Dopamine: the true root of esoteric conspiracy theories

Monty Burnz

Here is an interesting video which I think goes a long way towards explaining why some people are inclined to believe the most bizarre CTs based on the flimsiest of 'evidence'. It turns out our brain chemistry has a large role to play in how credulous we are, and maintaining a healthy dopamine balance is key to making sense of the world. Too much dopamine, and you start believing rather strange things - the scientific findings with regard to high dopamine levels and delusions, paranoia and hallucinations are quite interesting.

Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble.

Michael Shermer debunks myths, superstitions and urban legends, and explains why we believe them. Along with publishing Skeptic Magazine, he's author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Mind of the Market.

Sarky

That's got to be Illuminati propaganda. It makes far too much sense.

weisses

And a with a lack of dopamine your on the skeptic / debunking side

Monty Burnz

weisses wrote: »

And a with a lack of dopamine your on the skeptic / debunking side

Well no - with correct brain chemistry you are less likely to spot patterns that just aren't there. This may explain why hard-core CTers are a fringe group - the bulk of the population would have more-or-less the right amount of dopamine. Watch the video, it explains.

Stainless_Steel

Won't get much discussion on this factual scientific research in here...

Very interesting study. Makes a lot of sense.

Brown Bomber

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

Won't get much discussion on this factual scientific research in here....

...

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

Very interesting study. Makes a lot of sense.

Stainless_Steel

Brown Bomber wrote: »

...

You ok?

Brown Bomber

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

You ok?

Yeah, thanks . Was just enjoying the irony.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Well no - with correct brain chemistry you are less likely to spot patterns that just aren't there. This may explain why hard-core CTers are a fringe group - the bulk of the population would have more-or-less the right amount of dopamine. Watch the video, it explains.

yeah, i've always wondered why the bulk of humanity were rationalist skeptics.. i guess now I know

Stainless_Steel

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Yeah, thanks . Was just enjoying the irony.

Ah right I see.

My point was that there is no point discussing it in this forum, but that I agree it is interesting all the same.

Do you have any opinions on it?

The Bishop!

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Here is an interesting video which I think goes a long way towards explaining why some people are inclined to believe the most bizarre CTs based on the flimsiest of 'evidence'. It turns out our brain chemistry has a large role to play in how credulous we are, and maintaining a healthy dopamine balance is key to making sense of the world. Too much dopamine, and you start believing rather strange things - the scientific findings with regard to high dopamine levels and delusions, paranoia and hallucinations are quite interesting.

Interesting vid alright.

I've heard the connection between dopamine and delusion.

But stretching that premise to throw a blanket over all theorising members of this forum and labelling them as paranoid or deluded or chemically imbalanced would strike me as a tad condescending to say the least. (not that you're doing that necessarily).

Shermer seems to be a well-respected skeptic, but some of his views are also very self-contradicting from what i've read. For a so-called skeptic, he can display confirmation bias in spades himself in other areas. Anway that's neither here nor there..

Jonny7

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

yeah, i've always wondered why the bulk of humanity were rationalist skeptics.. i guess now I know

I believe the correct term you are looking for is "sheeple"

Father Damo

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Too much dopamine, and you start believing rather strange things - the scientific findings with regard to high dopamine levels and delusions, paranoia and hallucinations are quite interesting.

Doesnt ecstasy work by causing the brian to over release massive amounts of dopamine? I know of at least three lads pretty big into their CT who had quite a good time in the 90s :pac: Seems to make sense.

Monty Burnz

Father Damo wrote: »

Doesnt ecstasy work by causing the brian to over release massive amounts of dopamine? I know of at least three lads pretty big into their CT who had quite a good time in the 90s :pac: Seems to make sense.

It would be interesting to look for a link between people who have mental health and past drug issues and those who subscribe to esoteric conspiracy theories. I am very confident there would be a large overlap (which is not to say that all of those who believe wacky theories have mental health/past drug issues).

