The Trouble With Conspiracies

To make my point I'd like to start with an absurd example, and then move on to lesser idiotic ones.

Let's say someone named AbdulRahman, (choosing my own name so as not to offend anyone else), had a phobia of people named Ahmed. AbdulRahman is "Ahmedo-phobic". He absolutely mistrusts anyone named Ahmed, he is automatically suspicious when dealing with Ahmeds and believes them to be "bad" people. Now, AbdulRahman works in a company, and this company is looking for a new employee. AbdulRahman is part of a panel that interviews candidates for the job, one of whom is of course named Ahmed. As soon as he sees the name his guard is naturally up, and he is now looking for signs to discredit Ahmed. He will not readily admit to others that his reason for not trusting Ahmed is based purely on his name, because that's just insane. So he looks for other reasons to back his decision not to hire Ahmed. The company doesn't hire Ahmed in the end, because of AbdulRahman's manipulations. 

A few months later, AbdulRahman chances on an articles that talks about an incident regarding fraud, and the fraudster mentioned in the article is that very Ahmed that wasn't hired recently. AbdulRahman feels blessed, and more convinced about his phobia. He was right not to trust Ahmed.

But of course, he wasn't. Just in case you need me to make it clear, the reasoning behind not hiring Ahmed, behind not trusting Ahmed, was completely flawed. Stupid is too small a word for it.

Moving on to the less (but still) stupid and more realistic examples. Say AbdulRahman was a racist who didn't like black people. He rejected Ahmed because of his skin color and not because of his name, and later on felt more convinced about his racist belief when he discovered that Ahmed was indeed a thief. 

Of course, Ahmed being a thief is neither the result of his name nor his skin color. The reasoning is still erroneous, as most rational people would agree.

What is the problem here? AbdulRahman's racism or insane phobia is protecting him in this example from being conned. Yes, but that is merely by chance. His reasoning is completely flawed, it is not based at all on facts and logic, not based on the sayings and experiences of the person in front of him. It is based on entirely irrelevant traits.

This also works with ideological positions, and ideological "predispositions", as people of one ideology might be inclined not to trust people of an opposing ideology and judge based on that rather than a person's own merits. If AbdulRahman were a socialist with a disdain for capitalists, and Ahmed wasn't hired because of that, when Ahmed turns out to be a thief his views on economics are irrelevant. Conservatives and liberals, Sunnis and Shiites, the examples goes on. If you come up with a conspiracy theory based on your ideology, and you construct the facts based on a view you are ideologically predisposed to see, if the conspiracy turns out by chance accurate, it doesn't make your reasoning correct. 

If you're judging by ideology rather than by facts and logic, you're still like the AbdulRahman who hates all Ahmeds.