itsdanbooks's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a masterpiece and was what I had hoped Shermers' previous book, [b:Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time|89281|Why People Believe Weird Things Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time|Michael Shermer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312054576l/89281._SY75_.jpg|1499170] would have been.
In Why People Believe Weird Things, Shermers' thesis states that "smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons" (Why People Believe, p. 297); while I believe that the thesis was fascinating, I felt that his defense of that thesis was not as strong, instead focusing on things such as the history of the Holocaust denial movement.
On the contrary, I felt that Conspiracy is a much more approachable and focused exploration on the topic of conspiracy theories and his previous thesis.
The first part of this book is an exploration of the psychology of conspiracy theories, notably the types of conspiracy theories and their foundations: proxy and tribal conspiracism, motivated reasoning, and the various forms of cognitive biases (confirmation, hindsight, myside, etc.) and the motivations of conspiratorial thinking (p. 69).
Additionally, Shermer also defines a framework for categorizing conspiracy theories in contrast with their rational equivalent: ordinary/extraordinary, mundane/mystical, knowledge/intuition, science/pseudoscience, natural/magical, explained/mysterious, visible/hidden and history/conspiracy (p. 62).
The second part of this book is devoted to evaluating the claims of conspiracy theories and how to determine if a conspiracy theory is true or false — to do this, Shermer defines a “Conspiracy Theory Detection Kit” which consists of questions one must ask (p. 130-133) to determine the veracity of the source, and characteristics of a conspiracy one must consider (p. 137-139).
For example, some of the questions include: “Does the claimant make similar claims?”, “Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of others that lead to the desired conclusion?”, “Has the claimant provided a different explanation for the observed phenomena, or is it strictly a process of denying the existing one?” and “Do the claimants’ personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa?”
Some of the characteristics include: agenticity (agents would need to be superhuman to pull it off), complexity (large number of things coming together perfectly), paranoia (indiscriminately suspicious of governmental or corporate agency) and falsifiability (rejection of alternative explanation or if it can’t be falsifiable, its unlikely to be true)
Shermer then uses this kit to evaluate claims involving the Kennedy Assassination and Birtherism.
Shermer also explores actual conspiracy theories, such as Operation Northwoods (p. 196), Gulf of Tonkin Incident (p. 201), Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (p. 232), Project MKULTRA (p. 223) and NSA spying (p. 200). An entire chapter is also devoted to the deadliest conspiracy theory of all time: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg by “The Black Hand” which was the powder-keg for the start of World War I.
The final part of this book concludes by explaining how you can talk to conspiracy theorists and ensuring you can maintain a respectful and receptive dialog when it comes to rebutting claims using facts, logic and reason.
Finally, I’d like to conclude with some general observations that are not specifically contained to only one part of the book as well as my ideas for improving this book in a future updated version:
Throughout the book, Shermer is very clear that conspiratorial thinking is NOT a one-party issue and there isn’t a single persona that makes up a conspiracy theorist. He is also very clear that lack of educational achievement is a correlated with belief in conspiracy theories, high educational achievement does not preclude the belief in conspiracy theories.
As an example, when it comes to political belief, while QAnon, climate change denial, Sandy Hook false-flag and COVID-19 related conspiracies tend to be espoused by those on the political right, Shermer correctly notes that the political left is tends to be more likely to espouse conspiracy theories related to 9/11, GMOs, AIDS was invented, or Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
One thing that I did feel was missing from this book is the typically journey that conspiracy theorists fall into, the “rabbit hole” as Mick West described it in [b:Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect|37510834|Escaping the Rabbit Hole How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect|Mick West|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532829699l/37510834._SX50_.jpg|59121601].
A chapter exploring the life of a “recovered” conspiracy theorist would have been well worth including and would make a good supplemental chapter for the inevitable paperback version.
In conclusion, Conspiracy is well worth the read if you are looking for an approachable understanding of conspiratorial thinking without being dragged through the weeds with an overly academic presentation.
