Thread by @bradheitmann

One reason #conspiracies thrive is most humans need simple narratives to make sense of the world. When faced w/complex uncertainties, they revert from positivism, empiricism and logic to metaphysics, myth and superstition to fill the dark abyss where meaning should be. @NovelSci twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

This is because the ways they used to determine what is true no longer seem to work. It’s inexplicable why they lost their job or why they can’t seem to move up the social hierarchy or why they can’t find a mate. The reasons are not clear, so a narrative fills the void.

They may create such a narrative, but many times such meaning-making narratives are provided for them by charismatic leaders seeking power and are socially reinforced by affinity groups. Finally they belong and have a shared narrative to make sense of the world.

But why does the world no longer make sense. Is it just because the complexity creates an impenetrable fog of understanding? Is it because we have a psychological need to resolve paradoxes and conflicting views ie produce a dialectical synthesis from a thesis and antithesis?

Or is it because much of the world we perceive is “made up?” Take the dollar bill for example. It says “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” SAYS WHO? This is an astonishing claim. Can it be scientifically verified? No, because it’s a narrative—a story.

“But we can statistically measure dollars—we do it all the time. Is that not scientific?” Yes and no. The method is scientific but the underlying basis—the very ground for being is made up. We didn’t make up atoms. But we made up economics and psychology and politics and history.

This is what John Searle refers to as the “Subjective/Objective Distinction”. The human world — our “ontology” — is subjective. It’s comprised of stories we made up and agree upon starting with human language.

But then we take something like the scientific method which we use to determine truth (“epistemology”) in objective reality — eg measuring physical phenomena, manipulating matter, getting us to the moon etc — and start applying those methods to our subjective human world.

That dialectical process — resolving conflicts about the nature of the human world in order to create a narrative about “truth” — is primarily a process which describes history. Each layer of thesis/antithesis is resolved producing a synthesis ie a historical narrative.

The more people agree upon these narratives the more they are accepted as historical fact—as truth. But what happens when these human narratives built upon a made up, agreed upon reality (a “subjective ontology”) conflict w/objective, brute facts in the real, physical world?

Or what if a massive, meaning-making historical narrative doesn’t logically make sense vis a vis current events? Eg “what happened to the American dream?” or “how is it possible our glorious leader wasn’t elected?” or “our team won the championship last year so why do they suck?”

When the cold hard facts refute historical narratives or historical narratives come into logical conflict with current narratives what has happened is what I call a “dialectical failure” ie the historical scaffolding produced by the dialectic is shown for what it is — a story.

When this happens, we stop believing in the methods we used to create that scaffolding upon which we built our historical reality, our meaning. Faced with the choice between meaninglessness and irrationality, we choose the latter—myth, legend, mysticism and metaphysics.

At that point literally anything goes. We are highly susceptible to influence operations, amygdala hijacking via messages of fear, anger and hate and can be convinced to commit acts we never dreamed of doing before. We believe lies, we reject logic and embrace conspiracies.

To sum: when complexity breaks our narratives we reject objective methods (fact, logic, science, experts) in favor of subjective narratives (lies, conspiracy, enemies, hate) that justify/reaffirm meaning and make the world make sense again. But this too is just a story. @NovelSci

Further reading: a few rudimentary notes/thoughts from a while back with a critique of the dialectical approach (good luck reading my HORRIFIC penmanship).

Also a John Searle video explaining the objective epistemology / subjective ontology distinction:

In terms of the historical narrative-generating processes of Hegel’s dialectic, what happens when new information destroys a wide range of commonly held propositions upon which the fabric of society is woven? Conflict. That’s what.

Just look at what the rapid pace of secularization is doing to the US. We can thank much of our political polarization / culture wars to the smashing together of older religious, white, nationalist narratives with more modern, pluralist, positivist ones.

The more stark the contrast and deeper the divide between such narratives, the more likely those clinging to the old narratives are likely to regress and turn away from logic, science and fact to fallacious superstition and mystical interpretation.

Conservatives must beware fear and anger triggered by changes in identity, orientation, culture, ethnicity and technology in society. For they are the most susceptible to disinformation, propaganda & conspiracy theories and the downward ontological spiraling/conflict these cause.