Conspiracism is a world view and way of thinking. I think Michael Barkun sums it up well. His three principles of conspiracism are nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected.
In the conspiracist world view, things aren’t caused by negligence or incompetence. There aren’t systemic causes that lead to events. Opportunists don’t jump on opportunities that a chaotic event opens up. Things are caused by plans thought up and executed by cabals of powerful people (illuminati, CIA, “the elites”, banking elite, the deep state).
However things appear isn’t the “real” story. Everything is deception and whatever the true causes are hidden behind the “official narrative”. Large amounts of evidence, scientific studies, and other information are ignored and dismissed. Wild conjecture, random anomalies (“isn’t it weird” style rhetorical questions to show the “official narrative” is false), and other “alternative” evidence are embraced instead.
Things are connected and you need to find the patterns. This is often accompanied by finding “hidden messages” and symbols that show that seemingly unconnected events share a common cause and were conducted by a common group as part of some larger plan.
Skeptical thinking, by contrast, is about questioning claims and doubting things without sufficient evidence. Embracing the scientific method and accepting scientific conclusions, while still remaining open to new information. Examining biases and accepting your own limited knowledge.
A skeptic is just someone looking for real reasons besides those used in whatever propaganda suggests. That reason could be benign or not, but it doesn't mean that some secret organization/cabal is pulling the strings to make the situation what it is.
When some SaaS become unavailable due to some DNS issue, is it a conspiracy that their status page is also not updated when their status page is also affected by the outage or is it the deep state's fault trying to keep the average worker down with a cunning plan? A skeptic sees the outage and the status discrepancy as a company that just got things wrong. The conspiracy nut things the Illuminati it out to get them specifically.
Maybe it helps to have been in/around cults for more time in their youth than one would like to admit, but a skeptic and a conspiracy nut are nothing alike to me.
How so? If you want to have a discussion, you actually need to say something more substantial that two sentences saying "I disagree". What about what I said was superficial and crude? What about any of the modern things that would be called “conspiracies” doesn’t fit what I said? PizzaGate, the government did 9/11, Qanon, the government did Sandy Hook, etc.
In the conspiracist world view, things aren’t caused by negligence or incompetence. There aren’t systemic causes that lead to events. Opportunists don’t jump on opportunities that a chaotic event opens up. Things are caused by plans thought up and executed by cabals of powerful people (illuminati, CIA, “the elites”, banking elite, the deep state).
However things appear isn’t the “real” story. Everything is deception and whatever the true causes are hidden behind the “official narrative”. Large amounts of evidence, scientific studies, and other information are ignored and dismissed. Wild conjecture, random anomalies (“isn’t it weird” style rhetorical questions to show the “official narrative” is false), and other “alternative” evidence are embraced instead.
Things are connected and you need to find the patterns. This is often accompanied by finding “hidden messages” and symbols that show that seemingly unconnected events share a common cause and were conducted by a common group as part of some larger plan.
Skeptical thinking, by contrast, is about questioning claims and doubting things without sufficient evidence. Embracing the scientific method and accepting scientific conclusions, while still remaining open to new information. Examining biases and accepting your own limited knowledge.