SIO378: A Not Conspiracy Theory About Conspiracy Theories

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 378. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Today we are speaking for the second time with Dr. Ashley Scolaro, a Professor of Psychology with PhDs, apparently, wanted to make me feel extra bad for having zero PhDs. No, in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. And we're going to be speaking about conspiracy theories. I think this will be part of a broader series. This is sort of setting the table a bit.

We're getting our beaks wet in terms of the psychological science behind conspiracy theories, why people believe in them, why people act on them, all kinds of different stuff. This is maybe, painfully, the most relevant subject matter that we could be looking at right now because of the state of our country. It really feels like we should be studying almost nothing else other than how do you deprogram people? People.

Today's episode is not necessarily about deprogramming, starting with how they get programmed to begin with, and maybe later on we can look at deprogramming. Think this is massively important, and I'm excited to learn more about this. So let's get on over to the interview with Dr. Ashley Scolaro. As always, if you'd like an ad-free version of the show and bonus extras like the monthly Seriously Awful Movies, last month was Armageddon, God, that was so fucking funny.

You got to go check that out if you didn't. This month, I'll go ahead and spoil it. I think we're going to do Memento, because Dr. Scolaro, one and the same, Dr. that, as one she'd like to do a little debunking of. That's going to be a ton of fun. Patreon.com/seriouspod, ad free show, monthly seriously awful movies, and more.

Oh, by the way, also, if you're a patron, I put up the thread for the Ask an Astrophysicist Anything so that you can pose whatever questions you have about the universe, whatever physics, anything really, an article you saw, a movie, a show, whatever. Your Whatever you want to know, we'll see if Dr. Brian Gillus can give you an answer. I don't actually know. I'm not the expert.

I can't tell you what he can or can't answer, but he is an astrophysicist and we can at least try to ask. Plus, you can research whatever you might want to know. So go on to patreon.com, check out that stuff. I can't wait to do that Q&A episode. It's going to be a lot of fun. There's already a bunch of them and we could always use more. Also vote on the ones you want to hear.

That always helps me get an indication of which ones we should focus on. That's going to be so much fun. All right, let's get to today's show. We go. We are joined once again by Dr. Ashley Scolaro. How are you doing today? Doing

0:02:40 Ashley: Doing great. How are you?

0:02:42 Thomas: Well, uh, forward to speaking with you again, um, I think this will be, I don't know, less fun, but we'll make it fun. Yeah.

0:02:50 Ashley: Yeah, it's terrifying. We're in a terrifying world right now. So it's a little bit terrifying.

0:02:54 Thomas: I'll help explain, you know, gestures broadly at the world, at least at the country, it'll help us explain that mess. Uh, yeah, one of your areas, and this came up in the last episode that you were on, is conspiracy theory. And that seemed like, oh, we should definitely talk about that. And so I'm excited to do that. What exactly are we going to focus on today? I know that's a broad area. Do you want to talk at all about how you got into it or your kind of exposure to it at

0:03:00 Ashley: Yes.

0:03:24 Ashley: Sure. I, I I don't know about you, but I've always found conspiracy theories interesting. I don't think I've ever been sucked into a conspiracy theory. I don't know if you have, or you've gotten really into one.

0:03:34 Thomas: No.

0:03:35 Ashley: I've never done that, but really what got me interested in doing research in this was when QAnon came about in 2017, 2018. I got really interested in that sort of thinking and and developed some research in that area, really just broadly of what are conspiracy theory beliefs, what's going on there, what is the psychology of it. Then after the January 6th insurrection, I really got into it, mostly because I supervise a lot of undergraduate research, and students are wanting to research these topics.

0:04:06 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

0:04:08 Ashley: And I, yeah, so

0:04:09 Thomas: Every student is like, can we research why my parents are fucking, they lost it.

0:04:14 Ashley: They, I mean, they really like it. I had eight students doing projects last year on it. So they, I think they really liked it.

0:04:21 Thomas: Would this fall under like experimental psych kind of thing where it's just looking into different areas like that wow

0:04:28 Ashley: I teach one of the classes I teach is called experimental psychology. So, they do, yeah, independent research projects. And they have to do something in my area because I'm not an expert in everything. So I've developed expertise here from that. So yeah, got into it that way. I teach a full class just on QAnon and conspiracy theories. And so you'll never know. Maybe I am not.

0:04:45 Thomas: Wait are you Q though well yeah because it'll change

0:04:52 Ashley: No, I'm

0:04:52 Thomas: How I advertise the episode I would probably want to emphasize that I got Q everybody oh that's what that's What You Would Say Though If You Were Holy Moly Ashley Scalicuarlo I get it now it's all no I don't know I take it you watched that um I don't remember if it's HBO or or what network, but there documentary, uh, that, you know, featured those two dinguses. It was like that guy and his son, I think, or whatever. Did you watch that one? And people strongly, yeah, I can't remember the name of it probably. And people strongly believe that, that one of them is, is Q, I think.

0:04:59 Ashley: Not Q, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Well, I don't, I think I want to be Q. It is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Mm hmm. It's all in there.

0:05:23 Ashley: End of the storm. Yep. Yeah I've seen

0:05:31 Thomas: Yeah. That was, uh. That was very interesting. Interesting, yeah.

0:05:31 Ashley: That. Mm -hmm. QAnon's fascinating. And I think one of the reasons it's fascinating is there's a whole conspiracy about Q. In fact, the final paper in the class last fall that when I taught the QAnone class, there was a new new conspiracy theory that the person posting his cue wasn't cue. It's not the real cue. There's a new cue. And so the students wrote a paper on like, what do you think? Who has a better argument on that?

0:05:51 Thomas: I know who it is, it's Dr. Ashley Scolaro solved

0:05:59 Ashley: Yeah, I'm infiltrating from the inside. Just going right up on the inside of that. Yeah. Now, it, QAnon's interesting because it's, it's just so front and center. It's terrifying for that reason, too. It's also a conspiracy theory of everything. It provides a framework for conspiracy theories.

0:06:00 Thomas: It yeah yeah

0:06:15 Ashley: So there's all kinds of them in there too. So it's, yeah, it's fascinating. And I love teaching that class.

0:06:14 Thomas: Yeah They never seem to stop at just one, two, you know, there's not, once you get into them, it's like 18 different things and it's like, why are those all true? JFK's fate, you know, was killed by somebody else, and the moon landing's fake, and 9-11's fate, like, what, it's interesting, it'sike why all those, you would think, you know, what are the odds, yeah.

0:06:28 Ashley: Yeah.

0:06:38 Ashley: Why isn't it just one? Yeah, it, I got overly excited. This is Gallo's humor when the queen died because she died when I was teaching the class and the conspiracy theories came out around her death almost right away, just falling right into the course. So my students, I, at the end, I had to apologize and be like, like, I'm sorry I was so excited about the queen dying. Like, we've fallen into this, like, it's not something to be excited about. Like we're just, just pulls everything together. Yeah. It's everything. Everything's really in there.

0:06:40 Thomas: Uh, there you go yeah that's Like, to say that they're lizard people, that's a, right, that's the lizard people one, right? I just heard, I think, on Catching Up, I've been binging Be Reasonable, and definitely one of them was like, in terms of lizard people, the royal family, a number one, they're like, definitely lizard people, and then you go from, from there. So I don't know why exactly, but it's what it is.

0:07:26 Ashley: Read one of those David Icke books. Those are what, like 800 pages, got a million.

0:07:28 Thomas: I try. So look, I went on long time ago. Uh, good friends, Tom and Cecil invited me over. This was when I actually flew. They flew me out there to be on there. I don'T know. I have 300, 500, some big, big shows. Really cool. Really nice of them. And they're like, and we're also doing this David Icke book. And I was like, yep, cool. Count me in. I start reading and I'm like, this is not readable. I can't even understand. You know what I mean?

And so I've been really shocked to find how many conspiracy theorists on Be Reasonable will quote they'll be like, well, or not quote, they'll Be like, Well, David Icke, obviously, he's done brilliant work. And I read like, I don't know if this will sound weird, but I could tell the difference between like, Oh, this is good bullshit and bad bullshit. You know what I mean, like, well, still skill involved in writing, even if you're writing about the lizard people. And I couldn't even understand that. Like I couldn't go one sentence of that book. I, you know, one paragraph without being like, I don't understand any of what was just said. It assumes this like broad wealth of knowledge about this whole mythology. Maybe I started too late in the series. I don't remember what

0:08:15 Ashley: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:08:35 Thomas: It is, but yeah, I found that really really surprising how many people reference that and are like, or reference him and are like, yeah, David, I keep the little, I, if I read that, I wouldn't even know what to believe in from reading it. I guess that's how I would put it. Like, I'd be like, Yeah, I mean, I want to follow you, David. I'm into you. Um, I don't know what any of this said.