In Why People Believe Weird Things, Shermers' thesis states that "smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons" (Why People Believe, p. 297); while I believe that the thesis was fascinating, I felt that his defense of that thesis was not as strong, instead focusing on things such as the history of the Holocaust denial movement.
On the contrary, I felt that Conspiracy is a much more approachable and focused exploration on the topic of conspiracy theories and his previous thesis.
The first part of this book is an exploration of the psychology of conspiracy theories, notably the types of conspiracy theories and their foundations: proxy and tribal conspiracism, motivated reasoning, and the various forms of cognitive biases (confirmation, hindsight, myside, etc.) and the motivations of conspiratorial thinking (p. 69).
Additionally, Shermer also defines a framework for categorizing conspiracy theories in contrast with their rational equivalent: ordinary/extraordinary, mundane/mystical, knowledge/intuition, science/pseudoscience, natural/magical, explained/mysterious, visible/hidden and history/conspiracy (p. 62).
The second part of this book is devoted to evaluating the claims of conspiracy theories and how to determine if a conspiracy theory is true or false — to do this, Shermer defines a “Conspiracy Theory Detection Kit” which consists of questions one must ask (p. 130-133) to determine the veracity of the source, and characteristics of a conspiracy one must consider (p. 137-139).
For example, some of the questions include: “Does the claimant make similar claims?”, “Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have these been abandoned in favor of others that lead to the desired conclusion?”, “Has the claimant provided a different explanation for the observed phenomena, or is it strictly a process of denying the existing one?” and “Do the claimants’ personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusions, or vice versa?”
Some of the characteristics include: agenticity (agents would need to be superhuman to pull it off), complexity (large number of things coming together perfectly), paranoia (indiscriminately suspicious of governmental or corporate agency) and falsifiability (rejection of alternative explanation or if it can’t be falsifiable, its unlikely to be true)
Shermer then uses this kit to evaluate claims involving the Kennedy Assassination and Birtherism.
Shermer also explores actual conspiracy theories, such as Operation Northwoods (p. 196), Gulf of Tonkin Incident (p. 201), Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (p. 232), Project MKULTRA (p. 223) and NSA spying (p. 200). An entire chapter is also devoted to the deadliest conspiracy theory of all time: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg by “The Black Hand” which was the powder-keg for the start of World War I.
The final part of this book concludes by explaining how you can talk to conspiracy theorists and ensuring you can maintain a respectful and receptive dialog when it comes to rebutting claims using facts, logic and reason.
Finally, I’d like to conclude with some general observations that are not specifically contained to only one part of the book as well as my ideas for improving this book in a future updated version:
Throughout the book, Shermer is very clear that conspiratorial thinking is NOT a one-party issue and there isn’t a single persona that makes up a conspiracy theorist. He is also very clear that lack of educational achievement is a correlated with belief in conspiracy theories, high educational achievement does not preclude the belief in conspiracy theories.
As an example, when it comes to political belief, while QAnon, climate change denial, Sandy Hook false-flag and COVID-19 related conspiracies tend to be espoused by those on the political right, Shermer correctly notes that the political left is tends to be more likely to espouse conspiracy theories related to 9/11, GMOs, AIDS was invented, or Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
One thing that I did feel was missing from this book is the typically journey that conspiracy theorists fall into, the “rabbit hole” as Mick West described it in [b:Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect|37510834|Escaping the Rabbit Hole How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect|Mick West|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532829699l/37510834._SX50_.jpg|59121601].
A chapter exploring the life of a “recovered” conspiracy theorist would have been well worth including and would make a good supplemental chapter for the inevitable paperback version.
In conclusion, Conspiracy is well worth the read if you are looking for an approachable understanding of conspiratorial thinking without being dragged through the weeds with an overly academic presentation.
jdalton's review against another edition
5.0
I’m often found to be saying “I miss when conspiracy theories were fun” but maybe they weren’t actually “fun” lol. I enjoyed this book by breaking down why people believe them and how we can help people who do. I recommend this book for anyone who wonders why their friends and family believe certain things and how they can possibly fall for it.
jvanwago's review
informative
4.0
This helped me understand conspiratorial thinking, both the constructive and paranoidal kinds. Shermer does an admirable job explaining why conspiracy theories are baked into humankind.
