thomaswilson-sveltekit/.netlify/server/chunks/2021-06-10-weekly-44-618d9f06.js

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var import_index_10ac95e2 = require("./index-10ac95e2.js");
const metadata = {
  "title": "The Weekly #44: Thinking about Conspiracy Theories",
  "author": "Thomas Wilson",
  "date": "2021-06-10T20:18:00.000Z",
  "slug": "2021-06-10-weekly-44-thinking-about-conspiracy-theories",
  "draft": false,
  "imageUrl": "preview-images/44.png",
  "tags": ["weekly"]
};
const _2021_06_10_weekly_44 = (0, import_index_10ac95e2.c)(($$result, $$props, $$bindings, slots) => {
  return `<p><em>The Weekly</em> is a series of essays under one thousand words where I write about something I\u2019ve been thinking over the last seven days. This week I want to talk about misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding Covid-19, and why they\u2019re more harmful than previous conspiracy theories. I\u2019ve been a little busier than usual this week, so let\u2019s get into it</p>
<p>Alongside the actual pandemic of Covid-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared an <a href="${"https://www.who.int/health-topics/infodemic#tab=tab_1"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">infodemic</a>: the \u201Cfalse or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak\u201D.</p>
<p>The consequences of misinformation worsen the effect of a disease on a population (that\u2019s us). They can work directly by encouraging less-safe (i.e. less adherence to preventative measures, like wearing a mask or social distancing), as well as specifically dangerous (intentionally attempting to spread the disease) behaviour.</p>
<h2>Compassion &amp; Sympathy</h2>
<p>Before I begin, I also want to add that over the past few weeks I have felt a lot more sympathy for those who believe COVID-19 misinformation. <a href="${"https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/coronavirus-conspiracy-suspicions-general-vaccine-attitudes-trust-and-coronavirus-information-source-as-predictors-of-vaccine-hesitancy-among-uk-residents-during-the-covid19-pandemic/FEC34AA0D1972E3A761C784A39D26536"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">They are typically associated with</a> lower education, lower trust in the government, lower income, and lower scientific trust.</p>
<p><a href="${"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8083329/"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">An American study</a> which looked at adherence to social distancing measures in American citizens found that those who disregarded social distancing were more likely to to have great \u201Cpseudoscientific beliefs, lower governmental and institutional trust, lower risk perceptions, and [conservative political] affiliation\u201D.</p>
<p>I used to think believing the conspiracies was a choice, and now I think it\u2019s much more a consequence of feeling unheard. Of seeing the world as unfair, and seeking a reason other than ignorance or a bureaucracy-over-people government.</p>
<p>Believing these conspiracy theories is easier when you don\u2019t want the world to be unfair. When you don\u2019t want there to be a disease that doesn\u2019t threaten you, but does threaten others. So you have to sacrifice something for \u201Cnothing\u201D in return . I\u2019ll touch on cognitive dissonance later, but I think we\u2019re retrofitting what we\u2019re seeing into what we want to believe.</p>
<h2>\xA0Belief in multiple conspiracy theories</h2>
<p>I\u2019m near the end of R. Brotherton\u2019s <a href="${"https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/suspicious-minds-9781472915641/"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Suspicious minds: why we believe conspiracy theories</a>. In it, they talk about how belief in conspiracy theories are often correlated. If you believe in one, you\u2019re likely to believe in another. Even when they\u2019re unrelated.</p>
<p>Previously, this would mean believing that the Kennedy assassination was connected to 9/11. Or that the Freemasons secretly run our governments and plan our wars. But what do you do with that information? Trot it out at parties to a silence nobody feels comfortable filling, or share it among your co-conspirators to nods and disgruntled feelings?</p>
<p>You might be (probably) wrong, but you\u2019re also (probably) not hurting anybody with your beliefs.</p>
<p>The Wikipedia page for <a href="${"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Covid-19 Misinformation</a> runs several thousand words, and details at least ten broad categories of misinformation. These fall into a few groups:</p>
<ul><li><strong>The disease</strong>: e.g. the belief that COVID-19 was created and released by a secretive global organisation or government to control the global population; or that the mortality of the disease is not worth worrying about.</li>
<li><strong>Medical and scientific responses</strong>: e.g. the belief that vaccines or medications are not safe or could even be designed to actively harm people</li>
<li><strong>Social responses</strong>: e.g. the belief that some government or secret organisation are trying to make us obedient to their commands</li></ul>
<p>These are <em>massively</em> different types of arguments. But they all push behaviour in one direction: less adherence to public health policy. Less social distancing, less vaccination, more deaths and suffering.</p>
<p>Separate among the conspiracy theories which have emerged are that COVID-19 was a virus invented as a weapon to control global population, as a trigger to get us to inject microchips into our brains for mind control or to impart our ability to reproduce, and as a way to get us used to wearing face-coverings to make us more obedient citizens.</p>
<p>If you\u2019ve got brain control, you don\u2019t need to persuade anyone. If you\u2019re trying to control population in a physiological way, why do you need wilfully obedient citizens?</p>
<p>It\u2019s possible to hold conflicting beliefs in our head. Our brains will shape them until they\u2019re in-accordance with each other. We call that <a href="${"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">cognitive dissonance</a>, and it saves us from a lot of distress and time wasted in examining everything we believe and do before we assimilate something new.</p>
<p>Now, with COVID-19, even disconnected beliefs are pointing people\u2019s actions in a single direction. Belief a maligned global power set against the free will of the people, or corrupt medical researchers, or an evil foreign state all point towards the belief that adherence to public health behaviours should be ignored because COVID-19 is a) not-existent, b) not dangerous, or c) a weapon to control us, and should be ignored.</p>
<p>Belief in one conspiracy theory makes you more likely to believe another, even when they\u2019re not related. Even when they\u2019re directly opposing.</p>
<h2>Conspiracy theories fill a vacuum</h2>
<p>We do not know everything about COVID-19. The origin and nature of the virus itself, our governmental and societal response to it. The chance that we, in June of 2021, know everything there is to know about a pandemic which is still happening are very low. We do not know everything. That statement is caution.</p>
<p>This need for caution, of not overstepping our boundary or certainty, has left gaps in people\u2019s understanding of the disease.</p>
<p>A theory with less evidence than the one it opposes shouldn\u2019t be able to dislodge one with more explanatory power. But they can. When they\u2019re more appealing or more conforming or more sensible to the people hearing them.</p>
<p>We\u2019re already susceptible to these beliefs, and we don\u2019t have the infrastructure (legislative, technological) to stop them spreading. So they\u2019re spreading. And they\u2019re changing actions.</p>
<p>So they\u2019re causing unnecessary deaths.</p>`;
});