The Problem Isn't What They Believe. It's What They Don't Know.
Why conversations about conspiracy theories become so difficult when certainty replaces understanding.
One of the most frustrating things I've encountered when discussing conspiracy theories isn't simply that someone believes something I don't.
It's that they often have very little understanding of the explanation they're rejecting.
And frequently, the reason they reject it is remarkably simple:
"That's what they taught us."
It doesn't matter whether the explanation comes from decades of scientific research, documented historical evidence, or something that can be independently observed and tested. If it's part of what they were supposedly taught, it immediately becomes suspect.
There's something genuinely disappointing about that. Even a little sad.
Because questioning what we've been taught should be the beginning of an investigation, not the end of one.
When someone rejects an explanation simply because it was taught to them, without making an effort to understand it, they aren't necessarily thinking independently. They may just be replacing blind acceptance with blind rejection.
And neither one gets us any closer to the truth.
You Can't Reject What You Haven't Tried to Understand
Consider someone who believes Earth is flat.
They'll tell you they can't see the curvature, so Earth must be flat.
But can they explain how Earth's curvature is measured? How the horizon changes with altitude? How gravity works? Why the Northern and Southern Hemispheres experience opposite seasons?
Can they explain why the Sun remains visible for 24 hours during the Antarctic summer?
And just as importantly, can they demonstrate how their alternative model explains those same observations?
Or consider someone who believes persistent contrails are evidence that aircraft are secretly spraying chemicals.
Can they explain how contrails form?
Do they understand how temperature and humidity at cruising altitude determine whether a contrail disappears in seconds or remains visible for hours?
Have they examined the atmospheric conditions where the aircraft was flying?
Or have they simply concluded that because a trail remained in the sky longer than they expected, it must contain something sinister?
Then there are hurricanes.
Why do tropical cyclones rarely form near the equator? Why do large storm systems rotate in opposite directions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres?
The Coriolis effect, which results from Earth's rotation, is an important part of that explanation. Its influence is zero at the equator, making tropical cyclone formation there extremely difficult.
Understanding that requires learning something about atmospheric pressure, Earth's rotation, and the movement of air.
That's more work than declaring that storms are being secretly controlled.
And here's what I find especially frustrating.
In many of these conversations, the person isn't simply unfamiliar with the accepted scientific explanation.
They've already decided it's false.
How can someone confidently reject an explanation they haven't made an effort to understand?
The Building That Apparently Couldn't Have Been Built
Consider the magnificent buildings constructed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Someone sees an enormous stone building with elaborate architecture and concludes that people living at that time couldn't possibly have built it.
But how much do they actually know about nineteenth-century engineering?
Have they studied the original construction records, architectural drawings, or historical photographs?
Have they investigated the skilled laborers, stone masons, engineers, transportation methods, machinery, and construction techniques available at the time?
Or did everything they think they know about that building come from a YouTube video featuring someone declaring, "There's no way they could have built this in 1880"?
I've encountered that explanation repeatedly.
A video shows an impressive old building. The narrator expresses disbelief that people could have constructed it using the technology available at the time.
And suddenly, that disbelief becomes evidence of an advanced civilization whose history was supposedly erased.
But where is the investigation?
Where is the examination of the building plans, labor force, construction methods, or historical documentation?
Did the creator simply misunderstand how the building was constructed?
Did they genuinely believe the extraordinary explanation they were presenting?
Or was the creator deliberately generating controversy because controversy attracts attention, and attention can generate clicks, shares, subscribers, and advertising revenue?
Those are three very different possibilities.
And we shouldn't claim to know a particular creator's intentions without evidence.
But we should recognize that the financial incentives exist.
Research published in Nature in 2024 examined how advertising finances online misinformation. Other academic work has explored how platforms that monetize engagement can create incentives to circulate controversial or deceptive claims.
In other words, there's a potential financial reward for making ordinary history appear mysterious.
A video explaining how hundreds of skilled workers constructed a building over several years might be educational.
A video announcing that the same building is proof of an advanced civilization deliberately erased from history might be far more sensational.
Which one do you suppose is more likely to provoke an argument in the comments?
