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PhiloMadrid - Pub Philosophy Meetings in Madrid
28 May 2020
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 31st May: Why so many conspiracy theories?
Why so many conspiracy theories?
Why so many conspiracy
theories? by James
Conspiracy
theories as a subject are not only complex but also disagreeable. Like most
philosophical issues and problems our subject is mainly a language problem. And
it is a language problem because conspiracy theories depend on supping the
emotions out of people.
By the time a
belief or a claim becomes a public conspiracy theory it would be too late to
stop it, kill it, or neutralise it. Regarding our question the short answer is
that because today we have the ways and
means to distribute such messages. Which means that it is easy for a few people
to originate and disseminate conspiracy theories it is also that easy that we,
i.e. you and me, we’ll get to hear about them.
So the language
problem with conspiracy theories is that there are conspiracies and then there are
major singular events: planes crashing into buildings; banks trying to fix the
lending rates; princesses dying in car accidents; strange things flying in the
sky; stealing the natural resources of a continent; pretending to offer free
healthcare to people affected by sexually transmitted disease; viruses that
cause a pandemic in a few days and so
on.
There are
many scholars and not so scholarly arguing what is and isn’t a conspiracy
theory and what the anatomy of a conspiracy looks like. From our perspective we
could always start by trying to identify the key necessary and sufficient
conditions of a conspiracy theory.
The most
important condition for a conspiracy theory is that the “major singular event”
has already happened: a conspiracy theory cannot exist for future events or
events that haven’t happened yet. In September of 2019 I was not aware of any
conspiracy theories about COVID-19 although by January 2020 I was fully aware
that there was this virus that was very infectious in China. By mid February
COVID-17 was well known as causing a very dangerous epidemic in China and maybe
going pandemic. But still no conspiracy theory; only towards mid March that
some conspiracy theories started appearing mainly: the virus was a manipulation
by governments, a biological weapon developed by China to destroy the United States,
it’s all a fiction of the mind, etc.
A second
important condition of a conspiracy theory is that the event must be big enough
and singular enough that a large percentage of the population, certainly of a
country, but preferably of the world to know about it. And added to a lot of
people knowing about an event it is also necessary that we personally as a
group can directly relate to the event.
When a
popular princess died in a car accident in a tunnel anyone who could express an
opinion also had a conspiracy theory. Compare this when at a tourist spot we
came across a board outside a restaurant offering “Menu del Dia” but when we
came to order we were told that the Menu-del-Dia had finished. We, and those
around us, knew very well that this was a conspiracy of the heinous kind. In effect
for a conspiracy theory to work it must appeal directly to our raw
emotions. I was seriously angry at that
restaurant that day but it seems not everyone was!
For a
conspiracy theory to make traction it must also be believable: the state of our
beliefs is a sufficient condition to create emotional agitation and anger in us.
Thus a conspiracy theory is more likely to flourish if it conformed to some
rules of logic. We’re more likely to believe an unidentified flying object is
something from outer space rather than bubbles from a babble bath or maybe a
new research plane from a secret military base.
Another
condition for conspiracy theories is that there are enough respectable people
who can explain details of the event or argue the logic of the event. For example at the early stages of digital photography,
especially mobile phone photos, all of a sudden many people were seeing many
UFOs in their photos, one of the main reasons was the fact that many digital sensors
were not stable enough or most probably the processors were not that clever.
Thus digital noise, dust, or digital artefacts really looked like UFOs: the
technology is much, much, better today.
You remember
that I started by distinguishing between conspiracies and major singular
events. Major singular events are the breeding grounds of conspiracy theories
whilst committee rooms, corridors of power, or oak panelled offices are the
breeding grounds of conspiracies. From
the list of events I identified in the third paragraph: banks trying to fix the
lending rates, stealing the natural resources of a continent, and pretending to
offer free healthcare to people affected by sexually transmitted disease are
real conspiracies although there are many more.
