What kind of person is drawn to conspiracy theories?

[Uddi]

10 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Imagine you're a normal person in your own life, working a job and barely keeping your head above water and a homeless person looks at you and says "the workers just want to keep us down, it makes sense as they would want more control". You would be like "I'm just trying to do my job, I ain't got the time or resources for this shit".

Do you think the elites have less responsibility, more time, more actual resources than you, to plot a plan of world domination that requires other people like them to be aligned with their interests and in on their plan and not preoccupied with their own interests? The higher up you get in the rungs of power, the more strings are attached to you, the more of your time is valued, the more of your time is needed, if not, you get outcompeted by those that have that time. You think Jeff Bezos has time for your shit? Just playing the anti-conspiracist devil's advocate.

If you look around, you see arguably much more division than cooperation, certainly across country lines, across company lines, across different competing agents. And you conclude that at the very top, at the very highest levels of organization, beyond all countries, beyond all companies, there is perfect and synchronous cooperation? This is the fact-driven position (criticizing the narrative by pointing to dissonant facts; real concrete things grounded in the real world). The narrative-driven position is "but the elites are creating all that division to benefit them, to keep us under control; it's all an epic plot, a play, a deception". These are connections that could make sense but are less grounded in concrete things. They are more general and more like possibilities than actual facts. What appeals more to you and why?

I am not talking about Jeff Bezos or people like that. I mean stuff like the CIA, MKUltra, Project Stargate, Project Mockingbird, The Gateway Process, The Invention Secrecy Act, and more. The CIA literally invented the term "conspiracy theory". They used that when people questioned how the assassination of JFK happened. All these conspiracies point to the same essence even if they themselves are wrong. Plus one of my veteran friends actually knows how the elites can spy on you using wifi because he was a radio technician for years. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these came out to be true.

[Basman]

Conspiracy theorists have low epistemic standards. It's also a way of explaining away responsibility for one's life, when you think that essentially mythical forces are the one's making you unhappy. People hardcore into conspiracy theories tend to have experienced tragedies in their life I think. 

[Uddi]

24 minutes ago, Basman said:

Conspiracy theorists have low epistemic standards. It's also a way of explaining away responsibility for one's life, when you think that essentially mythical forces are the one's making you unhappy. People hardcore into conspiracy theories tend to have experienced tragedies in their life I think. 

That's not my intention with diving deep into it. I want to truly know how rigged the system is but because I follow manifestation, I know the true power is within me. I'm not too worried about conspiracies as once you raise your vibration enough, you get increased immunity to such negative stuff so you can focus on what actually matters in your life and spiritual journey. I would only dive deep into it if you have a stable mind and accept that the real power is within you. I don't feel powerless, in fact me knowing this stuff reduced my cognitive dissonance because now I understand why the mainstream society doesn't want to shift its paradigm to consciousness first.

[Karmadhi]

I notice a lot of people who are drawn to these theories tend to to not believe in democracy and fundamentally think others are sheep that are controled by forces hiding in the shadows. To me it shows low trust in others, lack of trust in democracy and the idea that evil trumps good.

[Shawn Philips]

On 12/3/2026 at 4:15 PM, Cred said:

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.

Dude it's the opposite. HSP notice things that remain unnoticed to normies. You ridicule HSP and ADHD people believing in "magic" ideas while you normies believe fake moon landings, dinosaurs, and the universe created by a big random explosion... those are more childish and naive theories that the so called "conspiracies"

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Shawn Philips said:

while you normies believe fake moon landings, dinosaurs, and the universe created by a big random explosion.

You make me die from laughter dude, whats your issue with the fucking dinosaurs? 😂

[Carl-Richard]

Conspiracy theorists are taking a huge blow after the evolution of AI generated images and videos. They actually have to doubt everything they see, and therefore their narratives weaken. A good example is claims of cloning.

[Cred]

@Shawn Philips It seems you have misunderstood me. I don't disagree with you. I am a HSP myself.

[Human Mint]

Uneducated people for sure.

[Uddi]

On 3/21/2026 at 10:37 AM, Carl-Richard said:

Conspiracy theorists are taking a huge blow after the evolution of AI generated images and videos. They actually have to doubt everything they see, and therefore their narratives weaken. A good example is claims of cloning.

@Carl-Richard Not stuff like MKUltra, Project Stargate, Project Mockingbird, The Gateway Process, Project Looking Glass, the epstein files, and much much more. The true part of conspiracies is that they reveal that corruption increases exponentially behind closed doors. This has always been the case.

