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M Knows It When They See It
35 Plays1 year ago
After last week's episode - which totally exists and was awesome, you guys - we dial things down a notch with a look a recent paper of M's, where they survey some works, outline some methodologies, tabulate some results - are we sure this is a philosophy paper? Apparently it is.
We also talk about robot lifeguards, obviously.
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Transcript
Mr. Addison's Ham Vision Dilemma
00:00:00
Speaker
OK, next image. Tell me what you see. Ham. Excellent. OK, next image. Ham. And this one. Also ham. Well, Mr. Addison, I have good news and bad news. Actually, it's all bad news. It's a very rare condition you've got where all you can see is ham. I've been showing you a selection of images of family members and friends and also common household objects. And you identified them all as ham.
00:00:29
Speaker
Ham. See? No, no, no ham. Everything is ham. Friends and family, quality ham. Knives, hard ham. Pools, wet ham. The world is made of ham. Wow. Don't come at me with your philosophical claptrap about essences and atoms. I know ham when I see it, and I see ham everywhere. Okay, so what is this an image of? I don't know. I'm having trouble focusing my eyes on it, to be honest.
00:00:59
Speaker
Mr. Edison, this is an image of a piece of ham. No. Yes. But that means you're representing ham on a piece of ham. It's ham all the way down. All the way down. You aren't being serious right now. Yes, I ham. I ham.
Josh Edison & Dr. M.R.X.T.'s Legal Humor
00:01:26
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Em Dintus. Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Edison and in Zhuhai, China, they are associate professor Dr. M.R.X.T. Is it the right to say associate professor, doctor? It's only in Germany. Only in Germany. Well, whatever. You're both of those things at various times.
00:01:54
Speaker
And we're in different countries. We are. That's okay. Now, Josh, I have to say, after last week's historic episode, I almost felt it wasn't even worth doing another episode of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy.
00:02:08
Speaker
Well, no, no, exactly. When you managed to pull off what we achieved last week, it's almost time to pack it in, really. I kind of expected that just the magnitude of what we achieved last time would have somehow caused MH370 to rise from the waves and become apparent, which, as we all know, is the end condition for this podcast. But it doesn't seem to have happened.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was a really lucky confluence. I sent out invitations to a variety of different, we had to say, prestigious guests we could have on this podcast. And all three wanted to be on the podcast at the same time. And I think we probably had the best roundtable discussion on that topic that anyone's ever had. And frankly, I actually don't know what more there is to say.
00:02:59
Speaker
No, I'm slightly worried that some of what we discussed might end up being both libelous and treasonous at the same time. But nobody's in jail yet, as far as I know of, so I think we got away with it. Actually, have you been following the War Thunder, Fieska?
War Thunder Forum Classified Leaks
00:03:15
Speaker
Oh, the missing plane, the F-34R. No, no, no, the game. So what is the forum, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So what are the more people sharing these classified details? It is, yeah. So it's a tank game developed by, I actually can't remember where, and I think they may even be Ukrainian developers. But it turns out the fans of this game
00:03:37
Speaker
are really, really big fans of tanks. And every so often, a tank is introduced into War Thunder, which the fans of these tanks don't believe the attributes are correct for. And so they leak classified information online about official secrets about tanks. Happens to still be hilarious. Yeah. Often. Yeah. Yeah. So they've done it again, have they?
00:03:59
Speaker
Apparently, they're always doing it. Yeah. If this is the one I've heard of, they have a pinned topic on their forum saying, guys, please stop sharing classified information to win internet arguments. Yeah. It doesn't appear to work.
00:04:12
Speaker
No, because I mean, the developers have said, look, our forums are set up in such a way that the developers never read what's going on in these posts. So when you're leaking classified information asking us to improve the attributes of Tank XYZ, none of the developers are ever going to see it. All you're doing is releasing official secrets online. It makes no effect upon the game, but it does make you legally liable for your actions.
F-35 Mystery & AirTag Tracking
00:04:42
Speaker
There's also the missing F-35 fighter plane in the States, which is not conspiratorial, but it is quite funny. The Department of Defense saying, hey, has anyone seen our fighter plane? It was around here a minute ago.
00:05:02
Speaker
The Department of Defense should have invested in key fobs and they could just go and then work out where it is. The thing with all the money that's spent on the F-35, they'd at least put an Apple AirTag in it.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, you'd think so, I don't know. Maybe we need to apply for jobs in the US Department of Defense. We do pay very well for doing very little work. Well, that seems to be standard. Now, now, now. Now? Now, we have an episode. We have an episode this week, as is our want. It's not a conspiracy theory masterpiece theatre, because it's not about an old paper, it's about a new paper. So it's conspiracy theory theatre, I guess.
00:05:42
Speaker
I mean, basically, we just use in this as an excuse to talk about a paper that I've written, which is available for free for people to read online. But I believe, Josh, you also have another topic you'd like to broach before we get into that.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's the sort of topic that we would normally put in a bonus episode for our patrons, but we have something special for the patron episode this week. We'll get to that at the end of the episode.
