The thing about conspiracy theorists is they tend to be the type of people who will never admit they are wrong. The amount of otherwise seemingly well educated rational people who try and convince me the moon landings were staged is quite incredible. When I reply: you do know that the US was in a race with the Soviets and they were able to track to the Apollo spacecraft all the way to the moon and back. Do you not think if it was faked the Soviet Union would have been the first to jump up and down and cry foul - rather than having to wipe egg off their face?
Oh yes I'm told, but they were complicit in the conspiracy also!
While I don’t disagree with your overall conclusions, I am not sure that conspiracies by your definition are all that rare. In fact, I think that it is quite common. It is really a form of cooperation between two or more people that other people deem as bad or immoral.
People are always scheming for their own benefit and engaging others in their plan. Every organization has a large number of them, particularly in management. Gossip is the most common form, and that gossip often leads to a person gaining an advantage over another.
The key factor is the overall impact to the rest of society. 99.9999% have little impact on the rest of society so no one calls it a conspiracy. When it has a big negative impact, then people call it a conspiracy. When it has a big positive impact, people call it “visionary leadership.”
Every startup is a conspiracy by a small group of people to change the world, in some sense.
You have a good point that when we talk about Conspiracies we’re mostly concerned about those with a political impact or that are fraudulent and impact a lot of people in some way.
A lot of conspiracy theories find holes in the official story that should not be there. The attempts to plug those holes are sometimes mad, and sometimes accurate.
But conspiracy theories have been popularised as a way to disregard critics and belittle opposition ever since the Iraq war.
Covid is an excellent example of this. We simply label everything we don’t want to argue about as “conspiracy theory” and do whatever we want.
So I would claim that most conspiracy theories in recent years have turned out to be true. But just the explanations. Just the holes they uncovered.
Yes, that's a good example. Dismissing things you don't want to argue about as a conspiracy theory is generally lazy. the lab leak theory is like that where even talking about early on was sort of outside the Overton window because of fear being labeled a rasist or something. (To be clear I don't necessarily believe it's correct but I think it's perfectly fine to hypothesize about it.)
On the other hand as soon as someone starts to veer off into "the virus was leaked on purpose to give the government an excuse to clamp down on our rights", my sense of the plausibility of the argument approaches zero - unless those claims come with a good deal of evidence.
I’m asking you for a heuristic about when you should be suspicious of someone’s claim. :) if that’s complicated, it’s not a problem with the question.
I believe there’s no difference between an expert claiming something and a “conspiracy theorist”. None of them have authority. And we should be sceptical of both unless they can give a good explanation of their theory, preferably one that is testable ofc.
The thing about conspiracy theorists is they tend to be the type of people who will never admit they are wrong. The amount of otherwise seemingly well educated rational people who try and convince me the moon landings were staged is quite incredible. When I reply: you do know that the US was in a race with the Soviets and they were able to track to the Apollo spacecraft all the way to the moon and back. Do you not think if it was faked the Soviet Union would have been the first to jump up and down and cry foul - rather than having to wipe egg off their face?
Oh yes I'm told, but they were complicit in the conspiracy also!
Yes, exactly. It's the standard reply.
When you've already decided who the villain or perpetrator is in your story, no arguments or evidence will convince you otherwise.
While I don’t disagree with your overall conclusions, I am not sure that conspiracies by your definition are all that rare. In fact, I think that it is quite common. It is really a form of cooperation between two or more people that other people deem as bad or immoral.
People are always scheming for their own benefit and engaging others in their plan. Every organization has a large number of them, particularly in management. Gossip is the most common form, and that gossip often leads to a person gaining an advantage over another.
The key factor is the overall impact to the rest of society. 99.9999% have little impact on the rest of society so no one calls it a conspiracy. When it has a big negative impact, then people call it a conspiracy. When it has a big positive impact, people call it “visionary leadership.”
Every startup is a conspiracy by a small group of people to change the world, in some sense.
You have a good point that when we talk about Conspiracies we’re mostly concerned about those with a political impact or that are fraudulent and impact a lot of people in some way.
A lot of conspiracy theories find holes in the official story that should not be there. The attempts to plug those holes are sometimes mad, and sometimes accurate.
But conspiracy theories have been popularised as a way to disregard critics and belittle opposition ever since the Iraq war.
Covid is an excellent example of this. We simply label everything we don’t want to argue about as “conspiracy theory” and do whatever we want.
So I would claim that most conspiracy theories in recent years have turned out to be true. But just the explanations. Just the holes they uncovered.
Yes, that's a good example. Dismissing things you don't want to argue about as a conspiracy theory is generally lazy. the lab leak theory is like that where even talking about early on was sort of outside the Overton window because of fear being labeled a rasist or something. (To be clear I don't necessarily believe it's correct but I think it's perfectly fine to hypothesize about it.)
On the other hand as soon as someone starts to veer off into "the virus was leaked on purpose to give the government an excuse to clamp down on our rights", my sense of the plausibility of the argument approaches zero - unless those claims come with a good deal of evidence.
What is your benchmark for if they need good evidence or not?
Something a long the lines of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
What do you think? :)
Hmm.. no it doesn’t quite work. 🤔
The next question would just be “what’s an extraordinary claim”
I think you might be making it harder than it is. Nothing is ever certain, but there are good heuristics you can use to determine if a claim or theory is ”extraordinary”. Michael Shermer recently posted a good list: https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelshermer/p/how-to-tell-if-a-conspiracy-theory?r=2mmx1&utm_medium=ios
I’m asking you for a heuristic about when you should be suspicious of someone’s claim. :) if that’s complicated, it’s not a problem with the question.
I believe there’s no difference between an expert claiming something and a “conspiracy theorist”. None of them have authority. And we should be sceptical of both unless they can give a good explanation of their theory, preferably one that is testable ofc.
Thanks for the link.