Mike Larkin writes:
> Let me say clearly that anyone who believes the 9/11
> conspiracy theories is a f**king wacko.
I remember one of the few funny things that Dennis Miller ever said on SNL/WU:
"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe OJ is guilty; and those who are very, very stupid."
[WS:] There is definitely something into it, albeit I do not think it is simply the matter of intelligence or even connection to reality. IMO, it is a matter of different interpretative schemata through which people see the world and construct facts. Schema is an apriori form of reasoning that organize perceptions i.e. facts into a coherent whole and thus cannot be refuted by facts.
In that respect, conspiracism is no different than the notion of causal relationship (as already noted by Hume and Kant a few hundred years ago.) In both cases, people implicitly assume that reality i.e. connections between facts take a certain form, and they simply look at facts to fill in that form.
The main difference between the two is that the causal frame implies connections that are impersonal, probabilistic and provisional, and which produces an image of reality that is full of uncertainties, shades of gray, contingencies and unknowns. Conspiracism, otoh, is the frame that is anthropomorphic i.e. models reality on personal relations - things happen because someone wills them that way - an evil sorcerer or a benevolent deity. It is frame that produces an image of reality that is full of certitudes and unshakable beliefs.
While producing counter factual evidence works well within the causal frame of mind, it is completely useless within the conspiracist one. In the conspiracist mind set, all contradicting evidence is simply re-interpreted as "cover-up" i.e. further evidence proving the existence of a conspiracy. The only way to debate a conspiracist is to produce an alternative conspiracy claim that better suits the believer's emotional need for a closure.
Debating conspiracists is like debating religious believers - it is pointless, because no facts can possibly change their minds. The only rational approach to these folks is to either ridicule of ignore them altogether.
Wojtek