necessarily allow for divine intervention, only that the laws might change slightly over time). But I think I remember he believes in divine intervention as well judging by his talks with Bernardo where he claimed something like God can have a plan (which would also be consistent with his Christian leanings, of course depending on how you define Christian again, that's always a problem, and I'm not just being a Peterson about this).

 

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I know one possible out when it comes to one of Sheldrake's studies - John Vervaeke managed to give a reply that is consistent with the naturalist view and once that additional thing was considered it rendered the ability back to just chance and it wasnt better than just guess.

What was that specifically?

 

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I will look into that NDE stuff because that sounded interesting, and I am also looking into fine-tuning stuff , my issue there is just that there is a fuck ton of things that one needs to know to even have the ability to track  and to make sense of some of the arguments there.

The Fine-tuning argument, in my limited knowledge of it (or rather almost purely intuitive understanding of it), never made much sense to me. Like the universe is the way it is, and if it wasn't like this, it might've been different or not even able to exist, therefore it must have been planned? Couldn't you just add infinite time to the equation and perhaps Sheldrake's idea of laws not being fixed and then over time, this universe is inevitable? Or is it that it being planned is more parsimonious than simply adding infinite time to spontaneous order and slight change in constants over time? But isn't infinite time already the case (or what's the loophole there)? I don't know.

Edited 25 minutes ago by Carl-Richard