People resist randomness and seek deliberate agents behind major events

Evidence

Three mental processes create the predisposition to see powerful hidden forces controlling events. First, we look for intentionality in events. People are averse to regarding anything of social and political importance as random, accidental, or unintended. It is an intolerably “absurdist image of the world to think that a series of coincidences changes the course of history.” In this respect, however convoluted its reasoning and evidence (or absence of evidence), conspiracism is simple, formulaic: the proposition that things are the deliberate work of powerful people is a constant. This is not to say that we correctly identify the agents responsible or their intention, only that we resist randomness and impersonal processes and unintended consequences. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to chapter 1’s account of conspiracism and to any epistemic-work theory (e.g. Tetlock’s aversion to randomness, and the proportionality argument in [116]). — connects to: People resist randomness and prefer intentional explanations for important events. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 115; Ordinary people can generate conspiracy theories on demand — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 218; Disproportionate effect-to-cause gaps drive people toward conspiracy explanations — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 116 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: how institutional explanations (which must routinely cite impersonal forces, accident, and unintended consequences) are structurally handicapped against conspiracy narratives in public discourse.

Broader Connections

• People resist randomness and prefer intentional explanations for important events. #corroborates (0.95) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 115
• Ordinary people can generate conspiracy theories on demand #exemplifies (0.80) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 218
• Disproportionate effect-to-cause gaps drive people toward conspiracy explanations #corroborates (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 116
• Casting targeted actors as irrational masks their strategic rationality and motives #complicates (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 351