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One can notice certain similarities between domains of

  • biology, in which live organisms cope with viruses
  • sociology, where societies cope with destructive ideologies

Drawing an analogy, we can imagine practices of social 'vaccination', where society may create supervised 'honeypot' extremist organizations which attract and supervise individuals succeptible to certain spectrum of 'viral' and destructive ideas.

I assume that intelligence agencies are practicing something similar to this, but is there a sociological theory describing this approach?

IlliakaillI
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    [This article](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/disinformation-conspiracy-theories-inoculation-edelman-corporate-america-1132325/) has an alternate notion of "inoculation" against misinformation, called "prebunking", although the study [here](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2020043118) seems to raise doubts about its effectiveness. – Hypnosifl Mar 29 '22 at 02:14
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    "supervised 'honeypot' extremist organizations" like Stalin's Operation Trust, and perhaps (some suspect) QAnon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trust – user4894 Mar 29 '22 at 04:08
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    @Hypnosifl What exactly is a "conspiracy theory?" The granddaddy conspiracy theory of them all is the JFK assassination. Yet the 1977 House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that, "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." Most people don't realize that it's the official position of the US Congress that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy. So who decides what is true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_Assassinations – user4894 Mar 29 '22 at 04:51
  • @user4894 - The article seemed to be about new claims bubbling up on social media, perhaps they looked for cases where they could trace the origin and see that they were unfounded? It also mentions past use of "prebunking" to try to deal with new false claims by deniers of anthropogenic climate change. I don't think they were going after long-preexisting conspiracy theories like ones about the JFK assassination--certainly it's possible some of them (especially ones that wouldn't have required large numbers of people to be in on it) are true. – Hypnosifl Mar 29 '22 at 21:13
  • (cont.) However, in the specific case of the JFK assassination, while there might have been some conspiracy I don't think that 1977 report is good evidence for it. According to the same wikipedia article you linked, the sole piece of evidence that led them to conclude a conspiracy was an analysis of a [dictabelt police audio recording](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_Dictabelt_recording), but a later National Academy of Sciences report from a panel of experts unanimously concluded that the dictabelt recording didn't actually show evidence of a second shot. – Hypnosifl Mar 29 '22 at 21:17
  • @Hypnosifl "I don't think that 1977 report is good evidence" -- I never said any different. What I said was that it is the position of the US Congress that there was a conspiracy. That is an unassailable fact -- *even if they are wrong*. I hope you can see that, and can re-read exactly what I said. The larger point is that "conspiracy theory" is a phrase commonly used to impede thought, to smear people with alternative viewpoints. We're meant to envision flat earthers and moon landing deniers when we hear people trying to explain to us the nefarious workings of the national security state. – user4894 Mar 30 '22 at 04:46
  • @Hypnosifl I should also take the opportunity to debunk the idea that conspiracies involving a "large number of people" are out of the question. 130,000 people worked on the Manhattan project and never said a peep. Nor was that only during wartime. The Manhattan project was not fully declassified till 1994. Likewise the US government has tens of millions of classified documents. You don't know what's in them, because people do keep secrets secret. Again, the larger point is not to be fooled by the smear, "conspiracy theory." Governments do lots of things they'd prefer that you not know about. – user4894 Mar 30 '22 at 04:52
  • @user4894 Specialized technical info seen by a small number of professionals is probably easier to keep secret, I'd associate "conspiracy theory" with facts that would be shocking to the general public, like the atomic bomb itself--this secret was leaked to the Soviets by a number of sympathizers involved in the Manhattan Project, see https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1945/espionage.htm , so in an alternate universe where the Allies didn't make the existence of the bomb public, I doubt it could have remained out of public knowledge for more than a few years. – Hypnosifl Mar 30 '22 at 21:47

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