I attended a talk about conspiracy theories at the end of July. That talk has played on my mind since, especially given the recentbanning of Alex Jones, that prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories, from Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify. The speaker at the talk was Jan-Willem van Prooijen from the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. He’s an expert both on the psychology behind conspiracy theories and on the psychology of moral punishment, and he offered substantial insights into why people would be taken in by the bizarre rantings of someone like Jones.

Van Prooijen uses the acronymCUESto abbreviate his framework for understanding conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories areConsequential (their existence can make momentous differences in people’s lives, affecting things like whether they get needed medicine),Universal (they emerge in nearly every observed society and time),Emotional (they emerge from System 1 emotional and intuitive processes), andSocial (they typically posit conspiracies among members of a perceived dominant group, where the conspiracies are designed to ensure continued domination).

虽然这些都说得通，但关于这个演讲，有一件事还是让我感到困惑。

At one point, van Prooijen began talking about theflat earther阴谋论的追随者如此之多，以至于有很多会议致力于“研究”地球的平坦，以及旨在让我们相信地球是圆的巨大阴谋。

The puzzle came with this parenthetical comment:

“You might think these people don’t think about things. But they do! They have an answer foreverything. You’ll find this if you argue with a flat earther.”

He illustrated his point. Explain to a flat earther that there are satellite photos of the round earth.Those are from NASA. NASA’s not trustworthy!Point out that people like Magellan sailed around the world.Of course a government history curriculum would say that!Point out that you canseethe curvature of the earth from the window of an airplane.The airplane windows were designed to make it look curved!

So a typical flat earther has a system of cohesive (albeit bizarre) thoughts that capture the implications of their theory. The same holds true,mutatis mutandis其他类型的阴谋论者:在许多(也许是大多数)情况下，阴谋论者接受他们的中心观点的奇怪要求。Now here’s what’s weird: embracing entailments of one’s views is supposed to be a hallmark ofrationalthought. So what is it doing nestled amongst a bizarre and arguablyirrationalweb of conspiracy theoretic beliefs?

Connoisseurs of philosophy of science will here recognize the lurking ghost of the Quine-Duhem problem:any经验假设可以被视为与已知的观察一致，只要“正确的”辅助假设也被接受。如果van Prooijen是对的，那么许多阴谋论者擅长接受“正确的”辅助假设。

Connoisseurs of British humor will recognize a parallel to the famous Monty Pythonparrot sketch, in which the pet shop owner maintains that a dead parrot is in fact alive in the face of all contrary evidence (it’s resting! it’s stunned! it’s probably pining for the fjords!). Again, just keep making the “right” auxiliary assumptions…

In any case, there appears to be a whiff of rationality in the typical conspiracy theorist’s thought, since they recognize the need to embrace the implied consequences of what they believe.

但这不仅是常识，至少有很多阴谋论是非理性的(如地球平面阴谋论);there are also empirical data that suggest that conspiracy theories flourish in theabsence理性的思考。

Viren Swami and colleagues, for example, published apaperin 2014 showing that belief in conspiracy theories is associated withlowerscores in analytic thinking. That means—at a rough pass—that the sort of mental processing often called System 2 (conscious effortful reasoning) isdissociated接受阴谋论。

那么阴谋论的构思是否包含有意识的推理呢?And how does intuition and emotion play into this (theEinCUES)?

I think the resolution of this puzzle is that conspiracy theoretic ideationfirstinvolves aninitialintuition or suspicion that is the product of emotional, automatic processing (feeling oppressed or lacking in control appears to be partly behind the initial conspiracy theoretic impulses). But conspiracy theoretic ideationsecondinvolves a great deal of quasi-rational thinking that works out how things would be if the initial intuition were accurate. And people like Jones purvey ideas that validate the suspicious intuition and give a template for the downstream quasi-rational thinking—so many people gobble those ideas up.

The problem with people who accept outlandish conspiracy theories is thus not lack of thinking. It’s lack of thinking that wouldoverrideone’s initial intuitions. So when those initial dark intuitions are strong enough (theyare out to get us!), one ends up with not merely a suspicion but a whole cluster of culturally scaffolded ideas that would (i) seem to make sense of the intuitionand(ii) arm it against refutation.

This view is consistent with the methods that many researchers have used to measure analytic cognitive style. Good tests for analytic cognitive style assess whether people use conscious thought tooverrideintuitive responses. Consider the following classic problem:

A bat and a ball cost $1.10.

The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

Almost everyone has the fast intuitive responseten cents. That, of course, is wrong, but people (including ones good at math) have this intuition anyway. So the measure of analytic cognitive style is whether people override their initial intuitions to give reasoned answers, likefive cents.

It’s thus possible to score low in tests of analytic thinking, despite the fact that one doesa lot有意识的“推理”——只要这种有意识的“推理”不违背一个人最初的直觉。Otherwise put, being low in analytic cognitive style doesn’t mean that onedoesn’tthink consciously, it just means that one’s conscious thinking seldom goes against what one intuits: post-intuition thinking is more like a one-way street.

And this, I think, is exactly what happens with conspiracy theorists (by which I mean here people who are actually taken in by the conspiracy theories, as opposed to those who propagate them mendaciously or aspart of a prank). Their initial conspiracy theoretic intuitions (they’re covering up the truth!)are powerful. And even more importantly, those intuitions aren’t overridden, despite their outlandishness, among people who have a lower analytic cognitive style. Such conspiracy theorists do think a lot; they just do so in ways that only cohere with their initial, suspicious emotional/intuitive responses.

It’s hard to know where this leaves us when it comes to combating outlandish conspiracy theories. Banning Alex Jones is a good start, but that just leaves a vacuum in the minds of suspicious people with low analytic cognitive styles for some other pernicious purveyor to exploit. So perhaps it’s worth attempting to nip the initial conspiracy theoretic intuitions in the bud. That, anyway, is more crucial than refuting thepost hoc“reasoning,” since by that point many conspiracy theorists havealreadythought of the objections you’ll bring to their views.

但究竟要怎么做呢?，扼杀最初的直觉?这是我们下一篇博文的主题!