I attended the opening talk of a local science festival.
The speaker was a psychology researcher from UK who flew here for that, and the talk was about conspiracy theories. When they introduced her they stated that she wouldn't accept any questions from the audience.
This was received with boos and shouts that it was not real science.
She then proceeded to bundle all the conspiracy theories together. Going from "the government is doing something bad" to "earth is flat".
After that talk I can really believe that the bullshit conspiracy theories are made up and spread artificially so that anyone that comes up with any conspiracy theory can be shushed as a crazy person.
But… in reality conspiracies do exist. One can make a theory and then test if it's true (or get killed/imprisoned by the government while trying).
This actually may be true although somewhat indirectly with respect to at least one well-known conspiracy belief.
If I recall correctly, the Flat Earth Society was originally concieved as a prank intended to lampoon actual conspiratorial groups (I.e. Nasa faked the moon landing, JFK was a mob hit etc)
But through some combination of timing, convimcing execution, and media interest coincidentally developing in the same direction resulted in the supreme irony of an unserious sham cult spawning an unironic counterpart community which rapidly outgrew and ultimately succeeded it.
The speaker was a psychology researcher from UK who flew here for that, and the talk was about conspiracy theories. When they introduced her they stated that she wouldn't accept any questions from the audience.
This was received with boos and shouts that it was not real science.
She then proceeded to bundle all the conspiracy theories together. Going from "the government is doing something bad" to "earth is flat".
After that talk I can really believe that the bullshit conspiracy theories are made up and spread artificially so that anyone that comes up with any conspiracy theory can be shushed as a crazy person.
But… in reality conspiracies do exist. One can make a theory and then test if it's true (or get killed/imprisoned by the government while trying).