 It doesn't make sense. This is all a big part of the eventual goal which is control. Belief in conspiracy theories are actually more popular than you might think. Polls over the years have shown that over half of Americans endorse at least one sort of conspiratorial narrative. Why not believe it? You know, whatever. In a world... Okay, sorry, with this new setup I had to try something dramatic. In an online world where misinformation and disinformation spreads like wildfire and people become empowered through misinformation, horrific consequences can happen. But how did it get to this point? And why have bizarre theories and fake news become so prevalent in our society today? The patented nano-silver we have, the Pentagon has come out and documented and homeland security and said this stuff kills the whole SARS corona family at point blank range. Scientists agree silver has no effect against the coronavirus. In fact, exposure to collodial silver can be toxic. Who or what is to blame for this? In this four-part series, we're examining the rise of conspiracy theories. The influencers who have pushed out these theories and that aftermath when the internet clashes with reality. How did we seemingly go from having questions about society to denying science and even at times reality? In this first episode today, I'm examining how conspiracy theories began and why they seem to grow. But before we dive into that, don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell so that you don't miss an episode in this series. Because we're diving into all the various details of conspiracy theories, this topic might be sensitive or triggering for some. Viewer discretion is advised. Misinformation is extremely prevalent on the internet, now more than ever. Scroll through TikTok for any length of time and you're likely to find a psychology hack. A real psychology fact by popular request. Psychology is a science. It is not a list of facts, tricks, hacks, or anything like that. Browse YouTube and you're likely to encounter a fantastical story time that most definitely certainly happened. Go on any Facebook group and someone will probably tell you that some essential oil will cure whatever ailment you have. And a lot of this is seen as a harmless byproduct of the internet. But when does it become dangerous? And when does this misinformation turn to conspiracy theory? Let's define it. Conspiracy is a plot between multiple people to secretly control or manipulate a situation or create crimes in secret. These do happen, though oftentimes they aren't always successful, since many secrets seem to always get out somehow and some way. Conspiracies do exist and there are real examples of conspiracies that have happened throughout time. But most of these are not successful and the secret is not kept for long, hence why we know about them. A conspiracy theory is a belief or argument that a conspiracy exists. Like if you were to believe that Avril Lavigne, iconic punk pop star, was replaced by another person. That is a conspiracy theory out there. A conspirator is a person who plans or carries out a conspiracy. Avril Lavigne and the team surrounding her would be the conspirators in the previous example. A conspiracy theorist is a person who believes a conspiracy plot exists or is taking place, like if you were to believe that Avril Lavigne was replaced. Other relevant terms related to conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists is apophynia, the condition of seeing or imagining patterns in random occurrences. For example, for a while I always saw 11-11 on the clock every day and became convinced that it was some sort of sign or had some sort of greater meaning. When in reality my body may have just been on a schedule where naturally I would have the urge to look at the clock at around the same time. I saw meaning in the potentially meaningless or maybe meaningful, but I didn't properly evaluate the other options and possibilities at the time. Conspiratorial thinking is a mindset that makes someone susceptible to believing in conspiracy theories. All of a sudden everything around you becomes a conspiracy theory or a potential conspiracy theory. A conspiratorial worldview is a mindset that accepts multiple conspiracy theories or the belief that the world is run by one mass conspiracy. All of a sudden Avril Lavigne taking a break from her singing career turns into Avril Lavigne being replaced, which turns into Hollywood constructing a massive plot to be rid of pop stars and singers. Which all of a sudden means even this video here where I'm talking about this conspiracy is part of the conspiracy. The reality is conspiracy theories and the conspiracy mindset has a lot to do with mental health. And while I'm no mental health expert I'm going to try my best to analyze this aspect because it is such an important component of this whole conversation. But I will be doing so through expert opinions and research and all of that research will be linked down below so that you can check it out and find out more about this topic. Things I will not be doing in this video is demonizing people who believe in conspiracy theories as well as making fun of them or seeing conspiracy theories themselves as a joke. While there are some funny aspects to conspiracy theories and I definitely will