Has My Sister Lost Her Marbles?

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I don't think she is crazy, just gullible.

That goes WAY beyond gullible IMO. I’d be very worried

[Jordan!]

She sounds like a moron.. not crazy

No offense

[OMG!WTF!]

I got a little bored reading this but there's some interesting info that might answer some of your questions. That really helps in these situations. The more you know the easier it is.


https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...65178117312301

The aim of this study was to build on previous studies reporting associations between facets of schizotypy and conspiracist beliefs by exploring the potential utility of a number of cognitive mediators of the former relationship......there appears to be a significant and positive association between lower-order facets of schizotypy and belief in conspiracy theories, which cannot be attributed to artefactual explanations. Second, the results of the present study extend these findings by also showing that cognitive processes mediated the relationships between schizotypal facets and conspiracist beliefs.

Schizophrenia is a spectrum much like Autism. People may have certain schizotypical traits but may not meet clinical definition of schizophrenia. It sounds like your sister may be dealing with something like that. The quote of her's you posted sounds super familiar...most of my family has had similar issues at one time or another. They're always very certain they are right and very self confident.



I mean there's no easy answer in any of this. It helps to keep yourself informed and hopefully knowledge will resonate with your sister too. The study showed that information helped to return some subjects to reality.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

Okay these are more texts from her today. Looks like she’s citing everything from a message board.

“My sources are the mother of all sources. 8 chan. Professional hackers, anons, audits, who hack, dig and find the truth. They do this for a living. Here is a link to one of their boards. Just lurk and read. All links, docs, etc can be found here.”

https://8ch.net/patriotsawoken/index.html


“Truths will be coming out soon about Hollywood, political and religious sick people. They are satanic pedovores. Read that again. Yes. They kill, eat, sacrifice kids! Including the pope, opera, billary, Steven cobere, the royals and many more! World wide.”

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I don't think she is crazy, just gullible.

Yeah, I'm going to second that opinion by Fuzz. Some people are just easily taken by these things and don't have the rational or critical thinking skills to carefully evaluate the information. I have people in my family just like her. It's distressing, but unless they're doing anything dangerous or acting on this stuff, it's best just to leave it alone. You could try to explain why this doesn't make sense, but in my experience, that's a waste of energy.

[photon]

8chan is a cesspool, that QAnon stuff and the garbage that goes on there will rot anyone's brain no matter how strong they are, the only way to win is to not play.

[Strange Brew]

You can’t diagnose mental illness from emails. I really think you should spend some time with your sister and see for yourself what is going on. I hope everything turns out well for you, her and your family.

[troutman]

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724570/

We have reviewed the current literature on the psychological factors that appear to drive conspiracy belief. We conclude that conspiracy belief appears to stem to a large extent from epistemic, existential, and social motives. Research has yet to demonstrate that it effectively serves those motivations, and early indications are that it may often thwart them. It is possible, therefore, that conspiracy belief is a self-defeating form of motivated social cognition. However, important questions remain open, and more controlled research on the consequences of conspiracy beliefs is needed, particularly on the vulnerable and disadvantaged populations that have been identified as most likely to benefit from them. We hope that this review will serve as an organizing schema for future research on the psychology of conspiracy belief.

Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
The need to find order in a confusing world

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/b...iracy-theories

The researchers found that reasons for believing in conspiracy theories can be grouped into three categories:

• The desire for understanding and certainty
• The desire for control and security
• The desire to maintain a positive self image

[troutman]

New research predicts likelihood that one will believe conspiracy theories

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0530154457.htm

Vitriol and Jessecae K. Marsh, an associate professor of psychology at Lehigh University, have found new research that inflated confidence in one's understanding of politics and public policy is associated with the tendency to believe in political conspiracies.

That is, people who overestimate how well they understand politics are more likely to believe that hidden actors or clandestine groups are conspiring in wide-ranging activities to influence important world actions, events, and outcomes.

In a separate study -- published in April -- Vitriol found that system identity threat, or one's perception that society's fundamental, defining values are under siege due to social change can also predict conspiracy thinking.

[Matata]

I don't care how many times you post those articles, you're not dimming my love of conspiracy theories. Though I'm mostly interested in conspiracies related to the military industrial complex and history would dictate they they are conspiring all the time. It's fascinating to guess at and makes for good mental floss, stretches the brain out in unusual ways, it's like mental yoga.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Matata

I don't care how many times you post those articles, you're not dimming my love of conspiracy theories. Though I'm mostly interested in conspiracies related to the military industrial complex and history would dictate they they are conspiring all the time. It's fascinating to guess at and makes for good mental floss, stretches the brain out in unusual ways, it's like mental yoga.