It's - understandably - a difficult enough topic to discuss on a forum like this and I'm not sure if there's a workable approach to have that discussion without a lot of people getting very annoyed.

Wee Willy Harris

Thinly veiled 'RTDH has a lot to answer for' thread.

studiorat

Wee Willy Harris wrote: »

Thinly veiled 'RTDH has a lot to answer for' thread.

The Bishop! wrote: »

But stretching that premise to throw a blanket over all theorising members of this forum and labelling them as paranoid or deluded or chemically imbalanced would strike me as a tad condescending to say the least. (not that you're doing that necessarily).

Already seeing patterns that aren't necessarily there perhaps?

There are also experiments that suggest too much dopamine in addition to a lower signal to noise ratio, may partly be an underlying cause of schizophrenia.

Perhaps it is that dopamine fluctuates with your circadian rhythm therefore staying up late at night trawling the net makes you more susceptible to spotting patterns that may not necessarily be there.

Personally I think there is an element of unconscious self-validation in belief. Belief always contains biases which are inherent in the way the human mind processes information be they cultural, political etc.

weisses

WOW having a blast going through the 90's and still being able to have an non sheeple look on life in 2012 .... win win for me or just lucky

hooradiation

weisses wrote: »

WOW having a blast going through the 90's and still being able to have an non sheeple look on life in 2012 .... win win for me or just lucky

if your win-win scenario comes at the expense of having to use words like "sheeple" without a hint of irony, then I don't think you've won.

Brown Bomber

Father Damo wrote: »

Doesnt ecstasy work by causing the brian to over release massive amounts of dopamine? I know of at least three lads pretty big into their CT who had quite a good time in the 90s :pac: Seems to make sense.

I believe you are mistaken. As far as I know your friends would now have reduced dopamine levels due to taking ectasy previously.

Brown Bomber

studiorat wrote: »

Already seeing patterns that aren't necessarily there perhaps?

There are also experiments that suggest too much dopamine in addition to a lower signal to noise ratio, may partly be an underlying cause of schizophrenia.

Perhaps it is that dopamine fluctuates with your circadian rhythm therefore staying up late at night trawling the net makes you more susceptible to spotting patterns that may not necessarily be there.

Personally I think there is an element of unconscious self-validation in belief. Belief always contains biases which are inherent in the way the human mind processes information be they cultural, political etc.

So what is your excuse then?

You are a conspiracy theorist yourself. The CT that Gazans are only faking their poverty and in reality are shopping in hi-tech malls, eating in fancy restaurants and then going for swims in their olympic sized swimming pools springs to mind as does your falling for every nonsensical anti-Gadaffi CT the hacks could create.

People in glass houses...

hooradiation

Brown Bomber wrote: »

So what is your excuse then?

You are a conspiracy theorist yourself. The CT that Gazans are only faking their poverty and in reality are shopping in hi-tech malls, eating in fancy restaurants and then going for swims in their olympic sized swimming pools springs to mind as does your falling for every nonsensical anti-Gadaffi CT the hacks could create.

People in glass houses...

Disengenious lies aside, all this works on the presupposition that there are such things as "anti-Gadaffi" CT's.
In fact the belief in there being "anti-Gadaffi" CT's in, in and of itself, a CT is it not?

Looks like it's an over abundance of dopamine all the way down.

weisses

hooradiation wrote: »

if your win-win scenario comes at the expense of having to use words like "sheeple" without a hint of irony, then I don't think you've won.

see I even kept my irony despite partying hard in the 90's

Father Damo

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I believe you are mistaken. As far as I know your friends would now have reduced dopamine levels due to taking ectasy previously.

But the 90s were a low point for CT. Apart from the Diana accient, they were hard to find.

9/11 kicked em all off.


Dont get me wrong, I fcuking love love love my yokes (hate the cocaine, utterly anti social drug) but I havent taken enough to entertain the sh1te that RTDH comes out with thank christ.:pac: However, I reckon tht in the early 90s in the height of the scene and in the days when one pill equalled five of todays, I reckon some of em did :P

I would bet my last note RTDH is a raving survivor of the old skool.

studiorat

Brown Bomber wrote: »

So what is your excuse then?

