Covid-19 and Conspiracy Theories: A Perfect Case of Ignorance And Bad Reasoning
Covid-19 has been a hot topic for the last 2 months which resulted in mass quarantine, mall, and religious sites shutdowns. Except for the birth of 1-liter coffee bottles, I personally do not see any silver lining that the public could cheer on these days.
Through these gloomy days, I rarely get any ideas on what to write on my page. The world seems so disengaged and boring until the conspiracy theories hit me. From 5G towers creating the coronavirus or a big scheme by the new world order and the Rockefellers controlling the strings. At first, I disregard them as stupid and will blow off instantly.
Of course, it did not.
Living in Indonesia, one of the conspiracy theorists that comes to the mass media name is Deddy Corbuzier, Jerinx, and other names who pushed their fame to new heights because of the existence of the coronavirus (largely due to their crazy conspiracy theories). However, I am not planning to disregard or debunk their theories. Better men than me have tried, and even after that many people still held their beliefs tightly in these theories. It led me to one question “ Why do people still believe them?” It seems absurd and mind-blowing. Therefore, in this writing, I am going to try to explain why possibly this situation occurred. To answer this question, we are going to start with an old Austrian Philosopher, Karl Popper.
How To Differentiate Science And Non-Science
Meet Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He stumbles on one question, how do you call something science and the other thing is not science? A question that is seemingly odd these days, you might say “Well science is when you are in the lab combining two chemical liquids or splitting a frog wide open”. Popper did not ask those kinds of questions, but rather how do we determine exactly what is science and what is not? To put it simply, how do we determine truth?
Inductive and Deductive Reasoning
There are two main ways on how our brain reasons to find the truth, deductive or inductive reasoning. To better understand this, let’s do a case.
The Swan Case
You and I are standing in front of a pond full of white swans, Deductive reasoning would say “There are only white swans in this pond that I can see, therefore all swans are white.” Inductive reasoning would say “Based on what we know in the theory of swans, and the sighting today of a pond full of white swans. We could confirm that all swans are white.”
Huh?
If you have not already noticed by now, there is a bunch of problems with this view on both sides of reasoning. Neither inductive or deductive reasoning could answer this question correctly. The simplest rebuttal to this is “What if we found a black swan?” Then the whole hypothesis that “all swans are white” is false. This is the problem that faced the school of thought that is Verificationism. The verificationist’s goal is to verify a certain event or situation as absolute truth. But as The Swan Case has shown that if we do not have all the data of swans in this entire universe, we could not absolutely sure that all swans are white. Since there will not be a census for colors of swans any time soon this verificationist dogma seems inefficient and worthless to determine truth.
Karl Popper: Our Truth Superman
To answer the question on how to determine the truth, Popper argued that the search for truth is not a finality rather it is a progress. So to answer The Swan Case, Popper argued that it is fine to determine that “all swans are white” as a theory and then worked hard to disprove it. So if we meet a black swan, then the premise that all swans are white can be deemed false. Therefore this Popper way of thinking is called Falsification where the goal is not to verify rather falsify. With this, when we hold a belief or theory, our goal is not to boast it to youtube and hold it as absolute truth rather our goal is to debunk our own beliefs and theories rigorously.
Where did Conspiracy Theorist Go Wrong?
You might say “But isn’t that conspiracy theorist job? to falsify what the mass media has told us” and yes they started off by having skepticisms on the news such as the reasons why coronavirus is happening. Some of them, DO actually solve real-world conspiracies such as Project MK-Ultra and Watergate. But there are differences that determine a good conspiracy theorist and a bad one.
The difference is when the data shows contrary to their beliefs. Good conspiracy theorists will act like a falsificationist that will instantly deny their past theories and beliefs and form a new hypothesis that suits the data. While the bad conspiracy theorist will go on to stay with their own beliefs, still believing that their hypothesis is an absolute truth. They will reject any data that is contrary to them and favors the ones that are supporting their hypothesis.
That certainly is not science nor the quest for truth.
The Love for Conspiracy Theories: Why Do People Still Believe in Them?
So after we determine how to determine the truth and how to differentiate between good and bad conspiracy theorists. Why do people still fall to the bad ones?
Seeing Patterns When There Is None
It seems self-evident that conspiracy theorist sees the world differently from the rest of us. In an interview by Kompas TV, Jerinx , an Indonesian musician and a conspiracy theorist mumbled through his explanation by connecting the dots from Rockefeller to Bill Gates to even Noam Chomsky. In his own words, he said “Why do I have proof? There are too many coincidences and there are no coincidences in this world that happens over and over again if it is happening over and over again, it is not a coincidence rather it is a pattern.” then he proceeds to try to connect to why coronavirus is happening and start with religion and so on.
Delusional? I know.
But there might be an explanation for this, in psychology, this phenomenon is named Illusory Correlation, where people see patterns when there is none. Usually, it happens when a phenomenon stands out for the subject who perceives it ( I mean coronavirus kinda stands out a little bit I guess, pfft). They who are victim to this, processed general information by converting them into subjective judgments that can lead to overconfidence or what is known as conservatism bias. Which explains why it seems outlandish and kind of out there. This also explains why people who believe in conspiracy theories are so persistent with their beliefs.
Dunning-Krueger Effect: Big Brain Time
The other reason why people believe conspiracy theories is it makes you feel smart. The Dunning-Krueger Effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability overestimate their ability (cough, Jerinx is a musician, cough). It gives you a feeling of an illusory superiority over a subject and usually happens when you are new to said subjects. Low interest in reading also does not help the situation. A 2016 UNESCO study about Indonesia’s interest in reading resulted in 0,001% (yikes) meaning from 1000 Indonesians only 1 person is diligent in reading. The 2019 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) also placed Indonesia in the 72nd out of 77 countries in reading.
In a fast-paced world where information is being poured by the second, it is understandable why a society with low interest in reading and low capacity to understand reading texts prefer to hear a man explaining to them why an event like coronavirus happens in a 10-minute video along with epic music and an epic voice over.
Conclusion: Conspiracy Theories Is Useful As a Gateway
To conclude, although it can be fun to make fun of conspiracy theorist and their followers. Their rise in numbers such as in a research led by clinical psychologists at the University of Oxford in 2020 where out of 2.500 people in England 60% of adults believe to some extent that the government is misleading the public about the cause of the virus, 40% believe to some extent the spread of the virus is a deliberate attempt by powerful people to gain control and 20% believe to some extent that the virus is a hoax might be an indicator of something.
We are in a time full of anxiety and uncertainties, although conspiracy theorists can be seen as people who are in desperate need of attention and relevance. There are also people who are clueless and in desperate need of an answer.
Conspiracy theories can be a gateway for those clueless people who are in a desperate need for an answer, my message for those people is:
Do not let conspiracy theories be your end, make it as the beginning of your quest for truth.