0:08:38 Ashley: Oh gosh. Yeah yeah. You got deep in the conspiracy theory with him, you, he's writing from this level of expertise that only people that have read it forever are probably gonna, it's only gonna be accessible to them, so yeah, you gotta, and I don't, I haven't read any of his books, but I've heard him, maybe he was on, was he, did Marsh interview him on Being Reasonable? I'm not sure.

0:09:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:12 Thomas: I haven't gotten to it. If he did.

0:09:14 Ashley: It's hard for me to tell of where I saw him, but I saw him bragging about how many books he's written. And I mean, yeah.

0:09:20 Thomas: Well, it's not hard when it's all gobbledygook. The other thing that I find interesting is when it comes to Q, you know, like, like I'm I'm a big X -Files fan. I don't know if you're an X -Piles fan, but that, you know, I love that whole, that whole mythos of the shadowy government figures. I don't, I don't believe in it at all, but I think it's really cool. And the stories about it, especially in the X -files, I just, I don't know. I find it entertaining. I find it cool. But I think what's so depressing is to, you KNOW, to see where we are now. And QAnon is just some incel behind a keyboard that you wouldn't, if you saw, you'd be like, fuck this guy. This, this guy sucks. Stuff. Most likely, you know, it's like, I, we don't get the brilliant hyper-competent shadowy government figures. I wish that existed. Well, maybe I don't, but we don'T. It's some bozo behind a keyboard typing a code that makes no sense. And then everybody hyper-interpreting it. I don't know. It was just kind of depressing. I'm let down by the reality of our world.

0:09:30 Ashley: Yeah.

0:10:17 Ashley: I that. That's

0:10:20 Thomas: One of my many questions will be, do people actually ever get out of this stuff. I don't know if that's something you studied, but lots to think about, lots to ask. Why don't we get in to the subject matter that you prepped for us today?

0:10:31 Ashley: Sure Yeah, so to start when I introduce this topic I like to start by really defining what a conspiracy theory is. It seems intuitive to people but we really got to distinguish a conspiracy theory from conspiracies because there are conspiracies in the world. Trump was just was indicted for one, right? A conspiracy to overthrow the election. So what is it that makes conspiracy theories unique? Because they're claiming there's some secret group that's done something, and the things that make them unique from actual real conspiracies, there's a few things. So we'll start there, and then we'll get into kind do they stick spread, and why do people act on them? So conspiracy theories have at the heart of them some sort of unanswered question. That's where the conspiracy comes in. Why is this thing happening, right? Why are people dying from COVID? Why Are Vaccines Causing Harm? Are the people that I don't want to be elected, elected? Whatever the question is, there's an unanswered question.

0:10:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:30 Thomas: Already stopping, is it always unanswered or is it just unanswered for the people who don't like the answer?

0:11:35 Ashley: There's a, right, exactly. They've created it as it's in debate, right?

0:11:39 Thomas: To them. Okay, gotcha.

0:11:40 Ashley: Yes. Yeah. There is a debate about that, or there's something that they're concerned about. Out. There's an assumption that nothing is as it seems, right? So that's where the reptilian conspiracy really shines, right, you're looking at the world, you'RE seeing people, they'RE not people, THEY'RE aliens. That's an extreme example, though, it doesn't always have to be that way. There can be less extreme examples, the election is an example of that, like people certifying the election that as normally happens, they're saying, no, that's not what it's happening in a conspiracy theory. Something different's happening with the election.

0:12:13 Thomas: Yeah, you got bags of ballots, suitcases suitcases of ballots. You got, Oh, you got a USB thing. That's, you know, all that stuff. Okay.

0:12:15 Ashley: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Someone's passing somebody a stick of gum. No, they're not. That's a USB key. Right. That was one of, that's one of the big issues. So there's that. People at the head of these conspiracies. So for conspiracy theorists, who they're talking about being like the, in the case of the aliens, the alien lizard people, but otherwise at the start of it, if it's the Democrats or Illuminati, those conspirators that are creating this chaos, they're staggeringly competent in the minds of the conspiracy theorists, Right? These are really competent people, but they're not foolproof. Every now and then they mess up and that's where we get to like come in and say, oh, here's where the conspiracy theory is. If they were perfect, conspiracists would never get that moment of like, oh here's where they're happening the

0:12:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:13:08 Thomas: Turns, they're hyper-competent and hyper-incompetent. Don't you think? I mean, it's like often it's, like, well, okay, all This stuff you had to do to make those buildings fall down and not have, I guess, like hologram planes, all the bullshit of 9-11 in truth which is just it's staggering how much how stupid it is but also like well yeah but they also a newscaster they gave them a script that said the building's Down before it was down and that's it's like why would they have given a newscast or a script and that like they're they're godlike one moment and then they're bumbling idiots the next. Yeah.

0:13:14 Ashley: Right. Right.

0:13:43 Ashley: You know you're right, they're not perfect and they may make, they'll make bad mistakes, and that's when the conspiracy theorists can come in and tell you what's going on. Um, people that that are causing the behind-the-scenes chaos in the world are also unusually evil or malevolent in some Way. So they're bad actors. And conspiracy theories are based on anomaly hunting. So when you talk to a conspiracy theorist, they're not going to just think that they're telling you this, oh my gosh, here's a conspiracy you got to know about. They're going to tell you to go investigate yourself, usually.

When I've talked to some people occasionally about this, they want to show me the, the, like, go to this website. Here's something you should look into. And that's the piece. They see themselves as investigators and researchers. And so it's kind of a, it's gamified a little bit in that way, but that's part of it. Like it's anomaly hunting. You're looking for the things that don't fit. And then one of the key things, which I think we've touched on, but just to point to again, is that conspiracy theories by design are irrefutable. Absolutely nothing is going to disprove it, even evidence to the contrary. So

0:13:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:47 Ashley: Exactly.

0:14:47 Thomas: It Only only proves it more.

0:14:49 Ashley: If it looks like a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy. If doesn't look like a transparency, it was definitely a conspiracy and If someone's giving you evidence, then they're in on the conspiracy theory and this is more evidence for it. We got to figure out why, right? So those are the pieces that make something a conspiracy theory. And so what's going on here because it's not skeptical or logical for people look at it, right? Like, oh, I should show you evidence and you should change your mind. So why aren't you doing that?

And where the theory to talk about today comes in is that scholars have developed this explanation for that type of thinking. We see in conspiracy theories is quasi -religious explanations of the world. And those sorts of thinkings are going to be similar to religious beliefs, meaning they're not necessarily based on facts. You can't show somebody facts to disprove it. There's some other mentality they're taking. And it's not to say that conspiracy theories are religions.

We could debate that because I think this article that published the theory was in 2013 before QAnon, and their argument was that they're not religions, and I think most of them aren't, but QAnon's a little bit of a different beast because the thing that makes most conspiracy theories quasi -religious in their behavior is that there's not an institutionalization or organization behind them like there is with religious organizations.

But I think with Q and the Republican Party being so interlinked and with Trump being so underlinked with Q, we might have jumped. QAnone might be that situation that's jumped a little bit.

0:14:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:28 Thomas: Yeah, evolved into a religion, ironically, I guess. But does religion necessarily, I don't think this is that important, but does it necessarily need to include any supernatural or paranormal -y stuff, or is that not critical to the definition in your mind?

0:16:41 Ashley: A conspiracy theory or of like a religion. The purposes of this, there is some supernatural peace going on, but I think it's more so being that it's a mystery that we can't explain a natural term. So it's, it is supernatural by nature. Like that's part of what makes something religious -based thinking is there's some mystery tied to it. And we can kind of walk through that piece by piece of the propositions here. But theories don't necessarily have a supernatural cause in the same way that religions might. But there's some similarities, which is why that analogy gets used and

0:16:42 Thomas: No, of a religion.

0:17:16 Thomas: Yeah?

