Why People Dislike Conspiracy Theorists

One his blog, Overcoming Bias, economist Robin Hanson suggested that conspiracy theories are denigrated because the folks who offer them are the same type of person who would engage in conspiracies.

In fact despite public antipathy to conspiracy theories many are believed in by average people and these people are not shunned for these beliefs because they do not talk about them over and over again. As a self test, do you believe any of these?

1. Oil companies and the government have unrevealed technology for cheap, fuel efficient cars.

2. Global warming is a myth designed to funnel grant money to climatologists.

3. Global warming is a myth designed to cripple capitalism.

4. Trolley systems in American cities were destroyed so the General Motors could sell more cars.

5. Darwinian evolution has been disproven and is only taught as a Trojan horse for Naturalism and Atheism.

6. The US government either allowed or caused the man-made disaster on 9-11-01, to give George Bush an excuse for invading Iraq.

7. The CIA killed John F. Kennedy.

I would consider all of these to be conspiracy theories although I'm not sure all of them are wrong. The point is even if you believe these conspiracy theories, if you do not structure your life around them your belief will have little or no social cost. It's not conspiracy theories by themselves that are disliked, it's the autistic behavioral style of some conspiracy theorists.

The thing is, such a behavioral style, which is a personal problem for me, is often seen by others as tiresome. Conspiracy theories are actually fairly normal. It is not the theories but the behavioral style of some who hold them that is disliked and those people are not seen as bad, merely boring and strange.

A Silly Idea -- Mechanical Turk Magic System

In a computer game, to cast a spell you need merely to press a key. This is convenient but not very magical. In the real world, magic supposedly requires study and practice as well as a connection to certain cosmic forces. If was desirable to duplicate this in a massively multiplayer game you could have magicians prepare spells before use as in older editions of D&D.

What would happen behind the scenes is that during his preparations the magician would be essentially applying to be able to use the spell. His credentials would be checked either by programs or by other players.

A program could check to see if, for instance, the magician spent his time killing lower level players or defenseless creatures and deny him the use of good spells if he had behaved in this fashion. A program could also give him some sort of multiple choice quiz and deny him magic if he didn't pass it.

More intriguing would be use of human players to critique some sort of performance by the magician. In this case the magician would compose some kind of art work, probably not a strictly visual one and be able to use a spell if other players liked it. The players critiquing the art work would have to be paid some how, for instance by a temporary increase in power.

Would this be fun or simply annoying? I deon't really know.

The Craziest Things I'm Interested In.

I am slightly crazy about a lot of things. For instance, I become irrational guilty when my folks criticize my, frankly terrible, housekeeping. However, that kind of craziness is ultimately boring. The two craziest questions I'm interested in are the questions of what kind of objects can have minds and does consciousness need to be included in any logical account of fundamental physics? The trouble is I cannot truly understand the arguments made about either question.

At least the questions aren't really crazy although they are divorced from mundane reality. After all what does it mean that a rock could be conscious, when I have no way to detect that? Though they aren't truly crazy, they do skirt the edge of the abyss.