The maths of the paper disproving conspiracy theories don't add up
littleatoms.com
littleatoms.com
The notion that "i can prove that conspiracies are false with my math" makes me cringe the same way it makes me cringe when the sceptics community "Proves religion wrong", completely disregarding any psychological or anthropological explanations for such a phenomenon.
A good chunk of the highly educated people from the economic fields, Law, Public Relations and business world are much more manipulative and opportunistic than most "science people" understands.
Go to any of the hippest (and most expensive) night clubs in a european city and you will meet these kinds of people everywhere, earning huge amounts of money doing dubious business deals or polishing the images of morally questionable partners.
You won't meet many tech people there, but the ones you will meet will be in ad-tech, data-reselling, or affiliate marketing.
You won't se any nerds these places, as you won't se any nerds at PR or upper class "fund raising" events, where the small scale conspiracies are pretty obvious.
They say, "You are one of those conspiracy theorists. You think there's a headquarters and they get together at the Bohemian Grove and run the United States."
Well, they DO get together at the Bohemian Grove and do a lot of picking of Secretaries of State, anyway.
But they don't have to conspire. They all think alike. It goes back to the way we're raised, the schools we went to -- after all, I'm a reluctant member of this group. You don't have to give orders to the editor of The New York Times. He is in place because he will respond to a crisis the way you want him to, as will the President, as will the head of the Chase Manhattan Bank.
-Gore Vidal, 1986
Generally the common denominator in conspiracy theories is that there is a group of people who are secretly in control and are purposefully causing things to happen to further their own particular agendas.
As you point out, it is true that a lot of powerful people really are trying desperately to further their own agendas. But the false part is that there is a small group who is really in control. The truth is, no one is in control.
Sounds scary, right? Which explains the attractiveness of conspiracy theories.
Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people thought.
"Conspiracy theory" is often a good way to get rid of the pursuit of truth.
No, I remember the multiple credible indications of widespread mass surveillance, including both anonymous and on-the-record reports from insiders and including the moves by government to immunize telecoms being sued for assisting in illegal mass surveillance.
Heck, I remember one of the major refrains in response to Snowden being that, while releasing the specific details was harmful to our security, the broad outline was largely already known and thus not newsworthy. (Note: in relating this response, I am not agreeing with it, particularly the first half; but the only reason it could be offered is because the idea that the NSA was engaging in widespread mass surveillance on a scale not officially acknowledged was widely believed and often discussed prior to Snowden, not "tinfoil-hat worthy".)
http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/surveillance-suits
One of the biggest changes from the disclosures is not that these suits suddenly became mainstream, it's that they finally had a decent chance of showing they had standing to sue in the first place.
Hell, Frontline aired a documentary about it in early 2007: http://www.pbs.org/video/2365249828/
Can someone explain me how is "babblings about martians" or lizard men crazier than believing in Shiva, Jehova or any other religion ?
Very few dare consider people who believe in a guy who talked to an "angel" or another one who multiplied fishes and came back to life after death crazies ...
> Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people thought.
What is fascinating is that it didn't really change anything when it comes to relationship between the government and the people. And a lot of people actually consider Snowden a traitor, when the traitors are those who actually spy on the people and covered it up.
No, it's about authority, some believe the authority never lies and is here to protect them so they have a duty of obedience toward that authority and others who know the authority is only here to protect itself and its power, by any means, at the expense of the people if necessary.
It's the difference between bundled and unbundled software. The rising tides of both play their part in a larger a picture, a larger set of lessons which ultimately--I believe--leave with unbundling/decentralization being the final answer. The flip side of the coin, of this lesson, is u need the times of bundling and centralization to learn how to do decentralization properly. In so looking at the broader picture, can we say bundling and centralization of power is a bad thing?
So while conspiracies shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, they also shouldn't be given special credence, either, and skeptics should be assumed to be part of an attempt to suppress the pursuit of truth.
That said, A lot of skepticism is as much an attempt to reinforce confirmation bias as is conspiracy theory - and one could say that conspiracy theory is a form of skepticism about the apparent natural order of things. So both sides tend to suffer from a tendency to not actually care about the truth when that truth could contradict their prejudice.
It is interesting that the only term that we had to refer to a "theory about an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage" became a synonym for lunacy, while leaving us with no short way to express the former concept.
