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People believe conspiracy theories because of emotional reasons, not because of logical reasons. Typically it's people who feel like they don't have any control over the world, and their mind is attempting to assert control by falsely recognizing patterns where there aren't any. Usually you'll find those traits are fairly common in people with anxiety/depression that is untreated. That and paranoia or schizotypal traits can cause conspiracy beliefs pretty easily. There are lots of people who would never be diagnosed with full-blown schizophrenia but who nevertheless remain on a spectrum where they may have schizotypal or schizoid or delusional disorders. Very often they will have a genetic predisposition to these disorders, but occasionally a brain injury can cause them. Then you get into people who are fairly rational but whose worldview and ideology rests on believing some kind of conspiracy theory like Republicans with global warming. This type is generally the most socially harmful of all conspiracy beliefs, because it is usually supported by lots of people in positions of authority. Basically, conspiracy belief is usually a symptom of an underlying psychological/psychiatric disorder, rather than a problem in and of itself.
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Sep 16, 2013 04:31
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I wonder how many people who are really heavily into conspiracy theories actually have some kind of undiagnosed schizoid disorder or are somewhere on the lighter end of the schizophrenic spectrum but escape diagnosis due to the fact that it doesn't noticeably interfere with their lives to most outside observers. Many of the 9/11 truthers that I've known had a parent or close relative with schizophrenia. I've had about 6 different friends/acquaintances in my life who had schizoid/delusional disorders run in their family who were hardcore 9/11 truthers and also 2012 Mayan Calendar fanatics. Two others had severe anxiety/depression disorders, and the last 4 all had a history of severe drug addiction. Also I haven't run into a whole lot of ex-cons but the ones I have generally are very fond of both conspiracy beliefs and Ayn Rand. Oh yeah, and one guy who smoked 1/8 of pot every day and was diagnosed with Mania (who also read some crazy book that merged his hardcore Christian upbringing with conventional conspiracy monomyth) These beliefs seem to be strongly socially infectious and those who strongly associate with them often end up with the same beliefs, the difference being that those who come around to them via social influence eventually stop believing in them after either being presented with enough evidence or cutting off said social influence. There also seems to be a very strong link to conspiracy belief and extreme right-left political ideology. Matter of fact, a lot of extreme ideology relies on conspiracy belief about the Jews, the CIA, 'The West', 'The Muslims', the UN, 'Communists' etc. as part of its core tenets.
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Sep 22, 2013 05:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:Anyone have any good sources to share about birther-ism? I think it pretty much also qualifies as a conspiracy theory considering the massive amount of mental gymnastics one has to go through to convince oneself that they're after Obama's birth records because there's legit shadowy stuff about that guy and nope, it's not about anything else, honest. Basically conservatives think with their amygdala. They're afraid of the 'other' and feel insecure and need protection. Thusly, they love guns, the military, and authority figures. The president is the ultimate authority figure, yet he is not of their tribe. A black liberal socialist. They must deny the reality of his authority for their worldview to make sense, and so they create a reality where he is somehow fake, illegitimate, not the 'real' president.
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Sep 22, 2013 19:01
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Deep Thought posted:This pathologising of beliefs is about as mystified as David Icke's stuff in my opinion. Oh yes, how could I forget how easy it is for a perfectly logical and rational person to believe the president of the United States is not a genuine US citizen despite the fact that he has released all of his birth certificates openly to the public. Silly me. Doesn't have anything to do with authoritarian personalities being deeply racist. They must have weighed the evidence and come to their conclusion based on intelligent and thoughtful criteria. EDIT: I don't know if you read this thread all the way through where literally somebody was a hardcore conspiracy theorist whose conspiratorial thoughts went away when they started taking anti-psychotic medication. I'm gonna go ahead and apologize for being snarky towards you because I went through your post history and read that your "go-to news source" is Russia Today, which means that you likely harbor conspiracy beliefs and probably are taking it personally when I pathologize certain beliefs. Sergg fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 21:42
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Nation posted:I personally cannot blame anyone for questioning the official story, or any official story. We are constantly lied to and manipulated explicitly, nobody can argue the propaganda machines that run 24/7 do not promote an agenda, strangely similar to the agenda of the richest and most exploitative elements in the international stage. Bin Laden never worked directly for the USA and Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, nor had Saddam ever worked for the USA either. The coup that brought the Ba'ath Part to power in Iraq was supported by the CIA, but Saddam wasn't even in Iraq when it happened. The intelligence services did indeed warn the Bush administration, but John Ashcroft basically said to the Justice Dept. "Don't gimme any of this terrorist crap, don't bother me with this baloney." and promptly went after porn and bong shops (he arrested Cheech or Chong, can't remember which one, during this time).
