You've been conditioned to believe conspiracy theories. Or have you?!
Popular Mechanics South Africa|November/December 2021
A smart conspiracy theorist never wears a tinfoil hat. According to research by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students in 2005, tinfoil can actually amplify mobile communication and satellite frequencies, including those used by the Federal Communication Commission.
Joshua Pease
You've been conditioned to believe conspiracy theories. Or have you?!

Based on these findings, the researchers (jokingly) speculated that tinfoil hats were a ploy propagated by the government to track the thoughts of US citizens.

So remove the headgear: Thanks to evolution, you’re probably curious about dozens of conspiracies – even in the face of logic and reason. Conspiracies are fun to dissect and debate, but there’s a deeper appeal: Humans have a natural skepticism towards authority and power.

‘We descended from primates that tended to notice dangerous, hidden things, like a predator in the grass,’ says Michael Shermer, Ph.D., a presidential fellow at Chapman University and bestselling author of Why People Believe Weird Things. ‘Our ancestors were the paranoid ones who assumed the worst and survived.’

According to Shermer, a conspiracy theory concerns two or more people plotting in secret to gain an immoral or illegal advantage over someone else. Whether rooted in a Wikipedia deep dive or documented history, however, most conspiracy theories are hard to prove, which is part of what makes them alluring – and dangerous.

Conspiracy theories give us just enough facts to entertain our whispering, primitive fears. But instead of a hungry sabre-toothed tiger working against our well-being, the modern danger might be the government, a powerful corporation, or – in the ugliest examples – an entire ethnic or religious group.

この記事は Popular Mechanics South Africa の November/December 2021 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

この記事は Popular Mechanics South Africa の November/December 2021 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

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