Six impossible things before breakfast

… they asked 102 college students about the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). People who believed that “when the raid took place, OBL was already dead,” were significantly more likely to also believe that “OBL is still alive.” … Conspiracy belief is so potent that it will lead to belief in completely inconsistent ideas.

But in fact it’s perfectly sensible for these two ideas to go together.  Suppose you had asked me in late April 2011 how likely I thought it that:

1. Osama bin Laden was already dead
2. Osama bin Laden would die during May 2011
3. Osama bin Laden would still be alive at the end of May 2011.

I probably would have given probabilities something like 20%, 2%, 78%: it was quite possible that Osama has already died, but if not, it wasn’t especially likely to happen during May.  In late May, I would have revised this to something like 2%, 98%, and roughly 0% — it’s quite conceivable that the US found he was already dead and lied about it, but it’s unlikely that they made up the whole thing without getting caught.

That is, information I received during May 2011 made both (1) and (3) seem much less likely.   Someone who didn’t believe that information (or who hadn’t heard it) would rationally assign a higher probability to both (1) and (3), even though they are inconsistent.

If you think everyone is always lying to you, you’ll think a whole lot of things are possible that other people don’t believe.  Occasionally, you’ll be right, and it would be great if climate change was one of those times.  Unfortunately, it’s not.

PS:  Yeah, the economics thing. Genuine free-market economists tend to believe in climate change and basically to approve of carbon pricing (even if they can be sceptical about specific proposals).

I think free market economics correlates with the conspiracy theories in this survey for three main reasons.  The first is that most of the conspiracy theories on the list are conspiracies by or with governments, so believers should support anything that reduces the power of governments.  The second is that, economists, like statisticians, are professionally required to think up holes in arguments, and so suffer from reflexive contrarianism as an occupational hazard. And finally, when it comes to giving excuses for not wanting to do anything about climate change, what “free-market economics” and “IPCC plot” have in common is that they sound better than “I don’t care what happens to the world over the next century”