be covering that, overall conspiracy theories aren't just a joke. There are some serious implications to conspiracy theories and the spread of conspiracy theories. And people who believe conspiracy theories aren't necessarily crazy or weird and they're not just fringe groups of people. Likely everyone watching this video believes in at least one conspiracy theory on some level and in some shape or form. Or we know of our own friends and family members who believe in conspiracy theories. So if I were to just look at everyone who believes conspiracy theories as a joke that would be inaccurate on my part. Conspiracy theories are much more complex than a simple dictionary definition because there are so many varieties of conspiracy theories. Some theories are based on age-old folklore, some scientific misinformation. Some conspiracy theories would require thousands of people to participate and others just a handful. And of course there are really silly or logically flawed conspiracy theories that exist that make it hard for people to take other conspiracy theories seriously. There's also a distinct difference between conspiracy theories of the past and conspiracy theories of the present time. Classic conspiracism involved developments of alternative explanations to phenomena that were hard to explain. There was at least partially a rational way of thinking and when you asked conspiracy theorists of the past to explain their theories, usually they had at least some logical reasoning and thought out possibilities of execution. He got to know Jim pretty good, liked him, and he was convinced that there was a plot, that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, was set up. He may have been part of it, but there was a lot involved. Could have gone back to Cuba. He traced a lot of things and he thought he was onto something big. Who killed John F. Kennedy? The commission answers unequivocally Lee Harvey Oswald. Was Oswald acting alone or was he a member of a conspiracy? The commission answers he acted alone. But modern conspiracism is completely different. Instead, modern conspiracism has vague ideas and assumptions without a clear idea of how these conspiracy theories could have possibly been executed. Why do you have that? It's a movement, man. It's the shift that can feel it coming. Some call it the Great Awakening. What do you think Q is, by the way? It's an entity of ten or less people that have... I'm Bob of the government. Hi, clearance. Security clearance. And how do you know that? Well, I'm just telling you, this is what it appears to be. What it appears to be. So you don't have any proof of that, that's what you're guessing it is. And you don't have any proof there, is it? Maybe it's not true because there's no evidence of it. It's just stuff being talked about on the internet, right? There hasn't been any non-evidence yet. New conspiracism also seems to take aim at political destabilization and de-legitimization. You believe there's a deep state? Yes. And what do you think that deep state's doing? Do you think they're running this country? I think they were, and they're petrified now. Because they're losing their control. But Donald Trump's the president. He's running the country, right? Yeah, but he's having to fight against it. I mean, he said he could do it all himself. Everything would be so easy when he came into office, and you think he's fighting with the deep state a year and a half into his term? I think he's been fighting since before he was elected. And who was in this deep state? Who are the people in it? Oh, I definitely believe that, like, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas. So you think the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas are running this country as we stand here in the rain? No, they're trying. So conspiracy theories themselves and the general practice and idea changes along with society and times. A simplistic view of conspiracy theories would be that much of it all boils down to one simple emotion. Fear. When the world is complex and scary and such dark things are happening that it almost becomes beyond human comprehension, it may be easier to look to a theory that rejects that reality. But of course, that's only a simplistic way of viewing conspiracy theories and those that believe them. Though it's also important to mention the world view of conspiracy theorists is often simplistic as well. A battle between good and evil. Us versus them. Red pill, blue pill. Instead of viewing the world as a chaotic mess or humans as complex, conspiracy theories seem to view the world in black and white. Every in-group or group of nice people needs an out-group of nasty people. Otherwise, they wouldn't know who they were. There have also been numerous philosophers who have weighed in on the topic of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories have truly perplexed a lot of philosophers because in part they are simply theories. People questioning reality is something that philosophers have done for centuries. But on another hand, they can elicit a very specific emotional reaction and can lead to a cognitive dissonance between reality and one's own perception. Philosophical thinking about conspiracy theories can be traced all the way back to Machiavelli and his work The Prince and later and more extensively in his discourses. To be loved or to be feared. