Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

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What's the prevelance of conspiracy theories? About half of Americans claim creationism explains the existance of man; only about 20% say humans evolved without God.

50% of Americans think there was a wider conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK.

About 35% of Americans think that global warming is a hoax.

What you're doing is probably the conjunction fallacy. You see people with odd beliefs. You then have a choice: i) these people have odd beliefs ii) these people have a mental illness and odd beliefs. Even though i is more probable you have to explain the irrationality of the beliefs so yu pick ii, even though we know it's less likely.

Mental illness is very common (1 in 4 at any point in our lifetime; 1 in 6 right now) but these numbers talk about the widest interpretation of mental illhealth. Delusional thinking is thought to be less common. Mood disorders are thought to affect about 5% of the US population; schizophrenia about 1%. So you've suddenly diagnosed very many more people with a mental illness.

Interesting choices:

> half of Americans claim creationism explains the existance of man

This is a fantastic explanation, it just doesn't originate from science.

> 50% of Americans think there was a wider conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK.

This is a perfectly logical thing to believe even in the absence of evidence. It's reasonable for any assassination of a prominent figure.

> 35% of Americans think that global warming is a hoax.

This topic is super-politicized. Uncritical acceptance would be unreasonable (and many do accept one side of this without questioning it). Most people aren't going to do any research into the topic. The 65% who believe global warming probably didn't do any research either.

I think it's not even very fair to call these 'odd beliefs'.

Agreed. They are "odd" only because they contradict mainstream scientific belief. The strange thing is that a lot of people take mainstream scientific belief and make it into a truth so absolute they don't even realize it's a belief anymore. And that is deeply ironic given that may scientific theory is only going to be around until a better one replaces it - it's supposed to be that way.

Even the creationist theory - we have to admit that the story of a bearded man putting dinosaur bones in the ground is pretty silly. But who knows if 65% realy believe that - maybe the majority of those believes in an alternate creationist theory which basically boils down to the universe having an inherent intelligence and an inherent purpose. Which is something that I personally do believe and which people who believe in the "random co-incidence" universe will at least discuss.

Either way the only thing that can be said with absolute certainty of any belief is that it will turn out to be false.

> conjunction fallacy [...] you pick ii, even though we know it's less likely

We know that "mental illness and odd beliefs" is less likely than "odd beliefs". That doesn't mean we know that "mental illness and odd beliefs" is less likely than "no mental illness and odd beliefs", which is the relevant comparison here.

(But, for what it's worth, I think most people who embrace conspiracy theories don't do so as a result of anything that would be diagnosed as a mental illness.)

I think there is a difference between someone who is causally stating an opinion, and someone who has fully subscribed to a specific conspiracy theory.

1 in 4, really?

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