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Sep 23, 2013 03:36
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McDowell posted:Yes, because America didn't support the Mujahadeen during the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan Actually the entire point of this line of argument is from somebody claiming that Osama was our employee, rather than someone who tangentially benefited from our retarded anti-Soviet policies by happening to be on the same side as people receiving weapons from us.
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Sep 23, 2013 15:10
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McDowell posted:ComputerParts seems to making the argument that people pointing to past policy as the cause of current problems are doing it for attention and should keep their mouths shut. You are attributing motives to him that he has not displayed in any sense. He was complaining about "analysts" who made completely false claims.
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Sep 23, 2013 15:28
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Deep Thought posted:Hey no need to apologise to me, this is a snarky forum. I actually wouldn't mind hearing about how birther beliefs and disarmament paranoia are really the displaced manifestation of someone's racially-aggravated Koro syndrome. It's just that your pop psychology cliches are more tired and just as baseless. They're not baseless at all. It's well-established by social psychology researchers that you can actually induce conspiracy thought by taking away peoples' feeling of control over their lives. Essentially the experiment goes like this: you have two groups. The first group receives a test where they have control over the right/wrong answers. The second group receives a written test where the right/wrong answers are randomized, effectively removing their sense of control. They are then either given a questionnaire with questions in it pertaining to conspiracy beliefs or something even simpler like where they are asked to see patterns in various posters (kind of like a Rorschach test but half the patterns are super obvious like a bird and the other half are non-existent). The group with control taken away from them had higher rates of conspiracy thought in the second questionnaire, and in the other experiment, the group with control taken away saw tons and tons of patterns in random geometric shapes with no actual patterns, far more than the control group did. As for delusional/paranoid/schizoid disorders, illogical conspiratorial thinking is one of the primary symptoms of these disorders.
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Sep 24, 2013 04:53
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As far as conservatives versus liberals, there are also well-established differences between the brains of political liberals and the brains of political conservatives, and this is something that neurological researchers have known for years. The brain of a conservative has, on average, a larger Amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for storage of memory of emotional events, primarily fear. If you have a damaged Amygdala you are literally incapable of remembering fear), and the brain of a liberal has, on average, a larger Anterior Cingulate (the part of the brain that is linked to various higher functions like reward anticipation, empathy, impulse control, and a few autonomic functions like blood pressure and heart rate). This finding has been independently replicated in numerous different studies. If you are a political liberal, you can pat yourself on the back as well, because the Anterior Cingulate also plays a crucial role in allowing you to maintain high levels of cognitive function into your old age, and psychological researchers have found that so-called "Super Agers" or 60-70 year olds with the same cognitive function of 30 year olds have large Anterior Cingulates. As far as this being related to birtherism, like I said, it's mainly due to the fact that political conervatives have a much stronger authoritarian bent and much more reverence for authority figures, so when their ultimate authority figure is a liberal black man, something that was unconscionable to them 20 years ago, they go into full denial mode and must scramble for ways to delegitimize him and his presidency in their minds to avoid cognitive dissonance, one of which is the whole Birther phenomenon.
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Sep 24, 2013 05:10
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computer parts posted:These studies seem to depend entirely on the questions asked and how "liberal" or "conservative" each response rates. Probably, but for every 1 Marxist who wants to abolish private property there will be like 20-40 moderate liberals with very nuanced views. I haven't done any research into the neurology of fringe ideologies like Marxism/Libertarianism but most of the (American) hardcore far-left Marxists I've met didn't hold those views after graduating from college and they're vastly overrepresented here in the SA forums in general.