0:17:16 Ashley: Why this theory was developed, is because there's enough similarities that when we try to understand what people that are into these conspiracy theories, theories, what are they doing, um, it's very similar to religious practices and religious beliefs. Again, they're not identical, but there's similarities that overlap with one another. I don't know if that fully answers your question, but that's kind of the

0:17:39 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I, I was just thinking in terms of, like, if you're going to evaluate whether something's a religion does it necessarily need to involve a supernatural claim or not? And I guess like probably not, because I feel like, you know, there's a lot of sort of almost secular, you Buddhism, like not actual Buddhism, but, you know, like those kind of religions where it's like, oh, I don't actually believe in anything supernatural. It's just I would call this my religion, though. I don't know. I'm not sure. It's sort of a tangential question, but it would be like if it needed to include a supernatural component to be a religion, it would would be an interesting factor in trying to evaluate, well, has Q turned into a religion? Could you argue that once, once Q in their eyes accumulates all sorts of characteristics that sure, they're not supernatural per se, but the combination of them is so crazy and unlikely that, you know, it's, that could almost be considered supernatural in a way. Like that'd be interesting to talk about kind of that distinction there.

0:18:07 Ashley: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think, and that's one of these points in here, so I think that, yeah, that's, that's definitely, that's definitely one of the keys in this theory that comes up that, yeah, we can, can, can disentangle a little bit more. One thing to note is that what we'll talk about is a theory. So it's, and it was published as such, as a theory in an article, but it's a peer reviewed article, a theoretical article.

0:18:57 Thomas: Hmm.

0:18:57 Ashley: And I like to bring that up to folks because I think it's important to know that this isn't like a magazine article. It's not something on psychology psychology today. This is, or even a scientist just got on and wrote, like, it's gone through the peer review process. That's really, I'm, it was published in Frontiers in Psychology, and I'm a reviewer for that journal. So first, I can tell you the reviewers are awesome. Like, they just, they nail it on that.

0:18:59 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah, it sounds something I I wrote on my blog or my sub stack. Right.

0:19:23 Thomas: Me too. I agree. Some of

0:19:24 Ashley: Awesome.

0:19:24 Thomas: Them are Q, by the way. But other than that, I think they're great.

0:19:26 Ashley: That is, that is how you know. I tell you that being a peer reviewer, being on both sides, having published the peer review process is really thorough because you submit to a journal, the journal sends it to an article editor, the article editor sends it to the reviewers, the reviewers read through and write it up and then send back their thoughts. The editor writes up the thoughts and either rejects it, asks for revisions, except, I mean, it's a really long process.

And someone on both sides of that, I can tell you, peer review, it's very detailed. And when we evaluate theories, that's important, especially from a scientific perspective. So for to give people a sense for this theory to get published, not only did they have to show like the scientific piece of that it had to meet, the reviewers had to determine it met certain criteria. So four specifically to say this is a theory that we should publish.

One, they had to, the authors had to really interpret recent data or findings in a new way. They couldn't publish someone else's work essentially. Like you can just say, here's someone else wrote it and

0:20:33 Thomas: Right, right.

0:20:34 Ashley: I'm going to write it as a theory. So they've got something there.

0:20:35 Thomas: But it might involve maybe some data that no one's done this certain thing with before, possibly. Interesting.

0:20:40 Ashley: Correct. Exactly. Yep. Yep. They have to represent previous theories accurately. And so as a peer reviewer, that puts a lot of work on the peer reviewers too, because you really got to think, okay, are they, is the sound right? It has to be testable. That's important in science. You have to be able to test this theory. Theories have to testable and scientific ones do.

0:20:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I actually fact check it.

0:21:03 Thomas: How would you test? Okay. That's interesting. I didn't know. Yeah.

0:21:05 Ashley: I'll show you some ways

0:21:06 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Pin in that, pin in that.

0:21:06 Ashley: That we can do that here. Yeah. Then And four, and most importantly, any non -scientific opinions in the article. So for example, a personal aside. So like one of the things they do in here is say they don't say personally, but it's obvious that it's their opinion. They're presuming that something like Q, they don't say Q because this was at 2013, but they were alluding to, hey, something could switch from conspiracy theory possibly to religion. And we don't see that that right now. It could happen, and here's how we think it could happen. But that's a personal idea. It's not scientific. And so the fourth criteria is that if they had a personal opinion, you have to be, someone has to be able to identify that. So I, as a peer reviewer, would have had to say, okay, yeah, they said it. That's personal, though, and it's clear. I can tell.

0:21:40 Thomas: Right. Right, right, right. So it's not as though it's not allowed. It's just, it's gotta be properly, you know, signposted a little bit. So someone doesn't think, oh, this data proves this thing just because they read it in the same thing. Yeah. This is, this is really helpful and fascinating to go down this route. Cause I think most people think of science or maybe, I don't know, I'll just speak for myself, But oftentimes it's like, oh, if you publish something in a peer reviewed journal, that means it's like, you know, you did a study and X percent of people do, you know, this standard deviation says that, and it's like, no, it could just could be, be a theory, but it's you know, it's gotta be rigorous. It's gotta be, you know, as you say, it has got to follow these kind of guidelines. And I think that's really fascinating. I've never really thought about that before explicitly.

0:21:56 Ashley: Right. Yes. Exactly.

0:22:30 Ashley: There's a lot of unpaid behind the work here in science, and that's that's some of it. So on to the theory then. So this has gone through that process. So this theory explains really how conspiracy theories appeal to believers. So how do they get kind of sticky in the minds of believers? How do they pull people in? How and why do they spread and how they kind of motivate people to act? Now, conspiracy theories will vary on this. Not every every conspiracy theory is going to stick long-term. Not every conspiracy theory will spread all over the place, and not every conspiracy theory is gonna motivate action. They vary on that, but this is gonna explain that.

0:22:32 Thomas: Yeah. Right, right, I was wondering if you'll allow me a guess and then I can see if in my just, you know, talking to a lot of people have been doing this kind of thing a long time, not explicitly conspiracy theories, but sometimes I've always felt like a big appeal for a lot Of the people I have dealt with, with conspiracy theories. I felt like A big appeal is like them feeling like they get to know something other people don't, you Know, like having that, oh, don't you see? Oh, yeah, you would believe that the common story on this or whatever, the official story. But don't you know, it's actually this. I've always felt I'm not saying that's like obviously a the only motivation, but I felt like that's a pretty big one in my observations. Does that consistent with this paper? Does that hold true here?

0:23:13 Ashley: Course.

0:23:33 Ashley: Yep. Yep, yeah, because it lets people think it democratizes expertise in a way that we wouldn't typically do that, because because they're anomaly hunting. Everybody go find, oh, I don't care how many people go look, you all look, come up with theories. That's why they become so popular is yeah. Right. You get that expertise feeling behind it. So yeah.

0:23:59 Thomas: Yeah, right. It's and also once you get to say, oh, no, literally all of the experts are liars in on the conspiracy, which is what they say. Like, you know, Again, it's nice that I've been in the middle of binging Marsha's show because it's like I have so many of these fresh in my mind. I think I've listened to 60 of them at this point. And just get to say, oh, no, you see all the people who literally like you, by the way. Well, I shouldn't. I don't know if that applies because you're cute.

0:24:14 Ashley: Yep. Yep,

0:24:31 Thomas: But like, let's say you weren't cute. You were just a normal, like, whatever, scholar.

0:24:31 Ashley: I'm making notes.

0:24:36 Thomas: I mean if Eli were on the show, he'd be like, I'm making Dr. Ashley Scolaro is cute dot com. Um, uh, but anyway, they get to say, oh no, that every single person with expertise is in on it. They're just that. And so like, that is the, you say democratizing. Taking one class of People, which is, you know, the people who actually know fucking anything about the thing because they've studied it or that, you know, it's their expertise. And it's just taking them away, saying they don't count. And so now what's left over is the democracy, I guess. What's leftover is anyone else, like any other people. Now we're all on even terms because the people who are like, do this for their job, well, they're fucking bullshit because they're in on the conspiracy.

0:24:50 Ashley: Yep yeah, That's the appeal, right? Everybody's on the equal playing field. You're right. It's definitely one of the big appeals. Somebody that's been doing a lot of research for a long time, it's frustrating when when you come into that, because it's like, I've dedicated my life to learning all of these things and reading all these papers and books. And, but that's, that's that'S the piece. That'S the appeal, right? I didn't need a doctorate degree.

0:25:33 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:25:38 Ashley: I just went online and I figured all these things out.

0:25:40 Thomas: Sure is a lot easier than getting that PhD. It's just saying, oh, PhDs don't account.

0:25:45 Ashley: Cheaper too.

