WEBVTT - Ep66 "Why do brains love conspiracy theories?" 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:09.600 Why are conspiracy theories a natural output of the brain? 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:12.080 And what does this have to do with Roswell New 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:16.400 Mexico or John F. Kennedy or the Great Fire of Rome. 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:20.760 What do conspiracy theories have to do with brains and 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:25.600 puzzle solving and cognitive dissonance and in groups and outgroups 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:30.400 and storytelling? If you hear an unlikely explanation for something, 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:37.839 what are good and bad ways to assess it? Welcome 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.320 to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.600 and an author at Stanford and in these episodes we 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:48.920 sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand why 0:00:48.960 --> 0:01:01.560 and how our lives look the way they do. Today's 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:05.880 episode is about conspiracy theories. Now, the point of today's 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.479 podcast is not to assess the truth value of any 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.400 particular theory, but instead, my interest is in why they 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.800 happen in the brain and why they are so sticky 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.920 in society. Okay, So, for definition, the idea of a 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:25.959 conspiracy theory is this, although all the available facts seem 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.759 to indicate X, there is an alternative story that reveals 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.240 a different truth. There are a million examples of this, 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.600 but let's just take a couple of examples to get 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.480 the ball rolling. So in nineteen forty seven, in Roswell, 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:43.120 New Mexico, an object falls from the sky. The examiners 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.600 conclude that it is a weather balloon, but that confirmation 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.480 did nothing to stem the tide of a conspiracy theory 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:56.320 that space aliens had crashed in Roswell. The alternative explanation 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:59.360 suggested it was a spaceship and no one wanted to 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.280 admit it. Now, this is an example of a conspiracy 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:05.960 theory because it requires that some people know the truth, 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:10.239 in this case, that there's evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.240 and in fact one that has vehicle troubles like we do. 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.200 But the conspiracy is to conceal that from the rest 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.280 of the population. Or take the nineteen sixty nine Moon landing, 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:25.040 a moment of great pride for the scientists and engineers 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.120 who made it happen, but many thousands of people at 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.480 that time and I think even some now, asserted that 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:36.280 the landing was a fake filmed professionally in a movie studio. 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.440 Or take the assassination of the President of the United States, 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.960 John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty three. Although one man 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.080 Oswald was captured for the crime. The conspiracy theory is 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.440 that many powerful shadowy figures and perhaps even another shooter 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:58.240 was involved with all of these examples. Decades after the event, 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.120 there are still assertions that there are alternative and better 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.520 explanations to the mainstream stories that the general public has 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:10.200 taken on. Now, most people that I talk with imagine 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:14.280 that conspiracy theories are something new. They are not. As 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:16.240 best I can tell, there is no country in the 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.840 world and no time in history that was not rife 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.920 with conspiracy theories. And this, as we shall see, is 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:28.480 because conspiracy theories don't require any particular technology or country 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:33.200 or politics. All they require are human brains. For example, 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.120 in sixty four CE, there was a huge fire that 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.600 destroyed much of the city of Rome. Now, historical accounts 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.720 suggest that the Emperor Nero had no responsibility for the fire, 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.680 and in fact he helped people in the fires aftermath. 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:52.440 But he had previously announced plans to build his new 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:57.280 palace the Domis area, and for that land needed to 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:02.200 be cleared. So conspiracy theories bloss and Roman said, maybe 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.320 Nero lit the fire or allowed it to happen, because 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:10.760 he clearly has something to gain here. Conspiracy theories pervade history. 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.240 There's so many examples, like who was really behind the 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:18.200 assassination of Julius Caesar twenty years earlier than that, or 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.640 who was actually responsible for the death of Alexander the Great, 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.400 which was three hundred and seventy years before that, or 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:30.080 who actually wanted to make sure that Socrates was tried 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:34.280 and executed before that. So conspiracy theories go back for 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.520 as long as we have written history, and that's the 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.359 signature that tells us we're not just looking at a 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:45.440 cultural phenomenon but a neural one. Now, it's often easy 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.039 to take the position of laughing at all conspiracy theories, 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.000 in large part because they end up being different than 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.719 whatever we have in our internal models. But I'm going 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.800 to assert that there are good and bad approaches to 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:04.160 analyzing any new explanatory idea, because, first of all, there 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.320 probably are some conspiracy theories that have some truth value. 