You Are Not So Smart
342 - The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind
June 22, 202647 min · 8,959 words
Show notes
Tim Harford of the podcast Cautionary Tales sits down with David McRaney to hear a story from David's book, How Minds Change, about how (and why) a prominent conspiracy theorist realized he was wrong. Charlie Veitch was certain that 9/11 was an inside job. The attack on the World Trade Center wasn’t the work of Al-Qaeda, but an elaborate conspiracy.
Highlighted moments
the conspiracy actually is irrelevant and the beliefs are irrelevant. But you don't know that when you're in the conspiracy. The anxieties and the values, the emotions that lead a person into a conspiratorial community, that's what's the motivating factor.
“the fear of social death is greater than the fear of physical death. And so if the ship is going down, you'll put your reputation on the lifeboat and you'll go down with the ship.”
“I always thought people changed their beliefs, then they left the groups. But most often what happens is they leave the groups, and then they change their beliefs.”
“persuasion, the kind that I advocate, and the kind that really works, is more about giving a person an opportunity to understand that they can change their mind. That it's possible than anything else.”
Transcript
Transcript not available for this episode yet.