“Banks trying
to fix the lending rates” is the Libor scandal when major banks tried to fix
the bank lending rate thus making borrowing money such as mortgages and load
more expense (this is well documented c2008). “Pretending to offer free
healthcare to people affected by sexually transmitted disease,” I am referring
to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in the USA between 1932 and 1972 when
officials experimented on Afro-American males on the promise of free health
care: they were never given any health care, this now goes on in places like
India but that’s another matter. And a case deserving of the hardest of conspiracy
theories is the “Stealing the natural resources of a continent.” I am referring
to the pillage of Africa which according to The Africa Report* is worth
$2.2trillion yet ,”On average, the net wealth per African is $1,900, compared
to $27,000 worldwide.”
Hence the
other aspect of the language issue is that we are very lazy when we come to
language: we tend to take unreasonable shortcuts. Our thinking can sometimes be
equivalent of thinking that a black cow and a black horse are the same
creature; so why should we think that a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory are
the same thing? Conspiracies do happen and investigating them is the legitimate
business of scientists, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and most of all
philosophers. Why philosopher, because philosophers (especially analytical
philosophers) are concerned with the thinking of people, and conspiracies
requires a lot of thinking.
Our first
task is to distinguish between creating a dead hand of malice and reasonable
and rational inquiry for example through Cartesian or Humian scepticism. The
first instance is when groups follow a conspiracy theory and reject or endorse
the official version of events based on political dogma and not methodological
investigation. What is clear is that reasonable inquiry is a must in society,
but this does not mean that people who exercise their right of philosophical
scepticism are politically malicious.
Usually the
exercise of inquiry goes something like this: people asking scientific type of
questions and expect the person to give us an honest scientific answer. Unfortunately,
this is why conspiracy theories are so obnoxious, this empirical investigation
does not work. It does not work because if the event was a conspiracy why
should the person tell us the truth? A good conspiracy would have a protection
wall of “plausible deniability” for those involved. Just because a person is
part of a conspiracy it does not follow that everyone one knows the whole story
with details: most probably what people
are engaged in they do not know they are working on a conspiracy. And most important of all just because we have
reason to believe that there is a case of a conspiracy it does not follow that
there is one. Thus when an official reply fails to satisfy us it does not
follow that that person is hiding something from us.
So one of the
enemies of the official explanation is the fact that the relevant officials do
not give access to all the information to bona fide people researching the
conspiracy theory: remember the redacted WikiLeaks reports, or the 9/11 Report,
or the Russian Report in the UK.
The other
failure of officials is that in trying to reject the conspiracy theory, or trying
to relax people that a major singular event is not the norm is that they
address the theory not the science (methodology). Let’s take the COVID-19
conspiracy theory.
So one of the
conspiracy theory about the virus is that this virus is a biological weapon by
China to dominate the USA; another is that the virus somehow escaped from a
virological laboratory in China. At face value the second possible event is
more likely than the first: why destroy the USA when Chine holds some $1.1
trillion of US debt. But if you spent these past three months listening to
reports from China on the virus you would have noticed that official replies always
push the idea that the virus is a natural virus and it came from a wet market.
It is this
kind of reply that concerns certain people: whether the virus was natural or
not or came from a wet market or not (any wet market) it does not exclude the
possibility that a copy of the virus was indeed at a lab and did indeed escape.
The fact that the international community is not allowed to investigate does
not help the issue. The difference, however, between a conspiracy theorist and
a bona fide investigator is that the theorist would conclude the virus escaped
from a lab, whereas a bona fide investigator would still be waiting for a methodological
investigation and an account of verifiable facts.
It is now our
turn to start our own conspiracy theory. A key question in conspiracy theory is
who benefits from conspiracy theories. If it is a real conspiracy one can do
well by starting to follow the money, as The Africa Report suggests we do. The
problem is when things go horribly wrong and instead of a plan or a conspiracy
we end up with a cock-up theory. And here is our conspiracy theory although I do
not claim to be original since I’ve been reading so much useless stuff on the
subject I lost count: what if conspiracy theories are hatched up by those in charge
of the major singular event to disseminate in society when their pet
responsibility goes horribly wrong? Thus
creating smoke screen and social noise and chatter?
