MellowFarmer
Well-Known Member
Thank you for playing Name That Skeptic!
Contestant A:
Michael Shermer claims in his Skeptic column that people who believe in conspiracy theories share four traits:
1. patternicity, or a tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise;
2. agenticity, or the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agent;
3. confirmation bias, or the seeking and finding of confirmatory evidence for what we already believe;
4. hindsight bias, or tailoring after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened.
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/four-reasons-why-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/762
Contestant B:
Saman Mohammadi claims that people reject conspiracy theories in a wholesale manner for 5 reasons:
1. Fear. There are many dimensions to how fear blocks people from discovering, accepting, and telling the truth about 9/11.
2. Ignorance. Due to the systemic blackout of the evidence showing that the official 9/11 story is a lie, people just dont know.
3. A False Sense of Superiority And A False Sense of Knowledge.The smugness of 9/11 truth deniers is hard to stomach. They actually look down on new information and new knowledge, which is strange to me.
4. Collective Brainwashing. The brainwashing of America, Israel, the West, and the world since the false flag September 11 events is definitely one of the biggest reasons why people reject alternative interpretations of 9/11 and the war on terror
5. Institutional Silence And Cover-Up. The culture at the top of the top of modern American society and other societies as well operates on a basic principle: keep your mouth shut, or else.
http://http://disquietreservations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/why-people-reject-conspiracy-theories.html