The good part of conspiracy theories
Most people (me included) generally are pretty dismissive towards conspiracy theories. “Oh that can’t be real”, “That wouldn’t happen”, or “You’re crazy” typically serves as the rebuttal when a conspiracy theory is brought up. That’s because the phrase conspiracy theory is usually associated with harmful ideas or theories such as the “Jewish Space Lasers” burning down California. The Denver Airport being the headquarters of the New World Order, “Deep State”, “9/11 was an inside job”, and “False Flag Attacks” are just a few examples of theories that most people (hopefully) reject. While in most cases it’s fine to use one’s intuition to decide if they should decide to entertain a conspiracy theory for a bit, you should always be a little bit more skeptical of the world around you. Accepting everything at face value isn’t a good alternative to being a devotee of the human attribution error. The one benefit that conspiracy theories bring, is making people seek the truth of the world around them.
I’m not endorsing any part of the more well known conspiracies that are divisive right now, but saying that conspiracies in general have an amount of skepticism (that’s probably a bit more than healthy) about the world and it causes people to search for the truth. Staying skeptical about things is how we can stay safe and make better informed decisions. If people were still blindly trusting of cigarette companies, there would definitely be a lot more people dead to throat or lung cancer because internal studies from the companies knew that there was a definite link since the 1940s but started their own corporate propaganda movement to hide that fact. And it’s always healthy to be skeptical about the government’s intentions, not necessarily thinking that they’re doing something evil, but trying to figure out what some of the reactions to policies/laws might be. Sometimes things have negative consequences, whether they’re intentional or not doesn’t matter but as long as you do your own research you probably can find a way to either help yourself or prevent it all together.
Basically, what I’m saying can be boiled down to “think for yourself.” Don’t always accept things at face value, but you also shouldn’t assume that something nefarious is happening. Some skepticism is good, too much is bad. Just like a healthy diet, balance is necessary. Conspiracy theorists either have too little skepticism or too much, they don’t trust anything or the things they wholeheartedly trust are espousing conspiracy theories.
