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How did we get so casual about conspiracy theories? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 days ago by Yondoza@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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How did we get so casual about conspiracy theories?

I was talking with someone today about nutrition. This person has a PhD in material science. They mentioned eating beef daily and I asked about the cholesterol implications. The answer was about a vague 'they' wanted us to think that, but it wasn't true anymore.

I hear the vague 'they' so frequently now it's just a normal conversation. In truth, as soon as I hear the vague they I dismiss the speaker's credibility on the subject, but how did we get here? Vague they wanted us to think X is a valid counter argument by the most highly educated people in our society?

This sounds like more of a rant than a question, but I do truly want to know how this happened? Was it pop culture like the X Files that made conspiracy theories main stream? Was it social media? When will the vague they stop being an accepted explanation? Has it always been this way and I didn't notice?

Thanks, love you!

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[–] superniceperson@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago

When did academic journals just start publishing nonsense? When did conspiracy theories like a shadow cabal of evil people that record the rich and powerful abusing children become obvious reality? When did literally hundreds of government officials state UFOs are real, they're not human, and there's a good chance they're not natural phenomena?

Science only has trust if you can trust those with the means to verify the work, do actually verify the work. The reproducibility crisis in all scientific fields was at a peak before LLMs were on every single phone; now there no such thing as trustworthy peer reviewed research that can be reproduced, even if the money was there to test everything that was published.

Tl;Dr the entire scientific world lost credibility and a whole lot of conspiracies were proven real as more CIA docs got declassified. Anything might be true at this point.