Chaos Theory, Symbiotic Information, and Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories have become quite commonplace in society. They pervade many cultures and subcultures and exist on both sides of the political spectrum. 

      They are nothing new. Conspiracy theories have been around in various forms for centuries. They have been formulated and developed over the years to demonize individuals and/or certain social, political, and ethnic groups and turn opinion against these groups with the intent of either deligitimizing or outright destroying these individuals or groups.

    The advent of information technology, in particular the internet, has made the creation, development, and propagation of conspiracy theories much more rapid and much easier. The internet gave fringe groups and their conspiracy ideation a larger platform with more potential for their ideas to enter into the mainstream. 

     Conspiracy theory development gets its causal root in the natural uncertainty of the human condition and our limited and isolated vantage points of the happenings of the world. This uncertainty enables our imaginations to fill in the gaps(often to high degrees of innacuracy) the pieces of the situation we are observing we don't have access to or can't directly observe.  

      You can look at the collective consciousness of a nation or culture as a complex human system in itself. Thinking of the chaos theory principles of unpredictability and apparent randomness of the activities within a complex system, the progression and outcome of the development and spread of conspiracy theories within human systems/groups are very hard to predict and control. 

   The unanticipated and unpredictable consequences of conspiracy theories can be quite damaging, destructive, or even deadly. One needs not to look any further than situations like the holocaust to see the dangers of unchallenged conspiracy theories. 

        Chaos/disorder within human systems and collective consciousness and understanding are greatly contributed to and exascerbated by deceptive and unmitigated conspiracy ideation. Conspiracy theories can lead to domestic terrorist acts and other acts of violence. 

       The mass propagation of conspiracy theories muddles and distorts the truth and saturates the information market with so much deception that discerning the truth from the deception and conspiracy ideation mixed in and blurred into the information becomes exceedingly difficult for a lot of consumers of news and knowledge, especially layman observors.

      This very problematic in a free society, as muddled and distorted information and the confusion that results from it makes discerning truth difficult. Without the ability to discern truth, a free and secure society is hard to maintain.

   Mass confusion and distortion and the chaos of information that conspiracy theories cause also creates plausible deniability for when actual conspiracies happen. When powerful people actually conspire to commit crimes or atrocities or conspire to consolidate power and their plot or conspiracy is discovered, all the conspirators have to do is call the accuser delusional and say the conspiracy is just another paranoid conspiracy theory.

      The mass propagation of fictitious and fallacious conspiracy theories in a nation or culture makes this deniability all the more easy.  

 

         Conspiracy theories operate in a similar way as the information that make up religious belief systems and political ideologies. From my perspective, conspiracy theories are like viral symbiotic information.

     Once someone subscribes to a conspiracy theory and accepts it as true, it latches on to their mind like a symbiote to a host, and that person spreads the theory by word of mouth or writing to other potential hosts of that information. The believer of the conspiracy theory becomes the theories acting agent. It's "spreader" like how a host would spread a virus. 

      This is not much different than how religions and political ideologies are spread. It's just most conspiracies are a little bit more falsifiable and distorted. Even so, once a conspiracy latches onto the mind of a person, they can be exceedingly difficult to remove from someones mind and make that person no longer accept it as true. 

The symbiotic information has established a foothold in the cognitive processes of that individual, and even evidence that contradicts or proves wrong their beliefs is often not powerful enough to change their mind.

This process is similar to that of an extremist ideology that leads to terrorism. It can be exceedingly difficult to deprogram and refute both conspiracies and extremist ideologies because of the information that makes up those belief system's symbiotic nature and the way they take over a mind once someone subscribes to them and believes them.

 

      This one of the great dangers of conspiracy theories. Once you can no longer refute them and people no longer see reason, they can spread so quickly and cause immense damage if not challenged and contained. They can even appear to take on a life of their own.