How "Conspiratory" are Conspiracy Theories?

I've been thinking a lot about conspiracy theories. I'm not going to go into any detail about the conspiracy theories I've been thinking about simply because it's not necessarily the point I want to make. I know many people believe conspiracy theories over "the truth". But what is "the truth" except a subjective set of theories practiced consistently into fact and presented to the masses. What is truth? Does the saying, "what is true for you may not be true for me" really apply?

I remember being told this story, a parable of sorts. It's unclear to me of it's origination, but I think that's beside the point. It's one of my favorites, and for the sake of time, I'll briefly go over it's synopsis (but there's many resources out there for the full story). Blind men encountered an elephant. They all began attempting to define what an elephant was simply by touching it. Each held a part of the elephant and so each described the elephant according to their part. They all claimed that an elephant was the part they held. None were wrong, but none were entirely right either. They were all partially right, holding a piece of the truth from different perspectives.

How much of the world do we think we know, but is promptly based in illusion? There is something called the Illusion of Knowledge. I learned this from watching Brain Games with my students. Essentially, the Illusion of Knowledge is the notion that we understand more about the world than we actually do. It creates a false sense of security and confidence so we can go about our daily lives without dreading the unknown (because we already believe we know the basics of how everything works).

Apparently, the Illusion of Knowledge in individuals is inflating with the increase of internet usage according to Yale Journal of Experimental Psychology. For brevity, it states that there are two types of memory for which humans store their knowledge: "internal memory ('What do I know?') and external memory ('Who knows what?')". With the rise internet, "people rely on information they know they can find online and thus track external memory (who knows the answer), but do not retain internal memory (the actual answer)." So when we use the internet for information, we don't necessarily gather the information. We don't really know the information, we simply know where to redirect ourselves to find it. Due to this consistent redirection to the internet, we subconsciously believe that we know more because we have access to such vast information at the tips of fingers which further develops the Illusion of Knowledge.

So how does all this relate to conspiracy theories? Well, what is a conspiracy theory? According to The New Oxford American Dictionary - 3rd Edition, a conspiracy theory is "a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event." So how does the Illusion of Knowledge and the parable (Blind Men and an Elephant) relate to conspiracy theories? I don't really have an answer... I suppose I have more questions in response:

• What part of the elephant do I have? What part do you have?

• Is it possible that things aren't as simple as black and white? That the binaries we create are part of the human nature to categorize for survival, but not necessarily for accuracy of understanding the world?

• How much do we really know and how much do we disregard simply because we don't understand it or it's an unpopular thought?