Why are there still pseudo-scientific conspiracy theories that undermine obviously confirmed facts and scientific knowledge in the present era of publicly available large amounts of scientific knowledge?
Why in the present age of computerization, the digitization of knowledge resources and the huge scientific knowledge available on the Internet are still created pseudoscientific conspiracy theories, sometimes absurd claims of the type that the Earth is flat, that evolution is a fiction, that some people are aliens from outside the Earth etc.? For what reason and for what purpose are these types of irrational pseudoscience theories created?
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The so-called irrational is an essential element of human nature and a heightened if sometimes misjudged adjunct to scepticism. Disbelieving received or given knowledge and ideas is essential to scientific and philosophical discovery. Myths and story making are pronounced human traits.
But in the end many conspiracy theorists appear unwilling to do the hard work of finding genuine proof.
This is the central idea of all the many and many conspiracy theories that have become increasingly popular in recent decades, as human life has become increasingly complex, changing and turbulent. The intertwined and accelerating events have become difficult to understand, providing fertile ground for the spread of this type of thinking, The educated and uneducated social classes, especially in the Arab region, in particular, which made all the political forces in different directions using conspiracy theories to get rid of opponents, and it seems to be a profitable business in the market of cinema, books and media.
The so-called irrational is an essential element of human nature and a heightened if sometimes misjudged adjunct to scepticism. Disbelieving received or given knowledge and ideas is essential to scientific and philosophical discovery. Myths and story making are pronounced human traits.
But in the end many conspiracy theorists appear unwilling to do the hard work of finding genuine proof.
I think these pop cultural ideas going back in my childhood to Edgar Cayce and von Daniken have been popular with people who, as other people have said, want mystery in their lives that science has not rendered too prosaic. Combine that with weak adherence to the scientific method, which helps to rule out many such theories based upon faulty evidence, then we can only begin to understand the "why."
The idea that science can be just as emotionally fulfilling as mysticism and pseudoscience was one that H.G. Wells tried to formulate, as did others in the field of science fiction.
Science gets revised. Pluto is no more the ninth planet. Imagine if Pluto had been a god. Well, yes, Pluto was/is a god. That kind of Pluto never gets proven to be other than what he is. Gods are eternal on our little dust ball, even after most believers are gone for a particular god.
We in the science fiction readership love simulated change but few of us enjoy the real changes that are always going on about us. Family members die or other changes due to time and aging. Nice to have the belief that some grand scheme is watching and guiding or if "bad," something we can in our "sea of troubles," take arms against.
The problem begins with literal interpretation of allegories/symbols, and with reification of attributes; pseudoscientists tend to be guilty of the former fallacy, scientists of the latter. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
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