'Squat' is exactly what I'm circling. Show us y

Quote:

---

Our Conspiracy-Generating Brains


Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxOBOhRECoo

Conspiratorial thinking is founded on anomaly hunting and is essentially irrefutable:

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/our_conspiracy...ing_brains

“Attempting to refute a conspiracy theory is like nailing jelly to a wall. Since conspiracy theories are inherently unproven, the theory is always a work in progress, able to dodge refutation by inventing new twists and turns.” Notably, belief in one conspiracy theory is found to be a strong predictor of belief in other conspiracy theories—even when they are contradictory. The appeal of conspiracy theories is rejecting “the official story.”

In a lengthy discussion of our love for stories, Brotherton argues that conspiracy theories, ultimately, are stories not unlike those we have been telling each other throughout the ages. “Conspiracy theories are an exercise in connecting dots,” he explains. “Reality is overflowing with dots. To make sense of it, our brain has to be good at quickly figuring out how they are connected. In its relentless quest to turn the chaos around us into meaning, however, our brain can conjure up seductive illusions.” This is known from a wealth of related research, as summarized in Daniel Kahneman’s 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow.

As we increasingly turn to the Inter­net to help us make decisions on all sorts of things, and as search results be­come iteratively refined based on our preferences, we must strive to better criticize the sources of information we encounter and adopt the point of view of others. This book, with its emphasis on a fun topic likely to be of interest to various parties, ought to help move things forward, if only a little. That is, of course, assuming that the book itself is not thought of as a tool of a conspiracy.

---