DocWatts

It does, and I think you make a number of very good points. I guess what I'm wondering is if this is something that at least some people will mature out of on their own (perhaps once they meet their own deficiency needs). I can confirm, at least anecdotally, that the people in my own life that I've seen this happen to are generally not very happy, and were experiencing problems in other aspects of their life. Again, because I do generally care about one or two of these people despite the crazy things that have worked their way into their belief structure, does anyone have any first hand experience of someone they've known eventually coming out of the Conspiracy rabbit hole? Is there anything I can do to actually help? Can nudging someone to examine their own belief be helpful, or is it counter productive more often than not?

Awesome; this was exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

If you're interested in the subject matter, Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) has written extensively on this topic. His book 'Collapse' is a systems level examination of a number of different cultures which have collapsed, and attempts to draw out some commonalities between them. He focuses in particular on societies whose collapse was due at least in part on environmental and sustainability factors.

@Parththakkar12 Thanks for clearing up this misconception then. Would characterizing this viewpoint as the "compatibilist" (akin to the how that terms is used in free will discussion) , or perhaps the "integrated" view of reality be a fair way to put it?

@Parththakkar12 So I suppose my resistance to this would be seeing this as a bit reductionist, as it seems to me that both internal subjective experiences and an external objective world are both important facets of reality. Or to to put it another way, if something like logical positivism is reductionist by discounting the subjective world in favor of what can be objectively measured, this perhaps to seem to me reductionist in favoring subjective experience and discounting the possibility of an external reality. I'll admit upfront that it's possible I may be misunderstanding this perspective, and alot of my thinking in this area is influenced by philosophers such as Thomas Nagel, who talks about ways of integrating subjective experience into an external reality.

I guess then I would ask, on an epistemological level, what makes intuition a better arbiter of truth than other modes of being, since intuition has its own limitations and can be misleading at times. I would think that you what you would want is some sort of integration between intuition, emotional awareness, and study of the external world, informing each other in some sort of feedback loop. ...wow, guess we've strayed a bit from the topic at hand, eh? In an interesting way of course.

Not disagreeing with you, but as far as setting aside models and whatnot, isn't having some sort of context for the subject matter you're studying quite important? Aren't fields of study such as systems thinking and epistemology models in a sense as well? Of course I do realize that I am viewing it from my own particular lens that I need to take into account, but if you're interested enough in a subject to spend time and energy researching it, I imagine that you're going to have some sort of emotional attachment going in, that you can try to account for as best as you can.

Awesome, thanks for the suggestion.

@Parththakkar12 You're right, I didn't like that answer . I don't look at people who buy into conspiracy theories as bad people, but I do see the obvious harm that comes from believing in baseless conspiracy theories; I've also seen how toxic and isolating they can be for the person who stitches a worldview together out of them (again, this post was born out of concern for a friend of mine who's manifesting his conspiracy theory beliefs in an unhealthy and isolating way). As far as your suggestion, are there any resources in particular you would recommend to understand this subject matter on a deeper level, and perhaps help me to empathize more fully with people who hold these beliefs?