Has My Sister Lost Her Marbles?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Locke

Lets not drag him into this!

In fairness, JC isn't based in reality and neither is Matata's post.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

In fairness, JC isn't based in reality and neither is Matata's post.

Whoa....it was my understanding that he was the vanguard of the Lizard-Man occupation.

Now you're telling me that I've been deceived?

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Locke

Whoa....it was my understanding that he was the vanguard of the Lizard-Man occupation.

Now you're telling me that I've been deceived?

I saved this comment from something I read:

Most humans, for most of history, have had nothing remotely close to what we conceive of in modernity as "critical thinking". What they have, almost universally, is a deep-seated need for in-group tribalism and social integration. That means, if there's a prevailing ideology in the group they find themselves part of, they will slowly or quickly adjust whatever they believe to adhere to that ideology, regardless of how crazy or baseless it is to someone who doesn't share the same ideology. Most ideologies are like that.

The problem is accessibility of truly bizarre information. In the past, patently ludicrous nonsense would (generally) be the province of small, geographically limited cults or the deranged ravings of single people. With the ubiquity of social media and a system of information sorting that deliberately validates one's current positions and seeks to place them with similar people, however, all it takes for a subculture to be overrun is for some small critical mass of lunacy to be injected into it slowly until everyone in that subculture starts parroting it so that they don't feel left out.

We can talk about failures of critical thinking and miss the point (and problem) entirely, especially when the people we accuse of being deranged madmen are themselves accusing us of a lack of critical thinking, because the words "critical thinking" themselves are a social signifier to your particular community that "you get it" and those people you disagree with "are just dumb/crazy," just like the words "common sense" or "facts and logic" or "I've done my research."

You find like minds in your political and religious ideologies all the time. That's how those ideologies propagate, after all, regardless of how goofy they are on paper. If someone walked up to you and said, "I believe that I have a blood curse that dooms me to eternal torture after I die, and the only way I can escape that is to psychically commune with an immortal Jewish zombie wizard who is also his own dad and thus dispel the blood curse by eating his magic flesh," you'd think that #### would be off-the-wall insane, except about 2.3 billion people would claim to profess some variation of that belief. Why? Reinforcement, a sense of community, and tribal bonds.

Put aside discussions of critical thinking. You want to save someone from the quasi-religious cult that's infused itself with the general political right? Best thing to do is to somehow ingratiate that person into your own subcultural community and give them a different social outlet than the one they currently have, or alternatively sabotage their capacity to access online reinforcement venues.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

They meet some of the same needs, but religions typically have some positive utility as well. They transmit useful social values, and can give people meaning, solace, and a sense of community. Conspiratorial thinking does not. It’s religion shorn of all wisdom and positive social value.

I think it's exactly that meaning-solace-community trifecta participation in a conspiracy community. I think it's reasonable to claim that religion provides these things in a way that is qualitatively different, but I don't think it's a coincidence that conspiracy-thinking has been rising as religious participation has been falling.

If I were to put my debate-coach hat on I think I could also make a compelling case that conspiratorial thinking does also transmit some useful social values, in particular critical examination of society. It is a good idea not to trust authority, the media should be questioned, industry does not have the best interests of people at heart and this should be recognized, etc.

However, that would just be me arguing for the sake of thinking through my own ideas. While I'm largely of the opinion that religion is a net-negative for society, I absolutely recognize the major social values they promote are several orders of magnitude more valuable than anything that could be argued for conspiracy-thinking.