AI Lifeguard Conspiracy Theories
00:06:10
Speaker
So now seems as good a time as any to mention it. Have you seen about the robot AI matrix lifeguards? I've heard mention of it, but I don't know any specific details. Let's play a sting and then you can enlighten me.
00:06:30
Speaker
Oh, it's part of the official episode now. It is. We're going to have two stings, two stings, this episode. I mean, we're going downhill after last week's episode. So most of the stings are all the time now. Just always stings.
00:06:46
Speaker
I mean, this is not a big story, but sometime over the last couple of days, an interesting video went up on TikTok and got shared around and it's a person at a public pool in the States going by the accents.
00:07:01
Speaker
And she's looking at a lifeguard who is moving in what appears to be quite kind of a strange way. They're very, very methodically and robotically sort of tilting their head up and down and sweeping side to side. And it does look a little bit strange. And that has caused the person shooting this video to assume that the lifeguard is some sort of an AI from the matrix or something.
00:07:27
Speaker
and is worried that she's going to call security over to get the person out of there and we need to get the word out. Now, people who know about these sorts of things say that this is apparently a thing that lifeguards do. It's referred to as an Alice scan. That's not Alice like Alice in Wonderland, but Alice like
00:07:46
Speaker
like John McClain's coke snorting friend to get shot in the face by Hans Gruber and Die Hard, that Ellis. And then Ellis scanners, yeah. It's a way of scanning the whole pool, making sure nobody's getting in trouble. And it's sort of, you do this very unnatural, methodical head-sweeping motion, presumably to sort of force yourself to methodically look across the whole pool, not just sort of, you know, sweep your eyes across in a way that you could end up missing stuff.
00:08:14
Speaker
So apparently it is a normal thing to do. It just looks very strange. But from that launched a conspiracy that we're living in the matrix. And this is some sort of an AI robot that's been caught on tape.
Social Media's Impact on Perception
00:08:28
Speaker
Now, I'm looking at a news article here, one that you sent me. And it has a paragraph starting, conspiracy theories often gain traction when they are presented in a way that appears credible. In the era of easily accessible information, it can be challenging to distinguish between reliable sources and those peddling falsehoods. Social media platforms can inadvertently legitimize conspiracy theories by giving them a platform alongside legitimate news sources, blurring the lines of credibility.
00:08:55
Speaker
Belief in conspiracy theories is not purely rational. Emotions play a significant role. Conspiracy theories can tap into anger, fear, or a sense of injustice, which makes them emotionally resonant. The allure of emotional satisfaction can often outweigh the need for evidence-based reasoning, leading people to believe in conspiracies despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, so the article I read was at streetmedia.tv, which uses the incident to do a bit of a talk about conspiracy theories and what they think of them, and they're sort of a bit worried about the whole truth is a lie, nothing means anything anymore, everybody impents their own reality.
00:09:39
Speaker
Stuff. And cats are marrying dogs. It's not nearly as much fun as laughing at someone who thought Lifeguard was a robot.
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a friend back home who has been a lifeguard in the past between doing a PhD and then getting an academic job. And apparently the training for that is very methodical to make sure that when you scan a pool, you are looking at every single part of the pool. Because as she points out, you might, you might.
00:10:11
Speaker
focus on splashy movement and go, oh, let's make sure the person who's splashing is having fun, rather than struggling to drown. But of course, there are also other kinds of movement that show that a swimmers industries which aren't flashy,
00:10:27
Speaker
unless you need to be carefully looking at every single person in the poll. And our normal attention seeking behaviour, that's not quite the right word, our normal attention directed behaviour trying to look for activity isn't actually good for looking out for people in danger, it's much better at looking for things which are causes of danger to us.
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, I do remember reading ages ago that I saw an article that essentially said a drowning person doesn't look like what you think it does. And sort of had stories of people who had been in some rough water, getting buffeted around a bit and saw a lifeguard charging towards them and then tried to say, no, it's all right, we're fine. We're okay. I need to see the lifeguard run past them and grab the person who was like two feet away from them struggling and almost because they weren't splashing around. They were just
00:11:20
Speaker
having severe difficulty keeping their mouth out of the water. I think there was an ad in the UK which shows a person appearing to have a heart attack and then the ad kind of stops and goes, did you notice the person having the heart attack?
00:11:37
Speaker
And then they actually point out the person that you think is having a heart attack is kind of the film version of what a heart attack looks like. The real person having the heart attack in the background, you wouldn't realize they were having a heart attack because heart attacks by and large aren't visual, they're internal. And so looking for the symptoms of heart attacks, we're trained by media to think, oh, heart attack activity looks like X, it doesn't look like X at all.
