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SUMMARY:On the Vices and Virtues of Conspiracy Theories - Dr Alfred Moore 
 (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20131030T193000Z
DTEND:20131030T210000Z
UID:TALK47487@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Charles Li
DESCRIPTION:Conspiracy theories are often regarded as vices\, both at the 
 individual level as cognitive failings\, and at the collective level as pa
 thologies of public reason. One of the major individual vices identified b
 y psychologists is the "confirmation bias"\, the tendency of people to see
 k arguments in support of things they already believe and to discount or r
 eject arguments and information that undermine their existing beliefs. Clo
 sely associated with this is one of the major collective pathologies\, nam
 ely group polarisation\, in which like minded people seek each other out a
 nd then unwittingly create for themselves an information environment which
  skews in support of their prejudices and creates group pressures that rad
 icalise belief. In this paper I will argue that these individual and colle
 ctive vices can have positive collective effects. I will draw on contempor
 ary social science in developing this argument\, but its outline will be f
 amiliar from J. S. Mill's account of the benefits of argumentative diversi
 ty. In short\, there may be a collective benefit to having groups of peopl
 e who\, partly due to their obsessive attachment to unconventional and soc
 ially disapproved theories\, are motivated to closely scrutinize official 
 narratives in a way that most of us are not. I will conclude by considerin
 g what this means for current research on conspiracy theories.
LOCATION:Erasmus room\, Queens' College
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