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An Interview with Julia and also Death
34 Plays1 year ago
M is back, for a given value of "back", so we have a full length episode this week, featuring both M and Josh - there's no denying it! M talks to Julia Deutz and Josh talks about DEATH. There's been a bit of it going around at the moment.
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Transcript
Introduction and Em's Return
00:00:05
Speaker
The Podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy featuring Josh Addison and Em Denteth. Hello, you're listening to the Podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy here in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and Dr. Em Denteth this week is back. But not actually on the podcast right now. Em is somewhat the worst for jet lag.
Julia Doots Interview and Conference Insights
00:00:32
Speaker
they they've just flown in and boy are their arms tired or something like that so so they're they're gonna take it easy and i will do one last one last solo episode before we get back into the swing of things but it's not it's not quite a solo episode em's presence will still be felt this week because while they were off overseas taking photographs of unconvincing lion statues
00:00:56
Speaker
They were producing a bit of content for us to relay back to you over the coming weeks. The first of which is an interview between Em and Julia Doots, one of the co-organizers of the conference that Em has been at. So that'll make for some interesting listening. And then I will come in at the end, I think, and give a little bit more, a little bit of extra content just to round out the week. But for now, take it away, Em and Julia.
00:01:28
Speaker
So I'm sitting here post-conference with Julia Dutz, one of the co-organisers of the Second International Conference on the philosophy of conspiracy theories. How are you feeling? I'm feeling really tired. Same, exactly the same. Yes, tired but also very grateful and very satisfied.
00:01:46
Speaker
It was a very rewarding experience I have to say, especially running it in person this time as opposed to running it online. It was quite neat to see people scribbling down notes, talking with people between sessions and generally just having a good time. Socializing, drinking and socializing. Maybe a little bit too much drinking.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, you can hear by the sound of my voice that I took especially that part very serious. Well, it is important to have socialization after a conference because that's where the real meat and potatoes comes in. I had no idea why I just said meat and potatoes there. It's just a thing in a thing in English that sometimes you say. So yeah, it was a good conference held all round highlights, low lights, different lights.
00:02:32
Speaker
Well, I think the highlights were for me were the panel discussions. So we had one on an interdisciplinary conspiracy theory theory, which I led, which was incredibly insightful and very productive. I led it, it was incredibly insightful, it was fruitful. One of the best, best panels I've ever seen or indeed participated in, I mean, really was incredibly fantastic. It was incredibly fantastic.
Panel Discussions and Conspiracy Theory Debate
00:02:56
Speaker
And I
00:02:56
Speaker
I have to think that I think it has to do with some one of the panelists, which was one M.R. extent. That person just speaks Arat Noxant and you know it. Yes, I know it. So Jan Willem van Proey and Jarl Nairnbaum, first one a psychologist, second one a sociologist, also joined the panel and
00:03:18
Speaker
I thought there was real kind of progress in answering the question of how can we come closer together, which I think we'll discuss later on in the episode when talking about our paper.
00:03:31
Speaker
And then, of course, there was a lesser panel on the generalism-particulism distinction hosted by Melina Sarpos, but the less said about that, the better. Is that right? No. Is that the implication you're trying to make here? Also incredibly fantastic panel. Also incredibly fantastic. And another person speaking arid nonsense, another MRX dentist. I don't know where you dig these people up from. Me neither. Maybe somewhere in, I think, that...
00:03:55
Speaker
Middle country, below Australia, some sort. Look, it doesn't even appear on most maps. It doesn't exist. It's a fiction.
00:04:04
Speaker
But the Generalism Particularism Panel also was really quite insightful and interesting, I think, very much so, because I think... So the question was, can the Particularism-Generalism divide be bridged? And I think the answer kind of was very divided, but I do think that we got all a little bit closer together, but that was my interpretation of what was being said.
00:04:32
Speaker
I don't know if you concur, but... Well, I mean as someone who's on that panel, sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say no, sometimes I think the question itself is rather complicated because it depends on who's bridging and also whether someone instead of bridging is actually just trying to conquer the other disciplines.