00:12:04
Speaker
No. Anyway, that's enough talk of AI Matrix
Conspiracy Theory Paper Discussion
00:12:09
Speaker
lifeguards. Let's move on to your paper. Does that mean another sting then? It does. We'll stick it in a roundabout here. Welcome to Conspiracy Theory Theatre.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yes, we have. We stuck it in here. Right, yes. So the paper we're going to be talking about today is called, I Know It When I See It, Motivating Examples in the Social Psychology of Conspiracy Theory Theory by M. R. X. Dentith. Now this paper is it under review at the moment. It's going through peer review.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yes, it's going through open peer review through the Rutledge open science collections as part of the misinformation and conspiracy theories collection, which I was invited to contribute to at the beginning of this year. It may have been the very end of last year. So Joe Jusinski is one of the people behind it, so I suspect I got the invite from him.
00:13:08
Speaker
And so I was asked to contribute a piece and you write the piece, you submit the piece online. You have to pay a publication fee, although I managed to actually get Rutledge to pay that on my behalf. And then the paper gets reviewed by people that you elect as reviewers, as well as people that Rutledge consider to be reviewers.
00:13:29
Speaker
And basically, you just go through a process where the reviewers put their reviews online so that people can see what the comments are. And then as long as you get two approved reviews, and that can be approved or approved with reservation, then the paper is officially published. You don't know what happens if it turns out that nobody approves your paper, given that you've paid a publication fee.
00:13:56
Speaker
presumably Rutledge would have to give you that feedback if they end up going, oh, and by the way, we're rejecting this paper, so it isn't published after all. But I think they select experts on the notion that experts are going to write something that's going to get through eventually anyway. And I've got one review thus far from Stephen Clark, which is approved with reservations, although the very first line of that review is along the lines of,
00:14:23
Speaker
Denton doesn't actually need to make any of the suggested changes, but I do think it would be a better paper if these changes were incorporated, which to my mind really is an approved, but Steve went for approved with reservations instead. Well, fair enough.
00:14:40
Speaker
Now, I also know why he did it, because I will be editing a paper of his at some point in the next few months, and I get the impression he's going, oh, oh, I better get my revenge first. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Now, because this is not a standard conspiracy theory masterpiece theatre, I haven't worked up notes as I usually do, because I think
00:15:04
Speaker
it would be a little bit strange to go sitting, to sort of be the same. And here's what dentists says as I read out these quotes and so on. So we can just sort of chat about it in general. But we should start with the abstract. I can't decide, is it fitting that you deliver the abstract since it's your words, or is it funny or if I say it?
00:15:27
Speaker
even though I'm saying the stuff that's actually what you said. I think it's funnier if you say it. This abstract's an interesting abstract, and that is not the abstract I initially submitted. So one thing which is, and we'll kind of see this from the way the paper works, which is interesting about this collection,
00:15:46
Speaker
is that it's mostly headed up by social scientists and so they wanted an abstract which fits in with a more social science style of abstract which is not really the philosophical style. Social science abstracts are kind of
00:16:01
Speaker
theories strictly defined. Philosophical abstracts are, well I mean no one ever reads them so you can write what you like in them. So the abstract to my mind is a little bit clumsy but it's clumsy because it had to fulfill certain criteria. So thus I think it's much better that you read it and thus I can somehow then blame the reading of the abstract on you rather than me.
00:16:24
Speaker
writer, I shall. So the abject of this paper reads, looking at a set of 76 representative articles published by social psychologists between 2017 and 2023, reviewed between December 2022 and February 2023, I examine the role of motivating examples, a kind of illustrative example typically used by researchers at the beginning of their work to motivate the issue or problem they want to resolve or address in that work, in the social psychological work on conspiracy theory.
00:16:52
Speaker
Through an examination of the language around how motivating examples are introduced and used in the social-psychological literature, I argue that the abstract and vague way that social psychologists employ such examples ends up relying on what Joseph Jusinski and Adam Enders deem as an unviable and easily abused, I-know-it-when-I-see-it standard.
00:17:11
Speaker
As will be demonstrated, much of the recent work in the social psychology of conspiracy theory assumes and thus fails to establish what is supposedly problematic about belief in the conspiracy theories used as motivating examples. As a consequence, the surveyed work typically fails to adequately capture belief in actual conspiracy theories, let alone establish a case for a general suspicion of such beliefs.
00:17:32
Speaker
This work then adds to and extends upon existing critiques of the social psychology of conspiracy theory by members of the wider community of scholars studying conspiracy theories. The upshot of this research is that if social psychologists want their work to be of use to the broader scholarly community studying these things called conspiracy theories, then they need to connect their work on the problems of conspiracy beliefs or mindsets to concrete examples of belief in unwarranted conspiracy theories.
