I'm fascinated by this kind of thing. I can't say how many hours I've wasted over the years looking into it. What keeps drawing me back -- like a gawker slowing down as I pass a terrible wreck on the road -- is the question of how this happens: How can people get sucked into this kind of craziness? What mental processes separate the people who are immune from those who are susceptible?
I have a friend who is a good example. He used to work for me, and now he occasionally helps me maintain my computers and networks at home. He's one of the people without a "mental immune system." He's very intelligent; I've watched him solve issues with my computer systems in minutes that have stumped me for weeks. It's not just specialized knowledge, either -- he's got some serious mental horsepower when applying logic to difficult system problems.
But this fellow is utterly without mental defenses to any kind of "occult" BS and conspiracy theory. In his world, "they" are out there, just out of sight (most of the time) -- "black helicopters," "911 truth," "UFOs;" you name it, his mind is full of it. We've had many long conversations while he's working on my computers about this. I try to be respectful, and probe where his brain goes off the rails. I've tried to explain the difference between healthy skepticism and Occam's Razor on the one hand, and cynicism and close-mindedness on the other hand. I've offered him books -- Sagan's "Candle in the Dark" for one. But nothing seems to have an impact. He can't tell the difference between science and pseudo-science, between real history and conspiracy theory.
I honestly think that this is a very important issue, because I've come to believe that if we can't figure out what causes this, and how to combat it,
then the prospects for our world and our species are not really all that good. I think that the number of people who have really mastered the scientific world-view are and always have been very small. That was OK in a simpler world with simpler and less powerful technologies. The few could develop the science and technology and the many could use it without really understanding where it came from. But the more we advance down the path of scientific and technological progress, the more true Clarke's Third Law becomes for larger and larger parts of the population. Couple that with the value modern societies place on democracy, and the ease with which powerful and potentially destructive technologies can be used by people who don't really understand them, and we have a prescription for disaster ...
GB, THHotA