0:25:46 Thomas: So yeah, so I get to just do some Google searches and then I'm with you. I'm the same level of expert.

0:25:52 Ashley: No, it's part of it for sure. So should we start with why people or kind of the reason why people might get stuck or why it's so compelling. Okay, so first piece, or one of their kind of propositions or pieces that is testable then, and behind their theory, is that one of the reasons conspiracy theories are so successful or sticky, cognitively sticky, is that they're minimally counterintuitive. Okay, one the features of our memory is that we remember things that are unique or salient.

0:26:25 Ashley: That's been helpful for us evolutionarily. If I was out in the jungle and all of a sudden this lion appeared out of nowhere, I'm going to remember where I was and remember what things around me were because that was a weird event and also terrifying. Fine. It doesn't have to be that odd, but we do remember things that are odd, and that's just a feature of our memory that's been helpful over time. So conspiracy theories grab our attention by doing this. So what makes them memorable is their starting point that isn't fully bizarre. Now, your David Icke example is a great example of where this can go wrong, right? If you're, you have to, where you're what makes themselves sticky to people, not what makes them pull away because it could if they got too deep. But what pulls them in is something that they're hearing isn't too bizarre. So let me give you an example that might help people. So let's think about the conspiracies about fluoridation in the water.

0:25:59 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah, mm -hmm. Uh-huh, yeah. Just heard one of those. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.

0:27:22 Ashley: So that, Oh, on Marsh, yes. Are you? Yeah, Marsh has got, yeah, be reasonable is great for that. I don't know how he holds his cool.

0:27:27 Thomas: Such a good, yeah such a good resource, yeah

0:27:30 Ashley: Gosh, he's, yeah, he needs to teach a master class and being calm. For example, so fluoridation hypothesis conspiracy theory is that there is too much fluoride in the drinking level and not just that too much it's dangerous. It starts with something that isn't that bizarre or unreasonable to people because public drinking water we know is processed by a governmental group. And occasionally there's times where it's not tested properly and it can lead. Exactly. That was going to be my point, right? Yeah. So Flint's.

0:27:33 Thomas: Sure mm -hum yeah Flint Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

0:27:59 Ashley: No, you took it. That's perfect. So high levels, that means I'm doing a great job of leading you places. Just like Q would.

0:28:05 Thomas: Just like you.

0:28:07 Ashley: Exactly. So yeah, so there's high levels of lead and flint in the drinking water. There's been other times where water's been poisoned unintentionally, but this happens. So people know that happens occasionally. And so there is a starting point. We know this happens, and conspiracy theories just take a little leap. So the leap and the fluoridation one is, yeah, they're high, and people know it's high ,and they're not doing anything. Thing.

0:28:08 Thomas: Yeah, well, It's also, so the one I just listened to is also, like, I think it's a pretty big leap because those instances you're talking about, you know, Flint and all those, anyone that I know of is mainly just malicious incompetence. Like, yeah, it's still, it's still evil. It's still bad. But it wasn't, to my knowledge, it wasn't anyone saying, "I'm going to put lead in the drinking water," whereas fluoride, that conspiracy is, "Oh, no," they're, because that was an intentional choice, because, you know, it's good for, it's actually good. So that was an intentional choice. So it's more like these, a bunch of doctors, a lot of people, a whole bunch of dentists, a much of, you know, medical people got together and decided to start this conspiracy where we're going to fool the public into thinking that fluoride is actually good for your teeth, but it's doing something else. I don't know what it's doing, but yeah, that's, that's pretty, yeah, that's a pretty different thing, I think.

0:29:17 Ashley: That's the hook. That is what is different. That makes people remember it. That is not what you would expect. Not that it is good, but it is a little bit of a logical jump. It seems like it is not because it is this benevolence that is behind conspiracy theories, but that is how they pull people in. Like, hey, don't you know that sometimes the water level gets wonky? Well, that is done on purpose in this case.

0:29:37 Ashley: Here is an example. It is not always. Like, they are talking about fluoride. They are not talking about everything. It's just fluoride in the water. That's the problem. We know they're easier to remember. And this counterintuitiveness is analogous to religious stories too. And just religious stories. Fairy tales are memorable because of this as well. But religious stories have them, and this is the analogy these authors are making here. So for example, Jesus, Christianity, sacrificed himself for other people, that happens, people do that, you know, that's that's a feature of human nature, sometimes someone will sacrifice their life or reputation or whatever for a bigger cause, so that seems possible, but the twist, right, is that Jesus rises from the dead, and he's also God's son, but there's a trinity, so God and Jesus is the same and says a hero spirit theory.

0:29:26 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Mm -Hmm. Hmm.

0:30:30 Thomas: There's a lot of twists in that one. I was sitting here trying to figure out how you're going to make all that story be one twist. Like, ah, there's quite a few.

0:30:37 Ashley: It's not one, but it's what makes people remember it. Now, if somebody were to tell you about it, they're probably going to start with one of those things, just like conspiracy theories would too. They're going to ease you into it. And that's the piece, right? So anytime someone's proselytizing a religion, they are going to do the same thing conspiracy theories are doing, according to these authors, right. They are going come and tell you something that's minimally counterintuitive. A Mormon proselytizer is not going to show up at your doorstep saying, hey, Joseph Smith uncovered these golden plates and there was an angel and, oh, he had all these wives. It's not all going to happen at one time.

0:30:38 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Sure, yeah.

0:31:12 Ashley: It is going to be one thing. Yes. So that is the key. It has bread crumbing in a counterintuitive manner. So, so that is part of it. And the other part that is sticky is that the conspiracy theorists being strategically omnipotent, again, comes back here and is minimally counterintuitive. It makes sense that somebody would be powerful and know a lot, but in conspiracy theories, they don't know everything. That's where they're not just like religions.

0:31:12 Thomas: Breadcrumbing or whatever. Yeah, yeah, can actually curious if you, if it says in the paper, what, does it define minimally counterintuitive? Like what's the minimally doing there? I'm just curious if they, if they lay out a definition that might like me insight into thinking on that.

0:31:54 Ashley: They don'T lay out a specific definition. I mean, well, they talk about it for quite a while because I guarantee you a peer reviewer was like, explain this to me in more detail because it's not not as clear, but they go too far in that, I think, in the paper. But essentially, it's that it's not the extreme leap. So when you read David Icke, it wasn't minimally counterintuitive. It was way too counterintuitive.

0:32:17 Thomas: Okay.

0:32:17 Ashley: You couldn't follow it. You can throw it away.

0:32:18 Thomas: Oh, and importantly, you're saying this is, this is how you get started in it. This is not not like, oh, the whole depth of the theory has to be, okay, that I might've been getting confused. So

0:32:24 Ashley: Right, right, right. Right. That's how you get stuck. Once you get baited, you're stuck.

0:32:31 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Okay, gotcha.

0:32:33 Ashley: Yeah. So it's baiting you.

0:32:33 Thomas: So it's got, so, so I guess the minimally is just saying it's gotta have that enough to kind of get people into it.

0:32:38 Ashley: Right. Right there. Has to be plausibility, nobody jumps into a conspiracy theory into the deep end, They start somewhere, right, right And there's, and the reason they're saying this is happening is that it's minimally counterintuitive. And we see this other places, it's not unique to conspiracy theories.

0:32:39 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, on the first try, like right away, you're already there. Yeah? Hmm.

0:32:54 Ashley: You see this in religion, as an example, that's why the quasi religious. Oh,

0:32:58 Thomas: Have a lot of thoughts on this that I won't, you know, know, I won't bore everybody with, But it's really, once I started listening to You're Wrong About, we've gotten hooked on the debunk, you know, and I'm hooked on it too. I love a good debunk. But it's kind of weird because there, like, there were a few instances in that show where I felt like, you were not quite right.

And for the most part, it was a fantastic show, I love it, I, I lost track of it since, um, Michael Hobbs left, um, like it's great show, but when that goes wrong, then I started to really feel weird about it, because it's like, oh, the thing is it's just always the counterintuitive thing, you know, and and then, like, when it, when that heuristic went wrong, it felt like, oh wait, so shit, were any of these other ones wrong?

And it really made me feel that, just started making me think about the fact that, like, I think we're really hooked as a society on counterintuitive stuff. Like, we just want, it just makes us feel good to be like, oh, you thought that, you know, vitamins were good, actually they're bad. You thought that this was this, actually it's like, over and over.

