It seems like many conspiracy theories — even the most extreme ones — are growing in popularity. To understand why, I chat with Dr David Grimes, physicist, cancer researcher and author of The Irrational Ape about the science behind belief-building and how we can more accurately determine fact from fiction. It’s a long chat that covers everything from the hot-topic of 5G & COVID-19 to freedom of speech and probability theory – see timestamps below for specific topics.

(Oh and apologies for the weird black screen cuts with my name on it, for obvious lockdown reasons this was recorded remotely over Zoom and the camera kept cutting out (and mine also stopped recording me halfway through coz technology will technology) so this was the best my post-editing could achieve, sorry!)

@1:48 – Coronavirus, 5G and Occam’s razor
@12:27 – Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence & Bayes Rule
@28:58 – How can we counter dangerous false narratives without damaging freedom of speech?
@37:30 – how to mathematically determine whether a conspiracy theory is likely to be true

David’s paper on the mathematics of conspiracies: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art…
Check out more of his work here: https://t.co/to9e2nSy0J?amp=1