Conspiracy Theory Research and Social Relevance
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, so that was also what one of the talks was about, Rory's talk, kind of, right? It was a conceptual basis that would fit both a generalist research agenda and a particularist research agenda. So this was a talk by Rory Ard, which actually challenged two dominant definitions in the philosophical literature.
00:05:12
Speaker
one by myself, one by Keith Harris, both of which he thinks are wanting with respect to four desiderasa for what a good definition of conspiracy theory would look like. And it is actually very interesting, a, hearing your own definition, b, critiqued in fine detail, and then b, going
00:05:32
Speaker
Rory, I think you've got me wrong on at least one point. At least one point. But no, it was a great talk. I thoroughly enjoyed Rory's talk, as I did a lot of the other talks. So now I'm going to ask the impolitic question, what was the low point of the conference? And there is actually a correct answer. Oh, wow.
00:05:52
Speaker
I'm not really sure what you're getting at. What was your low point of the car? Did it hit to end? Oh, of course. See? There's a really trite, clever and banala out there you go. I'm very happy that I didn't just start talking about something else. Brian Keeley's paper, one of the worst papers I've ever heard. It was absolute trash. We love you, Brian. We love you.
00:06:13
Speaker
We do. We definitely do. But I was not too concerned with the conference ending. I think my energy levels were... I mean there was a kind of blessed relief when it came to an end with at least at least finally the talks can stop. Although for me the talks did not stop because I gave a talk the next day to Rick Peale's Extreme Belief project. So I've just basically been on this entire time. Yes.
00:06:38
Speaker
definitely yeah so no low points only highs i think indeed on to we're working on a paper together now aren't we yes yes we've been doing it since probably february or maybe december yeah maybe it's hard to tell time has been a bit weird for me since the end of last year yeah but it's been a very very grateful
00:07:05
Speaker
I don't know why I say grateful, but it's been a... If you want to pay a basis to me, that is fine. I'm willing to just bask in the reflective glory. Well, in light of the panel discussion, the first one, the interdisciplinary one, I think our paper makes even more sense now to be written or almost done.
00:07:27
Speaker
And yeah, I'm very much looking forward to it seeing it in print. So if you'd give a brief gloss on the paper such that a potential reviewer isn't going to be immediately prejudiced towards it, what's our paper about? I think it's oh, this is a tricky one. I'll avoid words in the title as much as I can. But I think it's about a difference in concepts that we can address that hasn't been
00:07:56
Speaker
uh really paid much attention to so far a difference between shall i say it yeah i mean yeah i mean it is based upon a previous paper we wrote for the social epistemology review and reply collective so we're kind of building on that work yeah so i can say yeah it's between the difference in talking about conspiracy belief and conspiracy theory and i think also in the in in the light of the the generalism particularism
00:08:27
Speaker
panel, there is really a big difference between the two. So if you have some kind of a pejorative definition of conspiracy theory,
00:08:37
Speaker
then that immediately allows you to have some kind of basis for saying that conspiracy belief is going to be irrational. And I think we've had this particularism, generalism almost, you know, quarrel for a long time enough. And I think that our paper is trying to give an interdisciplinary answer to how we can at least be transparent about what we're talking about and not, you know, have to quibble as much anymore, hopefully.
00:09:06
Speaker
Well, it's also being kind of sensitive to the kind of research questions that people in different domains might be asking. Yes. Yeah. So we outlined the different CTT disciplines, conspiracy theory, theory disciplines. We should maybe still add a couple to be as wholesome as possible. Oh, yes. I mean, Jaron Harambam was concerned we weren't mentioning media studies during the conference. Fair enough. Right. Yeah, fair enough. I don't know why we haven't included it yet, but it's
00:09:34
Speaker
It's not been as visible, at least in my literature searches. And we explain a little bit how these disciplines all ask different kinds of research questions of different kinds of methodologies and other tools that they will use in the research.