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me. Do we love the idea of the conspiracy theories that we believe? Or do we greatly fear them? In his books, Machiavelli warned conspirators who would potentially be against him. It seems his greatest fear was the potential conspirators themselves. So I suppose you could say that we fear the potential conspirators of the world but we love the conspiracy theories because they protect us from our potential worst fears. They prepare us for worse or possibilities. Machiavelli warns his subjects not to engage in conspiracies partly because he believes these rarely achieve what they desire. The philosopher Carl Raymond Popper also made similar sentiments regarding conspiracy theories. He noted that while conspiracies do occur, he thinks few conspiracies are successful since few things turn out exactly how they're intended. Like, have you ever listened to a conspiracy theorist talk about a conspiracy that involves mass coordination on a wide scale between hundreds if not thousands of people and wonder, my workplace is barely ever able to coordinate on basic tasks. How are people coordinating and acting out these mass scale conspiracies without anyone knowing or getting caught? Many conspiracy theories seem to give humans a bit too much credit since no one is perfect and we all f up a lot including those who are in power in our society. Throughout his career, Carl Popper mostly talked about pseudoscience and what pseudoscience was. Carl Popper looked at scientists of his time and noticed two different distinctions. There were scientists who were actively looking to disprove their theories. They were looking for any information that could show that their theory could be false and then there were scientists who only looked to prove that they were right and never actively sought out any information that could prove their theory wrong. Or the entire theory itself was one that you couldn't necessarily disprove. Carl Popper believed the scientists that only looked to prove that their theories were right were actually practicing pseudoscience. That's a very interesting connection between conspiracy theories and pseudoscience because one could also argue that most conspiracy theorists only actively search for proof that their conspiracy theories are right. QAnon only looks to prove that their theories are correct through secret messages that Donald Trump relates to them supposedly. When I started to see some of the games that they were playing with Trump's Twitter, for example, that's when I really started to pay attention to it. One famous example, he had a 0000 second difference on post that Q and Trump posted at the same time three times in one day. So there's like a no time at all difference. And they asked President Trump to say to pop to be top and he did so in Easter. That's very specific phrase. And we keep it in tip top shape. We call it sometimes tippy top shape. Instead of actively looking for alternative possibilities or ways in which their theory may be wrong. Suddenly the most ordinary things like pizza, hot dogs and pandas become confirmation of the worst possible assumptions that you can make about someone. No, I can't prove it. I can only support it with evidence. But to say, do I need to prove it? I would say no, because the starting point is flat. That's what you observe. That's what I observe. And that's what everyone deals with in their day to day lives. It's important to keep in mind when examining a conspiracy theory or when talking to conspiracy theorists, whether or not this theory and its believers are actively searching to disprove the theory or if they're only looking to prove themselves right. These earlier philosophical works sparked a larger philosophical debate on the importance and merits of conspiracy theories. Are conspiracy theories even valid? Should conspiracy theories even be taken seriously? Those like Popper fall into a generalist way of thinking, believing that all conspiracy theories have some inherent logical or structural problem in their argument and reasoning. Therefore, most conspiracy theories shouldn't be taken seriously and should be seen as just a conspiracy theory. Then there are those like Charles Pigeon who fall under a particular list's way of thinking who argue that there's nothing necessarily problematic about a conspiracy theory and that each conspiracy theory should be evaluated on an individual basis based on its own individual merits. Within the last century, conspiracy theories have been very prevalent. Watergate, MK Ultra, 9-11, but are conspiracy theories merely a product of our modern digital age or have conspiracy theories always been present throughout human history? What does the empirical evidence say about the prevalence of conspiracy thinking over time? Conspiracy theories in their modern form have been around for at least 200 years. The United States was less than 10 years old when New England religious leaders sounded the alarm about the supposed Illuminati's plans to destroy the Republic. In a research project conducted by Usinski and Perrin, 104,803 randomly selected letters sent by U.S. citizens to the New York Times and Chicago Tribune were analyzed. These letters were sent between