Conspiracy theories are interesting from the perspective of auxiliary hypotheses because they often require a spiraling proliferation of auxiliaries to stay afloat. Each tenuous hypothesis needs an additional tenuous hypothesis to lend it plausibility, which in turn needs more tenuous hypotheses, until the theory embraces an enormous explanatory scope.
How to never be wrong – Samuel J. Gershman
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-018-1488-8
The “knot.”
It’s quite a leap, out of context and abstracted, but the pattern is similar. A kind of slippery slope where “truth” is disguised by a progressive retreat, until it becomes too mentally exhausting to pursue.
Conspiracy theories are founded on laziness. For the most part, those who watch Dark and embrace its “concept” are simply lazy enough to accept the explanation as a good one.
Apparent complexity creates a puppeteered truth, a fabricated reality that can confirm and reinforce biases. Or used for propaganda.
These times of pervasive epistemological collapse.
