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?
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