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.200 A tame example would be price fixing, where you have 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.919 a small handful of companies who control a market, so 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.440 they all get together and decide that all of them 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.840 should keep their prices high. Or another example is that 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.360 of planned obsolescence, where a company will make a product 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:26.880 that's pretty good, but it's not going to last you 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.800 eight years. Instead, it's going to break down in a 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.360 much shorter time so that you'll have to buy the 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.120 next model of it, and they'll get to enjoy you 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.440 as a repeat customer. So our conspiracy theory is true, 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.760 not true sometimes all the time. I only mention this 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.320 to remind us that the world is driven by incentives 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.960 of individuals, and sometimes weird stuff can happen. And then, 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.640 of course remember that sometimes there are unsolved mysteries, like 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.279 in nineteen seventy one, when a mild mannered man hijacked 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:01.160 the Northwest Airlines between Portland and Seattle and exchanged the 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.520 passengers for two hundred thousand dollars and then kept the 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.200 crew and ordered them to fly to Mexico City. And 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:09.919 then on the flight he did something totally unexpected. He 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.039 leapt out of the back of the plane with a 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:15.560 parachute and the money. This remains one of the great 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:20.520 unsolved mysteries in FBI history. Are there conspiracy theories around 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.159 the shore, but of course it's hard to separate whether 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:28.640 something was a conspiracy or whether the investigators were just 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:34.080 not talented enough or whether the perpetrator was just too talented. Anyway, 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.159 it's a big, complicated world, and we can't always rule 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:40.719 out conspiracy theories right away because something could be possible. 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.800 But what we are going to see today is how 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.680 to think about this through a scientific lens to distinguish 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.720 which ones have some modicum of possibility and which ones 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.360 most likely do not. So to begin, I'm going to 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:58.840 argue that conspiracy theories are inevitable. There's no way to 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.960 say if we just get better education and better media, 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.520 then we'll get rid of conspiracy theories, because in fact, 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.919 they emerge as I'll argue from a brain locked in 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:13.640 silence and darkness trying to understand the outside world. The 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:17.720 way brains figure out the world is by making hypotheses. 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.960 They make their best guesses about how everything in the 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.480 world fits together. Now, almost everything in the world is 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:28.040 beyond the reach of your short little limbs and even 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:32.160 your line of sight. So to understand what's happening with 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:37.000 groups of people, or politics or societies, we work to 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:41.080 put these little puzzle pieces together. Now, we essentially never 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.520 have all the puzzle pieces, so we always just work 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.480 with what we can. This is how we function in 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:52.160 the world, and brains work to balance their conclusions against 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:56.560 an assessment of how likely that hypothesis is. So let 0:07:56.560 --> 0:08:01.120 me give you an example. Brains cough up hypotheses on everything, 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:06.600 usually entirely unconsciously, and then they evaluate those hypotheses, and 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.040 almost all of them are wrong. So an example is 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.280 you say, I thought that I had put my keys 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.400 on the counter right here, But where are they? So 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:20.480 your brain runs through simulations. Maybe they're in your pocket 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:24.320 from last night's pants. Maybe you accidentally carried them into 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:26.440 the other room and left them over there. Maybe you 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:29.440 left them in the door. But if none of those 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:33.840 hypotheses pan out, eventually your brain starts turning up the 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:38.880 temperature to cook up more and more exotic possibilities. Maybe 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.840 my wife took them accidentally thinking they were her keys. 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:46.640 Maybe the electrician who fixed our panel accidentally pocketed them. 