00:09:50
Speaker
and explain that if we are to come together at some point, if we are to, you know, incorporate each other's works, then it would be really nice to have some kind of transparency and sensitivity in how we define and conceptualize our work. So then other- The definition of conservative theory. So yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
so that we at least know what the other people are talking about, right? And there's not any accusations anymore of we're just not talking about the same thing and it's all semantics, like let's not end with a disagreement of, okay, well, it's all semantics. I don't think that's really productive in going forward. Although philosophers do like saying it's all semantics and then just walking away. Yes, and I hope we won't do that here because I think there's just a lot at stake.
00:10:44
Speaker
It's philosophy in a social relevant, you know, area and it doesn't need to be socially relevant to be philosophy still, of course, but it's still, there are some, you know, real life
00:10:58
Speaker
applications to our research sometimes, not necessarily all, but something. Yeah, it would be nice to actually be contributing to public debate rather than railing at the sidelines shouting at clouds. Yes, or shouting at people shouting at each other and no one knowing what we are talking about. Yes, persistent disagreement between field doesn't necessarily mean that no agreement can be found. Sometimes it's just dogmatism or unacknowledged prejudice.
00:11:26
Speaker
Exactly. And I think our paper is trying to uncover a couple of, or actually one major kind of, well, yeah, conflation of concepts and hoping to provide a solution to how to, you know, go about solving this, at least in part.
00:11:49
Speaker
And if people want to have a vague idea of what we're talking about, there is a kind of precursor paper up on the social epistemology review and reply collective as part of a rather long set of discussions with Scott Hill.
Conspiracy Beliefs, Polarization, and Engagement
00:12:03
Speaker
Yes, and it's called
00:12:05
Speaker
reconciling conceptual confusions in the Le Monde debate. So it goes all the way back to the declaration in Le Monde and the fight that kind of generated taking conspiracy theories seriously, the edited collection, and now is producing new work
00:12:23
Speaker
for reasons which has somewhat escaped me other than the fact that Scott suddenly became very interested in a very old debate and wanted to resurrect it. But we've found something to take away from that to actually make it theoretically fruitful. Yes so all in all it was a productive or at least you know
00:12:43
Speaker
Consequential Debates on the social bismontory review ever. Yeah now moving forward and also now typically also moving back you gave a presentation at the second international conference on conspiracy the philosophy of conspiracy They're not just even on conspiracy theory. So tell me about your paper. Yeah, I wasn't even there You weren't right. It was a conspiracy then there was some M like
00:13:10
Speaker
Well, as I said, we've already, it's basically three other MRX dentists who are there, so. Yeah, it's all very confusing. So my talk was inspired by me doing something I think was a little bit of social, socially relevant philosophy out in the real world. It was super scary because I went to speak to the Dutch police and what I've learned there is that
00:13:41
Speaker
I think that there are a lot of ways in which you can describe people who believe in onwards conspiracy theories as, you know, in pejorative terms, but I think we probably shouldn't in so far as them making assertions about conspiracy theories is very much loaded by a lot of other motivations. So
00:14:06
Speaker
a lot of distrust in the government, for example, you know, and to be able to, you know, address these underlying motivations, I think we should be aware of the fact that just like the fact that conspiracy theorists who believe in the words of conspiracy theorists make assertions, which maybe have a polarizing effect, scientists do so too.
00:14:31
Speaker
So when, or a scientist or institutions or the media or politicians, right, anyone with power, if they do so, they kind of, in some instances, and I talk, I talked about COVID as an example, they kind of sometimes give ammunition to people who believe in unwanted conspiracy theories or have already have this very
00:14:54
Speaker
a distrusting attitude towards the government. So the talk was on assertions in conspiracy theory induced polarization cases, kind of. So when we talk about polarization, there's kind of worry that academically we all know what the term is, but actually no one really articulates it. So what is polarization and why is it something that we should be taking seriously?