The three main drivers are proxy beliefs (conspiracies reflect an underlying belief, such as distrust of government), tribal loyalty (we believe conspiracies to demonstrate loyalty to our tribe), and constructive suspicion (some conspiracies turned out to be true, so better be safe than sorry).
These rationale help explain why confronting conspiracy theorists with facts will almost never affect their belief.
It is easy to forget that many conspiracies throughout history of turned out to be true (yes, the government often lies to us). Shermer runs through examples of these as well as more paranoid conspiracies (QAnon) and how to distinguish them from one another.
Belief in some conspiracies is benign (e.g UFOs), but Shermer points out that belief in other conspiracy theories sometimes has fatal consequences (e.g. replacement theory).
What keeps this book from five stars for me is the glaring absence of discussion around the more recent phenomenon of mostly decentralized, “benevolent”conspiracies. Many examples of these of these can be found around COVID-19, climate change, and youth gender dysphoria.
For example, a lot of recent evidence has come to light demonstrating how evidence and discussion of the lab leak origin hypothesis for COVID-19 was suppressed and/or covered up by many scientists, journalists, and social media companies.
For the most part this was not done to purposely harm the American people, but to protect virology, research funding, avoid upsetting relations with China, and gatekeeping the preferred narrative. Hence my descriptor of “benevolent”.
This conspiracy started in small groups of top researchers and government officials, but became decentralized once mainstream publications and thought-leaders caught on to this preferred narrative.
There are many such examples, and they often are much more nuanced than black-and-white conspiracies (like whether climate change is a hoax or not).
The three main drivers are proxy beliefs (conspiracies reflect an underlying belief, such as distrust of government), tribal loyalty (we believe conspiracies to demonstrate loyalty to our tribe), and constructive suspicion (some conspiracies turned out to be true, so better be safe than sorry).
These rationale help explain why confronting conspiracy theorists with facts will almost never affect their belief.
It is easy to forget that many conspiracies throughout history of turned out to be true (yes, the government often lies to us). Shermer runs through examples of these as well as more paranoid conspiracies (QAnon) and how to distinguish them from one another.
Belief in some conspiracies is benign (e.g UFOs), but Shermer points out that belief in other conspiracy theories sometimes has fatal consequences (e.g. replacement theory).
What keeps this book from five stars for me is the glaring absence of discussion around the more recent phenomenon of mostly decentralized, “benevolent”conspiracies. Many examples of these of these can be found around COVID-19, climate change, and youth gender dysphoria.
For example, a lot of recent evidence has come to light demonstrating how evidence and discussion of the lab leak origin hypothesis for COVID-19 was suppressed and/or covered up by many scientists, journalists, and social media companies.
For the most part this was not done to purposely harm the American people, but to protect virology, research funding, avoid upsetting relations with China, and gatekeeping the preferred narrative. Hence my descriptor of “benevolent”.
This conspiracy started in small groups of top researchers and government officials, but became decentralized once mainstream publications and thought-leaders caught on to this preferred narrative.
There are many such examples, and they often are much more nuanced than black-and-white conspiracies (like whether climate change is a hoax or not).
socraticgadfly's review
fast-paced
1.25
Horrible book, not on the conspiracy theories, which I don't need Shermer to tell me, but on him totally getting wrong the one actual conspiracy he discusses, which is why this is 1-starred on a grok.
Rather than there being JUST and ONLY an Austrian conspiracy against Serbia in 1914, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand instead traces directly through one "Apis," head of both Serbian military intelligence and the secret society named The Black Hand, and also directly or semi-directly through confederates of Apis in the nationalist organization Narodna Odbrana, to Serbian Prime Minister Pasic. All of this and more is documented by Christopher Clark in the excellent book "The Sleepwalkers," which Shermer ACTUALLY REFERENCES and then ignores for Tim Butcher's "The Trigger," which is
A. A piece of crap and
B. Only about 10-20 percent about lead assassin Gavrilo Princip and 80-90 percent directly or indirectly about Tim Butcher.
