303. Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational (3)
1 (26m 2s):
But it's also a nice tight theoretical approach to the problem. Why do people believe conspiracy theories? There's a lot of theories about it, but I think they're lacking in one area or another. So I try to push the frontiers of scholarship and theoretical modeling about conspiracy theories. And so hopefully people who study conspiracies professionally can gain something from this, take my ideas and push 'em further forward. The job is not done, never done in science, of course. So anyway, so, but I'm grateful to Johns Hopkins for having the courage to do this. Conspiracy theories are not that popular.
1 (26m 43s):
Books about conspiracy theories are not that pop. Sorry, let me rephrase that. Books that are skeptical of conspiracist, which mine is for good reason, are not that popular amongst trade publishing houses, much less university presses. Yes, of course they'll publish the, you know, the goofy ones that claim that, you know, that moon landing was faked or, or you know, that nine 11 was an inside job and so on. You can, you can find publishers for those, but you know, a serious scholarly work that tends to be skeptical of these things, it's difficult to find publishers interested in that. So I'm really appreciative of Johns Hopkins University Press, who recognized what I recognized in, you know, I don't know, maybe 20 17, 20 18.
1 (27m 32s):
This conspiracy stuff is getting serious. I mean, it's gone all the way up to the top and was of the government and was clear after the 2020 election in November that Trump wasn't gonna go away. He was gonna try to, to, to employ his conspiracy theory in great detail with his followers and get them to act on it. And that's exactly what he did. And we now know exactly how that happened through the January 6th hearings and all the interviews with all the people involved or adjacent to it. It's clear this is a conspiracy theory run a muck in which people act on their beliefs. And so it's evident that conspiracist is not fringe, it's mainstream.
1 (28m 18s):
And again, because so many conspiracy theories turn out to be true, it's good that it's mainstream because in a way, again, back to the real ones, you know, if, if, if we didn't have declassification, we didn't have Freedom Information Act, we wouldn't, and, and, and these congressional hearings, we wouldn't know what the CIA was up to or the FBI or the US government. And not just those, those acts, but also whistleblowers, right? I mean, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and so forth. It's good that we have these people to tell us what's actually going on behind closed doors. And you know, one of the things I discuss in the book is that people outside of power think people in power have more power than they probably actually have.
1 (29m 2s):
But without transparency, it's hard to know. And, and so we become suspicious of large corporations, of powerful government agencies or apparently powerful government agencies. And it turns out often they do do things nefarious things. Again, you know, I discussed in detail about the Northwood's document that in which President Kennedy's own people presented him with false flag operations as a pretext to invading Cuba and assassinating Castro. I mean, what our government, Yeah, no, to its credit, he didn't act on these things, but that even that people in the top echelon of the US government were conspiring to assassinate foreign leaders and invade countries.
1 (29m 49s):
Okay? This is serious stuff, right? Anyway, so that's why I'm, I'm pretty proud of the book. I feel like I've made a contribution to an important field that makes a difference. It's part of our larger mission here at the Skeptic Society of of educational outreach and media outreach about important subjects in our wheelhouse of what we do and conspiracy theories. It's certainly in that. And, and so yeah, that's it. And so since today is today that it comes out, I would really appreciate your support by going to Amazon and just order it right there or go to auto amazon.com or go to audible.com and order the audiobook.
1 (30m 31s):
You just heard me read just two pages from the opening pages of the book, but I read the whole book and I try to not to read too slow so you don't have to speed it up to 1.3 or 1.2, but you can, if you like any case, I read the whole thing un abridged. So you can get it@audible.com or the book@amazon.com Or better still, just go to your local bookstore, which I still believe in. We have Chaucer's book here in Santa Barbara that I'm doing a public event ad. I try to go in there and purchase books from them when I can because well, I like bookstores and I think it's good to support bookstores. I know it's easy and convenient to get books through Amazon. I do it all the time. But anyway, in the links to the show notes for this podcast, there'll be a link to Amazon to audible, to our webpage and so on.
1 (31m 18s):
I would really appreciate your support in purchasing a copy. Also, it's late October, Christmas is coming up. This make a great, this make a great Christmas present under the tree wrap for your crazy Uncle Bob who thinks some conspiracy theory or other is, is true when it's not. Or maybe even if it is, he might enjoy reading this. So conspiracy, why the rational, believe the irrational, my latest spoke, Check it out. Thanks for listening.