00:15:21
Speaker
So polarization, at least on the view that I incorporated is where two people enter a debate, you know, having a certain position, leaving the debates on a more extreme version of that position, instead of coming closer together, right? It's moving away from each other. So when, if you say, believe that the Dutch prime minister has some kind of, is a reptile, for example, and is governed by Illuminati and whatever,
00:15:51
Speaker
and we enter discussion and you believe what you believe and I believe that it's not true and you make an assertion on the belief that you hold then that sometimes has the effect of me or the other way around I don't know I don't want to say that you believe this but the other person in the conversation to say you're not a reasonable person and
00:16:14
Speaker
quite frankly, shutting the door on even, you know, considering discussing with this person ever again. And I think that that kind of deadlocking, otherwise open-ended discussions, which are also often, also with conspiracy theories,
00:16:32
Speaker
often a political debate which should be open-ended, right, which should be at least to some extent reasonable and not seeing the other person as immediately unreasonable by promoting a conspiracy theory. So I think that that's very important, that it's
00:16:49
Speaker
kind of the democratic deliberation kind of model that we maybe value, at least I do in daily life, that we don't shut the door on people when they make assertions on conspiracy theories, in the sense that deadlocking the discussion has this polarizing effect because you're not even able to.
00:17:11
Speaker
to consider each other's positions anymore. Well, before someone promoted the conspiracy theory, hopefully you were still willing to do that. So what kind of is interesting from, say, the layperson's perspective about polarisation is that we do seem to live in an increasingly polarised society.
00:17:30
Speaker
And we also seem to be living in a society where we're having a lot of debates about the terms of debate, how we go through public discourse, who we listen to, who we let into the room, who we don't let into the room. How does your work kind of feed back to that kind of layperson's debate about what do we do with, say, toxic views or views that we disapprove of, which may have conspiratorial content?
00:18:00
Speaker
So this was not that much in the talk, right? I kind of steered clear there from proposing a policy of how to go about these things. But what to me seems like a viable or possibly viable solution would be to consider what's at stake in someone's promoting an unwarranted conspiracy theory or someone's
00:18:25
Speaker
dogmatic adherence to all scientific claims that are made even when they change. I think it's the stakes that are underlying these positions that we can always still talk about. So if you believe that
00:18:42
Speaker
COVID was made in a lab and leaked on purpose and whatnot. We can still talk about why you distrust the government or why you distrust this institution or what drove you into this attitude of being distrusting. I think that that's very much a different conversation, but it's also not so much on the conspiracy theories anymore.
00:19:08
Speaker
turning from philosophy of conspiracy theories to something.
00:19:12
Speaker
maybe rather different. And what's interesting about that I had a conversation with a psychiatrist probably about 10 years ago back in New Zealand and he was talking about how he treats subjects with paranoid delusions and said what you never do is suffer the delusion you just keep asking probing questions about the situation that got that they got themselves into
00:19:39
Speaker
And so, you know, they'll talk about, you know, do you really distrust your friends? Or could there be another explanation for what's going on there? So taking the paranoia out of the discussion, and making it about the causes of belief rather than the consequences of belief? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I have a similar experience, or at least, well, I've heard of similar experiences where
00:20:02
Speaker
the Dutch police, they told me that a lot of people who actually are arrested, for example, and, you know, COVID demonstrations or were anti-vaxxers or, you know, most of these people, when they were arrested, they would like quickly gave up on their beliefs. They were like,
00:20:22
Speaker
I was just on my laptop at home and I thought this was a very viable position to hold and now that it has gotten me here, I will drop it. This is not what I intended to do in the first place. That's interesting, but what's also interesting is that the small group who does not do that, who holds their belief and keeps it steadfast, they are the ones that
00:20:47
Speaker
in most cases, at least, and this is very anecdotal, but I think it has changed my view on conspiracy theories a little bit, is that the people who hold on to these beliefs, they often have a lot of prior reasons already for having this distrust in the government. It's not that they were perfect, trusting, institutionally trusting citizens, and then COVID hit them, bam, that's not their story.
00:21:13
Speaker
They went through all these scandals like tax problems that they were in an unjustly taxed way more than they should have, which took years to recover or they were in foster care for their entire youth and had a lot of bad experiences. These people have a lot of different explanations for why they believe and what they believe or what they promote to believe.
00:21:40
Speaker
And I think that that's at the core of every case of conspiracy theory induced polarization, at least in, I said in any, but I should say some as a particular shit. In most of the, or in some of the cases of conspiracy theory induced polarization, I think it's actually about something else. And I think that these people have good reasons to, you know, be in the position that they are.
