Psychologists explain why some people support alternate conspiracy theories concerning 9/11

reply to post by GoodOlDave

Really hate to bump this dying thread, but, since I'm here, I'll inject a little real truth into your thread before I go.

people who subscribe to these conspiracy theories generally subscribe to one or more other conspiracies.

False. I've never subscribed to any conspiracy theory before or after 9/11. For you or anyone else to claim that every single thing you've ever been told or taught is the absolute truth, is a psychological problem in and of itself.

the conspiracy theorists aren't subscribing to these conspiracy claims out of any real consideration of any evidence.

For there being such a major "lack of evidence", there sure are alot of very well-educated and highly-credible people that are seeing some sort of evidence, and would beg to differ. Seems to me that you would rather claim that some of our world's top schools are just giving people PhD's like candy with no real education. I would suggest having another look at my psychology thread and heeding some of their advice.

They subscribe to these conspiracy claims simply because they want to believe they are true

More falseness. I believed and supported the official conspiracy theory, supported Bush, supported it all. Then I started seeing alternate conspiracy theories, did my own research, and found the official conspiracy theory to be false.

It has nothing to do with what we want to believe. I wanted to believe the official conspiracy theory. Available evidence will not allow that to happen any longer, regardless of what we want to believe.

as they serve as an emotional outlet for their own antiestablishment outlook on life.

Never had any outlook on the "establishment" before 9/11, so this point is irrelevant.



Again, this article and thread are a failure as it attempts to falsely describe what certain people do or do not believe. This article is nowhere near anything that could describe me, so, ultimately, this article is likely propaganda fed to the gullible in the form of a theory as to why people believe in conspiracy theories.

Too bad it does not and cannot describe those of us that subscribe to alternate 9/11 conspiracy theories. The evidence is too abundant and damning to believe in anything else.

Originally posted by Saltarello
it will just show the low intelligency of the writer.

Yeah, it's dreadful when people unwittingly show their low intelligency.

Originally posted by _BoneZ_
reply to post by GoodOlDave

 

False. I've never subscribed to any conspiracy theory before or after 9/11. For you or anyone else to claim that every single thing you've ever been told or taught is the absolute truth, is a psychological problem in and of itself.

Now, why do you try to insult everyone's intelligence by attempting to pass off such a lie? This whole 9/11 conspiracy isn't just one conspiracy; it's an entire smorgasbord of conspiracies...

a) for controlled demolitions to be in the building it by definition means someone organized an operation to sneak loyal operatives in to plant them, and it's necessarily the fact the organizers and the operatives that planted them didn't care they were goign to kill thousands of innocent people.

b) It also means there had to have been an additional conspiracy to infiltrate the NYPA with operatives to allow said saboteurs into the building and commit said sabotage without being noticed.

c) for there to be zero tangible evidence of said controlled dmeolitions it necessarily means there were additional conspiracies set up to consciously conceal the operation. All the people working at ground zero never reported the blatant evidence of sabotage they were seeing, all the people releasing studies and reports were deliberately making things up, and some para-police force is going around makign sure noone comes forward to spill the beans

d) for there to even be all these conspiracies it means it's to benefit some specific goal, and the cause and effect from 9/11 would mean it was to frame Afghanistan for the crime, which means there's ANOTHER as-yet unknown conspiracy involving some massive concealed benefit from possessing Afghanistan for all these armies of conspirators to be doing what they're doing.

So please don't waste my time claiming you don't believe in a blizzard of other conspiracies, because you'd have to be incredibly stupid and lazy to simply claim "secret controlled demolitions" and not be able to understand just it means for "secret controlled demolitions" to have been in the building, and you're certainly not stupid and you're certainly not lazy.

For there being such a major "lack of evidence", there sure are alot of very well-educated and highly-credible people that are seeing some sort of evidence, and would beg to differ.

No it doesn't. All it means is that they exhibit the exact same personality traits of conspiracy theorism that these published psychologists are documenting; cynisism, low agreeableness, and the like. These "experts" you're referring to aren't basing their claims on any professional opinion. They're basing it on their own individual interpretaion of the world around them, along with an unhealthy dose of misrepresentation and propaganda from those damned fool conspiracy web sites. I would have thought you'd be the first to agree with me on this, since you've been railing about all these fringe conspiracies of "hologram planes" and "faked crash site at Shanksville" yourself.

Nobody, but nobody, is going to look at the towers falling and instinctively think it was destroyed by lasers from outer space. Someone had to have come along and put the inane idea into their heads. Sinply claiming "oh, well, Jesse Ventura was governor of Minnesota and he believes in these lasers from outer space so it must be true" is being intellectually lazy.

Seems to me that you would rather claim that some of our world's top schools are just giving people PhD's like candy with no real education. I would suggest having another look at my psychology thread and heeding some of their advice.

No, actually, I along with the reast of the world would much rather prefer to see some evidence to back up your claims other than these inane "witnesses heard explosions" and "Bush knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew Hitler" innuendo dropping being presented here. If I see one more character attempt to pass off "does the order still stand" as "stand down order" here, you will not appreciate my response.

Tell me something, in all honesty- if you conspiracy people genuinely believe you're right then why do you conspiracy people need to resort to passing off outright lies to give yourself false credibility?

Another good source that I discovered is this article from the Scientific American-

"Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition."

The full article ca be seen here.

Scientific American article on Conspiratorial Dissonance