RE: The psychology behind conspiracy theories
The lack of self-awareness is... astonishing.
You wrote a post awhile back where you said, very plainly, you would make substantial changes to society if you had the power. You aren't alone in this mindset, by the way... I've talked with many who share this desire. In this article, you fundamentally suggest that people are crazy for thinking people who actually DO have power might be cooperating on some level to make similar changes with similar intentions.
You spend this entire article talking about how science is about asking questions, while conspiracy theories are about having all the answers. And yet, you sound very sure that you have the answer when you write, and I quote...
Psychology and neurobiology are behind everything and I so wish and hope that people will soon realize that knowing yourself is the biggest knowledge one can have.
You will never see a positive conspiracy theory or a happy one. Psychology is pretty clear on why that is.
(sidenote: I have seen positive conspiracy theories. They are far less common, but they do exist.)
Everything starts and ends with psychology and neurobiology.
But the single most irritating part of this is that you frame conspiracy theories as necessarily unsupported and untrue. Some, even most of them, just like some scientific theories before being completely discarded, are poorly supported. Meanwhile, there are some conspiracy theories that were proven to be true. Facebook selling user data, even to governments of other countries? 100% true. People who thought that before it was proven were called conspiracy theorists.
This entire post does a great disservice to the subject. Yeah, evidence for aliens visiting Earth or helping build the pyramids is fundamentally nonexistent. Many conspiracy theories are like this, and can be safely disregarded. But to imply that conspiracy theories, even political ones, are all incorrect? That's naive to a mind-boggling degree. Conspiracy simply means at least two people conspiring; this entire article, you pretty much conflate it to mean lizard people running the government.
Not everything is a conspiracy theory, many things are healthy questioning and critical thinking and I think I have made that clear. Seeing evil behind everything and people being controlled and delusional is. I did not imply that all political theories are conspiracy theories nor do I think that I have all the answers. I even wrote how the term is sometimes used to discredit the opponent. The post is as long as it is because I was working on making some things as clear as possible but you have a right on your stance towards the article and as such, I respect it and appreciate your feedback.