Critique on Psychology's Approach to Conspiracy Theories
00:17:58
Speaker
I think that sounds quite sensible. That sounded sensible to me. It does. Yes, now, so this is a, this is a, um,
00:18:06
Speaker
I don't know the right adjective to use. This paper involves a lot of sort of surveying and reporting of results, which... So it's not quite experimental philosophy, but it is very much applied philosophy and applied epistemology. Because, yeah, there's a lot of surveying, there's a lot of methodology, and there is multiple tables in this paper. I don't know how I feel about that. Three tables, Josh. Three tables. I mean, not many tables. And it's more than three more.
00:18:36
Speaker
Three more tables than the average conspiracy theory paper in philosophy contains, or indeed the average paper in philosophy contains.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm not sure about that. If you ask me, tables are just a gateway drug for diagrams. And we all know that when you start including diagrams in your philosophical papers. Josh, I hate to tell you, but one of the early versions of this paper had a pie chart and a histogram rather than a table. So there were diagrams in the original, but Marty Orr, he recommended changing some of that information to tables because it would be easier to read.
00:19:11
Speaker
And in doing so saved your very life, because as we all know, when a philosopher puts diagrams in their papers, the only merciful thing to do is take them behind the shed and end it as painlessly as possible. I am never going to introduce you to my friend Axel Galfit, who wrote an entire book on doing the philosophy of science with diagrams. Probably for the best.
00:19:31
Speaker
So anyway, so that's that's that's the thing so you've you've done a bunch of surveys surveyed 76 articles Focusing in particular on the examples that they give at the start to say I'm assuming if you've got 76 articles, it's a fairly common thing then in papers that they say, you know People believe in conspiracy theories like this one and that tells us blah blah blah and go on basically you so I mean I would
00:19:58
Speaker
I don't know where the 76 representative articles actually represent almost all of the papers published in Psychology between 2017 and 2023. Certainly, I collect papers as they're being published, so basically the research archive I got all this information from is my own personal database of materials I've downloaded in that five-year period.
00:20:22
Speaker
there probably are some papers that aren't collected, but I suspect actually my representative sample is actually most of the papers published in psychology over that time. And yes, most articles in psychology start with, here's some conspiracy theories that people believe, then there'll be a statement of how these beliefs are generally taken to be problematic or emblematic of some kind of psychological process. And then you'll get the analysis of why we should be
00:20:52
Speaker
concerned with this process or what this process means for, say, personality types or fitting in with big five or something of that particular kind. So most papers have motivating examples, although as I note, some papers have no motivating examples. They simply talk about belief in conspiracy theories, don't mention any conspiracy theories at all.
00:21:15
Speaker
and then tell people, look, belief in conspiracy theories is bad without ever attaching that analysis of why belief in conspiracy theories is bad to any concrete example of a conspiracy theory. And you point out the difference, of course, between a motivating example and an illustrative example. It's not just that here's an example of a conspiracy theory. It's
00:21:37
Speaker
It's to show, this is the kind of beliefs we're talking about, and I'm assuming in most cases, here's the problem with them. A problem exists, these conspiracy theories are an example of it, and they're why I want to be talking about this in the first place. So it is, it is, I guess, then fairly, fairly important that these examples do what they want them to do.
00:22:02
Speaker
Well, yes, I mean, they exist, presumably, to tell people this is a problem that needs to be resolved. So let's try and resolve that problem, belief in theories of this particular kind.
00:22:16
Speaker
And then you start talking about this, this I know it when I see it standard that Joe Yusinski and Adam Enders have talked about, which is, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I know it when I see it. What's what was the thing that was, it was pornography, wasn't it? That there was the original, I can't define it. It's a, yeah, it's a Supreme Court joke.
00:22:38
Speaker
judgment, which is, you know, I mean, I can't define what pornography is, but I know it when I see it, which does indicate that Supreme Court justice had looked at a lot of pornography. But pervert justices to one side, when it comes to conspiracy theories, it's an equally suspect move, I guess, to say, I can't define a conspiracy theory. But I know when I say, I mean, this is the stuff we've talked about for ages, for as long as we've been doing conspiracy theory, Masterpiece Theatre, you
00:23:04
Speaker
You get all these attempts by people who want to say conspiracy theories are bad, acknowledge that some conspiracies do occur. So some conspiracy theories are just matters of historic fact or have you? So then it turns to, well, yeah, no, but I'm talking about those conspiracy theories. You know the ones I mean. And it sort of seems to be an extension of that. And as we've seen in the past, that sort of thinking tends to just get people into nothing but trouble. So it would be a worry if that's what's going on here.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a point that was raised by Joe Jusinski and Adam Enders in another paper. They point out that when the media talks about conspiracy theories, they very rarely, if ever, provide you with an operating definition of what a conspiracy theory is. They simply, well, here's a conspiracy theory. We know it's bad. And as Joe and Adam point out, this is a very easily abused standard.