You are a conspiracy theorist yourself. The CT that Gazans are only faking their poverty and in reality are shopping in hi-tech malls, eating in fancy restaurants and then going for swims in their olympic sized swimming pools springs to mind as does your falling for every nonsensical anti-Gadaffi CT the hacks could create.

People in glass houses...

Everything isn't a CT Bomber. When you figure that out you might start making more sense.

Monty Burnz

Monty Burnz wrote: »

It's - understandably - a difficult enough topic to discuss on a forum like this and I'm not sure if there's a workable approach to have that discussion without a lot of people getting very annoyed.

Come on gents, I'd like to be wrong about this particular prediction.

studiorat

Ok Monty educated guess.

Is it more a case of persons being susceptible to outrageous ideas because of a chemical balance in their brains. Or is as Francis Bacon put it, the person “prefers to believe what he prefers to be true”.

Most likely a percentage of each. But how much of a percentage?

Monty Burnz

studiorat wrote: »

Ok Monty educated guess.

Is it more a case of persons being susceptible to outrageous ideas because of a chemical balance in their brains. Or is as Francis Bacon put it, the person “prefers to believe what he prefers to be true”.

Most likely a percentage of each. But how much of a percentage?

Very good question. I wonder has any serious research been carried out in the field?

Edit: I had a quick look in Google Scholar, found a few papers:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911001036

Abstract
Surveys indicate that belief in conspiracytheories is widespread. Previous studies have indicated that such beliefs are related to agreeableness, low levels of self esteem, certain negative attitudes towards authority, and paranoia. The current study investigated the relationship between conspiracytheory beliefs, paranormal belief, paranoid ideation, and schizotypy*, in a study involving 60 females and 60 males aged 18–50. Sex differences were found in paranormal belief, with females scoring significantly higher than males in spiritualism, precognition, psi, and overall paranormal belief. Partial correlations controlling for sex showed that conspiracy beliefs were significantly and positively correlated with paranormal beliefs, paranoid ideation and schizotypy. Confirmatory analysis revealed a best fit model to explain conspiracy beliefs that included schizotypy and paranoid ideation, but not paranormal beliefs. These findings suggest that paranoid ideation and schizotypy are strongly associated with belief in conspiracytheories.

*According to Wikipedia: "Schizotypy is a psychological concept which describes a continuum of personality characteristics and experiences ranging from normal dissociative, imaginative states to more extreme states related to psychosis and in particular, schizophrenia."

And a few more:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3791630?uid=3737592&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101103720603
http://pos.sagepub.com/content/32/2/131.short
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00325.x/abstract;jsessionid=1F2EDFD2808F89099F95E8B7670F83AC.d04t03?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

humanji

Folks, This could be an interesting topic if some of you didn't insist on trying to use it as an excuse to insult people. Cut it out.

shedweller

Thinly veiled "Monty Burnz didn't have enough fun in the 90's" thread!

Seriously though. Does this mean its bad to discuss things that arent supposed to be talked about. And that we should just accept what the people in charge tell us? Or that when up against someone on Boards that is very good at arguing, we should just agree and shut up?

There are plenty of underhand things going on in the world that do warrant discussion and i'm ****ed if i'm going to be made feel bad for doing that.

(Awaits some well versed lad that will "own" me with lots and lots of words! Or maybe a short little quip!)

Monty Burnz

shedweller wrote: »

(Awaits some well versed lad that will "own" me with lots and lots of words! Or maybe a short little quip!)

Quip!

shedweller

Yawn

studiorat

I suppose you'd need to divide it into different types of beliefs ie paranormal etc. and political/social viewpoints and then whether there is a motivation to subscribe to this or that belief.

Reading through the abstracts you've provided it looks interesting that women tend more towards the paranormal and men more towards the political. But with belief in the paranormal pre-disposing some to believe more conspiracy theories.

