There is a certain relatively small, but enthusiastic percentage of the population that are prone to believe in conspiracies. Having been someone who has put in some time debunking conspiracy theories over the years, I can tell you a little bit about their patterns of thought and the way that they argue. Usually, conspiracy theorists have such a poor understanding of the subject that they’re talking about that it seems like magic to them and thus, anything seems possible. On occasion, after being dragged over and over again for their conspiratorial beliefs, they’ll learn a little something about what they’re talking about, but their knowledge is often badly flawed because their goal is to “prove” their conspiracy theory right, not to actually get to the truth.
Their style of argumentation is usually illogical and incoherent. They tend to throw pretty much anything against the wall to see what sticks and then insist that you disprove every single thing they come up with, while completely ignoring the much larger piles of evidence supporting some mainstream belief they’re trying to undermine.
If you talk to 10 conspiracy theorists, they will typically all have different arguments supporting their beliefs. Disproving the pillars of their argument has no impact on them because their beliefs have no real logic or structure to them. If you disprove one of their key pieces of evidence, they just move on to the next. They also almost universally ignore the fact that theories don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re measured against competing theories. If I say the world is round and you say the world is flat, then how both competing theories handle questions and statements like, “If the world is flat, where’s the edge?” or “People have looked at Earth from space and we see that it’s not flat,” matter a lot. They do not look at it that way. They believe what they believe, and no amount of contrary evidence is going to change it.
It also must be noted that conspiracy theories often rely heavily on a “them” that you’re supposed to believe are capable of anything. This leads to statements like, “Of course, they’re behind (insert horrible thing here)! You don’t think that the ‘Republicans/Democrats/Jews/Karl Rove/Bushes/Clintons/George Soros/Rothschilds/Illuminati/Big Pharma/white supremacist Martians from Venus/whoever’ are capable of that? Are you naïve?”
After reading this basic rundown about how conspiracy theorists argue things to get you prepared for the aftermath of sharing this article everywhere someone promotes this idea (hint, hint), let’s start to talk about adrenochrome.
Hellbound and Down 