00:24:01
Speaker
where you just assume that everybody knows what conspiracy theories are, therefore we all know that they're bad. But without ever actually telling us what makes something a conspiracy theory bad, it's then very hard to do an analysis of what are the bad consequences of believing in these things called conspiracy theories. So then you get into the results of your surveying and here's where the tables start showing up.
00:24:25
Speaker
And I should point out, I spent a lot of time reading these articles. So even though what I was looking for were the motivating examples, which are, as I state in the article, predominantly at the beginning of an article. So usually motivating examples occur in the introduction. Here is conspiracy theories. They're problematic. Now we're going to do some research to find out why they're believed, or some argument along that kind.
00:24:53
Speaker
But just to make sure that there were examples doing motivating work elsewhere in the articles, I by and large read all 76 articles over that, what was it? December to February, so three month period. And what was interesting about that is not only are there some articles that have no motivating examples,
00:25:18
Speaker
Some of those articles that have no motivating examples had no examples of conspiracy theories at all in their papers. So these are papers that are telling you conspiracy theory belief is bad without ever attaching that analysis to any example of what might constitute belief in a conspiracy theory. And I just think that's
00:25:42
Speaker
That is lazy. That's a worry. Yeah. Yeah. If you can write about the danger of belief in X without ever specifying what X is, then I'm not quite sure what you're doing. So you in the first of these tables, you talk about just all the different examples which come up and it's nice to see it's a very varied set of
00:26:07
Speaker
motivating examples. I'm not going to count the entire looks like looks like you got a couple of dozen, at least different examples people give the year I notice COVID is the one that comes up the most. And it looks like 911 is number two, although half as many mentions of 911 as COVID-19. So it's definitely the big explosion of literature from around about the beginning of 2020. So if you actually look at the number at the
00:26:37
Speaker
number of articles per year again 2017 to 2019 not that many articles 2020 onwards suddenly a huge amount of articles being produced
00:26:50
Speaker
I see in when you go through some of the examples or the quotes from the papers below, sometimes they're a bit vague. I see papers just sort of saying natural disasters, liberty, death, lack of technological progress to pandemics, which I mean, obviously everyone knows what you think about pandemics, but the rest of them are
00:27:07
Speaker
just quite wide ranging. And now, so then the next one, you tabulate the number of motivating examples in each one of these ones. So I see out of the 76, 19 of the articles, a quarter of them didn't have any motivating examples, which does seem like quite a lot.
00:27:27
Speaker
It does, and a small proportion of those had no examples at all. And some of them, goes all the way, one of them had nine examples, which I guess that's a little more rigorous, but the... Well, no, so the one that has nine, yeah, they're all very vague references, which is
00:27:47
Speaker
I mean, the moral we get to at the end, to kind of skip to the end ever so slightly, is that, on average, most papers use two examples. And most papers, when they use two examples, mention but don't explain what the conspiracy theories are, and thus give you no reason to believe that they are, in any way, bad beliefs.
Stereotypes in JFK & Epstein Theories
00:28:07
Speaker
Papers which have lots of examples tend to be just as vague, and thus, in some respects, more infuriating, because you've got more examples.
00:28:15
Speaker
But you don't have any reason to think that those are examples of bad beliefs unless you already believe they are examples of bad beliefs.
00:28:24
Speaker
And then your last table is just a list of one of the articles you looked at, which is a long one. This caused a little bit of issue during the publication, because of course, my database was of articles as they were published. And of course, you get online publication, which means an article can appear in one year.
00:28:47
Speaker
but of course, actually be formally published the next year or in some cases the year after. And so I had to kind of do some modification to the article to note that the listing by year is the listing of presumably first publication.
00:29:03
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily reflect the actual year of publication of the article, because we live in a top c-turvy world now where articles can have multiple publication dates and thus end up having multiple page ranges depending on when you read it.
00:29:21
Speaker
does make life difficult. But moving on, you bring up an interesting point with not having articles or not having examples at all, which is that, of course, there's been plenty of work in the social sciences. You mentioned sociology and anthropology, but
00:29:38
Speaker
pointing out that there's been a whole lot of work done around the idea that who gets to call something a conspiracy theory is relevant and therefore what counts as a conspiracy theory and what doesn't and the power relationships in that. We've looked at papers about that not too long ago. So to not define one, not even given an example of one at all,
00:30:01
Speaker
is skipping over all of these problems which people have put plenty of work into talking about. So you're sort of definitely letting things down straight away by not having any examples.
00:30:12
Speaker
but then you come to look at the ones that do give examples, what they are. And you start talking about stereotypical conspiracy theories. Is that something you found? They're not, it's the examples that are given, not of a, not of a, you know, here's a concrete example, more like this is just the stereotype that we're thinking about when we think of conspiracy theories.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I was thinking here about, for example, when people talk about 9-11 conspiracy theories, people kind of have a stereotype of a 9-11 conspiracy theory, which is going to be some kind of inside job hypothesis, and it's going to be of the made it happen on purpose hypothesis.
