We all have that friend or family member that believes in the most ludicrous things, convinced of a conspiracy that doesn't fit into the reality shared by the rest of us. I don't think an empirical mindset is the default for humans, but is something that's built over time, usually through education (though I wonder how much of our bullshit-detector calibration arrives with us at birth).
I also don't believe that an empirical mindset is with us at all times. In fact, I'd estimate that we are incredibly fallible beings with no good reasons for thinking and behaving the way we do the majority of the time.
I don't want to sound like I'm knocking on "gullible people" because every human is capable of all sorts of cognitive errors. Emotions is what makes us human. However, as emotional beings, even the most rational among us are capable of misguided beliefs. We are prone to believing in things without any rational reason. We see agency where none exists, because natural selection favors the paranoid. Evolution selects for those who think "I see a lion in the bush", whether or not the lion is there. The human standing there raising doubts and pondering the philosophical will sometimes be eaten be eaten by that lion thus preventing their genes from proliferating.
As pattern recognition creatures, connecting random events is something we do naturally, and it gives us the feeling of understanding the world we're in. Pattern recognition is one of our best traits, though it can often be wrong (believing the lion is in the bush, or seeing the face on the surface of Mars).
We tend to anthropomorphize objects, attributing agency to random events. Conspiracy theories help us make sense of an otherwise incomprehensible world. We feel better believing there's someone behind the curtain, even if that someone is a shadowy government or the Illuminati. It's reassuring knowing someone is in charge because chaos is a scary thought for many of us.
Conspiracy thinking also makes our our small lives more interesting. Earth is boring, so let's suspend our disbelief and entertain the idea that aliens constructed the pyramids. This reality is far more interesting and fun!
These beliefs are also cheap to hold, because most of them don't impact the believer's actual life. Believing that Zuckerberg is a lizard person is absurd, but it costs you nothing day to day.
There's also the lack of falsifiability. The absence of evidence becomes evidence of a cover-up. Our pattern matching runs one direction.
You're also more likely to believe in strange things because that's the shared belief of the group you identify with. People process evidence in whatever way protects their standing in a social group they value. Beliefs are membership badges, so abandoning one costs you socially even it doesn't align with the facts. We also commit "Argumentum ad populum", the fallacy that asserts something is true because many people believe it. "Many people believe X, therefore X is true". Surrounding oneself in online communities that share content from a few sources, solidifying the belief, all the while believing it's a common perspective believed by more people than really do.
These are just a few thoughts after interacting with a couple different people over the past year.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to send comments, questions, or recommendations to [email protected].