Echoes of covid misinformation

Levy, Neil

doi:10.1080/09515089.2021.2009452

Cited by 34 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Re-searching or looking at phenomena from different starting points and angles is a way to circumvent the path-dependency of belief formation (Hahn et al, 2018;Levy, 2021): The fact that later beliefs are influenced by earlier ones. People get stuck in bad beliefs (such as conspiracy theories), not necessarily because they update their beliefs insufficiently or irrationally, but because we update beliefs sequentially and we also do our information-foraging sequentially: The very gathering of evidence is directed (biased) by the sequence of past beliefs.…”

Section: The Epistemic Appeal Of (Popular) Science Versus Conspiracy ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Trust that, as we hypothesized, comes about in part from the (social) information-seeking activities and personal aha experiences described here. In other words, echo chambers do exist (and are even part of functional, rational forms of belief formation, see Levy, 2021), but we tried to bring out some underestimated ways by which conspiracists end up in echo chambers in the first place.…”

Section: Conspiracy Mentality Vs Conspiracy Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Insight in the conspiracist’s mind

Cruys¹,

Bervoets²,

Gadsby³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The motto of the conspiracist, “Do your own research,” may seem ludicrous to scientists. Indeed, it is often dismissed as a mere rhetorical device that conspiracists use to give themselves the semblance of science. In this perspective paper, we explore the information-seeking activities (“research”) that conspiracists do engage in. Drawing on the experimental psychology of aha experiences, we explain how these activities, as well as the epistemic experiences that precede (curiosity) or follow (insight or “aha” experiences) them, may play a crucial role in the appeal and development of conspiracy beliefs. Aha moments have properties that can be exploited by conspiracy theories, such as the potential for false but seemingly grounded conclusions. Finally, we hypothesize that the need for autonomous epistemic agency and discovery is universal but increases as people experience more uncertainty and/or feel epistemically excluded in society, hence linking it to existing literature on explaining conspiracy theories.

show abstract

Section: The Epistemic Appeal Of (Popular) Science Versus Conspiracy ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conspiracy Mentality Vs Conspiracy Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insight in the conspiracist’s mind

Cruys¹,

Bervoets²,

Gadsby³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“… 17 See Kurtulmus (2020 , 819) on the idea of an epistemic infrastructure that must ‘provide [citizens] with the opportunity to gain knowledge on issues they need to be informed about’. See also Levy’s (2021) analysis of echo chambers and the difficulties of avoiding or correcting false beliefs once individuals are in echo chambers. Levy concludes that ‘improv[ing] the quality of the epistemic environment… is a collective enterprise’.…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Vaccination Passports: Are They a Threat to Equality?

Voigt

2022

Public Health Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In several countries, governments have implemented so-called ‘COVID passport’ schemes, which restrict access to venues such as bars or sports events to those who are vaccinated against COVID-19 and/or exempt vaccinated individuals from public health measures such as curfews or quarantine requirements. These schemes have been the subject of a heated debate. Concerns about inequality have played an important role in the opposition to such schemes. This article highlights that determining how COVID passports affect equality requires a much more nuanced analysis than is typically assumed. I identify a range of broadly egalitarian considerations that could be affected by the introduction of COVID passport schemes. While these schemes could undermine certain aspects of equality, I argue that they could also be used to promote equality. The magnitude and severity of these different effects, both promoting and undermining equality, depend on how precisely these schemes are framed and the local context in which they are implemented.

show abstract

“…Contrary to these negative attitudes, some philosophers and psychologists tend to argue on diverse grounds in favor of certain epistemic and psychological benefits that might equally make such beliefs a source of rational reasoning. From these latter perspectives, belief in CTs is often responsive to the available evidence (Levy, 2021;Suthaharan et al, 2021), sometimes poses the best explanation of the events (Dentith, 2016), and may even lead to the truth (Dentith, 2019). Such views highlight the subjective importance of background beliefs as well as the relevance of sociocultural structures for evaluating the explanatory status of belief in CTs on a case-by-case basis (see also Basham, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statement of Removal

2022

Philosophical Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several philosophers and psychologists have characterized belief in conspiracy theories as a product of irrational reasoning. 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 incoherence. Drawing analogies to Lakatosian research programs, we argue that maintaining a core conspiracy belief can be Bayesrational 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)rationality associated with conspiracy belief lies not in a flawed updating method, but in their failure to converge towards well-confirmed, stable belief networks in the long run. This approach not only reconciles previously disjointed views, but also points towards more specific hypotheses explaining why some agents may be prone to adopting beliefs in conspiracy theories.

show abstract

Echoes of covid misinformation

Cited by 34 publications

References 36 publications

Insight in the conspiracist’s mind

Insight in the conspiracist’s mind

COVID-19 Vaccination Passports: Are They a Threat to Equality?

Statement of Removal

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About