Both conspiracy theories and belief in the paranormal rely on an (usually concealed) outside agent. What's particularly interesting for me about conspiracy theories is that the are more often than not malign in nature and thus lend themselves to paranoia and suspicion.

shedweller

Suspicion being lumped in with paranoia. Thats good, real good!

Joshua J

With over 6 billion different versions of reality it's so hard to know who's right. Guess I'll just have to trust my own.

weisses

shedweller wrote: »

Yawn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYi5u9BhtI

hooradiation

shedweller wrote: »

Seriously though. Does this mean its bad to discuss things that arent supposed to be talked about. And that we should just accept what the people in charge tell us? Or that when up against someone on Boards that is very good at arguing, we should just agree and shut up?

Quite how this is ties to the OP is a mystery to me.

shedweller wrote: »

There are plenty of underhand things going on in the world that do warrant discussion and i'm ****ed if i'm going to be made feel bad for doing that.

I don't think a persecution complex is also a sign of too much Dopamine, so you might want to give it a rest.

shedweller wrote: »

(Awaits some well versed lad that will "own" me with lots and lots of words! Or maybe a short little quip!)

Sorry, I got here as fast as I could.

studiorat

shedweller wrote: »

Suspicion being lumped in with paranoia. Thats good, real good!

Don't worry we weren't talking about you...

shedweller

studiorat wrote: »

shedweller wrote: »

Suspicion being lumped in with paranoia. Thats good, real good!

Don't worry we weren't talking about you...

Oh, i'm quite aware of that! But you did put suspicion and paranoia beside each other. Therefore making it look bad to be suspicious. Perhaps we should all blindly accept whatever bull**** we are told. Thats right. Just bend over and take it.

Jeboa Safari

Monty Burnz wrote: »

It would be interesting to look for a link between people who have mental health and past drug issues and those who subscribe to esoteric conspiracy theories. I am very confident there would be a large overlap (which is not to say that all of those who believe wacky theories have mental health/past drug issues).

It's - understandably - a difficult enough topic to discuss on a forum like this and I'm not sure if there's a workable approach to have that discussion without a lot of people getting very annoyed.

Would be interesting to make a poll here about posters belief in CTs and their drug use

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I believe you are mistaken. As far as I know your friends would now have reduced dopamine levels due to taking ectasy previously.

From what I understand, dopamine levels and system recover quickly and should be normal, its the serotonin system that MDMA affects and the jury is out as to whether it causes longterm damage or whether the user can recover with abstinence. Its Coke & Speed that affect the dopamine system

studiorat

shedweller wrote: »

Oh, i'm quite aware of that! But you did put suspicion and paranoia beside each other. Therefore making it look bad to be suspicious. Perhaps we should all blindly accept whatever bull**** we are told. Thats right. Just bend over and take it.

Perhaps you have your words mixed up. Suspicion by definition automatically assumes wrongdoing or crime, without proof or on slight evidence. The without proof bit is most important.
In fact it is suspicion that is as you say "bending over and taking it", blindly accepting what you are told or what you feel.

I think you might mean skepticism, that is questioning or testing an idea first regardless of whether the conclusion confirms your biases or preferences.

shedweller

Pedantic much?

Brown Bomber

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

yeah, i've always wondered why the bulk of humanity were rationalist skeptics.. i guess now I know

Sir,
Have you applied due skepticism to Shermers beliefs?

Incidentally here is a Amazon review from Shermer's book on the subject. Shermer sounds like a sleazy wanker to me.