*FOLLOW THE
MONEY
Where Africa’s
rich live
By Jeune
Afrique
The Africa
Report
Posted on
Friday, 13 September 2019
Best and take care
Lawrence
telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email:
philomadrid@gmail.com
PhiloMadrid
on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 31st May: Why so many conspiracy theories?
21 May 2020
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 24th May: The New Normal
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The New Normal
The “new normal”
It´s terms like the “new normal” that make second languages
difficult to learn. They originate from events and circumstances that may not
apply in other languages: the irony, innuendo, metaphor, and so on all play a
part in the creation of language terms. The idea behind this term is that the
way we did things or behaved have now changed to something new. Maybe even in a
new way that would have been inconceivable in the past.
The new normal does not mean that this normal is better or
worse than the past, but that it is actually happening now. And it is happening
not without an element of chagrin or concern although things might very well turn
out to be better.
Indeed the Wikipedia entry for “New Normal” in a business
context starts by referring to the 2007-2008 financial crises and the aftermath
of the 2008-2012 global recession. Someone more recently mentioned the CVOID-19
pandemic. But it does not have to be a major event to qualify for the change.
This idea or concept of the term “new normal” is not new
although I am not going to make any claims as to its origin. The concept has
been in use for many years in the fashion industry and we can go back to that
“little black dress*” by Coco Chanel in 1926. This dress broke all taboos for
women’s fashion, according to WHITE Communications GmbH., by making a taboo
colour, i.e. black, fashionable for young women. The little black dress doctrine
restored black to fashion and has been so ever since. A few years earlier we
had Ford’s mentality of “any colour you want” for your car as long as it is
black.
Thus it is very common in fashion circles to read or hear of
people talking about yellow being the new black, or blue the new black. A quick
look at a search engine will show the scope colours play in fashion over the
seasons. Fashion is not the scope of my essay, but of course to point out the
use of this term across disciplines and how our term can also be used
positively in a given context for a given discipline. If a fashion designer can
introduce a colour to a style and achieves the acclaim of “x the new black” we
could say that the designer has “made it!”
So what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of
something to achieve the claim of being “the new normal”?
One of the most important necessary and sufficient conditions
is that the new normal must actually be in existence. By definition if
something is normal, never mind the new normal, it must exist otherwise it
would not be anything. If yellow is the new black then there must be women
buying dresses that are yellow and fashion designers creating couture in yellow
colour.
More challenging is when does something become normal and
how old must the ‘new normal’ be to retain the title: new normal? If today we
talk about the COVID-19 as the new normal we are talking about two normals in
effect: the new normal regarding how we deal with a rolling pandemic and the new
normal post pandemic. Even if at the time of writing the post pandemic periods
looks a long way away and, therefore, we can hardly meet the first necessary
condition of existence.
In GHS Index: Global Health Security Index October 2019**
the United States of America and the United Kingdom were listed first and
second respectively in the overall score index of preparedness for a pandemic.
Today during an actual pandemic the US is the worst performing country so far
and the UK is the worst performing country in Europe. We can safely assume that
the viruses do not discriminate against nationality but only on susceptible
conditions of the individual.
My argument is that the COVID-19 pandemic is not the new
normal. We’ve been having pandemics over the ages with various degrees of
turmoil to society. Indeed the flu season is one serious pandemic episode that
happens every year. But we’ve become complacent to the annual flu epidemics: we
have vaccines, the flu mostly affects the elderly and most of us recover. The
fact that the US and UK have the worst death figures for the COVID-19 pandemic**
in May 2020 suggests that the fail factor is the management of pandemics and
thus there is nothing new about COVID-19.
A mitigating argument is that COVID-19 is a new disease one
that we have never experienced before, but this corona virus is a member of a
family of viruses which were already around in the 21st century. And
the business of viruses is to invade people to reproduce and by circumstances infect
people and many die as a consequence. No surprises there hence the GHS Index.
The mitigation applies to the extent that this variant of the virus is very
aggressive and quick acting but not to mitigate the international spread of the
virus.