00:22:07
Speaker
And hence, conspiracy theories, unworthy conspiracy theories become more probable, right?
Conspiracy Entrepreneurs and Legal Implications
00:22:13
Speaker
They have priors that kind of shape their evidential policies, so to say.
00:22:20
Speaker
So this goes well beyond the talk you gave, but what do we do in situations where you have someone who's trying to create polarisation, to someone who is entering the debate to make it more polarised by say, pretending to be an aggrieved party, even though they are insincerely asserting that in the hope it drags other people with them towards a more polarised position. So say like Alex Jones, if you take it that Alex Jones,
00:22:49
Speaker
is someone who doesn't really believe his conspiracy theories, but uses them as a vessel for selling supplements online, and thus has realized he can capture his audience by saying extraordinary things, dragging them along with him so he becomes their only trusted source. What do we do in a situation where you don't have actual polarization? You've got induced polarization with conspiracy theories as a vehicle. Yeah, so I think
00:23:19
Speaker
These people who would do that, I would call them conspiracy entrepreneurs. These are people that benefit either financially or in their social status in some way of promoting conspiracy theories. I think these people are a lot less interesting to consider or to even think of solving their position in a way.
00:23:47
Speaker
I think those are not the people that you're ever going to come closer together with. I don't think that because their whole social environment is built around them promoting these kinds of theories. I think it's very hard to have a really open discussion with someone like that. But I think that the people just below that kind of who really do have the belief, those are the people we can absolutely still talk to and we shouldn't
00:24:17
Speaker
I use a very strong term in one of my papers. It's a kind of ideological segregation to shut the door the moment someone, you know, promotes a conspiracy theory. But I do think that for people like Alice Jones, there is this kind of shutting the door, also, you know, to kind of cancel or deplatform someone like that.
00:24:39
Speaker
because it can be very harmful that they promote these theories, which, you know, other people will then adopt or like they're being almost sometimes being taken advantage of their, you know, their vulnerability, even though that vulnerability is very well, you know, reason for, very real, right? So, yeah.
00:25:00
Speaker
It's interesting you bring up the term conspiracy entrepreneur, which I'm very afraid doesn't mispronounce, but that's fine. Speechless fluency lets me get away with all kinds of linguistic murder, because that's a relatively recent coinage, isn't it?
00:25:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not really sure who. I think it might be Jerome. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, I know that Jerome has been talking about conspiracy entrepreneurs for also that's television and whatnot. But yeah, yeah, I think it definitely could be Jerome. And I think that conspiracy entrepreneurs are very, very different kind of
00:25:38
Speaker
you know, creature to deal with within, if you're looking at conspiracy theories from a political societal perspective, and I think that they're, you know,
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah. So in the, in the Netherlands, there were a couple of, uh, conspiracy entrepreneurs that were very active and also in all kinds of different, um, conspiracy theory waters, so to say. And, um, there's been this, you know, um, uh, uh, projects of the police, uh, to arrest a couple of them like intern in a couple of months, they arrested multiple of them. They had a lot of court hearings and, uh, they've all been in, uh, they've all been, um,
00:26:23
Speaker
arrested, arraigned, charged, sentenced to death, sent into space, put into prison and it's... Yeah, convicted. Sorry, sorry. They've all been convicted. Much more sensible than my options. Yeah, and this is difficult because I have a background in law. I know all the legal terms very well in Dutch, but in English it's very hard to make the switch.
00:26:44
Speaker
not for convicted, but for the reason they were convicted is because they pushed other people to do illegal things. I don't know the English word for that one. Entrapment? No, it's like inciting people to do illegal things or that you post messages, for example, on Twitter that you know could have very well, very reasonably lead to
00:27:12
Speaker
other people's acting against the law or against some regulation that holds at that time. And that's the, that's the main, like the main article that they've all been convicted on, which I think is, is also showing the entrepreneurial kind of idea what these people are doing there. You know, they're selling the
00:27:37
Speaker
They're influencing people, they're influencers, but in a very political way, which is kind of sometimes very problematic.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I find the conspiracy entrepreneur stuff fascinating because on one level I entirely understand where it's coming from. There is a particular class of conspiracy theorists who seems to be in the business of promoting conspiracy theories in a way which at least looks slightly inauthentic because we can give some other motive as to why they're promoting it.