00:30:56
Speaker
And that stereotype, we actually don't know whether that reflects what most people who believe in 9-11 conspiracy theories actually believe. It's actually an interesting empirical question here. Is that the most popular 9-11 conspiracy theory? Or does it turn out that actually most people, if they're 9-11 conspiracy theorists, they say, Leop theorists, let it happen on purpose.
00:31:20
Speaker
or maybe it turns out there are natural disasters, theorists in there going, oh, actually it was an earthquake that destroyed the Twin Towers. But the government's covering that up because that would affect house prices in Manhattan, and Manhattan's one of the most expensive parts of the world, so therefore we don't want to show it's geologically unstable. So when we refer to stereotypes,
00:31:42
Speaker
we need to actually be able to show that the stereotype is actually reflective of what people believe about a particular set of conspiracy theories. And 9-11 is useful here because of course there are a lot of 9-11 conspiracy theories out there and some are more or less plausible than others in that particular set.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, and in particular, you talk about, you go through the deaths of John F. Kennedy and the deaths of Jeffrey Epstein to point out that when people throw around these topics essentially as being, this is an example of a conspiracy theory, but in both of those cases, first of all, there are multiple possible theories which generally
00:32:35
Speaker
sort of go from the authorities did it to the authorities knew what was going to happen and didn't stop it to the authorities, and this applies to 9-11 as well. Of course, the authorities should have known about it and stopped it, but didn't know now trying to cover up their incompetence, that sort of stuff. And in particular, in terms of the JFK and the Epstein one, some of these conspiracy theories are not implausible.
00:33:03
Speaker
especially when it comes to the idea that stuff happened under their watch that shouldn't have, and they're simply acting to cover up their incompetence. There you don't actually need to be positing malign intent.
00:33:19
Speaker
simple incompetence. I think people would find a lot more plausible. So you get the idea that in the case of JFK, one possible conspiracy theory is that the CIA simply covered up the fact that they could have prevented the assassination if that acted on the intelligence they had. He mentioned the idea that the Warren Commission was designed to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin, that they had decided this was the outcome that they wanted from the outset. And so that was all the commission was ever going to do.
00:33:45
Speaker
And there's good evidence for that claim. We know that Lyndon Johnson believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone assassin, that he had help. I think Lyndon Johnson thought it was a Cuban conspiracy of some kind. And he was persuaded by the Attorney General to finger, that sounds terrible, finger Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole person responsible for the death of his predecessor.
00:34:12
Speaker
So we know the Warren Commission was constructed to get a particular verdict. Now, that doesn't actually mean that the Warren Commission result is wrong. You can have commissions who go, well, we think we know who did it, we'll just do an investigation to verify it. But it is interesting that Lyndon Johnson was a conspiracy theorist about his predecessor, but political pressure made him give up publicly on that view.
00:34:41
Speaker
And then, of course, there was also the Church Committee finding, which we talked about in the past, I'm sure, again, which said that basically that the Warren Commission didn't do a good enough job of proving its case, but again, not actually saying that its case is wrong.
00:34:58
Speaker
It's just saying that the relevant authorities didn't actually check all of the leads. They picked a target and chose to prosecute that one even in death and didn't do enough investigation of other relevant hypotheses at the time.
00:35:13
Speaker
And then when it comes to Epstein again, there are multiple theories. It could simply again be covering up incompetence. The prison authorities didn't pay enough attention to him and should have been able to prevent his suicide, but didn't. Or you can go further into it without even having to suggest that government agents snuck into a cell and bumped him off. Again, you could suggest the idea that he was encouraged to commit suicide or what have you.
00:35:39
Speaker
And that was an interesting example because as I, between writing it and submitting it, a report came out that showed that there was a cover-up by the prison authorities about exactly what had been going on about the surveillance of Jeffrey Epstein in his cell. So the prior probability, I'm sorry, the posterior probability of one of those conspiracy theories went up during the writing of that paper.
00:36:08
Speaker
As I think gets noted in the article, there really aren't any references to Epstein at all in the current literature. But it's the kind of example that people might want to use in the future. And so people should be aware that when people talk about conspiracy theories around the death of Jeffrey Epstein, there are actually
00:36:29
Speaker
at least three different versions and some of them are more plausible than others. They're not obviously false or obviously bad beliefs.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah, the next question of course then is of these conspiracy theories that get brought up, how many people actually believe in them and actually believe in what kind of them?
Abstract vs. Concrete in Conspiracy Beliefs
00:36:52
Speaker
And so you talk about Brian L. Keeley's work on the Oklahoma City bombing, Catherine S. Olmsted, the various things you've said about the Moscow show trials and various other examples.
00:37:05
Speaker
And the question here becomes, these are all specific examples you give, but when we talk about a vague 9-11 or the JFK assassination or something, how do we know that the theory we have in mind is something that people even actually believe anywhere, anyone?
