Jon, I think it’s a good question and a vexed one. Agree with Henry that the issue more complicated than just logic and mathematics. And with Rick that bias is baked into human intelligence i.e. it’s a feature not a bug of human intelligence. It’s what allows us to select out information from the vast sea we are immersed in. Any minimally functioning human being has to be biased. But that means it can turn on us in all sorts of ways.
The list of contentious views that Richard and Vineeto have on a number of subjects are fairly long - climate change, smoking, NWO (didn’t know about that one) and a fair few others. But this isn’t something unique to them. There does seem to be something in the culture whereby alternative narratives are springing up against mainstream scientific/political views and if anything the process is accelerating. Probably something to do with the democratisation and fragmentation of information since the internet age - sped up now by social media.
Then there’s the thornier question of whether this sort of contrarianism (assuming it’s not entirely correct) has anything to do with actual freedom or not, its progenitors or actually free people in general. Maybe the better question is why are actually free people not protected from the sorts of everyday selection biases and logical leaps that we associate with conspiracy theorists - or even just normal feeling being persons? Does actual freedom give one a privileged and neutral POV in terms of weighing evidence? But if so why do these ideas sound like recycled conspiracy memes, rather than something refreshingly novel - like actual freedom itself? Given I haven’t heard these views from anyone other than Richard and Vineeto, I don’t think it’s something related to actual freedom. My guess is it’s something to do with their individual personalities and histories. But maybe there is a contrarian pull that is part of the territory of actualism. I tend to hold views on things that are quite different from friends and peers I’ve noticed - although not like the ones here mentioned.