And which one might encourage viewers to share it with everyone they know?
The person making the extraordinary claim may have a financial incentive to keep the mystery alive. The viewer has a responsibility to investigate whether the mystery is real.
And here's the contradiction I find so remarkable.
Someone can reject historians, architects, engineers, and original construction documents because those sources are supposedly untrustworthy.
Yet they'll accept an unfamiliar YouTube creator's explanation without asking for the same standard of evidence.
They've rejected one authority without examining the evidence, only to accept another authority without examining the evidence.
That isn't independent research.
It's simply changing whom you've decided to trust.
When Not Understanding Becomes an Explanation
There's a pattern running through these examples.
I can't see Earth's curvature, so Earth must be flat.
That contrail lingered, so it must contain chemicals.
I haven't visited Antarctica, so it must be off limits.
That building looks too elaborate for its time, so an advanced civilization must have built it.
Each conclusion offers a simple answer to something the person doesn't fully understand.
And simplicity can be appealing.
But there's an important difference between an explanation that is simple because it accounts for the evidence and one that merely feels simple because it ignores the complexities.
A scientifically established explanation might require learning about atmospheric physics, geometry, engineering, or astronomy.
The alternative might require only a photograph and a narrator saying, "Doesn't that seem suspicious?"
One requires investigation.
The other offers immediate certainty.
And certainty can feel remarkably satisfying, especially when it comes with the belief that you've discovered something everyone else has missed.
Not knowing how something works is not evidence that it doesn't work.
And not understanding how something was accomplished is not evidence that it couldn't have been accomplished.
Question the Textbook, Trust the Algorithm
This is where social media has made the problem considerably worse.
We're told not to trust what we've been taught.
Don't trust the textbook. Don't trust the scientist. Don't trust the historian. Don't trust the government.
Fine. Question them.
I believe we should.
But why does that skepticism so often disappear when the information comes from a YouTube creator, a TikTok video, or a Facebook post?
Why does an unsupported claim suddenly become credible simply because someone confidently delivers it in a video?
And why is a scientific explanation automatically suspicious while the person contradicting it receives the benefit of the doubt?
Social media algorithms can repeatedly expose people to content similar to what they've already watched, liked, or shared.
Someone interested in one extraordinary claim may soon encounter dozens of related videos, often reinforcing the same assumptions.
The repetition can create an impression of overwhelming agreement.
But dozens of creators repeating the same unsupported claim don't create independent evidence.
They create repetition.
And there's another problem.
The content that attracts the most attention isn't necessarily the content that is most accurate.
It's often the content that provokes the strongest reaction.
Outrage, disbelief, fear, and the promise of hidden knowledge can all encourage engagement.
So someone who sincerely believes they're conducting independent research may actually be consuming a carefully selected stream of material that continually reinforces what they already believe.
They question what they were taught, but rarely question what their algorithm is teaching them now.
And that should concern anyone who genuinely values independent thinking.
Knowledge and Confidence Are Not the Same Thing
I don't claim to understand every scientific subject we discuss.
I couldn't sit down today and derive every equation behind atmospheric circulation or gravitational physics.
But I recognize the difference between something I don't understand and something that has no valid explanation.
If I don't know why a contrail persists, I can investigate atmospheric conditions.
If I don't understand why the seasons are reversed between hemispheres, I can study Earth's axial tilt.
If I question how a nineteenth-century building was constructed, I can look for engineering drawings, historical photographs, construction records, and information about the methods used at the time.
And if someone provides credible evidence that contradicts something I believe, I want to examine it.
That's not blindly accepting the official narrative.
That's making an effort to understand the evidence before deciding what is true.
Independent thinking doesn't mean automatically rejecting established explanations.
It means developing enough understanding to evaluate those explanations intelligently.
And sometimes that requires acknowledging three words that many of us find uncomfortable:
I don't know.
Those words aren't evidence of intellectual failure.
They're the beginning of learning.
When the Conversation Becomes Impossible
Here's where dealing with someone deeply committed to a conspiracy theory can become particularly difficult.
You attempt to explain how something actually works.