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah, if you're going to rely on stereotypes, you need an argument that says people predominantly believe in those stereotypical theories. And the problem is there's no literature which seems to indicate that. And this is kind of indicative of a larger issue in the psychology of conspiracy theories.
00:37:45
Speaker
in that there really isn't any literature describing the theories in the first place. So they're not reliant on examples of prior papers that showed that belief in conspiracy X, Y, or Z turned out to be a bad belief. And that's particularly prevalent with the new examples which appear in the 2017 to 2022 time period.
00:38:08
Speaker
in that examples like COVID-19 appear around about 2020, and no one explains why these are bad bullets. Now we might think that most COVID-19 conspiracy theories are bad bullets, but if you're going to use them as a motivating example for your research, you need to be quite specific as to this particular conspiracy theory is an example of a belief that people shouldn't hold, especially since
00:38:36
Speaker
Some of the conspiracy theories under that umbrella term are being investigated by security agents agencies around the world. So somebody's taking them seriously enough to investigate them and yet we're kind of washing them all with the label of unwarranted conspiracy theories or bad collects.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, and the COVID-19 especially leads into your next point, which is that maybe these people can get away with it if there had been previous work, which had already established some of these things as being things that you could, if the work has already been done in the past, so that we can get away with talking about things in general terms now, because they've been dealt with earlier. But as you say, stuff like QAnon and COVID-19
00:39:23
Speaker
pretty much brand new, so there isn't even the possibility in a lot of these ones there could have been any sort of prior establishing of that A, when you're talking about them you are referring to a defined kind of conspiracy theories and B, that they are in any way unwarranted or silly or irrational or something.
00:39:42
Speaker
And that makes me think of a point I don't make in the article, but maybe in a revision I should make, which is that's the other problem of the unviable and easily abused, I know it when I see it standard. When a new conspiracy theory comes up, you go, well, we know conspiracy theories are bad, ipso facto, this new one must be bad as well, because I know a bad conspiracy theory when I see one, I've been trained on the past set of bad conspiracy theories, except of course you haven't been,
00:40:10
Speaker
because at no point have you done any work to establish that these theories are by necessity bad beliefs. And then the last glass building of paper before the conclusion is the idea of conspiracy beliefs versus belief in individual conspiracy theories. So you say conspiracy theories are not beliefs, referring to... Well actually Julia makes that claim, I simply support her in making that claim.
00:40:38
Speaker
So people believe in particular conspiracy theories, and some people believe in lots of conspiracy theories, and the other ones I guess we call conspiracy theorists and cast dispersions upon. But you point out that sort of once the motivating, and in many cases, well I think you did point out some of the articles mention examples all the way through, but in many cases there's the motivating example at the beginning
00:41:03
Speaker
And then examples don't really come up again. It's just talking about beliefs in general the whole way through after that. And so everything remains at the level of the abstract. Is it the abstractness that is the bigger problem for you? Well, because if you're going to use motivating examples, then either explain why those motivating examples are examples of beliefs that need attention,
00:41:33
Speaker
or make reference to work which actually explains why those are bad beliefs. So I argue, and as you listed earlier, I use examples of other scholars, some people when they're talking about conspiracy theories go into the details of the conspiracy theories in question. Do I talk a lot about the Moscow show trials in the death of Julius Caesar?
00:41:54
Speaker
Brian talks about the Oklahoma City bombing. Lee Basham talks about the Atomic Energy Commission and the covering up of the danger of radioactive fallout. Catherine Olbersted has written an entire book on conspiracy theories in America over the course of the 20th century.
00:42:12
Speaker
refer to literature which explains the conspiracy theory and maybe also posits rationales as to why on the evidence the conspiracy theory is either good or bad. But the psychologists aren't doing that. They're simply relying on abstract examples and abstract examples that we're never given any reason to believe
00:42:35
Speaker
are actually the beliefs of conspiracy theorists out there in the world. It might be the case that there are a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists out there who simply believe really, really abstract conspiracy theories of the kind, oh, the New World order is out to get me.
00:42:50
Speaker
But in many cases, they'll be saying, oh, the New World Order is constituted of the following group, so the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg groups, and they're led by Lord Rothschild, et cetera, et cetera. They tend to believe in much more concrete theories than the psychology literature is actually tilting against.
00:43:13
Speaker
And that leads you in to your conclusion, which is actually, normally the conclusion is short enough that I can read the whole thing out, but this one's got a bit more detail, got a bit more meat in the conclusion than usual. So I don't think I could get away with that, but certainly it starts.
00:43:30
Speaker
As we have seen in the preceding analysis, I know it when I see it examples are not useful when it comes to motivating the analysis of what might be wrong with belief in conspiracy theories. This is because such examples, sans a detailed description of the theories in question, are typically clusters of sometimes rival theories that often include within that set conspiracy theories which are at the very least plausible to believe given the available evidence. As such, the preceding analysis fits in with existing critiques of the social psychology of conspiracy theory theory.