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Sep 24, 2013 15:49
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Execu-speak posted:Is there any refutation of the 'thermite was found in the debris' claim. My truther brother is throwing that at me as definite proof the towers were rigged to collapse. hahahaha! What's thermite made out of? Aluminum and iron oxide. Yeah there might be just a tad bit of those two elements floating around in the debris from two gigantic skyscrapers.
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Sep 26, 2013 01:24
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Execu-speak posted:I've seen that but it's a bit out of date, he's been ranting about how apparently actual fragments of it were found, tested and confirmed as in the latest loose change 'documentary' an American coup. Oh look, we've found both aluminum dust and iron oxide dust! In the wreckage of these two enormous skyscrapers! For real though, if you debunk this one, your brother will just go on to the next truther one. You have to address the root causes of his conspiracy thinking.
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Sep 26, 2013 01:28
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CommieGIR posted:Or an aircraft (entirely aluminium) Wait, you're telling me that if you take one gigantic object made mostly of aluminum, and smash it into another object made mostly of iron, and then the remnants of those objects are super-heated by jet fuel and collapse into a giant pile on the ground, that some of object A and some of object B are going to be fused together? Did I get that right? That sounds pretty crazy man, I dunno.
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Sep 26, 2013 01:31
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Execu-speak posted:Oh I've tried, I even used occams razor on him, he just won't listen. Every year he spews the same tired old bulshit. In my own personal life, whenever I hear this from people I just get snarky and say "Actually it was me. I did 9/11." Either that or I posit my own conspiracy theory that's even more ridiculous than the one I'm presented with, but directly contradicting theirs. Like, the Irish Mafia or black Nazis or somebody is responsible for it.
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Sep 26, 2013 06:09
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Yeah two enormous passenger aircraft that were fully topped with jet fuel crashed into some buildings. They were brought down... by thermite, which must have been planted in the same area where the planes crashed, since any idiot can look at the video and clearly see the collapse begin at the impact sites.
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Sep 29, 2013 08:14
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Huttan posted:Both administrations in Madrid and Washington were very quick to blame ETA for the Madrid bombing despite being completely at odds with 30+ years of history of ETA's terrorisms. The administration in Madrid had been supporting Bush in Iraq and the lies didn't sit well with the voters of Spain who voted the bums out a couple days later. The new administration in Madrid withdrew their troops from Iraq and in the US, Fox and others claimed the bombing was a victory for Al Qeda. If they hadn't been so quick to blame ETA and just said "we don't have all the evidence yet" then it was very likely that they would have stayed in office as they were way ahead in the polls. And in a very perverse situation, we're training Al Qeda in Syria (even more paranoid interpretation). I guess folks in DC have totally forgotten the blowback from training and supplying the Taliban in their fight against the Soviet Union. We got 911 and the war in Afghanistan out of that one. I predict that if we keep funding Al Qeda in Syria, then we'll see another 911 inside the US in less than a decade. We aren't training Al-Qaeda in Syria, we are specifically training a moderate counter-weight of FSA brigades that will eventually be fighting Al-Qaeda. Also we never supported the Taliban. The Taliban didn't even exist when the Afghan mujahadeen were fighting the Soviets. You got your facts all mixed up amigo.
