Conspiracy theories are prevalent in social and political discourse, with significant consequences for individuals, groups, and societies. Psychological scientists have only started paying attention to them in the past 20 years. In this section, the hypothesis that conspiracy theories evolved as a functional response to the presence of real, complex events is reviewed. The authors argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation and introduce a descriptive expression, such as “conspiratorial”.
Conspiration theories are often dismissed as unhinged beliefs held by a small group of paranoid idiots, but they are actually a result of cognitive mechanisms such as pattern perception and agency detection. The survivability of conspiracy theories may be aided by psychological biases and distrust of official sources. The social sciences have increasingly recognized the importance of understanding conspiracy beliefs and empirical research on this phenomenon.
The authors defend one hypothesis by proposing a second hypothesis to explain the lack of evidence in support of the first hypothesis. They argue that conspiracy theorists have their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is immune to revision by counter-evidence. The authors also introduce a new research domain, conspiracy theories, which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to identify, debunk, and counter them.
📹 The Conspiracy Theory that the Middle Ages Never Happened
📹 The Phantom Time Hypothesis – Conspiracy Theory
The Phantom Time Hypothesis is a niche conspiracy theory proposed by Heribert Illig, claiming that nearly 300 years of history …
Alternate conspiracy theory: HAI doesn’t exist. It’s just an advanced machine learning protocol designed to take in topic suggestions, filter though them, and turn them into ok articles. If that were true, that would explain why we rely so heavily on your viewer topic suggestions, so submit yours and, if we use it, we (the computer) will send you a free HAI t-shirt: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUdlvw6YgU44J8AnM2U_ZvRMyvh_CUM51LYSqF5nYJB9d1-w/viewform?usp=sf_link
I once read Mr. Illigs books and the starting point of this theory is, that he erred when he tried to prove, that the Gregorian calendar omitted 325 years because of a calculation error. The base of his theory is an alleged calculation error by switching from the Julian to Gregorian calendar. And then he tried to explain the missing 300+ years and came up with those other theories. He argued that the so called dark ages (with an alleged complete lack of written documents) were dark, because they just didn’t happen, which explained the lack of cultural development and documents in Europe. As far as I can remember, he did not bother to look into e.g. Arabian history writings to compare historical events.
When I was younger I thought this was interesting and a little possible. Looking back I was just really interested in alternative history ideas. As I’ve learned history I’ve learned just how utterly stupid this theory is. I can’t imagine a person taking it seriously while simultaneously having any interest in history
I realized conspiracy theories had gone off the rails when a long time friend of mine rambled for 10 minutes about the moon not being in space but in fact just a few miles away from us. He also mentioned how gravity wasnt real. When I asked how come the moon hasnt fallen out of the sky he told me I was fucking stupid.
There is something you should understand about conspiracy theorists. They don’t give a damn about evidence, unless that evidence supports their theory. I saw a quite well done flat Earth article that talked about how gyroscopes on airplanes should behave if the Earth was a spinning globe. And he was exactly correct in his analysis. The only thing he did wrong was he failed to ask a pilot how gyroscopes in airplanes actually behave. I guess he just assumed that they do not behave in that way and ran with it. He was wrong of course, because gyroscopes in airplanes do, in fact, behave in exactly the way he said they should. I pointed this out in his comments section and linked a pilot training article that describes this behavior and how to compensate for it. He responded to my comment by saying that NASA builds the gyroscopes to do that. I linked him a article that would tell him how to build his own gyroscope for not too much money but I never heard back from him.
1:00 lol, most ikea furniture are given super ordinary boy and girl names when they’re not named a fitting adjective or city name. So if you think a nordic person is named something sounding like an ikea furniture they may very well actually straight up share name with one. Eg. my chair is called Markus, which is obviously a boy’s name.
I’m a Tour Guide in York. During 866 Danish Vikings arrived and settled in York. They actual called the city Jorvik and this was later corrupted to York. The whole character of our city is Danish including our Yorkshire dialect. Evidence from this period may be rare elsewhere but York is packed with it.
In highschool I made a presentation on Illig’s theory in history class, and the teacher found it so good, that she gave me not one, but two 5s at once. (Our grading goes from 1 to 5, not from F to A) Also, I bought the book of course (‘Das Erfundene Mittelalter’), and I use it to this very day regurarely … as a wedge.