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.559 And eventually, because you've ruled out many of the other explanations, 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.120 you might come up with something in a more far 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.800 away range, like the electrician who was here was casing 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.880 the joint and has plans to come back and rob me, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.160 So he took the keys in order to make a copy. 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.160 Now what interests me is not just that brains come 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:10.400 up with increasingly more esoteric hypotheses, that's what brains do, 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:15.360 but our evaluation of those hypotheses, because we're always trying 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.360 to land on a story that makes sense. We're always 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:22.120 looking for a through line that takes the complexity of 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.640 the external world and turns it into something we can understand. 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.040 So when do we say, yeah, I think that is 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:34.680 the optimal explanation. Now, fundamentally, finding the best explanation is 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.400 a matter of connecting different dots together in ways that 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:42.280 best match the world. Here's a visual description of this picture. 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:46.360 A bunch of dots, and the dots are data points. Okay, 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:50.920 Now imagine some lines in between connecting the dots, something 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:55.280 like a subway map. And now this represents knowledge. And 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:57.520 when you can trace a path all the way from 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.840 one dot to another, we call that inside. And the 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:04.559 question is when does something go from insight to being 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:07.240 lots and lots of dots all connected to each other 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.320 in a pattern that no one else sees. And that's 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:13.640 what puts us into the realm of conspiracy theories, which 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.959 is what we'll talk about today. So why do people 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:20.400 find themselves there from a neural point of view. I 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:24.800 think there are several reasons. First, the brain is all 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:30.000 about pattern recognition. Our brains are wired to detect patterns 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.760 and make connections even when none exists. And this tendency 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.520 to see patterns even in random data is what's known 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.320 as apophenia. And by the way, if you listen to 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.920 episode sixty three about the way that we sometimes see 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.000 faces and patterns even where there is not a face, 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:51.280 that's called paridolia. And note that this is a visual 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:55.800 type of apofenia. But apofenia relates not just to what 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.000 we see, but to any sense like hearing, as well 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:03.400 as to con We make patterns out of random data, 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.640 and this is really at the heart of conspiracy theories. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.800 Now there's another thing as well, which is that puzzle 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:15.199 solving activates our reward systems. That's why we do Sudoku 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.480 or wordle or brain teasers or whatever, because we love 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:23.240 finding solutions. Presumably this involves the reward systems in the brain, 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.520 like the neurotransmitter dopamine associated with the reward system. When 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.400 you engage with a bunch of facts and suddenly see 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.680 a pattern, we all know the sense of excitement that 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:38.240 triggers and the positive reinforcement there. Now, it's for these 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.719 reasons that we solve puzzles, and of course when we're 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.480 kids in school, we get rewarded all the time for 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:47.840 solving problems by connecting the dots. And by the way, 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.680 I suspect this is why we love mystery novels. Something 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:56.760 seems so impossible and complex and confusing, and the satisfaction 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.400 is delivered in the final pages when Sherlock Holmes or 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:05.200 Hercule Poirot gives the explanation and now that you see it, 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:10.520 you thrill in the transition from something seeming impenetrable moments 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.240 ago now being rotated to a different angle so that 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.480 you can connect all these dots with ease. It's the 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:21.040 same series of events, but now there's a clear path 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:26.240 connecting them. So when someone generates a good conspiracy theory 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:31.040 to suddenly explain a mysterious event, there is this satisfying 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:35.360 feeling of having cracked the puzzle. Plus, I imagine that 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.239 one of the appeals of conspiracy theories is the overwhelming 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:40.760 sense of awe that you are the first person in 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:44.560 the world who sees the truth, whereas everyone else is fooled. 