dc.description.abstract | Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized
belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reason ing. Proponents of conspiracy theories apparently resist
revising their beliefs given disconfirming evidence and tend
to believe in more than one conspiracy, even when the
relevant beliefs are mutually inconsistent. In this paper, we
bring leading views on conspiracy theoretic beliefs closer
together by exploring their rationality under a probabilistic
framework. We question the claim that the irrationality of
conspiracy theoretic beliefs stems from an inadequate
response to disconfirming evidence and internal incoher ence. Drawing analogies to Lakatosian research programs,
we argue that maintaining a core conspiracy belief can be
Bayes-rational when it is embedded in a network of auxiliary
beliefs, which can be revised to protect the more central
belief from disconfirmation. We propose that the (ir)ration ality associated with conspiracy belief lies not in a flawed
updating method, but in their failure to converge toward
well-confirmed, stable belief networks in the long run. This
approach not only reconciles previously disjointed views, but
also points toward more specific hypotheses explaining why
some agents may be prone to adopting beliefs in conspiracy
theories | vi |