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What is a 'conspiracy theory?' (redux)
22 Plays5 years ago
Josh and the other M (or M and the other Josh) go back to basics and ask "What is a 'conspiracy theory?'"
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
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Transcript
Chaos and Confusion in the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
This week on the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, we discuss the surprising revelations by the US Air Force about life on- What the hell was that? Where did the room- where did he even go? What happened to my nipples? Josh? Josh? Josh, are you- are you there? Over here!
00:00:20
Speaker
Oh, there you are. Hold on. What's happened to your nipples? Well, I was introducing the podcast. Podcast? You know, the podcast we do together. We do? The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Hmm, a podcast based upon my research does sound like a good idea. Tell me more. Yeah, so you don't know that we make a podcast together. It's a complete surprise to me. I thought we were going to do our weekly gaming session of bi-weekly. Got to level up and get that level 100 special costume.
00:00:50
Speaker
Then there was this snapping sound, and the room disappeared. And something has definitely happened to your nipples. I think we've somehow got out of sync.
What is 'The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy'?
00:01:02
Speaker
Ian, whether that is my Ian, told me this happened to them a little while ago. They met a version of me from another dimension where Andy Bishago was president of the US. You mean he's not.
00:01:11
Speaker
Not where I come from. Em told me the only way they were able to get everything back to normal was to try and sync things up by going through the basics.
Defining Conspiracy: Secrecy and Common Goals
00:01:19
Speaker
So you're saying we should record a podcast? Yes.
00:01:22
Speaker
Well, you know me, I'm game for anything. Er, um, you're giving me a side-eye. Let's just say I'm not not giving you a little side-eye, you tasty little scamp. Let's roll some theme music as we get comfortable doing a bit of the old recording of the podcast. I don't think that means what you think it means. The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy starring Dr. M.R. Extenteth
00:01:49
Speaker
and featuring Josh Addison as the Interlocutor. Hello and welcome to an episode of the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Addison, sitting next to me as ever as Dr. Em Denteth. And we are once again going back to basics. We are. We're back to life. We're back to reality. Back to reality. You said the last time as well. Is that what I said last time? I think so. I don't know. Probably. That applies.
Conspiracy vs. Conspiracy Theory
00:02:18
Speaker
Why not?
00:02:19
Speaker
So speaking of last time, you may recall that last time we spoke about the three conditions for something to be a conspiracy. Those conditions are? The goal condition, the plotter's condition and the secrecy condition. So a conspiracy involves multiple plotters working in secret to achieve a common goal. So that's sort of the nuts and bolts. That's the formal definition, I suppose, but there's a lot more
00:02:48
Speaker
to it, to exactly how we talk about conspiracy theories. Yes, because having defined a conspiracy, you might note that conspiracy theory has that pesky extra word at the end, theory.
What Makes a Conspiracy Theory?
00:03:03
Speaker
Joshua, what is a theory?
00:03:05
Speaker
Well, it kind of depends who you talk to. I'm talking to you, so what do you think a theory is? Well, I think a theory is a proposed explanation for an observed phenomena. Which is different, which is sort of more the academic scientific
00:03:21
Speaker
definition of a theory which is kind of in contrast to the more colloquial definition of a theory which is a theory is kind of something that you reckon but don't know for sure. And sometimes just turns out to be your opinion man. Which is in some cases why people get a little bit tangled up in talking about conspiracy theories and leads them to say things like well there are conspiracy theories but aren't there also conspiracy facts? To which the answer is yes but not the way you mean. Yeah.
00:03:48
Speaker
So what are we talking about today? So we're going to talk about what makes a conspiracy theory a conspiracy theory, because that was actually a major part of my first book, basically every single article I've written subsequently.
00:04:04
Speaker
it factors into the second book and is a major part of the third book as well. Because it turns out that your choice of definition as to what counts as a conspiracy theory ends up doing an awful lot of work when it comes to working out what gets rolled in
00:04:24
Speaker
and what gets ruled out as being in the domain of the conspiracy theory.
The Nature of Benevolent Conspiracies
00:04:30
Speaker
So in my PhD thesis I put forward a definition that basically goes, a conspiracy theory is any explanation of an event that cites a conspiracy as a salient cause. So a conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy
00:04:46
Speaker
It's an explanatory hypothesis or theory involving a conspiracy and it says that the conspiracy is the salient cause of the event you're trying to explain. So you put forward a conspiracy theory when a conspiracy is the cause of the event that needs explanation.
