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>is a strawman argument

You don't know what a straw-man argument is, if you think this was a straw-man argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

A straw-man is purposefully misstating someone else's argument. I wasn't even talking about someone else's argument.

>is defeatist

In theory, yes. In practice, have you ever actually tried debunking stuff that paid trolls post? I did. A troll posted a chart with fake data. It took me 4-5 hours to collect actual data, and draw an actual chart. I went back and posted my reply. I checked the troll's post history. During the 4-5 hours I took to debunk their one post, they have made 57 (yes, I counted) similar posts of disinformation. Assuming I did nothing but debunked posts by this single troll for 12 hours a day, it would have taken me 20 days to debunk what they posted during only 4-5 hours of their time.

And then there's this sort of thinking, which is incredibly common and therefore typically considered fine (the medical establishment can hardly pathologize normal behavior).

EDIT: and the fact that this is so heavily downvoted demonstrates the truth of my comment.

> The author provides good edge cases where theories once labelled as conspiracy theories proved to be correct. The conspiracy was true. And since many legitimate theories, in science for example, turns out to be wrong, the author asks: "Why do people pick on conspiracy theories?" > > I think there is a problem in wording here. A conspiracy theory is, literally speaking, a theory about a conspiracy wherein bad intentions have led to error, lies and falsehood. > > The key here is the charge of bad intentions.

How would you draw a distinction between an idea/belief about human actions that is merely incorrect, and one that is a conspiracy theory: is whether one's intentions are "bad" the sole distinguishing factor? If so, that seems off as conspiracy theorists very often believe their intentions are good which generally speaking is not all that unlike all people and the beliefs they hold.

>It only begs the question what truth is

Postulating that truth doesn't exist can't possibly beg the question of "what truth is?" It's addressing it head-on. Not only is Truth not some universal law, it doesn't exist independent of a human mind. It's a construct from which we derive comfort. Even if we decide to assume it exists, we'd have to also conclude it's unattainable.

Well, that's pretty Freudian of you.

What about the story of handwashing? All experts dismissed the inquires, yet it was true.

The problem is the things that are labeled as a means to dismiss the story which are actually true.

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I think we need to drive home the definitions of these things. Any time a bill is written in congress, it is a DeFacto conspiracy. Theorizing about said bill is, by definition, a conspiracy theory. "Conspiracy theorists" are generally extremely imaginative to the point that they see meaning in vague, loose connections that often have no meaning -- and they have trouble seeing coincidence. To them, there's almost always some insidious reason for everything. So they see connections that might not be there, and they see evil intent in those connections.

In the process of this, they become incredibly active and dedicated to finding "proof". They dig up everything they can find. Sometimes, like a broken clock, they find something that might actually be worth investigating.

The author (not surprisingly) gives a more balanced assessment than the title implies, recognizing that many conspiracy theories are harmful to society. I wish he had spoken more of the costs of entertaining poorly founded theories that rile us up, because they gum up the public debate.

He says “Yet even these should not be automatically dismissed; someone should be evaluating them on their evidential merits.” If this is the center of his argument, of course I agree. Somebody should look it over seriously, somewhat in the way that Snopes does. The problem is, how do you know that Snopes did a thorough job and didn’t have a bias? It’s an important problem, almost the problem of our age. But having a million Facebook investigators watching the same 20 poorly researched videos is absolutely not helping.

> The people who believed that the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s were an elaborate sham orchestrated to justify a purge of Stalin’s enemies where called “conspiracy theorists”.

This is his other best point, that cases like this are not rare in history. Legitimacy is the glue that keeps society together, and what we might call “manufactured legitimacy” (to adapt the phrase by Chompsky) tends to be constantly created by those in power. And, to be fair, antivaxers think they are in that same type of a situation now (or at least a few do, I suspect most just see it as a way to shake a political structure they already have decided they oppose in hopes it will come crashing down).

Lastly, science tends to be entertaining innumerable hypotheses at once, and which ones are worth working on has a sort of ranking system with something like a serious challenge to relativity at the top and the idea that a confederate ghost shot JFK near the bottom. The author dislikes the term “conspiracy theory” because it is used to discount theories, but these days I feel it is almost a term that means we have to handle the dubious theory in question with kit gloves, since the goal is often not to establish our own assessment of its merits but to influence others who have already tied their identity up with this theory. This means we have to be much more circumspect and politically sensitive (as well as go on asides as we remedially explain 7th grade concepts) than we would if we were debating a real fringe hypothesis with a qualified advocate for it.

In summary I would argue that “conspiracy theories” should be investigated thoroughly by a few small groups of competent individuals and their findings and judgements not suppressed. At the same time, politically charged public posturing by people who have not put in the time to understand the arguments and evidence is swallowing society right now and swamping substantive political debate. The term “conspiracy theory” has come to be double sided; on the one side it is to scientific theories what a junk bond is to investing. On the other, while at times in the past it may have been used as a pejorative term by those in authority in order to suppress debate, now it is practically a badge of honor with political cache, such that it may well be elevated to serious debate whether it has a hint of merit or not. I think “conspiracy theory” has become a term that stands for too many contradictory ideas and while it’s fine to debate it, as here, when addressed seriously, for the most part we don’t have a lot of choice but to recognize that most online debate around conspiracy theories are disingenuous and are really trolling and political agenda pushing, and that they don’t deserve time-consuming, well reasoned responses.

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The reason conspiracy theories are so unproductive is that in general, pretty much no one is in a place to have the information to investigate their veracity. Watergate was worthy of derision from everyone not involved with the investigative process until information came out to verify it. Sometimes odd or irrational things are true, but we’ll have to accept being wrong about them until sufficient evidence is available.

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my discussion starts with the teleporter problem. Would you experience the world the same way after teleporting your body somewhere else?

In my opinion in both cases teleporting or walking, you are just changing space/time coordinates and everything else stays exactly the same, therefore you should percieve and experience the world the same way as before. Teleporting is effectively just like walking somewhere. Dematerializing at one point of space/time and rematerializing at another point in space/time. (if you meet your friend at the market there is no physical diffrence if he walked or teleported there)

Let's say you are able to create a perfect clone / copy of your brain with all the synapses and energetic conditions including your experiences and impressions and then immediately die after.

Do you think you get to percieve the world the same way you did before your death but from the point of view of your clone or do you think perception itself would end for the original you? (since you effectively just changed space /time coordinates again which is exactly like teleporting)

What happens if you both stay alive, it is most likely impossible you will be able to percieve the world from two diffrent points of view. (there is arguably no connection between you and the clone anymore from the moment after cloning and you and the clone immediately start to differ while both keep percieving from their point of view)

It seems paradox, because teleporting and keeping your perception seems to be possible in this example, while cloning which is teleporting in a way and keeping your perception appears to be logically impossible.

(I personally conclude neither teleporting / cloning while keeping your perception can ever be possible since it is paradox)

What do you think?

There's conspiracy theories, and then there's conspiracy theories. What the article argues for is a very noble and utopian idea of "we should fight all disinformation by facts, logic, and reasonable debate" which fails spectacularly in real life, for two reasons:

1. You can't use logic to debate someone out of a viewpoint which wasn't based on logic in the first place.
2. A single troll can generate so much disinformation in a day, that it would take an expert literal years to properly debunk it.

Same goes for the reverse as well though. Do not dismiss everything as a crackpot theory without also researching in the same way.