Can they be reprogrammed if they turned out to be right?
Conspiracy thinking is based on many flawed assumptions such as the degree of overt coordination that exists in the world. There’s inherent differences between groups doing something out of incentives where they don’t need to communicate with each other and a conspiracy where they do. Collusion is tempting when 2 or 3 companies dominate a market but it breaks down if there’s several dozen etc.
Growing up in a highly authority-averse context (early post-soviet era with many historical scars of governments/elite/etc-not-to-be-trusted)... It'd be best if people would both do research on their own AND have the means to do that research. Smart people going sideways sucks. But people believing authority without blinking is very dangerous too. Although it's convenient and sometimes beneficial. But in the long run IMO it's a ticking time bomb.
High-confidence lab leak people are very often conspiracists, while "lab leak is possible (even >50% probable)" are usually not.
Most of my family are Trumpers, anti-vax, and covid-deniers.
They will believe any asshat with a microphone and access to Spotify with next to zero thought. They explicitly DO NOT believe any reliable source. Their level of belief is inverse to how reliable the source is.
If a rando with no background in anything says it, it's reliable. If a random doctor says it, it could be reliable but probably not. If multiple doctors say it, then it's definitely not true.
It's manifested at this point into full science denial. I have one family member who won't take their high blood pressure medicine anymore because they think it's causing the hypertension. Sigh...
There’s a willingness in some people to consider some grand conspiracy is lying for complex reasons without considering the possibility that the person talking about it is lying to you or just mistaken for mundane reasons. Perhaps the medical establishment lying to you, or it’s the guy trying to sell you healing crystals.
Other times it’s more subtle conflict such as the ‘healing power of touch’ vs ‘touch fulfilling a physiological need’ where it’s easy to exaggerate a subtle misunderstanding to a wildly inaccurate idea.
It's called a paycheck. The execs make a call, and thousands of petty technicians are set into motion. If any of them are reckless enough to voice a reservation, no one is irreplaceable.
Shit oil prices are higher time to raise rates doesn’t require airlines to talk to each other. Shit LA to NYC route is getting really competitive let’s all agree to raise rates does.
Leave me to my conspiracy thinking and I will leave you to your complacency thinking.
Which is a great explanation for the rise in executive compensation at the expense of shareholders. It’s not so great an explanation for criminal conspiracies on its own.
responding here since rate-limited:
It has been estimated that up to 40% of Coca-Cola's annual revenue comes from the food stamp program. When a bipartisan effort arose to remove that poison from the schedule, the industry's lobbyists and non-profits were engaged, and set about making the removal into a racial issue. They succeeded, and the politicians promptly backed-off. "Just incentives" doesn't fly when the incentives themselves come from a single source, directed by unelected administrators, who may be subject to considerable private pressure.
"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."
- George Bernard Shaw
You’re a farmer considering which crop to plant and you realize tobacco is the most profitable option. Do you plant it or worry about the heat impact on smokers? That’s the kind of moral quandary which most people simply never consider in the moment.
> "Just incentives" doesn't fly when the incentives themselves come from a single source, directed by unelected administrators, who may be subject to considerable private pressure.
Taking that 40% figure at face value is crazy when losing the entire US market would only be a ~40% loss of total sales.
As to government programs resulting from lobbying, every company has the exact same incentives for such lobbying if a program doesn’t exist they would be happy for it to be created. The only thing different in this case is the degree to which their lobbying is effective.
Per The Hill:
“Take, for example, the most frequently purchased item in SNAP — sugar-sweetened beverages, which comprise 9.3 percent of all SNAP expenditures. This part of the SNAP subsidy, by our estimates, drives 20 to 25 percent of U.S. revenues for Coca-Cola and Pepsico.*”
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5118876-healthy-snap-...
> sugar-sweetened beverages, which comprise 9.3 percent of all SNAP expenditures
That’s also the typical percentage of food spending on sugar-sweetened beverages. Money is fungible, you can specifically exclude soda from SNAP but poor people are still gonna buy junk food.
The wider context is someone is trying to justify cutting SNAP funding and making their argument as appealing as possible. Which means you need to be especially critical when evaluating their claims because the degree to which an argument resonates with you is independent of its accuracy.
PS: “far more influence over policy than the general public” yes that’s what it means to have power. It however doesn’t directly make what they are doing good or bad even if it feels that way. You still need to justify specific details.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/1dbc675b-944d-4fb3-8889-6be7526cf...
I think of it whenever I hear a tin-hat theory - it's probably fantasy but from time to time it isn't.
The truth is the game was rigged from the start.
The earliest known usage is from 1863, about 84 years before the CIA was founded.
"Your task is to determine whether a given statement describes a conspiracy theory or not. A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by powerful people or organizations, often without credible evidence. Conspiracy theories often involve claims of secret plots, coverups, or the manipulation of information by influential groups."
This is a reasonable definition of a conspiracy theory. But then the prompt goes on to say:
"Here are some examples of conspiracy theories:
1. The moon landing was faked by the U.S. government to win the space race. 2. The COVID-19 pandemic was planned and orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies to profit from vaccine sales. 3. Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by scientists and politicians to gain funding and control the population.
And here are some examples of statements that are not conspiracy theories:
4. The Watergate scandal involved a cover-up of illegal activities by the Nixon administration. 5. The tobacco industry concealed the harmful effects of smoking for many years. 6. Corporate lobbying influences political decisions in favor of special interests."
i.e. stating that companies lobby politicians to advance their interests and affect politics isn't a conspiracy theory, but stating that climate academics do the exact same thing for the same reasons is. This is an incoherent set of instructions that reflects the author's ideology, in particular, the standard left wing assumption that people who work in the public sector don't have personal biases or interests. The authors appear to believe they're asking GPT-4 to exclude people who believe in true things, but in reality it's being instructed to filter out candidates based on their politics.
Given that they're not using a valid definition of conspiracy theory, it seems doubtful that this paper's claims would replicate in the real world if applied more fairly. Given that they were fantastically lazy (not validating anything by hand, 100% blind trust in the AI), it may not even replicate within the narrow academic context either.