I understand that - as a child I was fascinated by Sasquatch and UFOs. It is fun to think about.

[afc wimbledon]

Conspiracy theories are the modern worlds replacement for religion, we cant cope with the idea that awful random crap happens, in the old days we'd blame plagues on a vengeful god because we were sinners, now we blame a half dozen nutters flying planes into buildings on a vengeful Government because we wont support their plan for something or other (democracy's sin)


It's comforting for the frightened to believe their is a plan for it all somewhere when the world doesn't make sense.

[Dion]

The surprising link between conspiracy theories and mental health

If you’ve suffered with a mental illness for long enough, chances are that at some point, you’ll begin to recognise patterns to your health.

When I am well, I am enthusiastic about the world. I like the world. I like myself.

When I’m not, I want to know everything there is to know about Chemtrails. The suspicious death of Kurt Cobain. I fear my extensive knowledge of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 would not be a hit at parties, even if I felt well enough to attend them.

Over twenty-plus years of zigzagging between relative happiness and obsessively Googling “why did the third tower collapse?,” I’ve come to wonder whether there’s a link between the two states of mind.

In recent years it’s been suggested that stress plays its part in leading people to fringe beliefs, too. Professor Viren Swami, from Anglia Ruskin University, performed studies in 2016 that took 400 participants between 20 and 78 and asked whether they believed the 1969 moon landings had been faked.

Professor Swami also polled subjects as to whether they believed that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated by the American government. He then assessed subjects’ stress levels—most significantly, stressful situations that might have occurred within their lives in the last six months.

The results showed that the more stressed a person was, the more likely they were to believe in conspiracy.

“Stressful situations increase the tendency to think less analytically,” says Professor Swami. “An individual experiencing a stressful life event may begin to engage in a particular way of thinking, such as seeing patterns that don’t exist.”

“In the aftermath of distressing events,” he continued, “it is possible that some individuals may seek out conspiracist explanations that reinstall a sense of order or control.”

It’s fair to say that scientific studies establishing connectivity between mental health and belief in conspiracy is a developing field. More plentiful are a variety of surveys which seek to establish links between various social and psychological factors and a belief in conspiracy.

One of the most significant of these, reported by Psychology Today in April 2017, involved mining data from one of the largest surveys of mental health ever carried out: the US National Comorbidity Survey-Replication conducted between 2001 and 2003.

Subjects were asked the consider the statement; “I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy behind many things in the world.” More than a quarter of subjects believed that to be true.

Digging into the data, there were a number of commonalities. Those who agreed with that statement tended to be male, unmarried, with above-average levels of social disadvantages, such as having relatively low income and education levels. They were more likely to be from an ethnic minority.

They were more likely to carry a weapon. And they tended to report lower levels of physical and psychological wellbeing. Many had considered suicide.

Think of the mass murders committed by ‘Incels’ just this year—young, heterosexual men who through a combination of isolation and misanthropy believe their lack of sexual activity is in fact a conspiracy.

“[More] psychological models of conspiracy theories need testing” concludes Psychology Today. ”Indeed, we don’t know enough about conspiracy theories full stop. But given the current socio-political climate has this kind of research ever been more necessary?”

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/a...-mental-health

[Matata]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Conspiracy theories are the modern worlds replacement for religion, we cant cope with the idea that awful random crap happens, in the old days we'd blame plagues on a vengeful god because we were sinners, now we blame a half dozen nutters flying planes into buildings on a vengeful Government because we wont support their plan for something or other (democracy's sin)


It's comforting for the frightened to believe their is a plan for it all somewhere when the world doesn't make sense.

So there is no such thing as conspiracies? Every politician, corporation and government can be safely assumed to be completely transparent about their motivations and actions?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Matata

So there is no such thing as conspiracies? Every politician, corporation and government can be safely assumed to be completely transparent about their motivations and actions?

Any conspiracy that requires more than 1000 actors is doomed to collapse under its own weight.


https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0147905

Conspiratorial ideation is the tendency of individuals to believe that events and power relations are secretly manipulated by certain clandestine groups and organisations. Many of these ostensibly explanatory conjectures are non-falsifiable, lacking in evidence or demonstrably false, yet public acceptance remains high. Efforts to convince the general public of the validity of medical and scientific findings can be hampered by such narratives, which can create the impression of doubt or disagreement in areas where the science is well established. Conversely, historical examples of exposed conspiracies do exist and it may be difficult for people to differentiate between reasonable and dubious assertions. In this work, we establish a simple mathematical model for conspiracies involving multiple actors with time, which yields failure probability for any given conspiracy. Parameters for the model are estimated from literature examples of known scandals, and the factors influencing conspiracy success and failure are explored. The model is also used to estimate the likelihood of claims from some commonly-held conspiratorial beliefs; these are namely that the moon-landings were faked, climate-change is a hoax, vaccination is dangerous and that a cure for cancer is being suppressed by vested interests. Simulations of these claims predict that intrinsic failure would be imminent even with the most generous estimates for the secret-keeping ability of active participants—the results of this model suggest that large conspiracies (≥1000 agents) quickly become untenable and prone to failure. The theory presented here might be useful in counteracting the potentially deleterious consequences of bogus and anti-science narratives, and examining the hypothetical conditions under which sustainable conspiracy might be possible.

