From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning

Of tinfoil hats and thinking caps: Reasoning is more strongly related to implausible than plausible conspiracy beliefs

“…The likelihood that overfitted conspiracy theories maximise can be broken down into two components (Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020). The first relates to the descriptiveness of an explanation (how likely it makes the data points when considered independently), and the second concerns co-explanation (how likely it makes that particular pattern or co-occurrence of data points) (see Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020 for extensive discussion).…”

“…The likelihood that overfitted conspiracy theories maximise can be broken down into two components (Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020). The first relates to the descriptiveness of an explanation (how likely it makes the data points when considered independently), and the second concerns co-explanation (how likely it makes that particular pattern or co-occurrence of data points) (see Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020 for extensive discussion). In intuitive terms, descriptiveness and co-explanatory power appear to underlie part of the appeal of conspiracy theories: such explanations are remarkable for their focus on information not otherwise explained by official accounts (Keeley, 1999;Brotherton, 2015;Andrade, 2020;Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020).…”

“…The first relates to the descriptiveness of an explanation (how likely it makes the data points when considered independently), and the second concerns co-explanation (how likely it makes that particular pattern or co-occurrence of data points) (see Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020 for extensive discussion). In intuitive terms, descriptiveness and co-explanatory power appear to underlie part of the appeal of conspiracy theories: such explanations are remarkable for their focus on information not otherwise explained by official accounts (Keeley, 1999;Brotherton, 2015;Andrade, 2020;Wojtowicz & DeDeo, 2020). For instance, 9/11 conspiracy theorists frequently highlight the BBC's premature report of Building 7's collapse, even as it stood visibly behind the reporter (Brotherton, 2015).…”

Of Tinfoil Hats and Thinking Caps: Reasoning is more strongly related to Implausible than Plausible Conspiracy Beliefs

“…Bringing these two factors together, we can speculate that beliefs in implausible Conspiracy Theories may be examples of overfitting: instead of being appropriately calibrated to meaningful information and ignoring random noise, conclusions are fitted to both meaningful and random data, becoming ever more complex (see Wojtowicz & deDeo, 2020). One problem with overfitted conclusions is that they generalise poorly out of sample, meaning that they will not predict new information very well (see Briscoe & Feldman, 2011).…”

How explanation guides belief change

“…While explanatory reasoning is not per se incompatible with Bayesianism [7], there is clear evidence that at least sometimes such reasoning does lead people to transgress Bayesian norms. Committed Bayesians may regard this as further evidence that human reasoners are liable to performance failure.…”