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:47.800 You're the Sherlock. Now, I want to make clear that 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.400 even though people often say that conspiracy theories are not rational, 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.640 it's perfectly in line with what brains do to try 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.920 to solve problems. It's not necessarily the case that anyone 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:01.280 is trying to be disingenuous. It's that the world is 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.160 large and complex, and the best anyone can do is 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.560 to try to fit together the lego pieces that we 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:09.520 have to try to make a model of what is 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.559 going on out there. So the desire to crack mysteries 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:16.720 to resolve questions, this is presumably one of the things 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:19.800 at the heart of our success as a species. It's 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:23.760 what drives us to constantly cook up the next solution 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:27.640 and find the shorter paths and solve things that would 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.800 have otherwise been opaque. So why do we like having 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.320 answers so much? While psychologists point to a number of 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:39.960 drives that push us towards finding answers, the first is 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.080 the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. When we're faced with 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:48.040 facts that don't fit our model or information that conflicts, 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:51.600 we experience a state of mental discomfort. I know that 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:53.800 I feel this way when something doesn't make sense. It 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:57.320 almost hurts physically until I can solve it. So we're 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.920 always trying to resolve this discomfort, and sometimes conspiracy theories 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:06.200 can offer explanations that seem to provide a fit to 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:10.080 one's own existing beliefs or biases. A closely related issue 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:14.320 is that we always seek things that reduce cognitive load, 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:16.920 and this is why we so often look for simple 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.760 explanations for very complex events. When we're faced with overwhelming 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:26.520 our ambiguous information, our brains often prefer a more straightforward narrative, 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:31.200 even if it's incorrect, to reduce cognitive load. And I'll 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:32.920 come back to this in a little bit, but I 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.240 also want to mention one more thing. We typically have 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:39.560 what's called a confirmation bias, which means we seek out 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:45.040 information and we favor information that confirms our pre existing 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.640 beliefs and we disregard contradictory evidence. This shows up really 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:54.800 importantly in conspiracy theories when people selectively gather and interpret 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:58.440 information that supports their views. So these are reasons why 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.040 we seek answers in gener But there are even more 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:05.560 specific drives that shape a good conspiracy theory, and that 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.800 has to do with in group and outgroup dynamics. So 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:12.520 we grew up in small tribes for millions of years, 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:14.880 and you knew the people in your tribe, but you 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:17.680 didn't know those other people on the other side of 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:20.280 the hill. So as a matter of our deep history, 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:25.120 we have developed suspicions about our outgroups. In other episodes, 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:27.440 you've heard me talk a lot about the dynamics of 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.560 in groups and outgroups. But the key here today is 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:37.120 that many details of conspiracy theories are influenced by social identity. Specifically, 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:41.320 you are more likely to believe in theories that align 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:46.160 with your group's view and portray your outgroups those outside 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:50.120 your social or political group negatively to your mind. Your 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:55.160 outgroups are predisposed to act poorly and without the kind 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:59.000 of excellent conscience possessed by your in group, and that 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:03.200 fact gives a great deal of latitude for your theories. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.400 After all, if you were trying to explain some terrible 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:09.440 event that happens and you only had your in group, 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:12.640 you would be limited in your explanation. But without groups, 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:17.040 all the normal constraints of human behavior are unlocked, which 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:21.360 opens a broader set of possible narratives to use. Suddenly, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.640 you're not talking about your friends and neighbors. Now you're 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:29.360 talking about them, that other group that lacks morality and 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.000 ethics and always wants to trip up the good intentions 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:37.520 of your group, And so the impossible now seems possible. 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:40.600 This was all a ruse. It was a setup to 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.400 fool everyone, and only they would be sneaky enough and 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.480 cynical enough and devious enough to do something like this. Now, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.000 one of the social benefits that people derive from outgroup 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:57.160 accusations is that it can strengthen in group cohesion and identity. 