[Carl-Richard]

On 14.3.2026 at 2:30 AM, Carl-Richard said:

You can have a narrative which is more dense in facts (data points) and one more dense in connections or inferences and conclusions. That's the salient difference I'm pointing to. When a conspiracy theorist is like "look at how weird the videos look of the moon landings -> it must be staged", the anti-conspiracy theorist is like "but what about this fact, and this fact, and this fact, and this fact; that surely doesn't yibe with your theory?".

Here is like the best examples I could find of each extreme of the spectrum:

Fact-based:

Narrative-based:

List 25 is like "here is a fact, and here is a fact, and here is fact, what you do with them is up to you". Meanwhile Spirit Science is like, well, it speaks for itself.

Edited April 7 by Carl-Richard

[trenton]

@Leo Gura I have a question about a conspiracy theory. I believe there are epistemically sound conspiracy theories so long as we are honest about what we don't know. I'm curious if this is an example of an epistemically sound conspiracy theory.

The CIA probably did something bad, but we don't know what because they covered it up. Sometimes governments cover things up and we don't know what they did, and our government probably did successful cover ups as well, likely including something bad. The CIA also has a history of documented misconduct and various scandals, suggesting that they probably did other bad things as well, but we don't know what. Any scandal or misconduct through the history of the CIA is proof that the CIA might have done other things that we haven't yet discovered.

Is this reasoning sound? I also find it funny because it is intentionally unfalsifiable while simultaneously being the point of how cover ups work along with self-aware paranoia about "something bad."

The policy suggestion that this conspiracy theory would entail would be whistleblower protections because there are probably whistleblowers trying to tell us that the CIA did something bad, but we can't hear them.

[trenton]

My next argument seems even stronger in my opinion, but this is unrelated to the first. I believe that on some level conspiratorial thinking and conspiracy theories are necessary for justice to be possible in many cases. For example, sometimes there are conspiracies by organized criminals to frame innocent people. I have some questions about what you think of the following claims.

Scenario 1: I didn't commit financial fraud because there were organized criminals who stole my identity and used my social security number to make me appear to have committed crimes I didn't commit.

Scenario 2: I didn't attempt to kidnap this child. I was set up and tricked by criminals falsely claiming to be this child's relatives while I in reality had no intent of harming this child by claiming to know these relatives mistakenly.

Scenario 3: There are organized criminals who frame sex trafficking victims for prostitution.

How do you engage in conspiracy theories or conspiratorial thinking when somebody makes claims like these? Once you have witnessed frame ups like these by organized criminals, you become much more open minded to conspiracy theories because they are on some level needed for recognizing these scenarios. 

I do want to note, that for some reason I feel triggered by this subject of conspiracy theories. I feel the need to type insistently on this subject. Part of the problem might be because I believe in a conspiracy theory that there exists within the American government white collar criminals who do insider trading. What exactly are we labeling "conspiracy theory" versus blatant and undeniable reality? Is it not a conspiracy theory to say that there exists police corruption in forms such as using police stations to cover up drug trafficking operations due to bribery from organized criminals?

Can we define conspiracy theory? To me a lot of this is just undeniable reality. The Epstein files might be another example of a very transparent cover up. How exactly should we think about the Epstein files if we are not going to use any conspiratorial thinking regarding government cover ups? It seems completely necessary to me in some cases to apply this mode of thinking.

It is probably instructive to figure out why I feel triggered and what to do.

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, trenton said:

The CIA probably did something bad, but we don't know what because they covered it up.

That's the most impotent "conspiracy theory" I've ever heard. It's like calling yourself a rapist for thinking about sleeping with the teacher for 1 second.

[trenton]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

That's the most impotent "conspiracy theory" I've ever heard. It's like calling yourself a rapist for thinking about sleeping with the teacher for 1 second.

That is an interesting analogy. I don't quite understand it. What is your reasoning for this?

Is it because I could in theory say "something bad probably happened somewhere but we don't know what." I did consider that maybe if I applied this standard universally, it would essentially be a hunch. I might say that I have a bad feeling about that guy. I can't put my finger on it, but I don't like it. He has got some bad vibes. I don't know what but he probably did something bad.

If applied universally, it starts to seem ridiculous. At the same time when applied just to the context of government cover ups, there is a real phenomenon that cover ups happen but we don't what was covered up because of the cover up.

Do you maintain that it is wrong to say that successful cover ups likely happened?

[Carl-Richard]

5 hours ago, trenton said:

That is an interesting analogy. I don't quite understand it. What is your reasoning for this?