My favorite theory to debunk is the flat Earth theory, and it’s so friggin’ simple to debunk. All you have to do is ask a Flat Earther to explain how it is that when viewing Polaris, the stars appear to rotate counter-clockwise around it as time passes, and why the opposite is true when viewing Sigma Octantis. Both stars are confirmed to exist, yet the night sky spins in opposite directions depending on which you’re viewing (spoiler, one is over the North pole, the other over the South pole). Furthermore, ask them to explain why the stars at the equator appear to rise in the East and set in the West, traveling directly overhead as the night passes. They can’t, because a flat Earth isn’t possible with the celestial data we have. Not to mention if you can see Polaris, you can’t see Sigma Octantis, and vice versa. Then again, I’ve heard those nutters try to tell me Australia doesn’t exist, and that “They” knock you out with gas on the plane ride, then take you to a secret place. Again, doesn’t explain how in this secret place the stars rotate the opposite way across the sky, and that some of the stars can be seen in both, say, Europe and Australia, so clearly this “secret place” they pretend is Australia can’t be on the under side of the flat Earth.
The 614-911 phantom time isn’t created by HRE emperor Otto. It is actually created by Chinese Sui dynasty emperor Yangdi after disastrous defeat against Goguryeo. He summoned Albert Einstein by using ancient Chinese prophetic book (which was actually source code of interdimensional alien’s computer program) but it has critical exceptions so program was utterly crashed. So we actually have so-called ‘phantom time’ After disastrous interdimensional software malfunction, Sui dynasty was collapsed and new Song dynasty established. (And now you know Tang dynasty was actually fabricated by those interdimensional aliens)
When I looked up something about the history of Berne, Switzerland, I ran into an entire, over-300-pages book scan that pretty much said that the middle ages never happened *in the way it is written down*, but made in an extremely professional, “science-y” manner, and even discussed the “why did they even build this then if it was foreseeable if it is only useable for a few decades?” stuff and all. This actually discussed the renaissance period even, all the way to the 18th century, which was baffling. Basically, it shifted around a whole bunch of things and also removed a few centuries, and… yea. Actually, I should look if I can find this book again. In a way it was really interesting and entertaining.
The fun facts are that in that period, byzantine empire went into a long-lasting civil war, wars against bulgarian empire and persian, avars literally got just outside the walls of constantinople, and for the first time there seemed a slight chance of a schism between the catholic and the orthodox church. Do they seem only to me as too much for three people to come up with?
I mean, I could be pretentious and say that the ‘Byzantine’ Empire continued many roman aspects into the 15th century, or well into the Renaissance. By this argument, then, the classical era existed until the Renaissance, and boom, no middle ages. Of course, this was only in Byzantium…so even that would be a stretch, but its important to remember that roman ideas didn’t straight up vanish while all of Europe went stupid in the head in 476, regardless of whether you want to argue about certain time periods existing.
I went to an old traditional school. The history we learned revolved around one country and left one feeling that every other country was inferior. After the years went by, I realised I was being taught racism and my parents had paid a lot of money for me to be indoctrinated. After travelling myself and seeing many countries in the world, I have to look back and cringe at what I was taught back then. The world is filled with interesting people of all types and what a pity it is when one country thinks it is the greatest.
Problems with the theory : A) It does not explain the observations in ancient astronomy especially solar eclipses cited by Eurpoean sources prior to 600 AD. Some of the dates and times have confirmed eclipses. B) If Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty were invented, the history of the rest of Europe, including Anglo-Saxon England, the Papacy, and the Byzantine Empire, would have to be correspondingly fabricated. The era of “phantom time” also includes Muhammad’s life and Islamic expansion into the areas of the former Roman Empire including the conquest of Visigothic Iberia. etc etc
For me, the most damning evidence against phantom time is that Muhammad’s hijra (migration, emigration) from Mecca to Medina occurred during that time (622 in the Julian calendar), which is the starting point of the Muslim calendar. (In fact, in Arabic, the Muslim calendar is called the Hijri calendar; the Gregorian is called miladi, meaning “birthday”, in reference to its seeking to date from Jesus’ birth.) I cannot see the pope’s conspiring to convince the Arabs to invent a religious leader whose followers later fought with the Crusades.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984
the problem with this article is the Narrator has got the completely wrong period in time, the Middle ages is the 1500s, the Dark ages was 580 to 900 ish the phatom time hypothesis, talks about the time before the end of the first millennium yeah 1000 and can be proven quite easily if you take chineese astrology charts and use a computer to calculate astrological progressions of Haley’s comet etc, it will highlight the discrepancy in multiples so find a European report of Haley’s comment pre 500, and match it to the Chinese calendar event of the same day. then calculate forward till the next European sighing,
I’ve studied this for some time and just recently heard of these guys and their supposed concepts. Which makes me believe this website is full of $h!t! This was terrible! For anyone serious on this subject, try reading: Anatoly T. Fomenko – History Fiction or Science. He is all Brains. I’ve never heard of anyone with so many accolades & diplomas on top of everything else! He puts it into perspective and easily will show this website is another propaganda spreading outlet for the ones who have money. He brought up 3/points here and couldn’t even refute them. But, there’s so much more. websites like this are disgusting.
