음모론적 사고: 인지적 편향과 현대 정치

### 음모론적 사고의 부상: 인지적 편향과 정보 파이프라인
* 🧠 현대 사회는 개인이 사건을 설명하기 위해 정교한 내러티브를 만들어 무작위성이나 사소한 변화를 무시하는 **음모론적 사고의 영향**을 점점 더 많이 받고 있습니다.
* 🔍 우리의 뇌는 패턴과 설득력 있는 이야기를 찾도록 연결되어 있으며, 사람들은 **만족스러운 설명을 제공하는 음모론**에 끌리기 때문에 양극화와 상반된 현실로 이어집니다.
* 📖 첫 번째 인지 편향은 내러티브 편향으로, 인간은 원인과 결과가 명확한 이야기를 선호하기 때문에 **음모론이 허위 사실에 근거한 경우**에도 매력적으로 느껴집니다.
* ⚖ 두 번째 편향인 규모 편향은 중요한 사건에는 반드시 똑같이 중요한 원인이 있어야 한다고 생각하여 **아랍의 봄이나 다이애나 비의 죽음**과 같은 복잡한 사건에 대해 단순한 설명을 거부하는 편향입니다.
* 🔄 세 번째 편향인 목적론적 편향은 **모든 일에는 이유가 있다고 믿게** 하여 사건의 무작위성을 받아들이기 어렵게 만들고 음모론적 내러티브를 부추깁니다.
* 🌐 인터넷을 통한 정보 유통의 변화로 인해 파격적인 아이디어의 확산 장벽이 낮아지면서 **현대 정치에서 음모론의 확산이 증폭**되고 있습니다.
* 🛠 이러한 이론을 반박하는 것은 정보에 입각한 의사 결정을 보장하고 민주적 무결성을 유지하기 위해 매우 중요하며, **정보 파이프라인을 정리하고 명확한 사실 확인**을 제공하기 위한 노력이 필요합니다.
* 🤝 궁극적으로 현실에 대한 공유된 이해가 없으면 타협이 불가능해져 **민주주의의 근간이 위태로워집니다.**

음모론적 사고는 인지적 편견을 바탕으로 현실을 왜곡하고 사회를 양극화하는 데서 번성합니다.

- The modern world is full of conspiratorial thinking, where people see an event and they come up with this extraordinary story, the hidden truth that explains everything. But they're simply sticky in our minds because we are predisposed to patterns, and we're allergic as human beings to explanations that involve either randomness or small, seemingly unimportant changes. And this is one of the reasons why I think there is so much polarization and democratic breakdown around the world, is because we simply inhabit different realities due to the fact that there has been such a surge in conspiratorial thinking around the world. Our brains are driven to find explanations that fit a pattern, and our brains are also driven to find explanations that fit a narrative, a story that really compels us. So when it comes to understanding conspiracy theories, there are three main cognitive biases that you need to grapple with. The first one is called narrative bias, and this is where the human brain has evolved to make sense of reality through storytelling.

And the reason for that is because stories involve a very neat and tidy cause and effect. Now, because of that, if somebody tells you a story, it's very seductive to us; it sounds plausible. If somebody tells you there's no story, that's not very attractive to us. Now, the problem with conspiracy theories is they're not just telling you a story; they're telling you a really good story, right? There's a hidden cabal behind everything that's happening; there's a secret pattern that you just have to be smart enough to detect. And once you do, you can be inducted in this group of people who understand the real truth. Because what you have is you have a thriller versus someone telling you, Nothing to see here, and the brain is drawn to the thriller. So even though some of these conspiracy theories are extremely insane and obviously wrong, they still have a lot of people

that end up gravitating towards them because it's a good story. The second form of bias is called magnitude bias, and magnitude bias is this idea that any big event must have a big cause, right? In a lot of our thinking about the world, we have these linear relationships in how we understand it. So anything that has a small effect must have a small cause, anything that has a big effect must have a big cause. So for example, you have the Arab Spring where a man decides to light himself on fire in central Tunisia because he's disgruntled about his economic prospects. This is the trigger for multiple regimes collapsing and also a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Now, the conspiracy theories around this would tell you that there's something else going on, that there's some big plot, because this sort of random event of one man causing all of these catastrophes seems too strange to compute as a human brain.

Now, on top of this, you have things like Princess Diana's death, where there's lots of conspiratorial thinking around it. And it's a car accident; it's basically a sort of random event where somebody was driving too fast, and she died. When you have a consequential event, you want to have a consequential cause. But within conspiratorial thinking, research will show that conspiracy theorists will hold ideas that are quite clearly logically opposed to each other. So people who believe in Princess Diana conspiracy theories will simultaneously say that, Yes, we think that she is alive, and also that she was probably killed by the British government. Now, these two things cannot both be true, but they would rather accept that logical impossibility than the random explanation that there was some sort of small cause that was banal, which is to say she died in a car accident. The third form of bias is called teleological bias.