the years 1890 and 2010 and analyzed by a team of researchers for conspiratorial content. What was found was that conspiracy theories have been consistently prevalent throughout history and if there were any spikes in data, these spikes were not in this last century. The first spike occurred shortly before the year 1900 at the height of the Second Industrial Revolution. There was such a major societal change during that time that many citizens, especially those who felt powerless and voiceless, became insecure amidst the change. You know, changes in jobs, a failing and unsustainable industry, an uncertain future in society, definitely not things that we're dealing with right now. Certainly not problems of today. The second spike occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the beginning of the Cold War. A lot of conspiracy theories at this time had to do with communism and assuming association between groups of people and communism. It wasn't like there was heavy propaganda instilling a great fear in communism at the time. Studies have also shown that conspiracy theories are not specific to Western culture. Conspiracy theories have existed among citizens around the world. I know, surprising. Western culture didn't invent everything. So it seems believing in conspiracy theories isn't a cultural or even societal phenomenon, but instead may be intrinsically a part of human nature. So what is the main cause of conspiracy theories? Studies have shown that throughout history, whenever conspiracy theories tend to pop up, they're usually in connection with major societal crisis situations. Like I said earlier, conspiracy theories tend to see the world in black and white, good versus bad, us versus them. And usually conspiracy theories tend to place blame of a societal crisis situation on a specific group. While today's conspiracy theories implicate large government organizations and political leaders, throughout history, there have also been other societal groups consistently implicated in conspiracy theories. One of these groups is the Jewish population who have been systematically accused of conspiracy involvement. In the 1930s and 1940s, Jewish conspiracy theories were a major driver in one of the most horrific events in history. Even in medieval times, the European Jewish population was a target for conspiracy theorizing, including being blamed for setbacks during the Crusades. And interestingly enough, the Jewish population was also blamed for causing disease epidemics such as the plague. An entire population being blamed for a pandemic? That certainly hasn't happened recently. What is it they say about history and repetition? During the Wilsonian progressivism, FDR's New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, there was a growing number of conspiracy theories. Federal support of civil rights was said to be a part of a conspiracy against the white race. And at a similar time, the Kennedy and King assassinations had their share of conspiracy theories. In other words, yes, America has always been like this. Even back in the Roman era, there are prominent examples of conspiracy theories, and these are typically all connected to major crisis situations. In AD 64, the Great Fire of Rome erupted. Emperor Nero was out of town when the fire started, and he returned to Rome to organize help for the victims. But conspiracy theories started to spread throughout Rome, stating that Nero and his associates had deliberately set fire to Rome to rebuild Rome in Nero's vision. Nero, start in the fire! Nero did not like these conspiracy theories, and in response came up with his own conspiracy theories, blaming the Christian community for starting the fire and for spreading the rumors. So I guess you could say Nero chose to fight fire with fire. The connection of conspiracy theories and crisis situations throughout time have led researchers to believe that the two are inextricably linked. Evidence suggests that the feelings people experience when in crisis, fear, uncertainty, and being out of control, stimulate a motivation to make sense of the situation, increasing the likelihood of perceiving conspiracies in social situations. And much of these perceptions can influence the recording of history itself and how people recollect history and major crisis events. But here's where things get complicated. It would be incorrect for me to sit here and say all conspiracies are fake, false, wrong, and blatantly inaccurate. Because like I said earlier, there have been real conspiracies that have existed, and there have been conspiracy theories that have been proven to be true. These are all purportedly, allegedly disclaimer. In my opinion, whatever else I need to put here before talking about these. During prohibition, the US Department of Treasury poisoned alcohol. The US Public Health Service lied about treating black men with syphilis for more than 40 years. More than 100 million Americans received a polio vaccine contaminated with a potentially cancer-causing virus. The government tested the effects of LSD on unwitting US and Canadian citizens, otherwise known as MKUltra. So, I mean, I kind of completely understand why people might not trust the US government. I mean, their track record for conspiratorial involvement is not the greatest. The problem is for those