No, technically they're not just a set of beliefs. You're leaving out the significant "conspiracy" part of the beliefs.
External Quote:
A
conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a
conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation),
[3][4][5] when other explanations are more probable.
[3][6][7] The term generally has a negative
connotation, implying that the appeal of a conspiracy theory is based in prejudice, emotional conviction, or insufficient evidence.
[8] A conspiracy theory is distinct from a conspiracy; it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy with specific characteristics, including but not limited to opposition to the mainstream consensus among those who are qualified to evaluate its accuracy, such as
scientists or
historians.
[9][10][11] As such conspiracy theories are identified as
lay theories.
Conspiracy theories tend to be internally consistent and correlate with each other;
[12] they are generally designed to resist
falsification either by evidence against them or a lack of evidence for them.
[13] They are reinforced by
circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy
and absence of evidence for it are misinterpreted as evidence of its truth.
[8][14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory
While a simple belief held by an individual may indeed resist change, it doesn't have the same sticking power as the same belief framed as "
THEY don't want you to know that ____".
The article delves into both the psychology and the history of conspiracy beliefs, and is well worth a read.
The first part is part of my point a bit about how we reference "conspiracy theories" are subjective. We have a very large amount of cases here on the forum even where "conspiracy theory"-aligned claims are made
without a definitional conspiracy as presented here. This is the proper definition of conspiracy theory and I do not debate its use, rather identifying the fact we also assume people think there's a conspiracy when it's related to something we consider a "conspiracy theory". We have to be careful with that and it requires active consideration. This isn't a bad faith thing it just happens because of social connotations and how we're conditioned to discuss the surrounding topics.
My point above, is yes, they are just sets of beliefs. What you pointed out would be an addition to the set of beliefs, the same as we all have additions to our sets of beliefs. Rather than say, browsing Twitter to answer a question, we may come to a medium filled with specialists and experts in respective fields and ascertain from them. Considering the fact there are a large quantity of "conspiracy theory" claims that are only such because we consider it so, and the other party isn't actually thinking of any conspiracies. This is one of the issues our side holds in the community that ends up being divisive in debate, because there are a lot of cases where we take the assumption someone is framing a "conspiracy" when in reality they do not know and are legitimately seeking answers.
All conspiracies follow the same exact sequence, and it's the same sequence used for similar situations that have no "conspiracy" consideration.
>We are exposed to information related to something real that is incomplete, and in its incomplete state, does not fit into our cognition. This is the 'gap'.
>We seek to fill the gap in information by seeking out, and if we cannot find any, creating reasons for it that fit within our cognition. This is where what you pointed out in the second part comes in, eg, this is the step where someone may create a conspiracy by framing the "they" as part of a cognitive sequence to reason that gap to ourselves. We don't have the information because they don't want you to know it.
This is also how we normally process information, there's nothing unique about the processing aspect there. We all do the exact same thing to varying extents. Those who are more vulnerable to it are usually so not because of what we'd consider conspiracies but rather things like biases and impactors to them (though if you're socially conditioned by any "conspiracy" that'd be fairly considerable).
We can reframe the above for example. I'll present two frames of it for both ends but they're not super in depth there's a world of factors in it. For situational framing also, this is the same situation, just framed for different parts of the community.
>Bob sees something in the sky he can't identify. This is the gap - he can't reason what he saw.
>He looks it up online. For a multitude of reasons, that gap being what he can't identify, he falls in alignment to the 'believer' audiences.
>Bob does not develop the belief there is some "they" behind the phenomena, but rather perceives it as unidentified. He does resist conventional explanations because, for a multitude of reasons (some potentially overlapping, some not with the above) they do not 'fit' into his ability to reason the gap.
>Jane sees Bobs comments on a major UFO memer personalities post here he mentions his own experience. This is the gap for Jane, she doesn't fully know what Bob is thinking.
>For whatever reason Jane may be curious, she does not know exactly what Bob is thinking. She reads his other posts to get a better read on it, and the "gap" is filled by seeing Bob a) continuously resist conventional explanation, and b) interacting with the "believer" end of the community.
>Jane does not develop the belief that Bob is part of the devout "believer" audience, but does develop the belief that Bob is promoting a conspiracy theory.
While a bit different, both of these are cases where there is a "gap" of information that creates a need or interest to fulfill, and in both cases each party only observes fragmented information that develops their eventual belief. Both sides end up making an incorrect conclusion within the context of a "conspiracy theory" aligned subject. Though only Bob is classed a conspiracy theorist because his specific claim, was conceptually aligned with other peoples claims who do view a conspiracy behind it (rather than Bob being classed that way BECAUSE he views a conspiracy behind it). For contextual reference, Jane would not be a conspiracy theorist, though neither would Bob since neither meet the definition but in social conversations, not generally held.