00:28:08
Speaker
But at the same time, I also kind of worry that maybe we're creating a brand new pejorative that if we rescue conspiracy theorists as being anyone who believes a conspiracy theory, yeah, but not those guys, not those people over there, because there is that whole intent is magic thing going on here. Now, the real reason they're putting forward a conspiracy theory
00:28:30
Speaker
is their health pills and it actually might be the case. Alex Jones really does sincerely believe all the inconsistent conspiracy theories he has and also thinks that you should take as many male vitality pills as possible because they make Alex Jones into the magnificent masculine specimen he is today.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. So I wouldn't say that conspiracy entrepreneurs don't believe the conspiracy theories they promote. What I would say is that these people's
00:29:01
Speaker
lives revolve around promoting conspiracy theories to a, to a large audience. And that, you know, with, with, with great audiences come great responsibilities, I might say, and that's also what's behind these convictions, right, that it's
00:29:20
Speaker
Like I could make the same claims as some of these Dutch conspiracy entrepreneurs have made. And I wouldn't be convicted because I don't have an audience that will listen to it and will act on it, right? But because they do, they should be more responsible. And they also acknowledge that. Like one of the people who got convicted in the Netherlands, one of the conspiracy entrepreneurs, they had a legal team, like within
00:29:45
Speaker
their conspiracy theory community, a legal team to check all the tweets, to see if it would cross the law or not, which I think is already a sign of how
00:30:02
Speaker
you know, organised some of these conspiracy entrepreneurs might go about what they're doing. Yeah, so we're talking about a conspiracy theorist who isn't, and it's the term I realised you only learnt yesterday, of a garden variety. Yes. Instead, they're a kind of rare specimen. So the whole garden variety thing is, you know, you have plants in your garden, but those are standard plants, you know, you go to a botanical garden to see the really special variety of plants.
00:30:30
Speaker
and they're rare and they're unusual and people like Alex Jones, people like David Icke, they are rare and unusual characters.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yes. And I don't think it's a bad thing at all that they're being arrested and that my kind of my idea of conspiracy entrepreneur also ties in with that because these people do illegal things. And by being arrested, they often, you know, at least for some amount of time get their phone taken away from them like they're
00:31:03
Speaker
their platforms kind of, you know, are taken away from them and even might shrink a lot. Doesn't mean that others won't pop up and, you know, to take on the role that's been left empty by the people in jail. But still, like, it's, it makes sense to me that people who are, you know, promoting illegal actions should be, um,
00:31:26
Speaker
Do you want to commit to the... People who promote a legal action should be... Should be careful, I don't know. With what they say next. With what they say next. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes, yes. And also with, you know...
00:31:43
Speaker
So what I've also learned at the police is that there, and you notice probably better than I do because there's an insurgence of this new phenomenon, which is people call themselves sovereigns. And in the Netherlands, it's maybe newer than in New Zealand, but it's
00:32:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's a growing phenomenon and it's pretty concerning. And what you see is that, you know, conspiracy entrepreneurs, at least the big ones, the ones I mean, which, you know, their whole lives revolve around promoting these conspiracy theories and they're doing it in an organized kind of professional way. These also tap into this community of sovereigns often.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, and the sovereign citizen movement is kind of fascinating from a polarisation perspective, because it seems every interaction a sovereign citizen has, say, with the judicial system, confirms to them that they will write about their sovereign citizenness in the first place, because they don't seem to give up on, I can use the magic words, and say my real name is Bla.
00:32:53
Speaker
they get pinged by the courts, and yet they continue to persist. Oh, this is more proof that the courts are covering up the real legal system that underpins our great nation of insert name of nation here. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you're, you're giving them ammunition, like in a way, you know, for their beliefs to stick fast, to steadfast in their beliefs.