You describe the science.
You offer historical documentation.
You find the original recording rather than relying on an edited video.
You show how an observation can be independently tested.
And instead of discussing the evidence, the conversation shuts down.
Sometimes the response is anger.
Sometimes you're told you're brainwashed, asleep, or incapable of thinking independently.
Sometimes the source is dismissed before anyone has examined what it actually says.
And sometimes the explanation is rejected simply because it comes from a scientist, university, government agency, or another institution the person already distrusts.
At that point, you're no longer discussing the original question.
You're confronting a way of thinking in which contradictory information is treated as further evidence of deception.
How do you explain something to someone who has already decided that the explanation itself is part of the conspiracy?
And how do you have a productive conversation when one person is willing to examine evidence while the other appears interested only in having an existing conclusion confirmed?
Why It Can Be Especially Difficult in Relationships
Disagreements about facts can be frustrating enough with strangers.
In a relationship, they can become deeply personal.
Imagine caring about someone who believes that nearly everything you've learned about science and history is false.
You're willing to listen. You're willing to investigate. You're even willing to accept that the two of you may never agree.
But when you attempt to explain your reasoning, you're repeatedly dismissed as someone who hasn't awakened to the truth.
Eventually, the difficulty isn't simply the disagreement.
It's the inability to have an honest conversation about it.
One person wants to examine the evidence.
The other may be seeking validation for a conclusion they've already reached.
And when a request for evidence is interpreted as disrespect, meaningful discussion becomes extremely difficult.
You can respect someone's right to believe something without being obligated to agree with it.
But that respect has to work in both directions.
Is There Hope?
Yes.
But changing deeply held conspiracy beliefs is often difficult, and simply presenting more evidence during an argument frequently isn't enough.
A 2023 independent systematic review examined 25 studies involving 7,179 participants and found that most interventions aimed at reducing conspiracy beliefs were ineffective.
However, approaches encouraging analytical thinking and teaching critical thinking skills showed more promising results.
That doesn't mean people cannot change.
It means we should be realistic about what change requires.
I believe meaningful change begins when someone becomes genuinely curious about what they don't know.
When they're willing to ask how an explanation works before dismissing it.
When they can examine evidence without treating disagreement as a personal attack.
When they're willing to investigate the person making an extraordinary claim with the same skepticism they apply to the institutions that person criticizes.
And when they become more interested in discovering what's true than defending what they've already decided to believe.
Until then, you can explain the science, show the documents, and present the evidence.
But you cannot do someone else's thinking for them.
The problem isn't simply believing something that turns out to be wrong. We've all done that.
The problem is refusing to learn enough to discover whether we're wrong in the first place.
And perhaps that brings us back to the most important question of all.
They taught you to question everything. But did they teach you to question yourself?
Sources and Further Reading
1. Federal Aviation Administration, "Contrails" Explains how contrails form and why temperature and humidity determine their persistence. https://www.faa.gov/contrails
2. NASA Space Place, "What Causes the Seasons?" Explains how Earth's tilted axis produces opposite seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/seasons/en/
3. NOAA, "Tropical Cyclone Introduction" Explains the atmospheric conditions required for tropical cyclones and why formation near the equator is extremely rare. https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/tropical/tropical-cyclone-introduction
4. Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, "Tourism and Non-Governmental Activities" Documentation of tourism and regulated access to Antarctica. https://www.ats.aq/e/tourism.html
5. Ahmad, W., et al. (2024), "Companies inadvertently fund online misinformation despite consumer backlash." Nature, 630, 123-131. Independent research examining advertising revenue and the financing of online misinformation. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07404-1
6. Diaz Ruiz, C. (2023), "Disinformation on digital media platforms: A market-shaping approach." New Media & Society. Academic research discussing financial incentives associated with spreading controversial and deceptive online content. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231207644
7. O'Mahony, C., Brassil, M., Murphy, G., and Linehan, C. (2023), "The efficacy of interventions in reducing belief in conspiracy theories: A systematic review." PLOS ONE, 18(4), e0280902. Independent research reviewing 25 studies involving 7,179 participants. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280902