Everything happens for a reason is teleological bias in a saying. Now, I can speak from personal experience; I sometimes go on the news to try to explain events, and one of the things you can't say is, I don't know, and you also can't say, Maybe this was just sort of arbitrary, like sometimes just sort of random things happen. So what you have to do is you have to sort of fit the world into these really clear explanations where exactly one cause produced exactly one effect. So conspiracy theories thrive on all of these forms of biases because they ultimately stitch them all together in a single really compelling big reason why things happen, a nice story, and one that gives you a reason to make sense of a bewildering thing that has occurred that is consequential in the world. I think one of the other reasons why conspiratorial thinking is so prominent today is because the information pipelines that we use to get knowledge about the world

have completely shifted. And this is something that's different from every other human who has ever lived. The history up until now has been a history of expanding the number of people who can consume information, but not the people who can produce information. The internet has forever shifted that calculation because for the first time ever, we have drastically expanded the pool of people who can make information and then disseminate it instantly around the world. And this means the barrier to entry for crazy ideas is significantly lower than it used to be. And so this combination of the information pipelines shifting in the way that we understand the world and navigate it, combined with our evolutionary predisposition to storytelling and pattern detection, is a perfect storm for the rise of conspiracy theories as a major driver in our modern politics. Debunking conspiracy theories is really difficult, but yet we still have to try because it's really important to make sure that people

don't fundamentally misunderstand the world or vote based on conspiracy theories that are ultimately wrong. And so, the best way forward is to try to clean up the information pipelines that we have that allow people to make sense of the world, to ensure that good information is provided to people, to also provide detailed fact checks that grapple with the parts of the conspiracy theory that make the good story, and explain them in clear ways to show why it's incorrect. It won't always work, but I think it's definitely something that we need to do because, if we can't agree on reality, we can't compromise, and democracies are based on a shared sense of reality and then the compromise that is forged within it. - Want to dive deeper? Become a Big Think member and join our members-only community, watch videos early, and unlock full interviews.

These 3 biases are fueling belief in conspiracy theories | Brian Klaas, PhD

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음모론적 사고는 패턴과 설득력 있는 내러티브를 추구하는 뇌의 성향으로 인해 현대 사회에 널리 퍼져 있습니다.

스토리텔링에 대한 이러한 인지적 편향은 복잡한 사건에 대한 깔끔한 인과관계 설명을 제공한다는 점에서 음모론을 매력적으로 만듭니다.

음모론적 사고의 급증은 사람들이 이러한 설득력 있는 내러티브에 따라 서로 다른 현실을 받아들이면서 양극화와 민주주의 붕괴에 기여했습니다.

음모론적 사고의 편향성 이해하기

음모론적 사고는 사람들이 설득력 있는 이야기에 끌리는 내러티브 편향과 큰 사건을 큰 원인과 연관 짓는 규모 편향의 영향을 받습니다.

이는 아랍의 봄이나 다이애나 비의 죽음과 같은 우연한 사건에 대한 왜곡된 인식으로 이어져 음모론자들 사이에서 모순된 믿음을 낳습니다.

목적론적 편향은 사람들이 무작위적인 사건에 대해 의도적인 설명을 추구하기 때문에 사건에 대한 이해를 더욱 복잡하게 만듭니다.

음모론은 목적론적 편견에 기반하여 복잡한 사건에 대한 명확한 설명을 제공하고 설득력 있는 내러티브를 제공함으로써 번창합니다.

인터넷으로 인한 정보 파이프라인의 변화로 정보를 생산하고 전파할 수 있는 사람들의 수가 급격히 증가하면서 기발한 아이디어의 장벽이 낮아졌습니다.

이러한 정보 역학의 변화와 스토리텔링 및 패턴 탐지에 대한 인간의 진화적 성향이 결합되어 현대 정치에서 음모론이 부상하는 완벽한 폭풍이 만들어졌습니다.

정보 파이프라인을 정리하는 것은 사람들에게 정확한 정보를 제공하고 음모론에 대응하는 데 매우 중요합니다.

상세한 사실 확인을 통해 이러한 이론의 매력적인 측면을 다루고 왜 그것이 잘못된 것인지 설명해야 합니다.

타협과 민주주의의 기능을 위해서는 현실에 대한 공유된 인식이 필수적입니다.