When pope Gregory reformed the calendar and wanted to skip 10 days, a group of people in Greece rejected him and continued to use the Julian calendar. To this day they still use that calendar. If her couldn’t get everyone to agree on 10 days, there’s no way people would unanimously decide to shift 300 years into the future
When I first learned about this theory as an archeology undergraduate, my first thought was “What about all the tree ring dating we can do? Wouldn’t that show those years definitely did exist?” and it turns out, yes, this theory is extremely easy to demonstrate as compete nonsense. It got some weird serious news coverage originally to an extent niche conspiracy theories don’t usually get so it had an air of more ” seriousness” about it. But it is actually just as silly as any other.
So the sub-layman understanding of history is: Caveman/Early humans > Mesopotamia (Too long; didn’t read, and not enough popular media covers it) > Ancient Greece > Ancient Rome (Didn’t actually exist because no documents exist, even though they do, but I don’t want to spend time doing actual research) > Middle Ages > The Renaissance
Kinda off topic but something I always wondered is how dates are reconciled. For example. There are documents from the early middle ages that are dated 987 and when we refer to such documents we say they were written in 987. However, the Gregorian Calendar we use today was only invented in 1582. That would mean there are days that would be missing between 987 and 1582 that were never calculated or accounted for between the two calendar systems.
I have (entirely) read a french ebook that supports an ever stupider theory : that the period between the fall of Rome and Renaissance didn’t happen ! That’s a frickin thousand years, and the guy explains that with comets (totally proving he knows nothing about comets), which is both hilarious and painstaking.
The problem is not that the MA don’t exist. It’s that HS and Uni history classes decided not to teach about it. A huge number of game changing ideas developed in that period, that changed the Europe from the Empire of the city of Rome to a collection of Nations on the cusp of scientific revolution and global exploration and universal human rights. Things Rome wasn’t capable of.
That guy was less a conspiracy theorist than a moron. The Gregorian calendar did two things: 1. It realigned the calendar with the annual solar extremes (maximums and minimums). 2. It instituted leap days to account for the difference between actual annual solar revolutions and the revolutions between extremes. It did not go back and redate the historical record. It replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar.
As a Medieval Hostorian I say… no. That is a lot of years, and these three figures did not do this. The Eastern Roman/Byzantine Emiper simply called themselves Roman Empire. They also tried retaking Italy and that was literally smashing. Lastly the medieval period covers roughly 500 to 1500 for simplicity sake, and is subdivided into early medieval, high medieval, and late medieval.
I have another argument of why middle ages didn’t exist. In the middle ages existed several number of mythic creatures that don’t exist today. It goes from unicorns, elves, giant snails to orcs, goblins and else. So, as they actually didn’t exist, but in middle ages did, then this means that fictional years created fictional creatures… (Ha ha).
I thought HAI had made a small error, but I’ve decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. He said that the years 614-911 were phantom. Then when talking about the solar eclipse in 59 AD said it should have been 238 BC. Well, 911 – 614 = 297 and 59 – 297 = -238, BUT that is 239 BC, not 238 BC. On the other hand if 614 to 911 were all missing, that actually represents 298 years. But 59 – 298 = -239 = 240 BC (which is even worse!). However, if the missing years were between 614 and 911 – that the year 614 was followed by 911 – then the missing years are 615 to 910, a total of 296 years. 59 AD – 296 = -237 = 238 BC as he said. (Sorry, I’m obsessed with BC-AD miscalculations, which are rife on historical YouTube articles.)
