Common ways of faulty thinking

This is mostly a list of misleading ways of thinking.  I have limited myself to those seeming to be common among conspiracy talkers.  Oftentimes they don’t ask themselves if they have made any error.  Then they don’t pay attention to signs of them making errors either.  Add some refusing to listen to people contradicting them.  Then different types of faulty thinking can live on for generations.

The errors made are partially the same as for justifying one-sided exploitation.  Such comes from old arguments for justifying existing conditions.  There is an overlapping with the arguments of pseudoscientists too.  The later lacks systematic training in thinking logically.  Which leads to logical fallacies and related faulty thinking.

It happens that conspiracy talkers contradict themselves.  I think they are too home-blind to see internal contradiction.  Otherwise they often argue as if the following were valid:

• Black and white thinking.
To divide things on a subject in two sharply delineated categories.  There could be more categories which are meaningful to others.  Different categories’ boundaries are not obvious either.

• Circular reasoning.
To presuppose something to be true to show it to be true.  Two or more claims are seen as proof of each other.  Without any external support we can’t know that.

• Over-generalisation
To believe what applies to some would apply to all.  As such groups are presupposed to have homogenous characteristics.  Something which does not at all has to be the case.

• Personal ignorance.
Denying something to exist one does not know about.  The only thing one knows about is believed to be the only thing there is.  That there might be more don’t occur to the person.

• Personal incomprehension.
Own inability to understand is believed to prove something to be false.  Then one treats oneself as the pinnacle of human comprehension.  Others being able to understand it better is not spent a thought at.

• Predetermined conclusion.
To always draw the same conclusion regardless of how something looks.  How would it need to look to draw a different conclusion?  Without any idea on this one can’t know if one would be right.

• Presupposing hidden evil.
Others are presupposed to have something bad which they deliberately hide.  This one only bases on expressed opinion.  That their motive may be entirely different is something not considered.

Some treat they own way of thinking as if everyone could be presupposed to have it.  One argued as if thinking for oneself led to his particular conclusion.  For me it is to the opposite clear there are many ways of thinking.  People thinking differently than one personally does are commonplace.  This is quite simply a matter of individual differences.

In addition comes when conspiracy talkers base their arguments on myths.  Not only myths on what others can and want.  Myths of how thing should look and work are moreover common.  Conspiracy talkers take it for granted that their image of things holds true.  So they don’t think of the possibility of their expectations could be wrong.  Some such ideas I have previously brought up.  The ones I have not done this with will be explained a little by and by.

 

Uploaded on the 16th of Mars 2026.