Is it because I could in theory say "something bad probably happened somewhere but we don't know what." I did consider that maybe if I applied this standard universally, it would essentially be a hunch. I might say that I have a bad feeling about that guy. I can't put my finger on it, but I don't like it. He has got some bad vibes. I don't know what but he probably did something bad.

If applied universally, it starts to seem ridiculous. At the same time when applied just to the context of government cover ups, there is a real phenomenon that cover ups happen but we don't what was covered up because of the cover up.

Do you maintain that it is wrong to say that successful cover ups likely happened?

It just came off as completely artifical and inorganic, ungrounded, meaningless for the intended context. If you got a conspiracy theory, tell us about it, don't try to construct it after the fact based on some standard of being as milquetoast as possible. Because clearly it ended up being completely artificial and not even fitting the term "conspiracy theory". It's like you fear your father is going to beat you if he finds out you're a bad boy but you want to also sound like you're a bad boy and then you say "I could have probably been a bad boy sometimes". No, you're not a bad boy. Way too nice, way too constrained.

A conspiracy theory tends to be a specific narrative, not "something vague might have happened and it was covered up". Something very specific happened and it happened because of this specific reason and covered up for this specific reason. It has some power in the claims it makes, it actually makes a difference if they're true or not. An epistemically responsible approach to a conspiracy theory is to be consistent with the level and strength of evidence, and if you're for example a whistleblower with a lot of inside information, then you might have an epistemically responsible position thinking it is true. Same with how all the Epstein claims have tons of evidence now while before you had Alex Jones and essentially nobody else talking about it.

Edited April 9 by Carl-Richard

[Willy Phallicus]

Conspiracy theorists are better epistemologists than the voting public that thinks things are happening by fluke and coincidence but that aint saying much.

Their larger problem isn't epistemology - the conspiracy theorist has plenty of things to be paranoid about - its that they let the paranoia get to them.

[UnbornTao]

So it turns out the moon wasn't made of cheese, after all. What a bummer.

Edited April 9 by UnbornTao

[trenton]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

It just came off as completely artifical and inorganic, ungrounded, meaningless for the intended context. If you got a conspiracy theory, tell us about it, don't try to construct it after the fact based on some standard of being as milquetoast as possible. Because clearly it ended up being completely artificial and not even fitting the term "conspiracy theory". It's like you fear your father is going to beat you if he finds out you're a bad boy but you want to also sound like you're a bad boy and then you say "I could have probably been a bad boy sometimes". No, you're not a bad boy. Way too nice, way too constrained.

A conspiracy theory tends to be a specific narrative, not "something vague might have happened and it was covered up". Something very specific happened and it happened because of this specific reason and covered up for this specific reason. It has some power in the claims it makes, it actually makes a difference if they're true or not. An epistemically responsible approach to a conspiracy theory is to be consistent with the level and strength of evidence, and if you're for example a whistleblower with a lot of inside information, then you might have an epistemically responsible position thinking it is true. Same with how all the Epstein claims have tons of evidence now while before you had Alex Jones and essentially nobody else talking about it.

@Carl-Richard Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I actually have a ton of conspiracy theories and they are all very specific and calibrated to the evidence. There are plenty of conspiracy theories that explain criminal cases, institutional cover ups, and government corruption.

Firstly, conspiracy theories are very relevant to law enforcement for prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, and police investigations. This includes all kinds of frame up scenarios and set ups perpetrated by criminals with the intent to frame their victims while avoiding accountability by manipulating the evidence such that it misleads investigators. I have witnessed this personally multiple times. This includes cases of police corruption such as accepting bribes from drug traffickers, falsified evidence such as police officers planting drugs during traffic stops, the suppression of exculpatory evidence by the prosecution because they prioritize winning a case at the expense of truth, various cases in which people were set up and tricked into appearing to commit crimes by a third party of criminals who deceived them, gang activities in various contexts, institutional cover ups for financial fraud or child sexual abuse, my experience with an attempt to frame me for kidnapping, my experience with witnessing specific gang activities due to my father's involvement, various cases of insider trading among government officials, businesses engaging in calculated law breaking to ensure that they profit even after being sued, and so on. The conspiracy theory in cases like these are part of the investigative process rather than necessarily definitive conclusions.

For example, if you go to a school in which a teacher was reported by five or more students for inappropriate touching, but then the school rather than reporting him to the authorities instead moves him to another location, then this is a common cover up to protect the institution's reputation. It is a similar method to church scandals in which priests are moved rather than prosecuted. A reasonable inference an investigator would make is that multiple reports from several witnesses describing similar behavior is likely indicative of an institutional cover up.

