The moment I realized I was the one making my conspiracy research useless

I spent like 3 years diving into 9/11 truther forums and JFK documents thinking I was onto something big. Then last month I caught myself ignoring a solid debunk from a structural engineer just because it didn't fit my narrative. That's when it hit me - I wasn't researching, I was cherry-picking data that already agreed with me. Every forum post I made was just reinforcing my bias instead of actually testing my ideas. I had this whole timeline mapped out but I never once asked a skeptic to poke holes in it. Has anyone else realized they were their own worst enemy in this stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

lee_barnes7016d ago

Think about how often we do this in everyday arguments too, not just conspiracy stuff. I catch myself doing it with politics or even local neighborhood disputes. Someone will share a fact that goes against what I believe and my first instinct is to find a reason to dismiss it instead of actually considering it. It takes real effort to stop and ask yourself "wait, what if this person has a point I haven't thought about?" Takes practice but it makes you a lot harder to fool, including fooling yourself.

shah.evan16d ago

Yeah but lee_barnes70 said "it takes real effort to stop and ask yourself 'wait, what if this person has a point'" and I think that's close but you're making it sound like a choice you can just flip on. The thing is our brains aren't built that way. That whole cherry-picking instinct is hardwired, it's not something you can just decide to turn off one day like a switch. You gotta build systems around it, like showing your work to skeptics on purpose or writing down your assumptions before you even start looking. If you just try to "consider the other side" in the moment your brain will find a way to reject it before you even realize what happened.