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Oct 4, 2013 19:00
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Huttan posted:Operation Cyclone, also known as Charlie Wilson's War, supported what were then called the mujahadeen. The mujahadeen became the Taliban. The majority of groups and individuals we supported actually went on to oppose the Taliban vociferously, as they formed the Northern Alliance (after fighting with each other substantially), which acted as our ground forces and helped overthrow the Taliban in 2001-2002. EDIT: This is kind of a silly argument in the first place because the US government let Pakistan vet the groups and administer all the funds/weapons. We didn't even choose who to give the weapons and money to, Pakistan did. Sergg fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Oct 5, 2013 |
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Oct 5, 2013 01:18
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Basically you have a window of several years where the Communist Afghan government had resigned, the Soviet Union had broken up, and the US government largely forgot about the country of Afghanistan, and the Taliban wasn't an organized group yet, starting in 1992. It was basically a nasty civil war between different former mujahadeen commanders, most of whom formed a coalition according to the Peshawar Accords, in order to resist being dominated by Pakistan. Pakistan was attempting to take over the country by using Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who rocketed most of Kabul's civilian population to death but failed to gain much popular support. Even Osama Bin Laden, who was nominally allied with Hekmatyar, advised him he was being a dick. After 2 years of infighting, Pakistan switched its support to the Taliban, who went on to capture much of the South of the country, and also battled both Hekmatyar and Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massoud. Eventually Osama sides with the Taliban around 1995-1996, which is the same time when the Northern Alliance was formed to fight them. Edit: Hekmatyar fled to Iran and remained in exile for years. Eventually he joined sides with the Taliban somewhere around 2006-2008. Massoud was assassinated by Al-Qaeda, and Dostum is still a general or governor or cabinet minister in the Afghan government alongside most of the other Northern Alliance bigwigs. Some of the other Mujahadeen went and switched sides, joining the Taliban, mostly along ethnic lines with the Pashtuns. Haqqani is one of the more infamous ones (wikipedia Haqqani Network). Mullah Omar, the guy who founded the Taliban, fought against the Soviets, was blinded in one eye, and retired to be a preacher in a madrassah in Quetta, Pakistan. There he was tapped by the ISI in 1993/1994 to lead a new force that could gain popularity on the ground that Hekmatyar was unable to do. He started in Kandahar with only 50 armed madrassah students but was quickly reinforced by over 15,000 more armed students from Pakistani madrassahs. Right up until 9/11 Pakistani regulars and officers were training and fighting alongside the Taliban. I mean honestly they still kinda are. It's rumored that Mullah Omar actually lives in Pakistan now with support from the ISI. Sergg fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Oct 5, 2013 |
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Oct 5, 2013 01:49
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Nation posted:Who are you working for Sergg? lol, actually thankyou I know how difficult it is piecing all the names and dates together. You're welcome. I get cranky when people think that all Muslim dudes with guns = terrorists. It's just so incredibly more complex than that. The majority of Taliban fighters were usually Pakistanis before and during 2001, and the Afghans who retook the rest of the country with help from US bombers were ruthless towards them. They were basically like "Oh I can tell you've got a Pakistani accent so guess what? We aren't accepting your surrender, foreigner." and they would usually execute them on the spot. That's why you had the "airlift of evil" where Pakistan evacuated over a thousand military personell, Taliban leaders, and Al-Qaeda, after getting permission from Dick Cheney (who believed he was helping President Musharraf save face for the domestic audience).
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Oct 5, 2013 17:27
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It's completely plausible to believe the government is capable of horrible things. It is, and it has done horrible things. However, to attribute specific events to government conspiracy when there is no proof, that's when you get into unhealthy conspiracy thought. I guess one of my biggest gripes with conspiracy thought is that it takes legitimate social problems and concludes "invisible Jewish octopus did it" and thus the true, actual source of the social problem remains untouched. 9/11 was a consequence we paid for bombing Muslims in the Middle East, and for supporting the dictators that murder and oppress them. That's the root cause. That's a legitimate problem that needs to be squarely addressed. Going after the Reptilians from Planet X is only going to obscure the real issue.
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Oct 6, 2013 03:30
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Yeah its entirely possible there were more people involved than just James Earl Ray, but we need more proof. James Earl Ray himself was a hardened criminal who had been arrested multiple times for armed robbery, as well as a fervent white supremacist, and he fully admitted to being involved but then made vague attempts to pin it on some unknown figure named "Raul". All the allegations of conspiracy have been fraught with inconsistencies and contradictions.
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Nov 10, 2013 05:41
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I know a guy who claims the moon is hollow and is actually a secret space base for the Illuminati. He also believes the moon landings were faked.
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Dec 31, 2013 10:45
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twistedmentat posted:Oh I love Morgellons panic. Its sad how these people could probably be helped, but they refuse to accept it because of paranoia. That sounds like schizophrenia or some other schizoid disorder.
