Conspiracy Theorists are a Cancer to Society

A few weeks back, I was having a discussion in a Facebook group regarding how COVID-19 would affect public schools in the fall. A handful of parents, rightfully, expressed concerns for their children's health, and more importantly, the health of high-risk individuals in their families. Schools are, after all, petri dishes. It would be exceptionally easy for a kid to bring the virus home from school and infect entire families. 

But two members of the group had entirely different rationales for not wanting to send their kids to school - they were concerned an eventual vaccine for the virus would contain a microchip that would be activated by 5G cell phone towers nearby, which would in turn cause their children to start believing in a "gay agenda" that's been pushed by Hollywood.

That discussion was... tough.

You see, I have a visceral disdain for conspiracy theories and, sometimes, for the people who push them. Most of us are familiar with at least a few conspiracy theories, and a lot of us may even entertain some as being a remote possibility. For example, I'm generally open to the possibility that there are still some unknowns related to the JFK assassination decades ago. Or that the Saudi government might know more about the 9/11 attacks than they're letting on. Shit like that.

I place that kind of belief on the same level as agnostics being open to the possibility that there is a god or gods. Or some kind of higher power. It's not something we can prove or disprove. At a bare minimum, we have to entertain the possibility that it could be true, but we can acknowledge that it's improbable. 

I'm okay with that. I think it's good, even. 

My disdain for conspiracy theories comes from the folks who actually live the brand. You know, the people who will literally live their lives around the material facts of their preferred collection of conspiracies. The folks who could probably be diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder if they were to seek treatment. 

So what's the genesis of this disdain?

Why I Hate Conspiracy Theories

To understand why I have such a primal hatred of conspiracy theorists, it's probably useful to know a bit about me. Per the Myers-Briggs (yes, I understand the validity issues of personality instruments), I'm somewhere between an INTP and ENTP. Using logic and reason to stimulate debates to solve problems is my jam. Take a problem, research everything related to the problem, debate possible solutions, and come up with a unique solution that satisfies all the relevant parties. 

I can do this all day every day forever and be endlessly fulfilled.

In college, I majored in history and social studies, and also experimental psychology. All of those realms involved the same kinds of skills - research, critical thinking, asking questions, then answering those questions. This required great researching skills, curiosity, open-mindedness, skepticism, empiricism, and a relentless pursuit of the asymptote we call "the truth."  

The basic process is the same for all those fields. You start by making an observation, then you formulate a thesis or hypothesis, do research on the thesis or test the hypothesis, report the results, then offer a conclusion as to why it's correct or incorrect. If it's correct, I missed evidence somewhere and go back to the research stage. If it's incorrect, I reformulate the hypothesis and repeat the process. Greatly simplified, but that's the process.

Regardless of the application, there's always a fundamental assumption I HAD to make: I might be wrong. No matter how much evidence supports whatever I was investigating, that process of seeking the truth is a real asymptote - you never get to discover the truth, you only get incrementally closer. This means there's always going to be a lot of uncertainty baked into my world view. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Quite frankly, certainty makes me really uncomfortable. If I think I've discovered "the truth" about anything, it means I missed something, somewhere, somehow. 

This is a decidedly different approach to what a conspiracy theorist will take. Conspiracy theories go in the opposite direction. They start with a "truth", then work backwards to make that truth valid. Instead of seeking evidence to refute their truth as a good historian and experimental psychologist would do, conspiracy theorists seek evidence that supports their truth. 

I modify my world view continuously based on an evolving understanding of the world. A conspiracy theorist controls their view of the world to match their preconceived world view. 

My approach makes me progressively better at navigating the world because I objectively understand it better. This makes me a better individual, husband, father, teacher, community member, etc. 

Conspiracy theorists get progressively worse at managing their lives because their world view becomes more and more limited, which reduces their overall effectiveness at anything and everything. In short, they drift farther and farther from objective reality.

The Effects of Conspiracy Theorists on the Pandemic

Normally, this has little to no effect on others. Or more specifically, no effect on me. So I usually tolerate conspiracy theorists just for the amusement factor. However, the coronavirus pandemic has changed that game. A lot. 

While there's still a ton we don't know about the virus, we do know enough to understand that we're now at a stage where we have to "thread the needle" of reopening society in a way that won't overwhelm our health system, and this reopening has to be coordinated on a local level. Unfortunately for our policy-makers, this is a Herculean task given there's a HUGE lag between people being exposed to the virus, becoming contagious themselves, and showing symptoms. In short, seemingly healthy people can infect a lot of other people. 

This problem can be partially mitigated with all the recommended guidelines - only leaving home when it's absolutely needed, social distancing, wearing a mask in public, washing hands, avoiding touching your face, etc. Even with all those efforts, the reopening process is still akin to driving a bus down a busy highway without a steering wheel. 

Enter the conspiracy theorists.

The most dangerous type, right now anyway, are those who believe the danger isn't real. There are a lot of conspiracy narratives being circulated via Youtube videos and social media, but they all produce the same result - people avoiding any and all mitigation efforts. The stupid shits in my home state of Michigan are the perfect examples:

Because these people buy into the conspiracy narratives and take little to no precautions, they spread the virus quickly. Which results in a spike in positive cases, hospitalizations which threaten to overwhelm local hospitals, and eventually, deaths.

What these dumb shits fail to realize is that their "protests" to reopen the economy have the net effect of assuring the economy stays locked down longer. THIS is the overt harm that is being caused by conspiracy theorists right now, today. As a business owner increasingly desperate to reopen, I have a growing disdain for this group and their short-sighted ignorance.

Of course, there IS the extreme polar opposite conspiracy theorists who believe the virus is an apocalyptic end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it pandemic that will wipe out most of humanity. While these folks don't get nearly as much press as the people pictured above, their irrational fear fueled by their particular conspiracy theories are also potentially catastrophic only economic in nature. Instead of death via virus, though, they're heading down a path of death via starvation and exposure as more and more people lose their homes.

Culling the Herd

One of the main points of this blog is to connect with and, maybe, recruit people into my "tribe" in both real life and online. This process involves identifying people who are interested in the concept, have skills or knowledge that would be useful to the tribe, and are eager to learn from others within the tribe.

To this end, I'm normally extremely open-minded. I want as diverse of a tribe as possible because diverse tribes have the varied skills and knowledge to survive and thrive any and all potential situations. Conspiracy theorists pose a serious problem, however. They're "stuck" in a particular world view that perceives nefarious enemies and secret plots all over the place, and that generalized distrust seriously limits the flexibility of the tribe.

So that's one population I will not consider for the kinds of people I want to surround myself with as part of this project. 

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For those who are interested in learning more about the psychology behind conspiratorial beliefs, this is an excellent literature review on the published data on the topic, which I used as a source for this post: Understanding Conspiracy Theories