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Roswell... Bigfoot...
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Oh, that kind of thing.
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OK... Shape-shifting lizards. Interesting.
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Conspiracy theories do require a wild imaginative leap.
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I think we can explain it in scientific ways.
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So why do we believe some more ridiculous way.
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Yes and of course they spread much more readily now
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with the advent of social media.
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Who can you trust?
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The term conspiracy theory refers to explanations according to which
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events in the world are caused by an evil plan
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plotted in secret by a small group of powerful individuals.
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Some decades ago there was this tendency
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to conceive conspiracy beliefs as pathological,
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but psychologists have shifted this.
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They nowadays believe normal functions of our mind
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explain why people believe in conspiracy theories.
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The defining features of the conspiracy theory are:
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the conspirator, the conspiratorial plan -
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the sinister plan that they're trying to bring about -
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and the means of mass manipulation
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by which the conspirator is keeping the plan secret.
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Sometimes the conspirator will be defined in terms of a concrete body
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with an identifiable membership.
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The Illuminati, or the Freemasons,
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Jews, more recently things like the Bilderberg Group,
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the Skull and Bones Society, and various other secret societies.
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However very often, the conspirator will be defined
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in much vaguer terms -
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the Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex,
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global elites and so on.
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So they're always balancing between the need to define the enemy
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and the need to accept that the enemy is always going to be shady,
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secret and so on.
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Conspiracy theorists will often argue
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that if you destroy a group of powerful people in the world
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you will not destroy the conspiracy
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because the plan is the key thing.
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Very often, that plan is going to involve world domination,
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but if one looks at the level of cover up that would be required
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in order to keep all these things secret
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it necessitates having somebody who is actually in control of everything.
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Much of the conspiracist's writing will involve trying to analyse
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what strategies and what power the conspirators have
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to keep their sinister plan or their identity hidden.
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Very often the manipulation comes from the plausible -
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things like science, government, media ownership -
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to the ludicrous -
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paranormal manipulation, use of occult powers,
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manipulation of brainwaves.
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Conspiracy believers, I think they genuinely believe in the theories
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and they really strive for the truth.
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It may seem naive, but there is this human tendency
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to underestimate the role that chance alone can play in events that occur.
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This belief that the world is ultimately controllable
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and that is a very powerful driver
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of conspiracy beliefs in moments of crisis
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where there is almost like a vacuum in explanation.
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We see this more social function of conspiracy beliefs
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in the fact that people believe in them or not
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as being part of their social identity.
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The stereotype is that they're in their cellar
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on the internet, looking for the most recent conspiracy theory.
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But most people are neither believers nor sceptics
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but fall somewhere in the middle?
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And for me the key question is not
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what differentiates the hard believers from the hard sceptics,
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but how do we interpret that section of the population in the middle.
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Conspiracy theories can be dangerous for society -
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people who believe that vaccines cause autism
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and avoid vaccinating their children, put them in danger.
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A thorough thinking person could debunk one argument at a time
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but could not debunk all their arguments.
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The most sinister conspiracy theories,
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like the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the early 20th Century,
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or if you talk outlandish in terms of David Icke's alien lizards,
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the fundamental error is always the same,
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they're all based on the fundamentally flawed assumption about how the world works.
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And I think that if one makes people more aware of what conspiracy theories are
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it enables them, when they see a conspiracy theory,
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to see it for what it is.
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Thanks for watching! :)
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