A conspiracy theorist might suggest that we can be controlled with language.
Assuming of course, the X-Files wasn't secretly a propaganda campaign intended to discredit conspiracy theorists by subconsciously associating certain theories with fiction. But then again, the government has used urban legends and conspiracy theory as a cover for its own operations before, i'm personally certain they planted the Roswell story (and retraction) in order to cover up a more mundane secret project and retrieval, but just never expected it to go as viral as it did.
But even so, conspiracy theorists are half to blame for their own reputation at least.
I completely agree with that. But then there are many official truths that don't hold up to that regard. In many shady events, there are state-level interests, and many of parties involved have interests themselves.
For example, many of the anti-conspiracy researchers are trying to debunk everything they perceive could help the right-wing movements. But doing so deviate them from the pursuit of truth much too often... and make them embarass themselves in such ways.
If it wasn't for whistleblowers, we wouldn't have much truth in the news...
Alex Jones jumps on any possible conspiracy, debunkers write off every suggestion as a 'conspiracy theory' so that they don't have to investigate.
I don't think that was the case. Congress voted in the Patriot Act, which could be interpreted to authorize just such mass surveillance. The fact that there hasn't been much political blowback in the country at large indicates that most weren't that surprised (or bothered) by the idea of mass surveillance. Far from a 'tinfoil-hat worthy idea', the real problem is that it had become a commonly accepted fact even before it was verified by Snowden's revelations. I wish it had been tinfoil-hat worthy, then people would've cared a lot more when it was actually revealed.
Then Snowden comes with the evidence but by then people had already made up their minds before having the facts and everybody was tired of hearing about it. So the frog boils.
Very few conspiracy theories require some group to be in total control of everything.
Your strawman "small amount people in controlling the world" argument is just annoying. Conspiracies comes in many forms. The illuminati type conspiracies are not interesting. What is interesting is the global industrial complexes, their web of PR companies and the political cover ups it entails. And countless examples of this exists already. Lets forget about aliens.
The Illuminati was against the occult, mysticism and the Rosicrucians. And the only two musicians ever actually associated with the Illuminati were Beethoven and Mozart (or at least those around them were Illuminatus).
Businesses in an oligopoly tend to (actively) collude and fix prices all the time. Don't you think those in power are capable of doing that? there is nothing naive about conspiracy theories.
> But the false part is that there is a small group who is really in control.
There are multiple groups that fight each other for power at every level of governance. And yes, sometimes they succeed in furthering their own agendas at the expense of the people.
I forgot who said it recently but the further you get to the top there is less people actually. There is no coordination of interests. I should say David Rockefeller has succeeded in making Balassa's theory of economic integration synonymous with globalization, which to me is a threat to natural rights and classical liberalism. But they are all seem to have good intentions just flawed philosophies.
I also know a variety of super strange things, that as an engineer I could analyze but to me it seems pointless.
I think Elon Musk is right when he says reality seems like a simulation. Conspiracy theories are the least interesting thing in context with certain experiences I have had. Which are largely centered around quantum synchronicity, spontaneity and randomness. But also DMT and a Kabbalistic text known as Sefer Yetzirah.
I am atheist and skeptic but there's something to the fine-structure constant and 1371233. And surely I am not the only one to have discovered this but I have asked people who should know, and they don't seem to.
---
Also, Carol Quigley agreed with you according to Terrence J. Boyle-
>Unfortunately, many people interested in Carroll Quigley take entirely out of context the references he made in his book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time about a high-level Anglophile conspiracy that, he said, flourished before World War II. It seems that many people believe Quigley thought this vast conspiracy somehow continues to operate right up to our own day.
>But as Dr. Quigley once told me, the reality is much scarier. Instead of a secret cabal now being in charge, there's no one in charge.
You can be as ruthless as you want, you're not going to be able to fake the Apollo landings without the Soviets calling you on your bullshit.
Conspiracy theories tend to have massive logical and/or logistical holes. For example, how exactly would you wire the WTC to collapse with nobody noticing? How would you keep everyone quiet? At some point, you're adding epicycles to epicycles, which should tell people something, but never seems to...
> "Proves religion wrong", completely disregarding any psychological or anthropological explanations for such a phenomenon.
Nobody's out to prove religion doesn't exist (which is the only kind of sense I can make out of what you typed), but certain religious claims can be proven wrong, which is the only kind of disproofs I've actually seen.