00:05:06
Speaker
Now, I think last time when we talked about the definition of conspiracy, we did talk a little bit about what a conspiracy is not necessarily when we see to count as a conspiracy. Under the definition we're using, at least, it is not necessary that the conspiracy be a malevolent conspiracy. It can be a conspiracy
Why Are Conspiracy Theories Viewed Skeptically?
00:05:27
Speaker
of goodness.
00:05:28
Speaker
It's not necessary that the conspiracy works or at least achieves the goal that it is aiming towards. It is not the case that a conspiracy is inherently nonsense, basically is fanciful or scientifically implausible or what have you. It is something which happens
00:05:49
Speaker
quite commonly. So we discuss surprise parties as an example of conspiracies which are nominally good, unless you don't like surprises, very feasible, and actually, apart from my case, quite common, because no one's ever organized a surprise party for me.
00:06:08
Speaker
No, me neither. I think I've been party to a single surprise birthday party. That was Ewan's? Oh, don't remember one for Ewan. Amanda organised one. We went to a house out in somewhere in the North Shore and we had to hide in a room and Ewan walked in and we sheltered surprise. No, I don't know if I was there. I'm fairly sure you were. I'm fairly sure you were the one who drove Richard and me there. Probably. I did have a car at the time. Doesn't matter. Pointers. And you claim you don't drink.
00:06:39
Speaker
Well, I was driving. I was very driving at the time. That's true. You were very driven. The point, I think, was that... See, now I want to know what is the surprise party you did go to? Ah, Chris. Oh. We all ambushed him wearing theory masks. Or at least animal masks. Anyway.
00:07:01
Speaker
The point I think that we were both heading towards is that in the same way that conspiracies don't have to carry a whole lot of baggage along with them, conspiracy theories themselves don't, according to our definition, carry a lot of baggage that people do like to lump
Are Conspiracy Theories Inherently False?
00:07:23
Speaker
on them. So people often will have the idea that conspiracy theories are inherently irrational, inherently false.
00:07:31
Speaker
Inherently unlikely. Inherently alternative. The whole official story. The whole official story is an alternative to whatever the official version is, which has the implication that whatever the official version is, is not a conspiracy theory. We don't stick to any of those, do we?
00:07:50
Speaker
No, so the definition I've proposed, the conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event that cites a conspiracy as a salient cause, is a perfectly open and non-projorative, very broad definition. It's open that it admits any theory about a conspiracy, whether it be a surprise party or a cover-up,
00:08:11
Speaker
falls under the notion of being a conspiracy theory. It's non pejorative and that it doesn't build in that conspiracy theories are mad, bad or dangerous. And I can't remember what the third thing was. Because I think it basically kind of... Irrational alternative alternative. Well, you said I, I had a third condition, which basically just gets folded in under the the openness
00:08:37
Speaker
thing. It basically applies to any theory about conspiracy and doesn't build in that conspiracy theories are bad. No, this is at odds.
00:08:47
Speaker
with quite a lot of the literature, although I do like to think that the literature is slowly changing because of the work in philosophy and people realising that working with pejorative definitions is kind of skewing the debate. But the two major claims you get are either that conspiracy theories are by definition false, or at least they're prima facie unlikely.
00:09:15
Speaker
Now the notion that conspiracy theories are prima facie false has been put forward by a variety of different writers. Daniel Pipes famously being one example, he basically says that conspiracy theories are fantasies born of some kind of paranoid style and thus are never true.
00:09:39
Speaker
This is obviously nonsense, and we can say it's obviously nonsense because if you can show there has been one pejoratively labeled conspiracy theory in history, which then turned out to be the actual explanation of the event,
00:09:59
Speaker
then if you insist that they are inherently false you have a metaphysical problem. Yes, because there's quite a few things we can point to about that. So you can't say that by definition conspiracy theories are inherently false if you can show that at least one conspiracy theory turned out to be
The Changing View of Conspiracy Theories
00:10:17
Speaker
true.
00:10:17
Speaker
But again, I have the anecdotal evidence, and I'm sure I've mentioned this on this podcast before, of it being sort of that colloquial idea of a conspiracy theory that they're being false because I remember one time, years ago in the middle of the VW emissions scandal, I was heading off to Em's place to record the latest episode and my wife had a friend over.