And because of just how easy it is to, to put information out there, and how many YouTube videos, and not just bad stuff, like how many really good thought out, even if they might ultimately be incorrect, I don't know, you, there's podcasts, YouTube, YouTubers, essays, all that stuff, writing really considered, well-written stuff about how actually this thing is this thing. And I start to get like a little bit, um, about it where I'm like, shit, are we going to know, what have we done to ourselves?

There's, you know, cause like, it just feels like everything now, everything could be that, everything could be, well, actually, literally, you know, vitamins of sugar is good for your vitamin. Like, I don't, I've lost track. There have been so many, well, actually, the thing you thought is right is actually the opposite of right, that I've now completely lost track of the truth of a lot of very basic things.

0:33:01 Ashley: Yeah, yeah.

0:34:50 Ashley: Getting at, you're reading these authors' minds or they're reading yours, I'm not sure. Psychologists are so smart. That's one of the pieces in here. What you're talking about goes to just a feature of human nature. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll, it's not going to go away. It seems to be something that we're just wired to do, which is that we like to have these reconstruct. We like to tear apart something and then reconstruct it and something that makes sense to us. This goes to the spread of the conspiracy theory, which, which isn't exactly the minimal, it's not the counterintuitive argument. It's a different argument they're making about why they spread, why people spread them. And one of the reasons is this, that people like these conversations.

0:35:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:32 Ashley: We like to take apart something. And if you're doing anomaly hunting, which is the meat of a conspiracy theory, then they're going to go look for those things. Like here's evidence against it. And so the authors in this paper actually talk about that with dieting culture as an example. Like, if you look at experts will say something, and it might be in a paper, and it may be in small sample size, and it might be something that just for other scientists we're excited about, but it's not like a game changer for some reason. Someone might pick it up and make it a game changer, and they do that by spreading it in this way of making it make sense to people, getting in these conversations, if that makes sense. So they like to reconstruct, construct expert knowledge that way. And that's where you get into those conversations. Like, here's something you heard, but actually that's not true. That's a conspiracy theory type of logic here that they're talking about.

0:35:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:24 Ashley: Being at the key of it.

0:36:25 Thomas: I really noticed that with COVID and in particular, my mom, oh my God. It's like for some reason she is really in this mode now that just whatever the mainstream thought is, the opposite of it is true. Like she's just it's the it's bizarre. Like it's like, oh, the vaccine that actually causes COVID. Oh, masks that actually gives you. It's not like it's a vaccine. It's just like, what? Why would that be fucking true? Like, there's no reason you would think that, except there are a lot. And my mom didn't think all those things. But like a lot of the right now, a lot OF those people, that is their heuristic now. Now it's like, okay, the scientists or Fauci said one thing. So it's not only like, oh, he might be wrong. It's like no, the opposite thing now has to be true. It's the it's bad.

0:37:09 Ashley: I agree. There's definitely those pieces in there where something's wrong. Here's a piece where it might tie in to, or to come back to the article. Call. The conspiracy theories that are successful and why I think this process continues, you see this in other places. It's not necessarily conspiracy theories only, but some of the most successful conspiracy theories are framed as conflicts, not value -based.

0:37:16 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah. Hmm.

0:37:36 Ashley: And it's really hard to knock down a conflict, and we are tied to conflicts. Evolutionarily, we are, because because conflicts are important for our success, to know who we're in conflict with, why we're in conflict, with people. So we like conflict. And if conspiracy theory narratives can focus on conflict, they get us sucked in because we find that interesting.

0:37:57 Thomas: You give us an example or Well, you have like that framing of, oh it's not a values thing. It's a conflict. Like is there is there one that they had in mind with that point like a particular theory?

0:37:59 Ashley: A conflict that's out there. Don't have one specific conspiracy theory that they name in here, but let's think about the Illuminati. Say that so casually. Let's just talk about the illuminati just casually in here.

0:38:14 Thomas: Mm-hmm, sure. Yeah. It's what I was doing anyway before you got here. Yeah.

0:38:21 Ashley: We think about some of the big conspiracy theories, the lasting ones, one of the big ones out there are very racially racist -based conspiracy theories about people of Jewish descent. Event. Yep.

0:38:29 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, it's always well, and also Aaron Rabinowitz over on Philosophers in Space, I think, either a talk he gave, or maybe I can't remember if he just like talked about it on the show, but it does always come down to the Jews somehow. Like it just, it's and it's kind of, it's hilarious in a way, like obviously it's it's disgusting anti-Semitism, but it is weird how no matter what bat shit theory you hear some conspiracy theorists going off on, you can almost set a timer to when it's like, and it's the Jews, like it's bizarre, yeah.

0:39:06 Ashley: And that's the conflict. They're pulling somebody that they think you have a unique conflict over. Historically, there's been conflict that they can pull to to that. But yep, there's a conflict. There's groups of people that are in conflict. Good and evil would be the analogy in religion. So there's an conflict over good and evil. And you want to make sure good wins and evil doesn't. And so there's that analogy there too, that religion tends to put that conflict, especially fundamentalist religions, but other religions too. There's a good and evil piece. Andso conspiracy theories that are most successful do that. And part of why they're successful is they're using that human value that part of our human thinking that we have, have, which is we like conflict, we spread it. Yes.

0:39:49 Thomas: The Black and white, yeah. The back and white, good and evil thinking, yeah, that's that's just so widespread, yeah.

0:39:56 Ashley: And them. Yeah, it's not over sacred values, it's over a conflict. We find that interesting. That's also really hard to refute that there's conflict going on, because by the time you get done trying to explain why something's not a conflict, they can point you to something else that's a conflict. It's just going to go on. You're just going keep going with folks on that. And so it's just harder, harder to knock down a conflict. Yeah, that's part of the thinking, right, as they frame them over conflicts. Kind of reason why people can get pulled into conspiracy theories, because there's a ritualization that comes with sharing conspiracy theories, specifically, that helps you manage anxiety.

And now it seems like when you talk to people who believe in conspiracy theories, they might seem more anxious. But when they go through the process of going and looking for information, or they go on a Cue board and they look at other people that are posting about Cue, they are reducing their anxiety by doing something. If you have something in the world that's making you anxious, being able to concretely point to something is helpful. Here is how I can solve the problem. When we knew there was a virus being spread and we didn't know a lot about it during the COVID pandemic, it was a lot more terrifying. It's hard to remember that. But but when we had a name, even just a name for it makes sense.

So conspiracy theories, they have this ritualization that helps reduce anxiety. And it's ritualized similar to the way that religions use rituals. It's different. I know people are going to, it's not going to be identical. It is an analogy. But when people go on a board and they start commenting about something with Q, they are going through the same sort of process. You rehearse kind of what you do each time, and you can expect people to respond to you the same way.

So in churches, a Christian background, so to use the example of Christianity, might be in church saying a specific prayer like the Lord's Prayer. You might be reciting the Apostles' Creed with

0:40:10 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:41:51 Ashley: Everyone. You're in a group, you're saying the same thing. It's a call and response that you know what to expect, and it's this ritual you're engaging in. And when people are sharing conspiracy theories, they'll use code words that might do that, like trust the plan is one in queue, trust the plane, the Storm is coming. Also are waiting for other types of in-group support, like people saying, oh, yeah, that's a great idea, or oh, yes, I didn't expect that, or you denigrate an out-group, like these people, you know, these sheep out there that don't know what's happening and other people get in. So it reinforces in-group identity and it strengthens this kind of tribal view and conspiracy theories, but it performs this really important function of reducing anxiety through a ritual, which is, again, why the quasi-religious piece comes in here. It's different from

0:41:51 Thomas: Totally right. Right.

0:42:38 Thomas: Think you could say that also about just politics for a lot of people. I mean, a lot OF people. That's why they put the fucking bumper sticker, the Trump sticker on their thing. They love they need that like reinforcement from each other all the time.

0:42:41 Ashley: Yep. Yes. Yes. And it's again, conspiracy theories, what makes them successful is pulling on that because it's something people do, and if you can really pull in a ritual that way, it's gonna help strengthen and spread that conspiracy theory. Yes.

0:43:03 Thomas: And there's so it's so funny when you don't give them the thing they're looking for. They're so they're so confused, like they don't know what to do when And they're like, oh, yeah, that's why you got to make America greater than the world, blah, blah. And then, like, you don't respond in that way. And they can't even handle it because it isn't about. And I mean, this is honestly, it's just also true with stuff on the left. But like it, the more I think the more bullshitty You get, the more you need this reinforcement because you're just so out there because the world is not reinforcing your views because the world you're not reinforcing. You're just wrong about the world.