> Go to any of the hippest (and most expensive) night clubs in a european city and you will meet these kinds of people everywhere, earning huge amounts of money doing dubious business deals or polishing the images of morally questionable partners.
None of this proves the Jew-luminatti are running the world. (Antisemitism is about a millimeter beneath the surface of most of the really interesting conspiracy theories.)
Now, I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job or anything, but there is actually some strange historical context for this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_c...
>It is reported that LeMessurier agonized over how to deal with the problem. If he made it known publicly, he risked ruining his professional reputation. He approached the architect (Hugh Stubbins) first, and then Citicorp. He advised them to take swift remedial action. Ultimately he persuaded Citicorp to repair the building without informing the public, a task made easier by the press strike at that time.[3]
and
>Because nothing happened as a result of the engineering gaffe, the danger was kept hidden from the public for almost 20 years. It was publicized in a lengthy article in The New Yorker in 1995.[4]
Maybe so, but conspiracies generally require that they all act in concert with no one defecting. If even one of them decides to change allegiance (which should be somewhat likely if we are describing these people as "opportunistic") the conspiracy ceases to be pure speculation. For example, look at the sequence of events that eventually outed Lance Armstrong.
> They simply do not fathom the ruthlessness of the political or business world.
"Ruthlessness" is a spectrum. I'm sure there are lots of shady things that happen in Washington. I'm also pretty sure that no one in Washington is both as powerful and ruthless as Frank Underwood from House of Cards, for example.
I think part of the problem is that people vastly underestimate the ability of 'good' people to do nothing in the face of evil.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1862073279
It's a history of CIA manipulation of politics and culture across Europe and the US during the Cold War.
Projects like this don't have whistleblowers, because the people on the inside don't believe they're doing anything shady. And some of them don't have much time for the common public anyway.
Historically the extent of the manipulation - through overt violence, and covert forms of persuasion of all kinds, including bought-and-paid-for media influence - has been huge.
I can't comment on the religion bit, because it's not even false.
But the bit about manipulative, successful people and how jaded one has to be to "see the truth" is complete hogwash. Just because people go to expensive nightclubs, seem sleazy, and claim they made some hugely profitable deals doesn't mean they aren't full of shit. One is only wealthy, when their wealth is stable through time. Consider for example Kweku Adaboli: a trader at UBS who committed massive fraud. The guy lead a super luxurious life, earned 400k GBP + bonus p.a. and still had to take out payday loans. Now he's in jail. Was he to luxurious night clubs? Sure. Illuminati confirmed? No.
Just because you dislike a certain crowd, doesn't mean that that crowd is part of some conspiracy. Most of them are probably massive morons.
> All three are based in the United States, two in law enforcement or security services where secrecy is part of the job description and the cost of breaking it is extreme.
There must be differences between conspiracies where the conspirators agree that the secrecy is proper or beneficial, and conspiracies where people are forced into it or simply become aware of the secret by chance or as part of a job. For that matter, there must be differences between conspiracies where people are trying to unmask them (for example, national security reporters who have heard a rumor about the existence of a secret program and are investigating to follow up on it) and conspiracies whose existence hasn't been hypothesized by outsiders.
Just today the Washington Post reported on internal CIA use of deception against its own staff:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/eyewa...
> Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.”
In this case, there could be hundreds of people who think they know the truth about something, but really only a handful do. (The Post explicitly says this.) So even if one of those hundreds of people reveals what they know, the conspiracy won't really be revealed.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_psycholog...
I argue that conspiracy, or key elements of it, is a natural part of human behavior. You can see it in all kinds of legitimate things. You can also see it in many criminal activities. A subset of it would be what we traditionally call a criminal conspiracy good enough to leave only breadcrumbs. The conspiracy theories... one's using good investigation rather than cherry-picking... have to find and tie together these breadcrumbs to derive the hidden activity.
Academics almost exclusively tend to analyze why people must be wrong-headed if they investigate conspiracies, err, criminal activity. Instead, they should look at those that were proven right and wrong to identify data points for criteria or heuristics to help investigators get it right more often. What constitutes good evidence of a probable conspiracy vs what is just bias of researcher? A valid question and form of research.