00:10:38
Speaker
And then my wife said, ah, Josh is off to go record his podcast. And her friend said, ah, what are you doing? I said, oh, we do this thing. We talk about conspiracy theories and so on. And she said, oh, what are you talking about this week? And I said, oh, we're going to be talking about the VW mission scandal. And her immediate reaction was, but isn't that true? And so I had to say kind of what we're saying now. Well, no, we don't think that conspiracy theories is a theory about a conspiracy, definitely a conspiratorial angle. So the fact that it's known and true isn't part of what makes something a conspiracy theory or not.
00:11:08
Speaker
But yeah, I can see that there would be a lot of people who would have problems, if not on an intellectual level, on a sort of instinctual, emotional level with such a broad definition of conspiracy theory. Because there is in general, I guess,
00:11:33
Speaker
This notion that conspiracy theories are a little bit iffy, a little bit shady, a little bit weird, and if we start talking about perfectly ordinary things like a birthday party as being a conspiracy theory, I can understand people wanting to object to that. So why is it good then? Why not go with the flow in this case? Why is it good to have this definition that possibly bucks the tree in the middle?
00:11:52
Speaker
Well, once again, as long as you can show that one conspiracy theory that was considered to be false turned out to be true, and there are lots of those, Watergate, Moscow trials, and the like, it's metaphysically dubious to insist on they must be false. You can then go down the other route, which is to go, well, you know,
00:12:14
Speaker
Conspiracy theory which is proven is no longer a conspiracy theory. It's an official theory or story. And that means that, you know, we can say conspiracy theories are false because when they're shown to be true, they magically convert. Bit of a no true Scotsman
Academic Perspectives on Conspiracies
00:12:30
Speaker
thing going on there. Yeah, it's a representation fallacy, but that's also metaphysically dubious.
00:12:37
Speaker
because there are lots of examples of things that were pejoratively labeled as conspiracy theories at the time, say like the Moscow Show trials, where the people who said, no, it's actually true, and were tired as being conspiracy theorists putting forward a conspiracy theory were right at the time. It's not that evidence came out later that made people reappraise the situation.
00:13:04
Speaker
It was in the case of the Moscow trials, the Soviets lying about the evidence to cover up the crime they had committed. So you then have to go, so at what point did it make its conversion between conspiracy theory and official theory? Because it's quite clearly an official theory after 1969.
00:13:26
Speaker
but it was also true back when it was positive in the first place. So, can you explain how that transition actually works? It's just a, it's a nonsense position to start with. Now, admittedly,
00:13:39
Speaker
Whilst it is a position you find in the academic literature, it's likely not a common position. Most people's position turns out to be the notion that there's just something inherently suspicious about conspiracy theories. Yes, they can be true, but on average, they're likely false.
00:14:01
Speaker
Well, what do you say to that then? Does the more general view of it show that actually, given that there are many more things that count the definition of a conspiracy than we might initially think, the idea that their rear also doesn't stand up screen? There is a base rate fallacy going on here, which is you kind of need to know how many conspiracy theories there are.
00:14:25
Speaker
And then go, well, how many of them are false versus true, warranted or unwarranted before you make that claim? And the broader your definition of conspiracy, the more likely you are to find that actually there's a larger chunk of conspiracy theories that turned out to be warranted than you previously thought.
00:14:45
Speaker
Now I do think that's kind of a false error to do this because when you're playing with numbers here and you don't know what the base rate is, it basically can go either way. It does depend an awful lot on how you define what counts as a conspiracy. I'd rather go down the route of going
00:15:03
Speaker
Why is this a problem for conspiracy theories as opposed to scientific theories or psychological theories or historical theories? Because there are more scientific theories out there than there are warranted scientific theories. Scientists come up with new theories every day, which they then go into the lab,
00:15:27
Speaker
their special lab and they test in their lab coats with their stethoscopes because they're a cliched scientist and only a few, in fact only a tiny few, ever survive scrutiny.
00:15:41
Speaker
But we don't go around going, well, there are so many scientific theories out there, and most of them are false. In fact, scientific theories are just really unlikely to be true. We should be suspicious. Suspicious of those scientists. And yet when it comes to conspiracy theories, that's our reasoning, even though in other theoretical domains of explanation, we don't make that same move.
00:16:08
Speaker
Why do you think that is? Is it because high profile conspiracy theories all tend to be particularly loopy ones that are sort of obviously silly and false?
00:16:20
Speaker
I think we did talk briefly about the whole secrecy condition. Given that secrecy is baked into the very definition of a conspiracy, we do tend to be naturally suspicious of secrecy. So is there something to the suspicion angle?