Where do I even start? I guess with the brain, since that is my speciality. The book is called "The Believing Brain", so one might expect the book to be about how the brain constructs beliefs. There is actually very little of that, and when Shermer does invoke neuroscience it is maddeningly simplistic - of the 'activity in area X, which is involved in Y' variety. There are many examples of bad pop neuroscience in this book, so I will just pick a couple: the anterior cingulate cortex as a 'Where's Waldo detection device'?? "Dopamine - the belief drug?" While Shermer does cite a couple studies on the effect of dopamine on belief, to suggest that dopamine is somehow the key player, worse yet 'the belief drug', is absurdly simplistic and misleading. If we are going to pinpoint a neuromodulator, what of the serotonergic system, the common target of most hallucinogenic drugs? Schizophrenia, which Shermer mentions, affects far more than the dopaminergic system, e.g. cortical NMDA receptors. Anyone interested in a serious discussion on how the schizophrenic brain forms beliefs should seek out the Bayesian perspective of Fletcher and Frith. I won't get into the anterior cingulate, for the simple reason that I don't think anyone has a coherent view of it yet, but it most certainly is not a 'Where's Waldo detection device.' That's an uncritical and bad pop adaptation of a poor theory. With such simplistic and superficial treatments, Shermer misses an opportunity to discuss how the brain actually forms beliefs - that is by probabilistic and hierarchical neocortical inference of sensory and subcortical inputs.

Of course, it doesn't really matter, since this is not a book about the brain. It is really a book about Michael Shermer - e.g. what he believes and doesn't, what television shows he's been on, how much hate mail he has received, how many times he has biked across the country. He evidently has a very high opinion of himself, constantly referring to common hypotheses as 'my theory', 'my thesis' and citing his prior books as though they were major scientific treatises. A trivial corollary of Clark's Law is even referred to as "Shermer's last law" (any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God). For what does he hold himself in such esteem? For simple smackdowns of alien abductees and 9/11 truthers? For his "realistic vision" of human society that "acknowledges that people vary widely both physically and intellectually... Therefore governmental redistribution programs are not only unfair to those from whom the wealth is confiscated and redistributed, but the allocation of the wealth to those who did not earn it cannot and will not work to equalize these natural inequalities." But don't worry, Shermer assures you that he is fair and balanced - after all, he "doesn't even listen to Rush Limbaugh anymore." Shermer cites Stephen Pinker's 'The Blank Slate' as brilliant, but given his simplistic links between human nature and politics one has to wonder if he even read the book. Since his thesis concerns how humans believe irrationally, it would be nice if Shermer held his own naive libertarianism up to some scrutiny.

Neuroscience, self-promotion, and politics aside, this book misses a fundamental point. Many people continue to believe in God and the afterlife because of the unexplained mystery of inner existence. The term 'hard problem of consciousness' may be unfamiliar to most, but many are intimately familiar with it intuitively. Why do "I" exist as a conscious experiential entity apart from my neurons? People are wired to search for explanations of their observations, and here we have the most intimate of all observations completely unexplained by modern science. It is no wonder that people confabulate non-scientific answers to this most important of questions.

Monty Burnz

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Sir,
Have you applied due skepticism to Shermers beliefs?

Incidentally here is a Amazon review from Shermer's book on the subject. Shermer sounds like a sleazy wanker to me.

That looks very much like an academic with a particular speciality laying into a book written for the general public, and disagreeing with its precepts from the off anyway - I'd suggest the writer is a believing Christian who finds the thrust of the book very threatening. Still, you can't refute a point by questioning the motives of the person putting the point, so instead I'll post another review, one by the WSJ (as it was the first one that came up when I searched in Google):

Mr. Shermer marshals an impressive array of evidence from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. A human ancestor hears a rustle in the grass. Is it the wind or a lion? If he assumes it's the wind and the rustling turns out to be a lion, then he's not an ancestor anymore. Since early man had only a split second to make such decisions, Mr. Shermer says, we are descendants of ancestors whose "default position is to assume that all patterns are real; that is, assume that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators and not the wind."

In addition, as evolved social creatures, we have brains that are attuned to trying to discern the intentions of others—and we look for patterns, there, too, and then try to infuse them with human intention and meaning, or what Mr. Shermer calls "agenticity." Patterns in life are variously ascribed to the work of ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers and federal conspirators. "Even belief that the government can impose top-down measures to rescue the economy is a form of agenticity," the author says.