So you need all this constant, in my opinion. Oh, I should signpost. This is my opinion, this isn't the scientific thingy that Dr. Dr. Scolaro's referencing, um, just to be, just to please those peer reviewers, if they, uh, peer review my episode. Um, this is my, yeah. This is, this is my opinion, but I feel like you need more of that, the more honestly crazy your worldview is because you're not getting that reinforcement from the world, like the facts of the world because they're, you're wrong about them. So, so when you don't go with them on that, it really rattles them and they They don't have any way of it. I noticed this with my family.

Like they don't the first time I at all push back on my dad's like, you conservative Fox News bullshit in like 2009 or some shit like he just had no ability to even respond. Like he had he had never, ever talked to anyone of a different thing because that's all about just reinforcing your own views to each other. That's what Fox News is hearing your own bullshit spewed back at you.

Thing I was going to say is you mentioned when COVID started, I really see that dynamic of it giving you, of it relieving anxiety, you know, and, and I, they'll say that it's the opposite, like, oh, everybody else is so, you're deal with this harsh truth. Like you're afraid to deal With the truth at the time, you Know, whatever it is, the moon landings fake, and And you're afraid to deal with that. And it really cuts the other way.

It's like, no, you're going to this good and evil broad conspiracy because that's a comforting, easy thing to deal mit cognitively. I think it's way easier to deal wit, oh no, there's a shadowy cabal and that's why everything sucks. It's just those people, it's this very tangible claim versus, well, actually it's it's a cold and indifferent universe that just shit goes wrong. And like, sometimes things are terrible for no reason. Like that's a lot harder to deal with.

And I saw this firsthand with my, specifically like my older sister with COVID because it was funny. Like there was a few, there was like a moment where COVID starts and people haven't split yet. You know, remember that? Like it was, it was like, I mean, obviously it was inevitable that there was going to be a big split on it, but like for a few minutes, like Trump at first, like kind of didn't care about it, you know?

And it was kind of like, all right, well, we're all in this together. Like COVID is COVID. And then just, you know, very quickly you saw that big split where it's like, we couldn't even fucking agree on anything. And I noticed because my, sister is, I think a pretty anxious person, at least in that, in that way. Like, I don't know if she has like, you know, anxiety day to day or anything, but she's got that nervous energy of having to look up everything.

That's like, oh, I need to know this. Cause what if this happens and this happens like like that kind of anxiety. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Maybe it's also like an OCD thing. I'm not sure. Um, not to diagnose, but, but that kind of quality where it's needing to just do all that research you're talking about. Like that is a comforting thing to her.

And early on, she starts going off about the, Oh, but you don't understand the cruise ship, you know, the cruise ship. There's like all this crap. That's like, well, I don't, I haven't done the thing you've done, which is, I I don't know, look at everything. We had so little information that the information we did have, which was like, I don't know, the fucking cruise ship, she just kept saying. And also like in I think there was something about that.

There was like two main sources early on for any information about it. And she had obsessed over that and anomaly hunted on that, actually. Now that I think about it, that's I'm exactly what she was doing. She was just going over that again and again, anomaly hunting. And then she would present us with these anomalies and we're like, I don't know, man. Like, I assume the scientists are working on it. I'm not going to be the one that cracks this thing. I don'T know what you want from me.

0:43:11 Ashley: Yes.

0:43:23 Ashley: It's not just writing yes Know, I'm So it's It's fine.

0:47:18 Ashley: What she's, I I don't they're intentionally doing this, but it's comforting to them when you don't know something they know. Like, oh, well, you don't fully see. I can discount what you're saying, because you don' t really know what you' re talking about. So, but they' re in this, this web. This is why facts aren' t going to help them, because they' r going to point to something else. And to bring up the, they they don't know what to do when they' R speaking with someone, and it's true that they'll do that. Great thing that people, if people haven't seen it, there's a, there're so many docs on the insurrection, but there's Discovery Plus doc on the January 6th insurrection. I again, I teach a class on QAnon, so I've been prepping. We start soon, so I'm prepping that class and reminding myself.

0:47:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:47:38 Thomas: Mm-huh.

0:47:49 Thomas: Oh, you're a prepper too. Okay. You're Q and you're a prepper. Yeah.

0:48:00 Ashley: Yeah. Doomsday prepper as well. Well, with toilet paper now after COVID, my gosh, it's like, I can't have enough of it anymore. But no, yeah. So prepping for that class, I saw this documentary again it's called January 6th. It's by Discovery Plus. But what the point is, is that you can see what it does really nicely is it terrifyingly, but nicely is it shows you every aspect of the insurrection and a timeline of what's happening. And you can hear hear the police officers talking about how there's people screaming at them saying, we're working for you. Why aren't you letting us into the building? Like, we're part of this. We're going to help

0:48:04 Thomas: Oh, man, yeah.

0:48:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:38 Ashley: You. And the police, you can see them saying this to police officers and the police officers saying, you're hitting us. Well, they don't say it calmly, but they, but after the fact, they're saying, they know they're hitting US over the head with, you know, support the back, the blue or police lives matter. They're hitting police officers over the head with these flags. And at the same time, saying, we're on your side. Why aren't you supporting us? And when they're, they're you know, people like, well, you're here attacking people and what you're doing. You're not you you're not going to get what you think you are here. Like, no, I'm not going to you're actually supporting me.

0:48:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:49:08 Thomas: They're Beating someone, Being, let me support you, damn it, while they're beaten them.

0:49:13 Ashley: They're getting angry, right? Because they don't know what else to do. And they might turn and in that documentary, you can see him do several things. One thing is that they turn each other and start chanting things from the conspiracy theory, stop the steal, you know, they start really ominously chanting Nancy Pelosi's name, let's get the traitors, all these sorts of things to help calm themselves down in that ritual. There's several times where you can see people getting caught in that. One. They're in the Senate chamber, I think. And they're going through, which is just terrifying, they're doing through these Senate, probably confidential files, and they get it to Ted Cruz's statements. And I'm like, oh, look, he's going to decertify the election.

0:49:13 Thomas: Yeah, totally, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:49:55 Ashley: He's going to object to the Arizona votes like he's gonna sell us out all along. And someone else is like, no, I don't know. I think that's what we're supposed to do. They just kind of stumped because they don't have their screen to kind of go back to those previous arguments. They they're on the spot. It doesn't make sense to them. I don't know if that fits with what you're saying, but you can see people doing that in real time. That is a real thing that happens because they're not using logic.

0:49:55 Thomas: Yeah. Well.

0:50:15 Thomas: It's Cognitive dissonance. Right, they're kind of dealing with Their cognitive dissenance, and It takes them a minute to figure it out.

0:50:17 Ashley: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so so conspiracy that anxiety really helps them spread. Media has given, this isn't surprising to anybody right now, but remember this article was before social media was really like way before it was 10 years ago that it was published. So it was probably 12 or 13 years ago when it was first developed. They didn't, they point to in this article mass media and the 24-hour news cycle, but they don't have social media, which is really allowing a lot of things to have a platform and spread quickly. And as they point out in here, that's what's going to help is it's, it's going to, whatever people can grab your attention with, and so in mass media, it's whatever gets people interested.

So they pointed to the satanic panic as an example of that, like people were really interested in that news story. Whatever gets people's attention is going to lead to something being spread more frequently and also lead to more action because people are paying attention to it and reinforced about it. Um, so the spread is really exacerbated by social media because you can just keep spreading conspiracy theories and ideas.

You can do it quickly and you can have other people respond quickly and you can have a pretty well-developed idea closely after something happened. Um, of my favorite recent examples of this is tied to the Sound of Fury movie. Have

0:50:41 Thomas: Oh. God.

0:51:46 Ashley: You heard of that Movie, okay. So,

0:51:47 Thomas: I We Plan on covering it eventually on Where There's Woke, but haven't, haven't done it yet, yeah.

0:51:54 Ashley: So one of my, an example of it spreading kind of so quickly that that the conspiracy theorists can't get a good hold on it before it gets out there, the Sound of Fury, right, is tied to the q anon movement about people holding children and these satanic convuls

0:52:10 Thomas: It's the movie that basically, you, the fever dream of the people who think there's child trafficking everywhere, and it's very interesting because like it's not clear if everybody involved in making it or if everybody seeing it knows that, but yeah, it's from that like mindset, that view worldview that there's traffickers Everywhere, and It feeds into That, yeah.