My biggest concern about discrediting conspiracy theories is that when people are victims of frame ups, they are often not believed. The justice system handles these situations poorly and the investigations are often not done in a sufficient manner to secure the necessary exculpatory evidence. The lone victim of the frame up is often the only one with the knowledge of how the frame up works. The general population typically has a poor understanding of frame ups by organized criminals such as cases of identity theft, sex trafficking, or kidnapping among other examples. There are actually many possible frame up scenarios that challenge the current evidentiary standards including digital frame ups where the law is still very much behind technology. The gaps in the legal system and its evidentiary standards is what allows organized criminals to exploit the gaps to frame innocent people while avoiding consequences. Complete investigations are often expensive and time consuming, making truth seeking structurally difficult to seek in frame up scenarios as the defendant must become the prosecutor of organized criminals who manipulated the evidence to make him seem guilty.

By this standard, "conspiracy theorist" includes FBI agents investigating a criminal network that they suspect has committed serious offenses but haven't yet received confirmation beyond the circumstantial evidence which appears to implicate the bad actors. "Conspiracy theory" includes investigators making hypotheses as to what the organized criminals may have done to aid in discovery.

I think the problem with discrediting "conspiratorial thinking" generally is that it doesn't seem to account for cases of reasonable inference based on documented patterns and corroborating evidence. If I am going to say there is an epistemic problem with conspiracy theories, then the actual criticism should be that they are often made without sufficient evidence which would make the claims more grounded. By this logic, the problem isn't simply conspiratorial thinking because there are different epistemic standards that can be used when making conspiracy theories and engaging in conspiratorial thinking. We should probably say that wild speculation without evidence is the problem rather than just conspiracy theorists making conspiracy theories, otherwise we end up with a bunch of people saying, "sometimes conspiracy theories are true, therefore there is validity to making conspiracy theories in certain contexts."

There are however types of conspiracies and frame ups that the general population typically has no understanding of, leaving the victims of criminal conspiracies and frame ups vulnerable to being accused of making "wild stories" when in reality they are telling the truth. Many stories of legitimate conspiracies are often dismissed due to seeming crazy, which in of itself is an epistemic failure. This seems to be the real reason why I find this subject triggering and I felt the need to post in this thread.

[zurew]

On 2026. 04. 09. at 11:55 PM, trenton said:

Many stories of legitimate conspiracies are often dismissed due to seeming crazy, which in of itself is an epistemic failure.

They can be an epistemic failure, but this is why the talk should rather be about how to make sense of events better and how to distinguish real conspiracy theories from false ones.

I wont do this, but my personal approach would be something like:

1) Lets take systematically all the conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be true and deeply analyze them structurally and try to extract common patterns from them.

2) After that, lets go back in time, and try to think about what better epistemic approach(es) could have been used to recognize that the given conspiracy theory is plausibly true and or worth deeper investigation (given all the avalaible info and tools and all the alternative hypotheses back then)

3) After that check how many false positives ( by false positive here I just mean - generating a conclusion that there is a conspiracy when there isn't one) would your updated epistemic approach generate about other known historical events that we already have a more plausible/better answer and or theory for.

 

So develop an approach by which you can recognize and differentiate (hopefully in a reliable  way) true conspiracies from false ones and integrate that approach within a higher order weighing system -  where you compare, study and entertain a bunch of other alternative theories for any given event in question (by alternative theory here , I just mean theories that are not conspiracy theories).

On 2026. 04. 09. at 11:55 PM, trenton said:

This seems to be the real reason why I find this subject triggering and I felt the need to post in this thread.

I understand your frustration (if you try to target people who are so naive and biased   that they never ever entertain any conspiracy theory no matter how much evidence is presented),  but on the other hand, you need to understand and acknowledge that dismissing most conspiracy theorists as a heruistic can be reasonable and understandable  given some of the reasons you already layed down -  limited resources, time, information and having negative priors about most conspiracy theorists (where most of their claims turn out to be false or unsubstantiated and most of them are generally uneducated about the subject they try to talk about) .

This is not to say that there isn't any room for epistemic improvement (when it comes to how to approach conspiracy theories and people who bring up conspiracy theories) , but this is to say that you shouldnt have an unreasonable standard for people and for institutions. Because, just like we cant expect every single criminal case to be perfectly solved (given all of our limitations), we also cant expect people and institutions to recognize every single legit conspiracy theory when there is one.

But I think its fine for you to push people to update their priors about conspiracy theories and about conspiracy theorists so that they dont just categorically reject all conspiracy theories. 

Edited April 11 by zurew