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.080 So your group, with all of its flaws, can nonetheless 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:05.240 feel pretty good about itself. So conspiracy theories typically reflect 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:08.639 who our friends are and who our enemies are. In 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:13.480 other words, the particular conspiracy that a theorist chooses is 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.720 consistent with what they already have in their internal model. 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:20.600 So if they hate Russians for whatever reason, then that 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.680 is the target of their conspiracy. If they hate Ukrainians, 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.280 then that is the target of the conspiracy. And there's 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:28.520 one more thing I just want to mention here about 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:31.879 in groups and outgroups. Your outgroup doesn't have to be 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.760 someone with whom you have enmity, just someone you don't trust. 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:39.280 Maybe you think they're secretive, and this is why shadowy 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:44.520 government organizations so often feature. They are a default outgroup 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.919 that you don't trust because they reveal their cards so little. 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.960 We'll come back to that, okay, So returning to the 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:55.960 bigger picture of why people generate conspiracy theories, there's another 0:17:56.080 --> 0:18:01.040 drive that deserves mention, and that is the jern audience. 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.560 It shouldn't be overlooked that there is a social component 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:09.119 to conspiracy theories. So for the puzzle solver, there's often 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.280 a sense that they will get famous for nailing this 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:17.320 thing that everyone else overlooked. The theorist's mind races to 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:19.480 visions of the future in which they are on the 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.639 front page of Time magazine for having figured out what 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.399 no one else did. All of these are feelings that 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.400 are natural and important drives of our brains. Not only 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.679 the desire to simplify a complex model to something that 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:39.360 suddenly clarifies our understanding, but also the desire to demonstrate 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:43.320 your value to your community. And this social component, I 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:47.080 suspect is an important piece of what powers the creation 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:50.720 of conspiracy theories. But there's even a slightly more tame 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:54.120 way that the social drive expresses itself and that's even 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:58.600 just repeating the story. You get something out of telling it. 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.040 After all. The piracy theory is interesting, so you get 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.360 the attention at the party or on the couch or 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.840 on social media. The reason it's interesting is because it 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:14.360 challenges someone else's internal model. They think they understand something, 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.480 and suddenly you tell them, voila, you have a totally 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:21.119 different framework for explaining the same thing. That's why it 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:25.520 holds their attention. Maybe you weren't the original sherlock who 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.119 came up with the theory, but you can glow in 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:31.160 much of the credit because you're the one spreading the word. 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.919 So conspiracy theory is propagate because you get to be 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.520 the one who tells the story. It's like having this 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.040 precious little gem that you get to show over and over. 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:43.879 It's like a gift certificate that you can use, but 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.199 it doesn't get used up. And that's why if you 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.639 have a good conspiracy theory, you'll tell everybody you know, 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:55.240 because it's not only about truth, it's about social dynamics. Now, 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.600 this is not to say that you as the teller, 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.400 might not believe it totally, just that you don't have 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:04.679 to believe it totally to get all this delicious social feedback. Okay, 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.280 so these are some of the drivers of why people 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:11.679 create and repeat conspiracy theories. We are all driven to 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.480 solve puzzles and that helps us to simplify narratives and 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.320 reduce cognitive dissonance. And there are many social components here. 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:23.160 Our in groups and out groups typically play big roles 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:26.960 in shaping the story. And finally, conspiracy theories tend to 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.000 be sticky because people could have the impression that they 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.040 are doing something valuable for their community or at minimum 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:37.520 getting social attention for being the one to offer the 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:41.840 surprise twist. And in thinking about conspiracy theories from the 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.359 neuroscience point of view, I realized there we're two more 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.159 things that are important here. The first has to do 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.800 with threat detection. One of the most important jobs of 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.040 the brain is to see trouble coming. What we find 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.440 in neuroimaging is that the amigdala is like an emergency 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:02.040 control center that kicks into gear when anything menacing is brewing, 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.480 whether that's a real threat or even just a perceived threat. 