Conspiracy test

For me, at least:

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Same here. Seems pretty high to me, avowed skeptic that I am.

I think this test confounds belief in conspiracies with paranoia. The two things may be associated but they're not the same thing.

In other words, they've put apples and oranges on the same scale. (And they have different prices per pound... hee.)

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Ditto. I didn't think much of the test, there were lots of questions about trusting your friends - what does that have to do with believing in conspiracies. My friends might be unpredictable just because of their personalities.

There were also questions like
6) We seem to live in a pretty rational and well-ordered world.

I disagreed, but not because there is a conspiracy, I just think humans are irrational and so is the world they have created.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

And, same here. They seem to rate skepticism as leaning towards conspiracy theories, rather than applying skepticism to many things, including CTs.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

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Because the irrationality is covering up what they are really aiming at. They are all liars, and they come across as irrational because they can't keep thier lies straight.

That's the only explaination, right?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

...anyway, back to the test... complete rubbish. Examples follow.

3) I can normally do what I want to do in the world today
Yes; it's a major conspiracy that I don't have the money to travel like I want.

4) Princess Diana's death was an accident.
Very complex answer. Accident, absolutely. Cause or blame...many.

5) It is difficult for people like myself to have much influence in public affairs.
Is it difficult for politicians?

A third of the test just proves whether or not you trust your friends.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Got the same as ToSeek.Agreed. Another multiple choice poll with flawed internal logic and samples drawn, seemingly at random, from heterogeneous populations.

Wasn't there another poll that was posted no too long ago that suffered from the same defects?

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Mine is this:


26-50
Your responses indicate that you have a medium level of belief in conspiracy theories. You may well be quite trusting of your close friends, partners, those you work with and others but sometimes cannot be sure of all of them all of the time. You may also feel that your voice in terms of wider political decisions is rarely heard or acted upon, perhaps because government and big business is more concerned with their own interests than with those of the average person.

15-25

Your responses suggest you have a low level of belief in conspiracy theories. You may well tend to be trusting of your close friends, partners, those you work with and others. You may also feel that you contribute to political decisions and have a voice that is heard in wider society, albeit a small one.

I don't take this tests just for these reasons. You have to wonder if 20 year old journalism/comp sci majors with inflated and pretentious world veiws wouldn't have better things to do with their time than to come up with bad psychology tests.

The only one on these internet tests I ever took that I was actually very impressed with, was one entitled "Perversions You Didn't Know You Had". And after honestly answering their 150 questions they responded with, "you'll probably like this and didn't know it" and provided a link and all I could say was daaammnnn!, and that's all I'll say about that.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

I also scored in the 26-50 range. Totally agree with others on this one--I don't see how some questions relate to CTs at all. So what if I think the majority of people are irrational?

Actually, to my way of thinking, that makes conspiracies somewhat less likely. It's rational to keep your mouth shut when participating in illegal activity, but people don't.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Not so much. That's not to say I don't think there are conspiracies out there. (Watergate, Enron, Worldcom, for example. I could cite others, but they'd appear partisan in nature.) But, there has to be pretty good evidence of one before I'll take my occasional suspicion of one (I suspect I'm mildly paranoid, for example) to genuine belief (I'm pretty sure I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. As such, I try to filter my beliefs accordingly.) Certainly, the evidence has to be pretty strong before I'll accept the existence of the proposed conspiracy theory.

To do otherwise denies human nature. Even my very closest friends are human. I trust them where it really matters. As for what doesn't matter, I'll take their word at face value. It generally doesn't "cost" me anything to do so.

To believe otherwise is not rational. I strongly believe that certain political figures should behave with honor and integrity. I've written about it on any number of occasions. Politicians are still getting themselves into scandals of their own making.

I also strongly suggest that most of the questions are phrased much too vaguely for analysis phrased this definitively. Particularly without context.

No, people tend to be naturally irrational when left to their own devices. It's one of the main reasons "we" came up with the scientific method. It's one of the more effective ways of filtering out our irrationality from our body of knowledge.

As for "well-ordered", I suspect one would need to define "well-ordered" before the question could be answered with any sort of confidence. As I see it, there's a point (far closer than appears in passenger-side mirrors) after which "well-ordered" becomes totalitarian and oppressive.

So in that sense, when I say the world isn't "well-ordered", I don't mean the world is (or should be) outright chaotic, and I don't mean that I consider either extreme to be less dangerous than the other. A little chaos is good for us. So is a little order.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

The funny thing about this test is that it gave me a medium level of belief in CTs, but actually I have an extremely low level, to the point of I sometimes have a hard time believing in actual conspiracies. My first reaction almost always to someone telling me something is a conspiracy is not to believe it. I don't know why I react this way.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Conditioning maybe?

A natural tendancy can be over-ridden after conditioning yourself to be different.

Just a theory...

Well, IMO you shouldn't tamper with it. Unless that someone is providing evidence, conspiracy is a serious enough accusation that your first reaction should be disbelief.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

I could not complete the test, as I don't have any friends

Just use your imaginary friends... or, lacking those, answer the way you imagine you'd behave if you had any friends.

Since we've all pretty much expresssed our doubts about this quiz anyway, it's not likely to matter much.

In fact, the quiz is so bad there's only one explanation... the whole thing is a conspiracy.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

.....your so right, I see it all now! do you think they know I fantasized over
Dana