Shermer's right that this is arguably the world's deadliest conspiracy. He's dead wrong about where the conspiracy started.
==
The rest of the book, without this egregious ax-grinding, would probably be 3 stars, no more, so, even without this, it's not worth a read. It's a basic definition of conspiracy vs conspiracy theories, basic overview on why many people believe in conspiracy theories, and how to try to talk to them.
But, surely Shermer could have found something else to discuss as a true conspiracy. Rather, it appears that, following in Butcher's footsteps despite having read Clark's documenting the likely ties to the Serbian government, and despite mentioning the Black Hand, even in an overall superficial treatment (and even talking about an assassination conspiracy, though trying to limit it to just the Black Hand, if that), he thought he could use some intellectual judo to show an Austrian conspiracy.
In reality, despite Conrad having been pushing for pre-emptive war with Serbia for years, even after the assassination, the Dual Monarchy was divided on going to war. And, trying to treat its Byzantine turns in just a few pages will be a good way to get superficial treatment even if not wrong — which, of course, Shermer is. And, I can say that as having read "The Sleepwalkers" TWICE.
Rather than there being JUST and ONLY an Austrian conspiracy against Serbia in 1914, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand instead traces directly through one "Apis," head of both Serbian military intelligence and the secret society named The Black Hand, and also directly or semi-directly through confederates of Apis in the nationalist organization Narodna Odbrana, to Serbian Prime Minister Pasic. All of this and more is documented by Christopher Clark in the excellent book "The Sleepwalkers," which Shermer ACTUALLY REFERENCES and then ignores for Tim Butcher's "The Trigger," which is
A. A piece of crap and
B. Only about 10-20 percent about lead assassin Gavrilo Princip and 80-90 percent directly or indirectly about Tim Butcher.
Shermer's right that this is arguably the world's deadliest conspiracy. He's dead wrong about where the conspiracy started.
==
The rest of the book, without this egregious ax-grinding, would probably be 3 stars, no more, so, even without this, it's not worth a read. It's a basic definition of conspiracy vs conspiracy theories, basic overview on why many people believe in conspiracy theories, and how to try to talk to them.
But, surely Shermer could have found something else to discuss as a true conspiracy. Rather, it appears that, following in Butcher's footsteps despite having read Clark's documenting the likely ties to the Serbian government, and despite mentioning the Black Hand, even in an overall superficial treatment (and even talking about an assassination conspiracy, though trying to limit it to just the Black Hand, if that), he thought he could use some intellectual judo to show an Austrian conspiracy.
In reality, despite Conrad having been pushing for pre-emptive war with Serbia for years, even after the assassination, the Dual Monarchy was divided on going to war. And, trying to treat its Byzantine turns in just a few pages will be a good way to get superficial treatment even if not wrong — which, of course, Shermer is. And, I can say that as having read "The Sleepwalkers" TWICE.
aiyam's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Deportation, Antisemitism, Classism, and Abortion
micpoll's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I REALLY enjoyed this book, even though it was a challenging one. I’ve always been fascinated by why people believe these “wild” conspiracy theories, especially in the age of COVID and Trump, and I got some answers from this book.
Not only does Shermer explain why people believe them, how they aren’t actually that new, how some big theories have been debunked, he also explains why this issue is important and how we can discuss/challenge our opinions when talking to someone who doesn’t agree.
I got this from my local library, but I am very tempted to buy myself a copy to keep!!
Not only does Shermer explain why people believe them, how they aren’t actually that new, how some big theories have been debunked, he also explains why this issue is important and how we can discuss/challenge our opinions when talking to someone who doesn’t agree.
I got this from my local library, but I am very tempted to buy myself a copy to keep!!