Mr. Shermer also delves into the neuroscience of "the believing brain." For example, he cites research suggesting that people with high levels of the feel-good neurochemical dopamine "are more likely to find significance in coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none." Even for folks with normal chemical levels, there's a neurological upside to pattern-finding: When we come across information that confirms what we already believe, we get a rewarding jolt of dopamine.

"The Believing Brain" perhaps inevitably turns to religion, but a sign of Mr. Shermer's all-purpose skepticism is his consigning of the chapter "Belief in God," along with "Belief in Aliens," to a section called "Belief in Things Unseen." He doesn't take religious faith seriously except as an object for explanatory debunking—God is simply the human explanation for pattern-making and agency on an epic scale.

"As a back-of-the-envelope calculation within an order-of-magnitude accuracy, we can safely say that over the past ten thousand years of history humans have created about ten thousand different religions and about one thousand gods," Mr. Shermer writes. He lists more than a dozen gods, from Amon Ra to Zeus, and wonders how one of them can be true and the rest false. "As skeptics like to say, everyone is an atheist about these gods; some of us just go one god further."

...and so on (I presume it's bad form to quote a whole article). I'm not sure why you think he's a 'sleazy wanker' though?

Here's another review from the journal, Evolutionary Psychology (I wanted to find one from an academic journal to refute the anonymous religious scientician you quoted):

Conclusion
The information presented in The Believing Brain brilliantly synthesizes
evolutionary and cognitive science. Although some of the arguments may not be new to
evolutionary psychologists, the real value of the work (as with much of Shermer’s previous
work) lies in Shermer’s ability to explain to non-experts the utility of evolutionary
psychological science. The general population may not be ready to accept evolutionary
explanations of everyday human behavior – in a 2009 Harris Poll (Harris, 2009) cited by
Shermer (p. 2), 82% of Americans expressed belief in God, 60% in the devil, and 45%
believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. It is therefore incredibly beneficial for
evolutionary psychology to have a credible and prominent proponent such as Shermer
endorsing our field of science. Shermer sums up the issues evolutionary psychologists face
quite well; “The problem,” he notes, “is that superstition and belief in magic are millions of
years old whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to
circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old” (p.63). Indeed, for
evolutionary psychologists to encourage people to understand human behaviors as evolved
behaviors, we must fight those same evolved processes that lead us to believe irrational
things. Shermer has written an entertaining and informative book that serves as a great
resource for helping people understand why we form such beliefs in the first place.

SamHarris

studiorat wrote: »

I suppose you'd need to divide it into different types of beliefs ie paranormal etc. and political/social viewpoints and then whether there is a motivation to subscribe to this or that belief.

An example of this is 9 11 and the Muslim community - in which people are three times more likely to subscribe to CTs than a non Muslim in the same country. Its very clearly not the case that they have information that others do not - merely that they perceive that they have skin in the game and therefore have far more reason to delude themselves.

With regard to chemicals altering pattern recognition on an anecdotal level I have definitly observed a direct correlation between heavy weed smoking and belief in CTs. Not sure if that effects dopamine to anywhere near the same extent but its something Im sure others have noticed in the past.

Brown Bomber

SamHarris wrote: »

An example of this is 9 11 and the Muslim community - in which people are three times more likely to subscribe to CTs than a non Muslim in the same country. Its very clearly not the case that they have information that others do not - merely that they perceive that they have skin in the game and therefore have far more reason to delude themselves.

With regard to chemicals altering pattern recognition on an anecdotal level I have definitly observed a direct correlation between heavy weed smoking and belief in CTs. Not sure if that effects dopamine to anywhere near the same extent but its something Im sure others have noticed in the past.

I have no doubt that this is more of your nonsense of the kind that "A UK Muslim is more likely to rape than a non-Muslim" but you are tying yourself in knots to satisfy all your biases.