with conspiratorial thinking, these examples of conspiracies that have happened in their minds can be proof that the conspiracy theories they believe of today are happening right now. When there may be no empirical evidence for them to think that, or their logical reasoning for these conspiracy theories may be inherently flawed. So how can we determine if a conspiracy theory is false? Well, some are very clearly from an outside perspective, just not true, but others are a bit harder to disprove. So here is what experts recommend for determining whether or not a conspiracy theory is false. And it's not always based on how crazy a conspiracy theory sounds. Conspiracy theories that have been proven to be true can be just as outlandish and strange as the questionable or false ones. I mean, if MKUltra wasn't proven to be true, I would be questioning it or thinking that it's just another bizarre conspiracy theory. One way to examine the validity of a conspiracy theory is to evaluate the believers themselves. Most people are often adaptable in their beliefs when confronted with new information. Most people follow the Bayes Theorem model, a gold standard for how one should update beliefs in light of new evidence. But those who may have apophenia or a conspiratorial way of thinking may not be thinking rationally and may not be open to changing their mind. In addition, people that believe in conspiracy theories often exhibit an almost nihilistic way of thinking that leads to distrust in all experts or belief that all experts, institutions and trustworthy sources are in on the conspiracy theory. Those who believe that climate change isn't real and the concept of climate change is just a massive government conspiracy theory all of a sudden start distrusting the random scientist doing their own independent work as being somehow in on this conspiracy. This way of thinking can lead to refusal to recognize trivial or accidental events. AKA sometimes shit just happens. Conspiracists usually believe that nothing occurs by accident, which may be a sign that their theories just aren't based in reality because really accidents are sometimes the only thing humans can do. Reality is the world is absolute chaos with very little meaning or reasoning behind what's happening. But amidst the chaos and randomness that's constantly occurring, sometimes things align perfectly and it can be hard to see that as a result of randomness and chaos. It's like those viral ping pong videos where someone's able to make a ping pong ball fall perfectly into a cup through a seemingly random pattern of movements. But sometimes all it is is just luck and a random sequence of events that ends up having a perfect conclusion. We want so badly to make sense of the world around us but sometimes we give too much credit to seemingly random events. Lately it seems that more and more people adopt this conspiratorial way of thinking where all of a sudden everything becomes a conspiracy theory. This way of thinking has transformed the conspiracy theory landscape and has now been defined by the term conspiracism. Conspiracism is the belief system that leads to conspiratorial thinking or a conspiratorial world view. Conspiracism is distinctive as a belief system for two reasons. First, it is inherently a very negative belief system. There aren't really any modern conspiracy theories that have a super positive predicted outcome. Usually it's like the world is going to be destroyed not people are plotting for peace and to end world hunger, which is interesting. Conspiracists greatly fear and oppose the conspiracy theories they envision because much of those conspiracies are aimed at destroying their way of life. The Illuminati, mind controllers, forces of evil, the Cabal, the globalists, all of these entities are really similar when you actually look at them. Conspiracists believe them all to be evil and plotting against citizens and running a complete secret society of sorts. Conspiracism also seems to be a belief system that lends itself to obsessiveness. This obsessiveness can be seen in conspiracies activity on social media. Joe, to show you stupid presidential, if you say this, please say that. Conspiracy theorists may also become so ingrained in their beliefs that even when specific hypotheses of the theory become proven false, they will still remain ingrained in the overall belief, which can also be explained as a confirmation bias or a willful ignorance to any opposing information. If you examine a conspiracy theory and the people who believe it and you find these patterns to exist, chances are the conspiracy theory may be actually just a conspiracy theory based on only conspiracist discourse and not any actual scientific reasoning. And if you believe in a conspiracy theory, I encourage you to evaluate your own logic and reasoning with this same model. Why do you believe what you believe in our other events more or less likely? As Carl Popper said, every false belief we discover is actually good because that gets us that much closer to believing only true things. You can't be afraid of being proven wrong or proving yourself wrong or changing your beliefs when presented with new information. It's a part of learning that we all do as we grow and gain more knowledge in the world. Learning itself could be described