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.199 And once you're amigdala is revd up, you operate with 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:14.399 heightened suspicion and vigilance. Now like almost everything in neuroscience, 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:18.400 we find a spectrum of threat detection across the population. 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.400 Some people never see threats, possibly at their detriment, while 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:26.680 other people have more fear and anxiety and see threats everywhere. 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:29.719 I just want to note that Mother Nature always seems 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.480 to do this. She generates a spectrum, and in some 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.400 situations or in some eras, one end of the spectrum 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:39.800 might do better than another. But it's not to say 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:43.160 that there is a single best answer for all situations. 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:46.680 Along with threat detection, there's one more thing that brains 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:50.240 try to do all the time, which is agency detection. 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:54.600 Did this event happen because of the actions of agents 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.959 behind it, like other people or groups of people, Like 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:01.160 are my keys missing because I with them somewhere stupid 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:05.800 or because someone else came in and took them? Not surprisingly, 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.359 we find the same kind of spectrum here, such that 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:11.199 at one end people think that everything just ends up 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:13.320 the way it is by natural forces, not by any 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.600 planning by humans. At the other end, people have hyperactive 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:21.240 agency detection, and they are more likely to believe that 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:26.479 powerful forces are behind complex events. Now I've been talking 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.680 about this so far, as though anywhere on that spectrum 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:33.119 is equally useful, but in fact, at the extremes we 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:37.320 find things like paranoid schizophrenia. People who suffer from this 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:42.119 are much more likely to be predisposed to conspiracy thinking. 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:47.520 In paranoid schizophrenia, we generally find patterns of suspicious thinking 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:52.160 and a heightened tendency to see threats and hidden motives. 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:55.840 These detectors are all cranked way up, and the reason 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.679 that we categorize this as a mental illness is because 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:02.119 it tends to in ped the social progress of a 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.240 person because they're out on a part of the spectrum 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:08.920 which is unlikely to be correct very often. Again, I'm 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:12.119 not saying that there's no possibility of conspiracies in the world. 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:14.800 It's just that if you connect the dots everywhere all 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.320 the time, it's very unlikely within your lifetime that you 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:37.720 are going to be right often if ever. Now, what 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:41.280 has always fascinated me about people who suffer from paranoid 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:45.280 schizophrenia as I've traveled around the world is an obsession 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:50.200 that they have with shadowy organizations, but specifically whatever your 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:54.719 local shadowy organization is. So, if you have schizophrenia in 0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:58.919 the United States, you obsess about the FBI or the NSA. 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:02.160 But if you're in Russia, you obsess about the Federal 0:24:02.160 --> 0:24:05.600 Security Service, the FSB or its predecessor of the KGB. 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:08.919 In the United Kingdom, it's the MI six that you 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:13.000 worry about. In China, it's the Ministry of State Security, 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:17.160 known for its secretive operations. In North Korea, you're sure 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:21.640 it's the Reconnaissance General Bureau that's behind whatever conspiracy theory 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:25.840 you're working on. So the stories themselves are plug and play. 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:29.239 You find the same stories translated everywhere. The thing that 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:34.960 changes is the local group that you are paranoid about. Okay, Now, 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:38.600 with that foundation about why brains cook up more and 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:41.600 more esoteric explanations for things, I now want to pose 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:45.720 the question, what are the chances of any particular theory 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:49.679 being true? I mean, we all have limited information, and 0:24:49.760 --> 0:24:52.520 there's a possibility that some things are done in a 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:57.320 shady way. But I assert that with any proposed theory, 0:24:57.359 --> 0:24:59.919 the important thing is to look at it through the 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:03.480 lens of probability. And there are a couple of ways 0:25:03.520 --> 0:25:06.880 that I want us to think about this. First, let's 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:11.000 consider the optimal number of people involved to keep a 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:14.280 conspiracy going. My guess is that this number would have 0:25:14.280 --> 0:25:17.119 to be very small, like two or three, because that 0:25:17.160 --> 0:25:20.280 would give just enough power to do something maybe interesting, 0:25:20.560 --> 0:25:24.920 but it wouldn't involve so many people that you're guaranteed 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:27.840 that somebody is going to defect. Now, the fact is, 0:25:28.160 --> 0:25:31.080 any of these conspiracy theories that float around, like the 0:25:31.119 --> 0:25:34.080 moon landing was faked, or JFK was murdered by a 0:25:34.119 --> 0:25:37.879