Sometimes even smart people get bamboozled and misled by some conspiracy theories, and that's because those are often presented like outright scams: The people behind the creation of the conspiracy theory, if they are talented enough and know what they are doing, concoct this elaborate picture of something in a way that sounds extremely believable, if the subject matter is new to you. They essentially present a "here are all the facts, you decide" piece of work which has been carefully designed to sound competent, complete and reliable... while in fact it engages in an enormous amount of cherry-picking, selection bias, hiding evidence that contradicts the conspiracy theory (or sometimes even presenting said evidence but distorted in a manner that makes it appear to actually support the conspiracy theory), and outright fabricating "facts" that are not true.
Almost nobody is immune to this any more than they are immune to scams in general. Even the smartest and savviest of people, even those who have actually studied and researched all sorts of forms of scams and con artistry, and who are outright experts on those subjects and could hold an hour-long lecture about them on the spot... are not completely immune to scams. If the scam is clever enough, presented in a way that even the expert doesn't recognize, is about a subject that the expert hasn't heard of before in relation to scams and conspiracy theories, and is presented in a plausible-enough manner, even the expert can fall for it. At least temporarily.
And that last sentence is the crucial thing: Only temporarily.
That's what distinguishes the actual intelligent person from the less-intelligent ones: The intelligent person encounters or does research on the subject, finds out all the facts (not just the cherry-picked ones presented by the scam), and realizes that it was just a scam or baseless conspiracy theory, and learns from his mistake. "Good one, you got me for a moment. Very clever."
Of course the order in which the two things happen affects the outcome clearly: If a normal person encounters the debunking of the scam or conspiracy theory first, especially if it's competent and comprehensive, fact-based debunking, that usually kind of "immunizes" the person with knowledge: From that point forward the person is aware of that scam or conspiracy theory, and if he ever encounters it in the wild, he already knows that it's just that, and recognizes all the tricks and deception going on.
So in most cases it's essentially a race: Who gets to the unwary person first, the scammer or the debunker? If the scammer or conspiracy theorists reaches the person first, the likelihood of getting a victim is much higher.
Sometimes, however, someone who was deceived by a conspiracy theory not only embraces it fully, but becomes a True Believer who will be extremely difficult or even impossible to "deconvert", no matter how much the actual truth is explained to him. He will start rejecting all counter-arguments, all explanations, all the facts that contradict the conspiracy theory, no matter how simply and clearly presented.
I have the impression that it requires a particular type of cognitive level, a particular kind of intelligence and perhaps personality, which may well be innate, for someone to become a True Believer who just outright refuses to listen to reason afterwards.
I have that impression because I have noticed that the vast, vast majority of such people do not believe in just one such conspiracy theory. They tend to believe almost all of them. Almost all conspiracy theories that are presented to them, they tend to believe or, at a very minimum, consider plausible. (The only exception to this is if the conspiracy theory goes completely against their personal convictions, eg. against their religion. As an example, Christians will almost never believe a conspiracy theory that goes against Christianity, and that's because, in essence, Christianity "got to them first", and secured that foothold.)
There might well be people out there who stubbornly believe just one particular conspiracy theory, refusing to listen to reason, but do not believe in any of the others and considers them ridiculous. However, if there are, I have never encountered one. Most of the time a person who stubbornly believes in one, believes in multiple ones, often a dozen at minimum. They somehow have a propensity to believing conspiracy theories (at least ones that do not directly conflict with their personal convictions, eg. religious ones.)
But why do these people believe in conspiracy theories, and stubbornly keep believing against all evidence of the contrary?
There something else I have noticed that might actually be telling about the reason. And that's that the first kind of people I described at the beginning of this post, ie. the actual smart people who know about scams and conspiracy theories but might still get fooled by a particularly clever one, if they do fall for a conspiracy theory it tends to be one that actually sounds plausible and does not involve some kind of huge world-wide or governmental cover-up requiring the involvement of hundreds of thousands of even millions of people.
The scams and conspiracy theories that fool smart people tend to be much smaller in scale. Perhaps a claim about a particular private company, or a particular product, a particular person or small group of people, or the like. Something that actually sounds plausible and possible in actual reality. For example, a company covering up an internal secret thing or mistake sounds plausible. An individual person or very small group of people conspiring to do something nefarious sounds plausible. That kind of thing.
The smart people, however, extremely rarely fall for the implausible conspiracy theories, ie. the ones that would require an impossibly large conspiracy and which go completely against all reason (such as, for example, every single scientist, researcher, engineer and expert in the world being in on the conspiracy, never spilling the beans, never blowing the whistle, and this having been so for literally hundreds of years.) Not that the smart people never fall for them, but it's rare.
(I have also noticed that when smart people do fall for the silliest conspiracy theories, these people tend to be religious, usually Christians. Some kind of common psychology may be going on behind the scenes.)
So, why do the less-than-smart (and in a few cases even smart) people not only fall for the silly conspiracy theories and stubbornly refuse to listen to reason even when it's clearly presented to them?
One of the key factors is the sense of surprise and awe that they experience when first presented with the conspiracy theory. That "wow!" factor, that "I never knew about this!" factor. It excites their imagination and curiosity, just like an awesome visual show might excite a small child. That "wow!" factor might actually cause a rush of dopamine or other hormones to be produced in their brains. They get a strong sense of awe, of enlightenment, of having been revealed something incredible and stupendous. It's mind-boggling! (Unlike a spectacular visual show, the "wow!" factor might not be immediate, but build up over the tens of minutes or hours, when eg. the conspiracy theory pseudo-documentary is playing, but it's still very similar.)
After that, they get the strong feeling of belonging to an elite group of people who are "in the know", of knowing the deep secrets behind the scenes that the vast majority of people don't know nor are aware of. In other words, they get a sense of superiority. They get a sense of belonging to a privileged special group, a group that's privy to secret knowledge. It's like belonging to a highly esteemed private club. It's exciting.
They often gush about it to other people, like family members and friends: "Did you know about this? It's incredible! It's secret knowledge that only very few people know!" And then, regardless of what happens, they feel rewarded: If the other person starts believing, they get a sense of validation and camaraderie, having "recruited" another member to the privileged elite club. If the other person rejects this information, it just gives them a sense of smugness and intellectual superiority: Stupid people can't understand such privileged knowledge, and are just deluded by the system.
That smugness is pretty much ubiquitous to conspiracy theory believes. Just read, for example, the comment section of any popular flat-earther youtuber, and the comments that are not just sucking the d*ck of the video author will reek of smugness, of an air of superiority and disdain for the "peasants" who have been fooled by the system and don't realize it. (Which, of course, is quite ironic.)
It's precisely that sense of superiority, that smugness, that attitude of being superior to the fooled masses, that keeps them believing. It rewards certain parts of the brain.
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