BTW re 911 it sounds like you are the one who is deluded...

studiorat

SamHarris wrote: »

An example of this is 9 11 and the Muslim community - in which people are three times more likely to subscribe to CTs than a non Muslim in the same country. Its very clearly not the case that they have information that others do not - merely that they perceive that they have skin in the game and therefore have far more reason to delude themselves.

That could be one way of looking at it. Convincing yourself of something for political motivation is likely. The other, that being religious they have no problems believing outlandish theories in the first place. Same for any religious, abrahamic, pagan etc.

SamHarris wrote: »

With regard to chemicals altering pattern recognition on an anecdotal level I have definitly observed a direct correlation between heavy weed smoking and belief in CTs. Not sure if that effects dopamine to anywhere near the same extent but its something Im sure others have noticed in the past.

I'd be the exception to the rule so. Could also be the they other way around, people who believe in many CT's are more likely to smoke weed!
One thing I have noticed, is quite a few pagans I know are strong believers in CT's. Not the big clangers, like 911 and NASA but they do believe in hidden agents and the like.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I have no doubt that this is more of your nonsense of the kind that "A UK Muslim is more likely to rape than a non-Muslim" but you are tying yourself in knots to satisfy all your biases.

BTW re 911 it sounds like you are the one who is deluded...

Poor old bomber, nothing to contribute but he can't help having a go anyway.

Suggest merging this excuse for a thread with the current one.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056771805
Obvious bandwagon jumping going on here.

Brown Bomber

studiorat wrote: »

Poor old bomber, nothing to contribute but he can't help having a go anyway.

Suggest merging this excuse for a thread with the current one.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056771805
Obvious bandwagon jumping going on here.

Lest we forget this was the absurd claim of Sam Harris.

An example of this is 9 11 and the Muslim community - in which people are three times more likely to subscribe to CTs than a non Muslim in the same country.

Pointing out the foolishness of this statement is not "nothing to contribute". Especially given that you have tacitly approved the claim by responding to it like it it is somehow legitimate.

The cognitive dissonance must be something awful for poor Sam. On the hand looking down at and resenting the existence of "CTs" while also being a poor-standard "CTer" himself.

Brown Bomber

studiorat wrote: »

I'd be the exception to the rule so.

No you wouldn't. I've already pointed out your "belief" in CT's.

studiorat

Brown Bomber wrote: »

No you wouldn't. I've already pointed out your "belief" in CT's.

From some one like bomber who has a history of reading one thing and coming away with a completely different meaning this is not surprising. Perhaps hooridnation is correct any you aren't abject to a few lies now and again to cover your error

I'd suggest you re-examine the statements I made about Hamas' corruption and you'll find you are once again wrong.

Ziphius

Very interesting video.

studiorat wrote: »

I suppose you'd need to divide it into different types of beliefs ie paranormal etc. and political/social viewpoints and then whether there is a motivation to subscribe to this or that belief.

Reading through the abstracts you've provided it looks interesting that women tend more towards the paranormal and men more towards the political. But with belief in the paranormal pre-disposing some to believe more conspiracy theories.

Both conspiracy theories and belief in the paranormal rely on an (usually concealed) outside agent. What's particularly interesting for me about conspiracy theories is that the are more often than not malign in nature and thus lend themselves to paranoia and suspicion.

I made a similar point to this over in the ghost thread in the popular science forum. Women seem to have a preference to believe in ghosts, astrology and so on while men prefer UFOs and cryptozoology. I imagine men are also more likely to be interested in conspiracy theories too. I haven't seen any data, but from my personal experience it seems likely.

It's also interesting that pattern recognition is linked with creativity. All the pro-CT people I know are very artistic.

Monty Burnz

Ziphius wrote: »

It's also interesting that pattern recognition is linked with creativity. All the pro-CT people I know are very artistic.

I'd like to think I'm good at recognising (true!) patterns but I'm about as creative as a withered old bone. Doesn't disprove a correlation of course, but it seems they don't necessarily always go together.