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Jan 6, 2014 00:04
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Many times CFS is caused by a prolonged viral infection EDIT: Often times delusionary parasitosis is a symptom of a larger pathology, either formication (the physical sensation that insects are crawling on you which can be caused by diabetes, certain types of cancer, TB, and B12 deficiency) or schizophrenia. Sergg fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 03:35
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Spazzle posted:The cfs community has latched on to various viral hypothesis (see xmrv), but these don't hold up under double blind experimentation. Really? I was under the impression that prolonged infection by the Epstein-Barr virus could cause this. duck monster posted:"Insects under the skin" is very very much a reccuring theme with schizoid delusions. Ask any tweaker. I'm glad he got treatment. Thank heavens for that doctor appointment. Don't you live in Australia? Is long-term, in-patient drug treatment covered by your guys' national health plan? Sergg fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 06:19
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Butts McGee posted:Speaking of conspiracies that have odd bits and pieces, anybody know anything about the odder bits of the Oklahoma City Bombing? This seems like the best place to ask. The stuff about the alleged extra bomber, or McVeigh's much changed account of September 1994. McVeigh is a drat liar so that safely accounts for any discrepancy in his stories. There's been a lot of speculation about the second bomber. People said that his description matched a neo-nazi named Michael Brescia. There was also some speculation that it was Jose Padilla, as it actually does look like him. There was also a weird freak connection between Terry Nichols and Islamic terrorists. He was in Cebu City at the same time as Ramzi Yousef the 1st WTC bomber. Ramzi Yousef's phone records indicate he made calls to the neighbor and close friend of Terry Nichols' in-laws who lived in Queens, NY. It's possible that, at some point, either at gun shows or through extremist anti-government ties that Terry Nichols made contact with Islamic terrorist networks who were looking to recruit US veterans. He may have even consulted with them but he certainly didn't need them. Short of the mythical, unproven 2nd bomber, it doesn't appear as though he or Tim McVeigh had any help from Islamic extremists.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:41
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Spakstik posted:I'm going to regret asking this, but: to what end? Has he always been in cahoots with the US government, or just the Obama administration? If it's the former, why did they wait until Obama's first term to fake his death? This is a joke, right?
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Jan 12, 2014 20:28
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twistedmentat posted:I may have been a little flippant with my accusations of racism underlying Ancient Aliens, and yes Stonehenge and other megalithic European sites are often cited as Alien, but the focus on the modern theories is on South America, the Middle East and Asia. They have no hesitation to dismiss ancient peoples as primative, even thought that even if someone doesn't have an ipod or the steam engine, they can't figure out how to pile rocks. Nothing flippant about it. You don't see them making the same claims about ancient European structures like the Temple of Artemis, Colossus of Rhodes, Statue of Zeus, etc.
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Jan 12, 2014 20:33
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Strudel Man posted:You mean the ones that we only know about today because of the written records that the builders left about them, and about how they built them? Those structures? I seem to recall that the tunnels snaking through the Pyramids were absolutely full of Egyptian hieroglyphics about who created them and why, as well as Egyptian mummies.
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Jan 13, 2014 18:49
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Omi-Polari posted:Can anyone explain what LaRouche's deal is? It's so batshit. It looks like a totalitarian cult that combines elements from all over the political spectrum: LaRouche is a classic messianic narcissist who built a religious-like cult of personality for himself. Bob Avakian did the same thing with his Revolutionary Communist Party.
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Jan 14, 2014 08:41
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I can't help but hypothesize that David Icke has always had some kind of untreated psychosis and/or delusional disorder like a
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Jan 15, 2014 08:05
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Hahaha, Stewart Air Force Base? That's the second or third dumbest thing I've read today. It hasn't been an AFB since 1970. There's an Air National Guard base there, but most of it is a civilian airport, and is clearly visible from the road. So what they're saying is that they flew 747's low over a residential area, with no one noticing (believe me, you notice when a plane is landing at Stewart), then switched out the passengers right next to a busy road during the morning rush hour, and no one noticed? What the gently caress. You were probably conversing with someone who has a schizoid disorder.
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Feb 7, 2014 05:00
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I honestly think the most dangerous conspiracy theories are: 1) global warming denial 2) vaccine panic which goes along with 3) western medicine is just trying to keep you sick
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Feb 12, 2014 05:15
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