00:16:40
Speaker
Yes, I think the secrecy stuff does play a particular role. It's harder to show a conspiracy theory is warranted because of the secrecy condition, although it's not impossible. And indeed, you might say it's really hard to prove some scientific theories because nature likes to keep secrets and is actually probably better at it than human beings are. The amount of work required to uncover what is happening at the base of nature is getting progressively harder.
00:17:06
Speaker
But once again, I think that's kind of the wrong angle to take here.
Trust in Authority and Conspiracy Theories
00:17:10
Speaker
Now, I actually think the real reason, and this is me doing my bit of folk psychology here, as to why we treat conspiracy theories suspiciously, is that we've grown up being told that conspiracy theories are bunk and bad. And we've also grown up, particularly in the West, in policies
00:17:30
Speaker
where we are expected to trust political authority, and most of the conspiracy theories we're concerned about are conspiracy theories that say don't trust those authorities, and yet we keep on being told by those authorities don't believe conspiracy theories about us. Quite possibly. Is
00:17:55
Speaker
This is, I think something that's come up a little bit. Is the divide between disciplines, like in, I know you've talked about sort of the sociological, sort of psychological conception of conspiracy theories versus the philosophical one. Is that where there's a bit of a divide in the suspicious versus not suspicious or plausible versus not plausible sort of thing? So this is a very crude accounting. Most philosophers,
00:18:24
Speaker
take it that a conspiracy theory is just an explanation of an event that sites a conspiracy is a salient cause. That seems to be increasing in the case in work in sociology being done today, although it wasn't the case when sociology was being done on this about 20 years ago. Social psychology
00:18:42
Speaker
they're more likely to go there's something suspicious about conspiracy theories, although social psychologists seem to be much more interested in what they take to be the negative social consequences of belief in conspiracy theories, which is a lack of trust in authority.
Philosophical vs. Sociological Views on Conspiracy Theories
00:19:02
Speaker
being more willing to engage in conspiratorial activity yourself and the like. Historians tend to be much more what's the evidence for this particular claim. So historians will go in the history of conspiracy this particular period of time, lots of conspiracies this period of time, not so many. Political science seems to be largely on the line of conspiracy theories are for losers.
00:19:26
Speaker
which is the claim that their views expressed by people on the losing side of a political debate, and it's kind of a release valve of democracy. So yeah, there is some disciplinarian sectioning of these views, although it gets fuzzy around the edges.
00:19:44
Speaker
Well, it always does. Now, you mentioned a second ago, talking about historians, looking at this particular conspiracy theory. You've picked up on my special word, Particular. A term about that one. That's the division between sort of a generalist and a particularist view of conspiracy theories. Yeah, so generalists are people who go... We can talk about the class of conspiracy theories generally.
00:20:12
Speaker
and use that to render a verdict on particular conspiracy theories. So they take a generalist view, conspiracy theories are, and almost every generalist is someone who thinks that conspiracy theories are in some way suspicious. I've yet to meet a generalist who believes that believing conspiracy theories is always fine.
Generalists vs. Particularists in Conspiracy Theory Assessment
00:20:32
Speaker
I'm sure they do exist, although that also would be a bit weird to then go, David Icke, he's right too. Alex Jones, he's right too. Most generalists go, no, there's something suspicious about conspiracy theories, and that justifies my prima facie reaction to this particular conspiracy theory.
00:20:50
Speaker
The kind of definition I advocate and the one that we use in this podcast is a particularist one, and that you're going, well, actually, the only way to tell whether a given conspiracy theory is good or bad is to weigh it on the evidence. So conspiracy theories are warranted or unwarranted on the evidence for those particular on their own. And so particulars reject the generalist consensus.
00:21:16
Speaker
by going, yeah, you can't render a claim about a particular conspiracy theory because of its membership of the class. You should actually be looking at the evidence and going, I mean, even if this conspiracy theory resembles one I've already met, which was false, in this particular instance, mightn't it be true? We should at least entertain the evidence before condemning it.
00:21:42
Speaker
I just completely forgot what I was going to say next. I had a point and it disappeared. Just went off with a speedboat. It did. At least the helicopter's gone. Yeah, the helicopter circling a while ago, messing with our sound levels. It was indeed. We shot it out of the air with our mind rays. Yes. Oh, that's where I was going with it. Long time distance of the podcast.