There seems to be no new events on how the rolling COVID-19
pandemic is progressing. What is different is that the previous new normals,
the once that put the health care systems on alert for pandemics all those
years ago have failed miserably. We also know that both the US and UK had
recently abandoned their level of preparedness for pandemics. Hence, the
COVID-19 is not a new normal but a massive failure of all the preparations we
had done and the knowledge of virus we have accumulated. And all this without
even knowing how the virus found itself in the public domain in the first place.
How the post COVID-19 pandemic “normal” will be is a
different matter. Will a post pandemic normal be business as usual; maybe we
have to wear a mask, something we should have been doing for years, and accept
a high levels of unemployment and some
people might die from COVID-19. Do we in the main continue to dismantle
healthcare systems, stop providing universal free healthcare, channel corporate
money through tax havens and continue doing business with unscrupulous regimes
in the post pandemic normal? As I argued the term new normal is not a moral
judgement, hence the post pandemic might be a worse version of the normal pre
pandemic. Or will the next new normal be something for the better as a change.
Will the new post pandemic normal be a black car, take it or
leave it. Or will the post pandemic new normal be a little black dress simple
in style and with a kick up the backside to dogma and taboo?
*(Black Dress) Coco Chanel
*(Black Dress) REBEL TURNED CLASSICTHE LITTLE BLACK DRESS
WHITE Communications GmbH.
**Pandemic at Wikipedia
**GHS Index: Global Health Security Index October 2019 (PDF
file)
Best and take care
Lawrence
telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 24th May: The New Normal
15 May 2020
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 17th May: Education now and post pandemic (essay)
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Education now and post pandemic
I am not too optimistic that post pandemic we’ll be returning back to
“normal”. The irony of the Coronavirus is that this is first time since the
creation of the “global” economy countries had to function as a real global
economy. All of a sudden the global economy was tasked with supplying life or
death equipment for healthcarers and the public in general.
The problem with education in all this is that education is very
similar to the military infrastructure. They both cost a lot of money, the
Return on Investment will take years to happen, and by the nature of knowledge
it is in constant progress and evolution. Basically our victories depend on the
weaknesses of the enemy.
Traditionally the seat of knowledge has always been universities and
people had to go through the “system” to reach the high levels of academia and
thus respect. But this model of education has been challenged recently. The
most important challenge is that not only do we have far more sources of
knowledge than ever before but for the first time we theoretically have the
means to access all the knowledge we have today when we “want” to access it.
Another implication of knowledge is that many activities can be
classified as bodies of knowledge. In other words, knowledge can be about
something and how to do something. This implies that what we call education is
not just for children or those who belong to institutions we call colleges, but
rather education is a source for knowledge. In the past we had academia and
apprenticeship. An apprentice is someone who knows how to do something through
empirical knowledge and experience.
During this pandemic we have demonstrated that new technologies,
such as the PC, mobile phones, tablets etc are robust for many information
exchange purposes. It is enough to continue with the teaching process at all
levels of the education process. But it is also true that many teachers (and business
managers) have been inundated with the challenge and as a consequence they are overloading
children and young adults with homework. Indeed today under the present
circumstances people are afraid of the looking-busy-disease. We inherited this
disease of having to look busy more as a defence against not seeming to have
anything to do than any rational justification to be doing something.
Post pandemic we need to develop new management skills and these
management skills have to cover two objectives: plan our objectives and plan
not to waste time. Of course, piling loads of books and chapters from books and
telling students to read them is not efficient nor being busy. I would argue
that a sign of efficiency comes in two parts. The first is how to remember a
particular piece of knowledge. Although learning is not about memory but about
application. This means that we are going to be more dependent on machines.
Finally what the pandemic has also demonstrated is that we need a
deep understanding of the scientific method and how to us this method. The
lack of scientific awareness around us is an indictment of the failure of the
political system that models the education system not necessarily in the
interests learners and those engaged in furthering their knowledge.
Best and take care
Lawrence
telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 17th May: Education now
and post pandemic