However, it's nonsense and defies common sense to have their assumption that conspiracies don't happen and investigating one is equivalent to mental illness unless you have a confession in hand from perps.
For example, if an industry is predicated on certain things happening or not happening (e.g. military contractors being biased towards war) or denying certain facts (e.g. oil companies playing down global warming) it may seem like a widespread conspiracy but it's actually a bunch of independent actors with the same motivations or bias.
There's also the fact that a large conspiracy needs a large motivating factor. A group of criminals conspiring to steal something has a very clear reward. The government spraying massive amounts of chemicals from airplanes to do...stuff...is hardly a compelling reason.
That's a good point. This happens a lot with oligopolies, too. Yet, there has been evidence that some of them collude in secret often through intermediaries to expedite this process. You usually see this with lobbyists but sometimes outright scandals like RAM price-fixing. So, coincident interests doesn't auto-eliminate possibility of a conspiratorial explanation but certainly should be the default belief for scheming, self-interested behavior.
"The government spraying massive amounts of chemicals from airplanes to do...stuff...is hardly a compelling reason."
I smirked at the wording. The amount of mythology around chemtrails mostly makes it a good example. Yet, you're off the mark on this one just as they are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
So, you can replace "stuff" with testing of bio-weapon systems and studies of disease impact on unwitting subjects with legal immunity. Not sure if any of the chemtrail claims or evidence overlapped with that as I didn't research it much. Yet, it's a fact that the U.S. military secretly (for a while) flew planes over U.S. cities that doused them with both chemicals and biological agents to support our biological and chemical weapons capabilities. There were many groups involved in that. They even blocked further investigation of all the incidents and those effected. So, we know what's revealed is a fraction of what went on but I'm not going to speculate size of that fraction. I just know there's more.
This brings me to another facet of the problem: supporting irrational stuff with rational stuff. The fact that certain conspiracies and lies happened before seem to increase the likelihood people will believe a similar claim. "Of course they're doing chemtrails on us: remember Sea-Spray!? Why wouldn't they still be doing it?" That doesn't logically follow but does in many people's minds. Hell, it often does in reality so much we have the meme that "History Repeats." I think allowing recurring and similar rogue behavior in industry and governments plants many seeds for other, false beliefs to show up. Another reason to put an end to any schemes we identify. Affects signal-to-noise ratio of our ability to detect sneakier schemes.
Good news is the biggest bullshiters in conspiracy claims are usually really full of shit. Obviously. They practically out themselves. Helpful to researchers like myself as we just filter them away.
So, Im not blanket supporting conspiracy claims so much as saying we need fo recognize the need for some and focus on how to evaluate them effectively.
I know another person who sold a company for $110 million, and tried to scam a major investment bank. There's about 10 con-artists in this group of people, all of them have a variety of wealth, some extreme wealth but of questionable origin.
These people were amateurs and in extremely privileged positions with huge politicians involved with them. Now the politicians weren't involved but I could see a situation developing where something conspiratorial could happen.
But I have never experience this with the government or military. People forget the intelligence agencies have certain mandates, rules, laws, regulations etc. Sure some wild stuff has happened, along with illegal and immoral in the past.
And the general march towards a technocratic supranational surveillance state is concerning, but to me that is the inertia of ignorant power hungry people.
As for conspiracies like 9/11, it seemed to be partially a failed sting operation. And I think the coverup of what CIA and DIA were involved with, leads to the conspiracy theories.
And all the weird elements of 9/11 or other stories, or love, life, the Universe etc., to me seem like echos of distractions, set to feed delusions and one's ego, like there is a firewall of sorts protecting the dangerous from reaching some level of enlightenment or understanding.
When in reality, all this is a computer simulation. And the absurdism to it is screaming out that this isn't real . In my opinion, and Elon seems to believe that- https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fP...
Elon Musk: "Well maybe we are in a simulation right now. [smiles, nods] [pause] Yeah [laughs] seriously. [laughs] Uh sometimes it feels like that." (23:14)
Elon of Mars (Wernher von Braun's The Mars Project) - http://imgur.com/a/yhvDH
I will add, I don't believe in Free Well or the self, and I think Sam Harris is right on these ideas.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/09/us/memphis-jury-sees-consp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Com...
1. Obviously, some things are successful "conspiracies" to continue nefarious activities despite what would be public aversion: An obvious example is the clergy sex abuse case.
