It amuses me how willing people are to think there is a plot behind anything and everything. In the past conspiracy theories were widespread, but largely the province of cranks. Yes, maybe there were people who thought Catholic churches were built on the high ground so they could house artillery when the pope took over the US, or that Freemasons or Jews were behind every manner of social ill. And more recently there are still those who think the CFR is secretly scheming to take over the world, or that Bohemian Grove is a gathering of One World Satanists, but they were still a minority. However, thanks to the internet, and its anonymity, paranoia has become the stuff of everyday life.

Want an example? Find any movie or book which has a uniformly high rating on IMDB or Amazon.com and look at the comments. I guarantee you, at least a dozen people will claim "the studios" have hired people to inflate the ratings.

Now, I don't deny that there may be a few cases where some ambitious self-promoter did not have his family and friends puff up a self-published book or self-distributed movie. And there are a few cases where movie studios have shown favoritism to reviewers who have given them generally positive reviews. But they are the exception, rather than the rule.

In general, big studios and big publishers know such "gaming" is counter productive. If you corrupt the system so that a reviewer always gushes about your film, or a given venue gives all your films 10/10, then readers come to realize this pretty quickly and ignore the ratings and reviews from such biased sources. So, though it may benefit your for a very brief time, in the end it costs you more than it gains.

But that sensible explanation won't change anyone's beliefs. Once again, as I mentioned about politics, we in America simply cannot believe in an honest disagreement. In today's world, no one can disagree with you because of an honest difference of opinion. They must be either stupid or evil. Or, in this case, paid off.

And thus, our strange self-obsession, our belief that our opinion is the only right belief, leads us into the additional error of conspiratorial thinking.

Sometimes I worry for our future. How much hope can one have when thruthers, Michael Moore, and other conspiracy theorists are granted so much credence, and those who argue that the world is largely a sane, predictable place, from which we need little protection, are considered hopelessly naive.

POSTSCRIPT

If you want an example form another realm of human endeavor, check out the comments to an old article, in which I am accused of being a paid mouthpiece for the CPAs. (Oddly, the entire series of arguments begins with me praising the poster for not questioning my motives, followed by a post where I complain that he accuses me of being irrationally opposed to the FairTax, and then followed by the post above, where I am accused of being in the pay fo some group.)

POSTSCRIPT II

Originally I intended only to denounce an absurdity, but it occurs to me that I wrote on this topic quite a bit already. So rather than just have a short rant, I think I will also direct interested readers to some of my earlier works.

To start, here are my essays on the tendency to see evil where there is none:

Life Without Villains
Enemies Into Villains
Rethinking My Earlier Position

(Note: Some of these refer back to my characterization of liberal thought as including a specific world view. Links for all articles relating to that topic can be found in y recent post "Apology as Arrogance".)

And, to flesh out my thoughts on evil, here is my own post on the nature of evil, and the possibility that much evil is not intentional evil, but more the outcome of mistaken beliefs. My point in posting it here being that, while I think mistakes can lead to evil, I do not think all those who disagree with me are inherently evil (or stupid):

The Nature of Evil

(Note: Some of these refer back to my characterization of liberal thought as including a specific world view. Links for all articles relating to that topic can be found in my recent post "Apology as Arrogance".)

And here is my writing on all things conspiratorial (or at least all I could find today, I write a lot). Some of this relates to specific conspiracies (eg. that Bush lied to get us into Iraq) while other essays are on conspiracy theories in general. However, I think all provide a good look at the mental process behind the conspiracy theory style of thought:

Sinister PNAC? Hardly!
Food For Thought
Bill Clinton Murdered Leon Trotsky!
Idiots or Geniuses?
Dismissing Conspiracy Theories
Our New Paranoia
259 Lies?
Isn't History Enough?
The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories
An Interesting Question
A Shortcoming of Conspiracy Theories
A Small Update on the Birth Certificate Controversy
Amusingly Left Wing
Absurdities on Oil
Birth Certificate Controversy Revisited
Your Fellow Man
Revival of an Old Absurdity
A Question for Those Who Believe "Bush Lied"
One More Post on the Birth Certificate Controversy
Really, The Last One on This Topic
Wrong is Wrong
Tips for Conspiracy Theory Buffs #1
Rewriting History Concerning World War II
A New Take on an Old Topic
A Brief Follow Up
Slate Imitates Me, But I Really Don't Mind
Those Darn Jews
Those Darn Jews Part 2
One Last Time
Conspiracy Theorists' False Logic

(Note: I know many think there is something to the Obama birth certificate controversy, but I include my writing on it here as the debate did take on many attributes of conspiracy theory thinking, such as evidence to the contrary being taken as proof of the plot, or the habit of taking a conclusion and then looking for matching evidence. Read what I wrote and let me know what you think. I believe even if there was something to the original argument, many took it to the wrong extremes and became a bit loopy in the process. But, as I said, read my older arguments, I will let them speak for themselves.)

(Note 2: Though global warming and other environmental theories also qualify as conspiracy theories, I have excluded them as they are a topic unto themselves. Don't worry, I will be writing on that absurdity soon enough.)

I hope that at least a few readers will find some of my older writing interesting.