00:43:58
Speaker
with a few references. And so you sort of ask, you know, what would be the cost of using more detailed examples? And as you say, if the average is two, two examples, it doesn't sound like a lot of work to actually work up a more concrete example that you can go some way towards showing why it's irrational. Yeah, I mean, it's the addition of a paragraph or two of additional verbiage.
00:44:28
Speaker
which would then make your examples more concrete. Yes, you say. Admittedly, one cost of moving away from the I know it when I see it standard is that social psychologists might have to do a little more digging to find obviously implausible conspiracy theories to use as motivating examples in the future. Once you start working with what people actually believe, it becomes clear that at least some belief in conspiracy theories is plausible. That sounds a little bit bitchy to me. Just a little bit. Just a little bit pointed.
00:44:54
Speaker
Part of this actually is Joe Yosinski's fault. So sometime last year, or maybe the year before last now, because time moves in weird ways, especially during the pandemic, Joe eked me on to become less friendly, more competitive in my writing.
00:45:13
Speaker
And so this is kind of Joe's fault. He wants, he basically wants other social scientists and people in the humanities and philosophers to be a bit more aggressive in critiquing some of what he thinks of as lazy work going on in conspiracy theory, theory generally. And so I'm just following up on what Joe has asked and taking the fight to the other team. I guess that's fair. Did you watch the leaders debate?
00:45:43
Speaker
No, oh god no. Between Chris and Chris, yeah. I mean it was terrible on so many different levels but the worst, actually not the worst part, but one of the worst parts to my mind is that when they had the discussion of the debate afterwards with Jack Tame talking with Tohy Henry, Mikey Sherman and David Cunliffe,
00:46:07
Speaker
Not only did they keep on using sports metaphors for how the debate went down, but they kept on wanting Chris Hopkins to become really aggressive and to quote Mikey Sherman, go all mongrel on Christopher Luxor. And I was going, I don't think I like these aggressive metaphors. I mean, maybe it's the polite New Zealander in me, but these aggressive metaphors are just not suing me at all.
00:46:36
Speaker
No, no. Well, maybe, no. Maybe, maybe if more of Joe rubs off on you, then you'll change your tune.
Improving Conspiracy Theory Research
00:46:44
Speaker
Become more of a, become more of a mongrel yourself. Those are fighting words, Josh. If you were, if you were, if you were in front of me right now, wham bam straight to the moon. Yes, well, good thing I'm not.
00:46:55
Speaker
So you talk about the benefits, of course, of using more and more well-archued examples, and then go on to say, furthermore, the issue is not just that the motivating examples in the surveyed papers in social psychology are poor, rather the use of illustrative examples in general in the social psychology literature itself is poor. Recall that in many of the papers surveyed, there are no examples cited other than the motivating examples, and in nearly 10% of the surveyed papers, there are no examples motivated or illustrative whatsoever.
00:47:22
Speaker
It really does seem that work in social psychology rests upon the problematic and unviable, I know it when I see it, standard.
Closing & Teaser for Next Episode
00:47:29
Speaker
which you go on to say is a problem, as we have discussed. And I even end by saying if they don't buckle their shoes and tighten their pants, their work is not going to be of much use to the wider literature. And that's the other thing which I kind of emphasise in this paper. Psychology is just one discipline that studies conspiracy theory.
00:47:54
Speaker
Many people for some reason have privileged the psychological work on conspiracy theory. But historians study it, sociologists study it, cultural studies scholars study it, political scientists study it, philosophers study it. There's a song reference there of ants do it, bees do it, even human beings knees do it.
00:48:16
Speaker
that literature needs to have a broad appeal. And at the moment, the social psychological literature is really only talking to itself. Well, there we go. So an interesting paper if you do say so yourself. Indeed I do. Which you did as I was reading your words in first person. So that's the end of this episode. We've looked at papers. We've looked at robot lifeguards. We've talked about fighter planes. What more could you want?
00:48:46
Speaker
Well, if you're a patron, you probably want a bonus episode, because that's what you get. And what a bonus episode we have for you. It's been years. It's been a while. It's been a long, broad story. And do we have a story for you?
00:49:02
Speaker
Yes, another bit of conspiratorial happenings in the art world. So, if you'd like to hear more about dodgy arty dealings, become a patron. If you're not one already, just go to patreon.com and look for the podcast's guide to the conspiracy and sign yourself up. And I think, I think, that's pretty much all we have to say to you this week.
00:49:27
Speaker
Indeed it is. Well then in that case it's simply a matter of me saying goodbye. I know a goodbye when I see it.
00:49:43
Speaker
Associate Professor, M.R.X.Denters. Our show's cons... sorry, producers are Tom and Philip, plus another mysterious anonymous donor. You can contact Josh and myself at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider joining our Patreon. And remember, it's just a step to the left.