2. Obviously, other supposed conspiracies are bullshit: Chupacabra, Moth-man, LGMs at Area 51.
3. Other things are a kind of readily identifiable, if you are historically literate, forms of opportunism: The rise of the security state and the neocon wars after 9/11, for example. 9/11 wasn't an "inside job" but it was cynically exploited about as far as possible. From Winston Churchill to Rahm Emanuel, politicians have known not to waste a good crisis. "Cui bono?" Yeah, the people who jumped on it and exploited.
Maybe a better direction to go would be "how long until leaks occur" given the number of people on a project. This isn't that different [although it's less click-bait-y than mentioning conspiracies], and you'd have lots of examples from industrial products.
How often do Apple product releases leak? How long does it usually take for them to leak?
There should at least be enough data to do something interesting.
how many of those are actually leaks and not "guerilla" marketing like movie trailer leaks.
I think the right terms for this are "variable reward" and "variable interval" here:
And the bit about his estimates of the number of conspirators in the NSA.. he says the exact same thing: "In the PRISM case, the figure of 30,000 comes from total NSA staff. In reality, the proportion of those employed would would have knowledge of this program would likely be a lot less but we take the upper bound figure to minimize the estimate of p."
It doesn't prove that there's a climate-change conspiracy, but it was a bona-fide attempt by someone who had access to internal documents to whistleblow.
I don't understand why NSA - Snowden is an example of a conspiracy being exposed but UEA - Climategate is not.
Unless of course, it's career suicide for an academic to come within a mile of being seen to portray climate change as a conspiracy. Which could be taken as more evidence that there is a conspiracy.
Because when Snowden's documents were analyzed the evidence matched reality, while when the "Climategate" emails were analyzed all that was found was normal researcher chatter?
Seriously, the critics of the emails quoted a few phrases out of context that sounded bad but weren't and couldn't point to any change made to data or methods that wasn't already publicly documented. Then a bunch of independent bodies went through the emails and data and agreed all was good.
Mainstream rejection of a story is not evidence that that story describes an ongoing conspiracy.
You might as well ask why Obama - Birthers is not considered an example of a conspiracy being exposed. Unless of course, it's career suicide for a politician or journalist to come within a mile of being seen to portray his citizenship as a conspiracy. Which could be taken as more evidence that there is a conspiracy.
The point is that someone exposed a bunch of internal documents in an attempt to whistleblow what they considered to be a conspiracy.
The reason there's no parallel with the Birther thing is that no-one in the Obama camp attempted to whistleblow.
The reason there is a comparison with Snowden-NSA is because Snowden was a whistleblower.
The paper in the article holds up the climate change conspiracy theory as "it can't be a conspiracy because no-one attempted to whistleblow it" while completely ignoring that someone DID try to whistleblow it.
Again, whether or not there was actually any conspiracy doesn't matter. Someone "on the inside" thought there was and attempted to whistleblow. It needs to be included in the list of failed conspiracies regardless of whether it actually was a conspiracy or not.
No, all evidence points to it being done by a breach from outside.
At no point have I criticised anything about climate change, or even suggested that it might not be the most urgent pressing thing that human society faces.
But the automatic downvoting/criticising happens to any post that dares to mention anything like Climategate. I had to think twice before mentioning it because I knew I'd lose some of my precious internet points.
If this happens here, where there are no consequences, what happens in academia, where the penalties of being sceptical are so much more serious, even career-threatening?
Looks like some of your points were restored, but I'll note I downvoted you for the above. It's ridiculous to assert some relationship between this message board and academia, or that downvotes are responding specifically to a single cherrypicked idea from that post.
It ends up being complaining about downvotes with a not so subtle insinuation that the subject wasn't given a fair shot (when it was actually widely and very publicly investigated) and you're begging the question by asserting that any dismissal of the question is evidence of dismissal of the question for a specific reason, when it could just be that some questions have already been addressed and so are no longer worth more time than it takes to give a downvote.
The parish provides a sufficient population that enables social proof to convince people automatically of the correctness of believing and belonging. It's not that the priesthood makes people believe things - it's the people, and the social proof and the social pressure that does this. The priesthood gains political power (which all men yearn, consciously or not), and when co-operate with the state provide a channel of mass control and communication. Thus the people perpetuate the belief, and the state has no incentive to intercede.