0:52:31 Ashley: Yes. Yes. Right. So there's that, my favorite conspiracy theory tied to that is they, they, they did this pay it forward Angel Studios campaign where they said, OK, give us money so that, you know, if you want people to get this, if you want this message to really get out, give us money and we'll kind of like hold seats back for people so that if somebody goes to the theater and they Don't have a ticket, you can get which there's not will call like I've just theaters.

0:52:58 Ashley: That's like a very old view of theaters. But this was the strategy. So a lot of theaters are sold out because people are buying these tickets. Tickets and then there was a conspiracy theory about it because here are these people going to see this movie they know it's sold out they're all amped up and then they're like four people in the theater and they're Like

0:52:42 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It Is Very. Weird.

0:53:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:16 Ashley: Why isn't anybody here, oh, people don't want this message to get out, that's why, and it's Like, no, the reason it's, you all sold it, it's sold out because you all bought tickets and nobody's showing up at a theater to see a movie that they didn't buy a ticket for, that doesn't happen. Um, that's an example of like I'm getting ahead of themselves with social media, but it spread. It spread really fast. I don't know if it's still got as much attention, but social media really helps these things spread.

What leads to the most action, kind of the dangerous nature of conspiracy theories, this article points to it, is they make claims credible and salient. They can tell you if a conspiracy theory leads to action, what they've done is pointed out that something that you can, you know what it is, you You know what the thing you're after, what you're trying to stop is, and you can point it out. Because if you don't do that, you're not going to be able to point out where your action should be. But they can lead to action, and that's how they do it, is they point to something that's

0:53:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:54:12 Ashley: Behind it.

0:54:13 Thomas: So. Like the JFK conspiracy probably doesn't lead to much action. I would Would imagine, but the conspiracy of, oh no, these people have children that they're, you know, that they're draining their adrenochrome or whatever the heck stupid thing it is, that definitely will lead to action because that feels very, you, imminent, and it feels like there's something maybe people could do about it if they, for example, go to a pizza place that they Think people Are being

0:54:17 Ashley: Right. Right.

0:54:37 Ashley: Which has happened several times, yeah. I mean, and who wouldn't, like, I mean nobody wants children to be hurt. Like, I meantime, of course You want to go help children, like, and you do it to, I feel bad for those people in a lot of ways because they've got pulled into this process, but they've, they're going out trying to rescue children that aren't, that aren't there, it's kind of It's the sad feature of it, like their intentions are, I'm gonna save children, but they're so deep in the conspiracy theory that they've a little bit but lost, um, of the things with conspiracy theories for spreading is that they use this process that people have developed called anchoring and objectification.

So what certain conspiracy theories, what lets them spread quicker than others is if they can anchor something that's unfamiliar to us and something that is familiar and objectify it, mean create something in our, a picture in our mind of what it is, if something's like not tangible, so for some Of these conspiracy Theories that they have things in them that we can't tangibly grab a hold of, they can use these processes for them to make sense for us, so um, do this a lot, this is just partly how we communicate with one another, so it's not surprising conspiracy theorists would do that because they're experts in their conspiracy theory and they're trying to link their idea that we all might think is really out there. They're trying to anchor it in something we already believe in.

The theory does it itself. So do the people sharing it. So, for example, anchoring's naming this unfamiliar event to something we already know. So when psychotherapy first came out, there's an analogy to religion here because psychotherapists were bringing it, Freud and others are bringing this idea of here's a therapy. This can be really helpful to people. This can work for treating your anxiety or other mental illnesses. And they had to anchor that idea of going to someone to talk about mental health.

They had to anger it in something real. And so they did that by comparing psychotherapy to confessing to a priest. So if you look back in time, experts in psychotherapy, that's how they got people to not be to understand it, you anchor it and what people already know, oh, confessing to a priest, talking to a pastor.

0:54:38 Thomas: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

0:55:35 Thomas: And You're Not saying this Is a conspiracy or anything. You're saying this is just illustrating the effectiveness of kind of that technique. So when this psychotherapy first started hitting or whatever, more people would have been familiar with confessing to a priest and would feel anchored by comparing it to that. Whereas nowadays, I feel like that would be so quaint. That would go the other way, I'd be like confessing to fuck that. I'm not doing this.

0:56:59 Ashley: No. Right. Of What We do, yeah, but They had to, like, here's something you don't know about, let me tell You about it in a a way that you do know about it.

0:57:25 Thomas: Right. Anchor it to something you do know about. Gotcha. Okay.

0:57:29 Ashley: Conspiracy theories that operate well do that. They help explain people. David Icke doesn't do a great job of that because he's not anchoring it in something you can follow. Great teachers do that, they can anchor something, some unfamiliar concept, to something that you know about in your day-to-day life, and so anchoring makes something unfamiliar familiar, relatable, relating it to your real life. They also do giving abstract examples, something concrete, as the objectification piece. So thinking about like when you're, you know, learning chemistry or learning about different molecules or atoms as balls, you knows, if you ever built like in chemistry sets, that's objectifying those concepts because they're so small you can't see them. And this is a way for you to visually see something and imagine what it might look like. And

0:58:19 Thomas: Is kind of bad because it turns out that's actually not at all how it works. Like, yeah, we all as kids, we All thought like, oh, atoms are like little solar systems. It's like, nah, they're not at all like that. But I guess, you know, we do what we can.

0:58:23 Ashley: Right. They're not like that. Yeah. It's a starting point. You have like, but The point being, yeah, that's a, right. That's always with science as an expert. I'm always like, okay, I have to explain this concept, but I can't give all of the gray area to everybody at once because you won't be able to understand everything if I'm always just like hedging, right? Like, oh, this is not exactly like this is this is something I can use to communicate to people. So, right.

0:58:32 Thomas: Yeah, oh yeah, it's a big challenge. You have to decide like, all right, how much do I want to to get into this. You're not going to like give us your whole PhD, you but there's risks because if you give an analogy or something and, you know, maybe it does work somewhat, but are there limitations to it that will then kind of misinform people a little bit? It's kind of a tough, tough challenge.

0:59:12 Ashley: So you have to use a way for thinking about objectifying something. And our last conversation talking about how the brain works is a good example there, too. Like when you talk to cognitive scientists, when computers were developed. This is really the rebirth of cognitive psychology because we could use the computer as analogy for thinking about human behavior and how the brain works too for memory and language and the like. That's objectification and anchoring. I'm taking something that's concrete. Here's a computer. People can learn how those work and I can explain how the brain works in a similar matter, right? Like when you're remembering something, just like like how your computer, you put information with a touchpad or keyboard or whatever, it saves it on a hard drive, and then I can pull it back up later. It's the same sort of way that memory works.

It is an analogy we use because you put the information into your brain with your senses, you store it in your brain in various areas, and you retrieve it later on when you remember it. Of course, that's a gray area because the brain, it's not exactly how the the brain works. The brain's all chemical. So things get lost in the, you know, all over the place in a way that hopefully your computer doesn't work. We get really angry when our computers work that way.

But that's a similar type of process where you're taking this abstract concept of here's this tissue in your body doing this really strange thing and you're making it concrete. But here's what it's like. It's like a computer. Same thing with atoms as balls. It's not a perfect example, but it's an analogy. It's And making it concrete. We know that people people remember things better and can understand them better when they can visualize them. Lots of studies on that. The classic studies was having people remember different lists of words, and one list of words you could easily visualize was like penny, apple, tree, things

0:59:33 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

1:00:58 Ashley: Like that. Another word list would have words like justice, liberty, and people didn't remember those words as well.

1:01:07 Thomas: Interesting.

1:01:08 Ashley: And that's mostly because how do you visualize visualize just as you could. But when I tell you, I'm going to read you a list of words, there's going to be 10 words, and then I'm gonna ask you to remember as many words as you can. I do that. And within 30 seconds, you're going to have a hard time visualizing those other words. Now, penny tree, apple, you can visualize what those are, those other ones, you can't.

1:01:28 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

1:01:29 Ashley: So conspiracy theory, this anchoring and objectification helps that way, because it it can make things more concrete for you.

1:01:36 Thomas: Right. So as we're kind of drawing to a close, maybe, I want to make sure I tracked the paper along with you because it seemed like we started with what makes these sticky or what people into them. And then I see, I don't, maybe it's because it was words I can't visualize, but I don't remember that well where we went from there.

