Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

Again with the Covid thing.  Let's assume that you need to go to the store, because food is a necessity; and you encounter a person not wearing a facemask who takes umbrage with the fact that you are wearing one. Or you own a store and you refuse service to a person that isn't wearing a mask. It doesn't matter which scenario we want to pick, create your own--but the point is that you are going to engage in a conversation with a person who doesn't want to wear one.  The instinct in the conversation is to point out that there is a disease and that the mask helps to contain it. You may further want to point out that you're really not wearing the mask for you, but for everyone else. You will probably be tempted to point out that the reason that the numbers of infected have fallen is because of requirements like the mask. Let me be clear: this will not work. The person you are speaking with has already heard this and rejects it out of hand. Conspiracy theories, and this ...

When conspiracy theories get large enough they begin to get desperate. Your standard event conspiracy, such as the Titanic didn't sink theory, can rely on some errant data and then work the conclusion with winks and nods. It's not a good method of argumentation but it at least the evidence is grounded in reality. The more and more a theory grows it gets substantially more difficult to sustain some plausibility in the evidence itself. The vast super conspiracies concerning the Illuminati are going to inevitably begin claiming outlandish things, i.e. that Katy Perry's Dark Horse video is a black magic ritual. This is because a proper theory needs to make predictions and conspiracy theories have to grasp at straws to even attempt to do this.  In making the predictions or even trying for a cogent conclusion some conspiracy theories resort to an interesting tactic: using fictional narratives to bolster their claims. To be entirely honest, I'll make reference to a fictional ...