00:22:08
Speaker
may find it a little bit odd, I think, sometimes to compare the theory behind this podcast with the reality of a lot of the speaking of it. Because although, I mean, this, this is a theory that is basically sympathetic to podcast.
00:22:24
Speaker
To podcasters, guys, to conspiracies. We are very sympathetic towards podcasts. Sympathetic to conspiracies. It isn't a view that says conspiracy theories are inherently nonsense and you should disregard
Sympathy for Conspiracy Theories
00:22:34
Speaker
all of them. And yet most of the time I think we are more in party pooping mode when it comes to discussing individual conspiracy theories. Although we do go through periods of then
00:22:47
Speaker
We do. Self-correcting and doing our series on false flags and things like that. We do like to point out that conspiracies do occur and there are warranted instances of conspiracy theories. The problem is the really entertaining conspiracy theories
00:23:05
Speaker
often turn out to be the ones that we don't find to be plausible. Although we had great fun talking about when Richard Nixon was right. Yep, that's true. That's true. Yeah, I think. And again, I think coming back to what I said a little bit before about the fact
00:23:21
Speaker
But the big names in conspiracy theories, the ones that people think of when they think conspiracy theory tend to be the loopier ones, the ones that get the attention. So certainly we will probably never do a episode of this podcast on the time somebody threw a birthday party for one of their friends, because frankly, that's just not that interesting. Unless this podcast turns into a prize party for May. Oh, you never know, it might.
Promoting Books and Upcoming Events
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, it might.
00:23:51
Speaker
So what are all the people doing hiding behind the sofa then? The same thing they're always doing hiding behind the sofa, cataloging your daily knife in excruciating detail.
00:24:03
Speaker
I wish I hadn't gone to the bathroom three times today. Was it three times? Don't give me that. So I think we've said all we wanted to say. Is there a conclusion you'd like to wrap things up with? Buy my book. Buy my book. You can't afford to buy my book. I can't afford to buy my book.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, so there you go. That book is the podcast. No, it's not. It's not the philosophy of conspiracy theories, or it's taking conspiracy theories seriously, or depending on when you listen to this, it might even be understanding conspiracy theories.
00:24:44
Speaker
third book. You're going to run out of gerunds before too long, what else will you be doing?
Conclusion: Humor and Future Topics
00:24:48
Speaker
I'm feeling after I've finished writing Understanding Conspiracy Theories, I'm going to take a break from writing books about conspiracy theories and write something else instead. Right, a graphic fiction? Well, so there's a the New Zealand Association of Philosophy Conference is coming up in November of 2019.
00:25:10
Speaker
This is obviously being recorded before November 2019, although we don't know when this is going out. And I've been working on a suite of papers on fake news. And just the other day I was going, yeah, this paper, what's fake about fake news. It's a really boring name. And then I just suddenly realized, you know what I should call it? I should call it what the fake.
00:25:36
Speaker
You could call it that. So I'm writing a paper called What the Fake? Good. I approve. Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
So is that going to be your thing now? Fake news, not books about conspiracy theories? Fake news, secrecy, disinformation, erotic fiction about your mother. So just the usual then? Yeah. Righto. I mean, I know you love reading it. So I think that is all we had to say until the next one of these mysterious filler Back to Basics episodes. Indeed. When we'll talk about
00:26:09
Speaker
What did we talk about? Well, as you know, next time we'll probably talk about the role of evidence in the conspiracy theories. Evidence, yes. I remember that episode well. At least I remember that it was a long time ago. It was. But now is not there, now is now. And now is the time to end this episode of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy.
00:26:29
Speaker
So I think all that remains is to say goodbye and listen to the... No, there won't be bonus content to go with this one. Well, there probably will. We can't predict what's going to be. Let's try and predict what's going to be in the bonus content. So I'm thinking we're going to have a news story about how a hippopotamus decided the fate of a small Middle Eastern country.
00:26:59
Speaker
I think there'll be something to do with Donald bloody Trump. And I think we're going to discover why it is that Steven Spielberg is running for US president. The real reason, not the reason his publicist put forward. No. That's all lies. It's secretly because Tom DeLonge is his choice of vice president, isn't it?
00:27:20
Speaker
to the stars. Right. Well, there we go. So I think I think we better stop while we're more or less ahead. So until the next time you hear from us, whenever that might be goodbye and totally.
00:27:36
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Ederson and M. Dennett. If you'd like to help support us, please find details of our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.