Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

This is revisiting the same subject as last post, creating a hierarchy. Barkun gives us a pretty bare bones but essential categorization of CTs. His hierarchy lists three different categories: Event, Systemic, and Super. Each category builds off of the previous one. An event CT revolves around a singular event and is roughly encapsulated within that event. If a person thinks that a shooting was really a false flag and ends it there, it's an event CT. A systemic CT is one that links different events, involves a conspirator(s) with an involved plan, and a goal that necessitates the events in question. To link it with our previous example: if that person then continued on by saying that all mass shootings are false flags in some poorly thought out plan to reduce gun ownership we would have a systemic CT. The super CT is global. It involves a group that controls world events, has a dedicated hierarchy and a some kind of plan that would likely be to strengthen its world domination...

The biggest hurdle in dealing with conspiracy theories is how to define them. A later post will deal with the term "Conspiracy Theory" in much greater detail but for now let's just assume the common parlance of the term and discuss what exactly we mean and more importantly how we can divide the various conspiracy theories into their proper categories. In an earlier post I referred to two types of CTs: Academic and Historical. Academic theories, properly understood, are those dealing with specific knowledge that is hidden from the public. These include hidden cures, ancient aliens, secret discoveries, etc. Historical theories deal with the secret behind historical events, e.g. the truth about assassinations, disasters, and the actual workings of governments. Since I made that claim though I realize that this is an insufficient categorization. Which makes this type of analysis all the more tricky since finding a top-level taxonomy can only begin with the proper definit...