as being continually proven wrong. Another way experts evaluate a conspiracy theory is through scale, the size and duration of a conspiracy theory. The general idea for this logical evaluation of a conspiracy theory is that the more people that would need to be involved in a conspiracy theory, its size, and the longer a conspiracy theory would need to be in existence, its duration, the less likely a conspiracy theory is real or true. Think of like in high school, when a secret is passed around between classmates, the more the secret is spread and the more people know about the secret, the more likely someone is going to spill the beans. Similarly, the longer the secret is kept, the more likely the secret is going to get out some way somehow. So those are some ways that we can determine the validity of a conspiracy theory. And whether or not you should take it seriously. But this still doesn't answer the core question. Why? Why are conspiracy theories seemingly everywhere on the internet? And why do we all subconsciously believe at least some of them? A good example of this is the Wayfair conspiracy theory that happened last year. All over TikTok, Instagram, and social media, people were talking about these mysterious Wayfair products that were priced in a reasonably high amount and that had names of children who had been missing. The general idea was that Wayfair was trafficking children. Much of the details surrounding this conspiracy theory were proven to be false, but that didn't stop people from believing them initially when this information came out. In fact, I was even someone who partially believed it. According to Dr. Baraza, PhD, and professor at USC, it's much easier for people to trust the information that's being presented to them on social media. We oftentimes trust who we know. We rely on social cues to attribute validity to a message, which means that we're likely to trust information that's being shared by those we already trust and already know. Yeah, look at the fluffy belly. So the belief in conspiracism, combined with the social media growth mechanism, lends itself as the perfect opportunity for conspiracy theories to grow. Hopefully I don't have cat hair all over me now. But why is it that people latch onto conspiracy theory, concepts, and ideas? People's motivation to make sense of their environment increases when they're feeling out of control and are experiencing feelings of anxiousness and uncertainty. In a psychological experiment, one group of research participants read a scenario where a president was shot and killed. Another group of participants read the same scenario, but with one difference. The assassin missed and the president survived. The participants were then asked whether or not they believe the assassin was a lone wolf or part of a conspiracy. Results showed that when the president was killed, people were more likely to believe that a conspiracy theory was behind it than when the president survived. When things fall into place too seamlessly, like the ping pong ball falling into the cup, it can be hard to believe that it was all just a random occurrence. It can be hard to wrap our minds around the fact that mere accidents or an odd sequence of events can have such a large impact on our society, especially to the extent of a president being killed. It's also believed that conspiracy theories could be evolutionary byproducts. The byproduct hypothesis suggests conspiracy theories emerge from a large brain capable of thinking, reasoning, and gossiping. Yes, gossiping can be an evolutionary byproduct. So all those drama channels that you enjoy and love to watch, the tea that we love to be spilled, could actually be explained through evolution. Conspiracy theories contain a few key components, pattern recognition, agency detection, and threat management. When assessed separately, each of these mechanisms has an important function for survival. Another theory is that conspiracy theories aren't a byproduct of evolution, but in fact necessary and have actually helped humans of the past. Conspiracy theories could have possibly helped ancestral humans in navigating their social world and anticipating imminent dangers in their society. Whatever the reason for conspiracy theories existing may be, the reality is they are prevalent and being interwoven into our society. More than 50% of Americans believe in a conspiracy theory. Polls over the years have shown that over half of Americans consistently endorse at least one sort of conspiratorial narrative. The reality is you probably believe in at least one conspiracy theory, just like I do. Conspiracy theorists are not fringe outcasts or weirdos. There are family members, our friends, our family, and even ourselves. So it's important to understand conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists so that we can better understand the effects of conspiracy theories on our society and what we can do to help. Next time on Conspiranation, when conspiracy theories turn dangerous, we're diving into the different types of conspiracy theories, how they grow, and the original conspiracy theory that may have started the most dangerous conspiracy theories that we see today. And later on, we're examining conspiracy theory influencers and the effects of conspiracism on society. Stay tuned.