"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22
My wife told me our younger son does not believe humans ever walked on the moon. My guess, based on prior conversations, is that he does believe UFOs carrying aliens from other worlds have visited Earth. I know he believes in supernatural events. His critical thinking skills are weak.
I searched the internet for a quiz to assess one’s susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking and easily found a couple of them. I thought of asking my son to complete one and comparing his results to mine. Before proposing that to him, I decided to take the two quizzes myself. Although my susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking is less than average, I was surprised to test positive for some conspiratorial thinking, particularly about government influence by powerful persons. I quickly realized that answers suggesting my susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking were mostly informed by what I have observed during the last two years. So I retook the quizzes and answered the items based on my thinking just a couple years ago. My revised results then showed conspiracies to have little effect on my thinking. Perhaps thinking that would have been considered conspiratorial when the quizzes were designed (e.g., wealthy persons have excessive policy influence and suppress technology that could benefit society) is less conspiratorial today?
#Catch22 #Conspiracy #Misinformation #Disinformation #Corruption #Politics #Government #Society