De islamitische kalender (ook wel heigiriaanse kalender of Arabische kalender) is een tijdrekening met als beginpunt het jaar waarin de hidjra of hegira, de migratie van Mohammed van Mekka naar Jathrib (tegenwoordig Medina), plaatsvond. Dit jaar begon (volgens de juliaanse kalender) op 15 of 16 juli 622. We zijn nu in het jaar 1443.
I think this is mostly based off the idea that we know where we are in the galaxy at a particular time, but we can’t exactly know how far we’re off. Like who knows for a fact it’s 365. Whatever? How could they have known back then without accurate time keeping? Even modern day, there’s no real way to judge distance from the sun, the earth revolves around the sun but not in a perfectly set rotation. It’s more like trying to hit a penny, from a speeding car during Daytona 500, with a blindfold and a rubber band to accurately predict. Think of the sun as a target, the earth is you as a sniper, the slightest movement on your end can drastically change where your round will hit the target or the sun.
Here’s what happened, Aliens abducted Elvis, JFK, Paul walker and the Middle Ages. In an attempt to make a fast and furious movie based on chromed out armoured bell bottom wearing horses but Tesla shot Neil Armstrong with a “fre$h” ray gun causing him to defeat the aliens break dancing lunar champion, in retribution and cause they were on military grade psychedelics(it took them awhile to come round) the aliens decided about 10-15yrs ago to flatten the earth. That’s what happened.
1:28 “knights, pillaging and cholera” … in Europe, there was no cholera in the Middle Ages. The first cholera epidemic to touch the Mediterranean or Brits was this one: “The first cholera pandemic (1817–1824), also known as the first Asiatic cholera pandemic or Asiatic cholera, began near the city of Calcutta and spread throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Eastern Africa and the Mediterranean coast. While cholera had spread across India many times previously, this outbreak went further; it reached as far as China and the Mediterranean Sea before subsiding. Millions of people died as a result of this pandemic, including many British soldiers, which attracted European attention. This was the first of several cholera pandemics to sweep through Asia and Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. This first pandemic spread over an unprecedented range of territory, affecting almost every country in Asia.” So, vibrio cholerae is endemic to some places in the Far East, like India. It came to spread that far because of modern highly international global capitalism. Both of which were absent from Medieval Europe.
The funny thing is, the name Conspiracy THEORY is wrongly used (on purpose)… Theory means an idea that have been tested and came out to be correct. While Hypothesis means an idea that wasn’t tested, or it’s tests came out wrong or inconclusive. I.e. theoretically 2+2=4 But hypothetically 2+2 could be 5 if there are hidden numbers in the occasion, (like being actually 2,5+2,5)… So it would only be correct to say “conspiracy theory” if such ideas was tested and verified as true, so in the given case its a conspiracy Hypothesis, or conspiracy idea, but I don’t think that would create as much hype and clicks, would it?
You glossed over the most important bit about Roman architecture tho… This is gonna blow your mind; ***The Roman empire didnt fall in 475 AD***. That was the Western Roman Empire; the Eastern Roman Empire (renamed the Byzantine Empire by more modern historians to prevent confusion; but nvr once called such when it was still a thing) lasted for another whole millennium! And sure, by the end of that they were very distinct from the old western Roman empire, but they still were using many of the building techniques handed down since Roman times. But ofc, as they werent in western europe; the conspiracy theorists dont care about all that.
I think there needs to be differentiating terminology between batshit insane conspiracy theories and reasonable conspiracy theories. The term has become synonymous with the batshit stuff, and I’m all for that. I just get my panties in a bunch when simple, normal, academically and scientifically reasonable questions and/or theories are posed and they get shoved into the category of The Middle Ages Never Existed and Ancient Aliens. Anyone relate??
History happens. It’s cool to think that we’ve been duped all of this time, but guess what, i wasn’t there. I know my lifetime and now they are saying the Mandela effect is saying it’s not all together true. Hogwash. Or is it. I do remember Mandela dying in prison, i remember because I didn’t know who he was and there was media attention and then I found out, then later the media announced his death and I’m like i thought he was already dead
I like the article. Just wondering if using the terms BC and AD is because that’s how they were historically named? Most secular and scientific outlets have changed to BCE and CE to avoid all that religious connotation. Using BC and AD always take me out of whatever I’m perusal/reading/listening to because it instantly makes me think that the intended audience is not the wider secular population. Not saying that is the intention here, but BC/AD seem out of place in such an informative article.