[Matata]

Originally Posted by troutman

Any conspiracy that requires more than 1000 actors is doomed to collapse under its own weight.


https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0147905

Two criticisms:


1. The trouble with conspiracies is they can only be judged by their failures, a successful conspiracy can't be analyzed or dissected.


2. A successful conspiracy doesn't require everyone involved to buy in or even be aware of a conspiracy. When you deal with institutions that are very compartmentalized, such as the military or corporations, a large scale conspiracy can be pulled off with only a handful of people pulling the strings and they can be controlled completely through blackmail. Get them drugged, take some pictures of them with naked little kids and they'll chew their own arm off before outing their conspirators.


The catholic church ran a pretty successful global pedophilia ring for a long time (possibly centuries), even if a conspiracy is doomed to be found on a long enough timeline, that doesn't mean it can't do a tremendous amount of damage.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Matata

So there is no such thing as conspiracies? Every politician, corporation and government can be safely assumed to be completely transparent about their motivations and actions?

That’s not the definition of a conspiracy theory though. Not that there is a good one.

For example would it have been a conspiracy theory to state that oil companies conspired to hide what and when they new about global warming? I don’t think prior to this knowledge becoming public it would have been conspiratorial to say that oil companies knew at least as much as public reasearch.

Whereas it is a conspiracy to say that they and car companies surpressed the creation of an electric vehicle.

In my opinion the difference between the two is one of incentives. It doesn’t make sense that a car company wouldn’t make a profit when given the opportunity. And a working profitable EV1 would have done that.

Whereas it makes sense for oil companies to surpass research.

In general conspiracy theories arise from a failure to apply occams or hanlans razor.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Matata

Two criticisms:


1. The trouble with conspiracies is they can only be judged by their failures, a successful conspiracy can't be analyzed or dissected.


2. A successful conspiracy doesn't require everyone involved to buy in or even be aware of a conspiracy. When you deal with institutions that are very compartmentalized, such as the military or corporations, a large scale conspiracy can be pulled off with only a handful of people pulling the strings and they can be controlled completely through blackmail. Get them drugged, take some pictures of them with naked little kids and they'll chew their own arm off before outing their conspirators.


The catholic church ran a pretty successful global pedophilia ring for a long time (possibly centuries), even if a conspiracy is doomed to be found on a long enough timeline, that doesn't mean it can't do a tremendous amount of damage.

Here’s a perfect example. You said the church ran a global pedophilia ring. This is unlikely to be true. The simpler statement is the church covered up pedophilia by it’s members. One requires advance planning and coordination the other requires a whole bunch of people acting in self interest.

[Matata]

Originally Posted by GGG

Here’s a perfect example. You said the church ran a global pedophilia ring. This is unlikely to be true. The simpler statement is the church covered up pedophilia by it’s members. One requires advance planning and coordination the other requires a whole bunch of people acting in self interest.

I'd agree that would be the leaping off point for conspiracy, is the church shuffling around pedophiles to save face, or is pedophilia an intrinsic part of the church? One wouldn't think that church leaders would be perfectly fine with shuffling pedo's around the globe doing unspeakable damage to thousands of children, but they did, and the fact that they did is a valid platform for questioning if the roots go deeper.



The whole pedophilia thing doesn't exist in a bubble, it keeps popping up in elite power circles all over the globe. For example, Jimmy Saville was proven the most prolific pedophile of all time, he was very close with the British Royal family and the rest of the ruling class in Britain and he said point blank that all those people are pedophiles, and his monstrous actions were consistently protected by them for decades. How does one apply Occam's razor in that scenario? It starts to feel disingenuous to say it was one loon who hoodwinked all those people for decades.

[GGG]

Occam’s razor suggests that pedophiles will hide in areas where they are in positions of authority and questioning that authority is frowned upon. So yes you would expect to see higher incidences of pedophila in the Boy Scouts, teachers, churches, and other positions with access to children.

This does not imply that their is an active global pedophile ring.

[Matata]

If you think an institution that shuffled pedo's around the world isn't worthy of deeper scrutiny, then that's where we'll have to disagree.