1:01:56 Ashley: Flowed well. So yeah, what makes things sticky is that conspiracy theories are minimally counterintuitive. So they grab you in with something that is but not too surprising or bizarre. Gives you a ritual, which makes it sticky because it helps relieve leave your anxiety. It makes you want to come back for more. The ones that are framed as conflicts are really sticky because we pay attention to those. They're easier for us to think about and we get really interested in conflict. So those will stick better. We spread conspiracy theories through this anchoring and objectification.

So the ones that spread best are ones where they can anchor an idea and something people already understand and they can make something visual or objectify it in some other way to where you can actually have a concrete understanding of what's at play. Also spread really well because they democratize knowledge. They break down expert knowledge, and we already do that. And so conspiracy theories really spread from that, that because they that out. So you get to do this puzzle hunting, which people like to do. And experts kind of show you how to do that because we deconstruct this expert knowledge for folks all of the time when we teach about them is that you're going to break it down into digestible parts and people are doing the same thing, but they're doing it on their own.

And then what makes people act on them is when the conspiracy theories are framed with a call action of some sort. We talked about the conspiracy theory or conspiracy theories about Princess Diana. They're not necessarily generating a call to action. I guess investigate what was happening, but it's not the same way as the QAnon theory that's saying there's people trying to prevent Donald from being president, even though he was elected. Well, I can go through and who to go out and potentially

1:02:05 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Right.

1:02:52 Thomas: That's right. Yeah.

1:03:49 Thomas: Yeah,

1:03:49 Ashley: Commit violence against Congress.

1:03:50 Thomas: Yeah. You know who to hang. It's Mike Pence.

1:03:53 Ashley: Yeah, that's the idea, right? And they also can generate action by keeping people's attention, continually generating things that people find interesting and to the news. So pulling on that 24 -hour news cycle, pulling on social media, whatever gets, you know, they pull on attention -grabbing ideas that way. That's the stick, spread, act piece that they have here. So And it's sticking, spreading, and acting just like religions would, right? So it'S minimally counterintuitive like religions are. They have that.

1:03:54 Thomas: Oh, I see, each of those kind of components had a comparison to religion maybe? Oh, Okay, I see, I thought I thought it was building to like, and therefore, you know, and then there's gonna be like another distinct thing that was why it was like religion, but that was my misunderstanding. I, I also thought that like, oh, surely you couldn't have gone through this paper much, because all I did was add in a bunch of stuff that I'm used to derailing people, but I feel like, because you're Q, you really just led me to do that in a way that really consistently went along with the points you were making. So that's great. It's all a success.

1:04:29 Ashley: Right. Yep. Yeah, it's either I'm Q or I'm a really awesome teacher, and I just know how to kind of follow what folks say on it. Or you're a really good student.

1:05:04 Thomas: Or I'm Q and I knew what you were gonna say because I'm cute. No, I don't know.

1:05:11 Ashley: I think after this, we can agree we're both Q. And this was just a plot to pull down religion, essentially, because we're comparing it to conspiracy theories.

1:05:13 Thomas: We're both Q. And really, aren't we all? Isn't the Q in all of us? So, okay. So yeah, Anything else? I know that you mentioned, I'm not sure on or off the air, but you mentioned that this was a big paper and we weren't going to go through all of it. Is there anything we didn't get to in the paper that you could at give least people like a of or at least an indication of what other insights are there? Or is it like we pretty much covered the bulk of it? So don't need to do that.

1:05:42 Ashley: I mean, you could, you should be able to just access this paper. So you could go read it if you wanted to.

1:05:45 Thomas: But we don't read, Dr.

1:05:48 Ashley: I, I would not, I wouldn't, I würden't recommend reading this paper because as Q, I don't want people to know my tactics, but it's dense paper. So I tried to pull out what I think are the big takeaways, which people probably know about conspiracy theories. But I think the important thing and why I wanted to talk about it is that what is happening with conspiracy theories is not logical thought. You're not going to change people's minds on these by talking to them logically. I'm not saying you can't try to provide them evidence, but what likely is going to happen is they're going to go back and find a reason why you were wrong and they were right, because they're not good faith actors in that way.

1:05:48 Thomas: Scolaro. We don't reading.

1:06:29 Thomas: Yeah.

1:06:29 Ashley: That's not the mentality that they're using. It's analogous to religion, not in saying that people who have religious beliefs or religious beliefs on themselves are bad actors. It's just that the same thing will happen in religious belief, because it's not based on on fact. It's based on this idea that there's, like, a mystery out there, and we're not going to convince people with logic when they think there's some sort of supernatural or somewhat omnipotent factor, right?

1:06:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

1:06:59 Thomas: Quasi supernatural. Yeah, yeah,

1:07:02 Ashley: You're not going to be able to do that. So for folks who know people that have conspiracy theory beliefs or engage with, you know, engage with them. I think some, and we all are in a certain extent listening to media because these things will pop up whether we like them to or not.

1:07:02 Thomas: For sure. Yeah yeah

1:07:19 Ashley: I think just like it's, just like conspiracy theories find some contentment or relief of anxiety in naming something, and just like the example of naming COVID, I think this helps too. Conspiracy theory beliefs are quasi -religious. You can't approach someone with a conspiracy theory belief with logic, because that's not going to help. So just like you can't approach someone who's religious and prevent them some sort of fact that disproves one of their religious beliefs, it's just going to lead them to some other thing. So That's how you're going to change conspiracy theory, people who believe in conspiracy theories.

Just like religions aren't going to go away, neither are conspiracy theories are going to be here. So I think understanding that this is what this is. It's a quasi-religious type of thinking. And so the way that you would approach them, you know, when they're dangerous, that's a completely different situation. Just like people who have religious beliefs that are dangerous, I wouldn't advocate not being concerned about them and trying to prevent them from hurting themselves or other people. But at least knowing, having a name for what's happening instead of the constant cycle with QAnon or specifically that people have, when are people just going to know this isn't true? They're

1:07:19 Thomas: Yeah yeah right yeah

1:08:30 Ashley: Not going to. They're not going know it's not true.

1:08:30 Thomas: Yeah Exactly. There's not going to be an indictment that will will do it, but I mean, we're, this will be topic for another time, I'm sure, but like, what is there research on what will fucking do any of this, what will actually maybe deconvert people.

1:08:45 Ashley: Specifically to share with you right now on that. But when you look into what works when you have communications, even with just two people of different religious beliefs having communication with each other and resolving conflict. I think that's the way to think about it, which is to be compassionate so far as you can. If somebody is dangerous, spreading things that are harming other people or harming themselves, that crosses a line, in my opinion, where you can't be compassionate in the same way. But just approaching that belief as being something that is not going to be disproven with fact, showing them compassion, not being outright, not just telling them their name calling or something, not doing that. You're not going to dismount somebody from a conspiracy theory in one conversation. It's going to take a while for that to happen. It would, and being compassionate and open to talking to them is probably helpful to the extent you can. You have to protect yourself to a certain extent with this stuff.

1:09:10 Thomas: People.

1:09:42 Thomas: There's got to be research on that, right? And maybe a topic for another day or is that just everyone, every scientist like you is like throwing up their hands. I don't know, man. We can't fucking figure it out.

1:09:50 Ashley: There, I mean, there are some studies in that we could definitely talk about another day if you want to have me to back on to talk about kind of some of that. Yeah.

1:09:57 Thomas: Right. Well we'll put it behind the paywall. You can, I'm sorry. Democracy dies in darkness unless you pay for the Patreon. That's how it goes. If the Washington Post can do it, why can't I, I do that. All right. Well, Dr. Ashley Scolaro, thanks again so much for taking us through that. There anything you're plugging at all or just being a teacher?

1:10:02 Ashley: So yeah. Q baby.

1:10:18 Ashley: Yeah, just me. I'm awesome. No, I don't, I don't have anything. I have, no, I just, just like to chat about these things. I mean, I'm just, it's fun.

1:10:25 Thomas: Just like to chat about. That's awesome.

1:10:26 Ashley: So, oh shoot.

1:10:27 Thomas: You are cute. We should say that. You are cute, so cute .com. Go to 4 -8 -chan or whatever the fuck, wherever that was, 4 -kun -8chan. Yeah.

1:10:30 Ashley: Yes. Yes, um, the plan. 4chan, 8chan, I mean we

1:10:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, you can find her on all those sources. All right. Thanks again so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it.

1:10:39 Ashley: Could go down the whole rabbit hole that's a yeah yeah yeah thanks for having me again it was fun I