[TheOtherHobbes]

Conspiracy theories are a bug in Human Space - a problem that only exists because we exchange information with other humans, and we rely on informal systems of narrative logic to do it quickly and efficiently.

And we're most impressionable when emotionally agitated, which is why conspiracy theories are a combination of nonsense narratives and powerful emotional triggers.

If you're an octopus you're going to have misbeliefs and poor assumptions, but they're your own work. It's not clear that octopuses share much - if any - information in the way that (for example) corvids do.