00:33:17
Speaker
But I was talking to Jan Willem van Breu, and as you bring up the judicial consequences of being a sovereign, he was like, oh, you don't really need to worry about these sufferants, because in time, they all do something illegal, right? If the police system works, which is, of course, an if, if the judicial system works, which of course, another if, you know, quite big or small, depending on the country that you live in, they're doing something illegal, so they will be
00:33:47
Speaker
put away at some point. Yes, although if the polarisation rhetoric is correct, they might be put away, but it doesn't actually reduce their belief at all. Yes, which I think is quite problematic. So to get back to the talk a little bit is
00:34:06
Speaker
I think it's important to just keep an open discussion going with people, even if they promote very much unwarranted conspiracy theories and not to shut the door and say they're mad, bad and dangerous for believing that. I think that's very important to avoid them by shutting the door from your side, your
00:34:31
Speaker
effectively closing them in an echo chamber. That's kind of how the metaphor works in my head. Where do they go if no one is willing to even consider them reasonable persons? They will go and speak to each other.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And,
Future Research and Episode Reflection
00:35:04
Speaker
The effect of epistemic echo chambers is probably in a lot of cases polarizing. So I think that by shutting the door, you're doing a lot more harm than good often. I also agree with objections that say like, you know, some conspiracy theories you should not really not be spending any attention on, right?
00:35:13
Speaker
you know,
00:35:26
Speaker
So my answer to them would be yes, but you can still talk about the underlying griefs of these people, which brought them to, you know, consider conspiracy theories, which are onwards in the first place. But this is a very
00:35:44
Speaker
very premature psychoanalysis which should not be considered as advised in any way, shape or form. This is very preliminary work that I've been looking into and need a lot more data on. So where's next? What other projects are you currently working on?
00:36:04
Speaker
Well, I'm working on the conceptual, on a paper that provides a conceptual map. So I think it will maybe be a sequel to our paper, like our paper saying, you know, conspiracy theory and conspiracy belief, you have to distinguish between the two or at least be transparent if you're not doing that. And my own paper that will hopefully sequel that one is
00:36:30
Speaker
a more of a conceptual basis on all of the concepts or at least a lot of the concepts in the conspiracy theory theory literature. So it's kind of mapping which concepts we can talk about, conspiracy mindsets, conspiracy entrepreneurs also in their conspiracy belief, conspiracy theories. I think there's more than 25 concepts that I go over and I map them in a way that
00:36:56
Speaker
hopefully should make sense to multiple disciplines working in conspiracy theory theory and give some kind of grounds of why we should ask certain questions about certain concepts and not others by categorizing and demarcating different parts of the map.
00:37:18
Speaker
Excellent, I'm looking forward to seeing these results and also looking forward to seeing where our paper lands. Me too, yes. Well, I think it's been a long week for both of us. I think we'll call this recording to an end and go wet our whistles somewhere in Amsterdam. Yes, let's do this. And I'm doing this, yes. Over and out.
00:37:43
Speaker
And there you have it, the first of what I believe will be a few interviews that Em has brought back with him from overseas. There was an issue with the recording equipment at one point. The thing that Em had been using for recording interviews died, but I think they managed to get some sort of replacement. And I also think some of the interviews that were going to occur
00:38:05
Speaker
were happening over Zoom or something anyway and would have been recorded that way. So I haven't heard any of the other interviews, but I understand they exist and I imagine we'll be feeding them to you in the near future. But for now, I was quite interested in the talk of Julia's talk with the police and the
00:38:26
Speaker
I guess the psychology of some of these conspiracy theorist types can be quite interesting, although of course we're a philosophy podcast here. Thank you very much. But the psychology is interesting nonetheless. Now!
00:38:40
Speaker
That was, by my reckoning, about half an hour's worth of interview. And I think we're saying that this is a proper episode this week, because technically it does have me and Ian in it, just not together at the same time. So I think this is going to be a proper episode. So I should probably give you a little bit more content.
Tributes and Cultural Impact of Recent Deaths
00:38:58
Speaker
And I thought, again, I thought as with last week, I would look into current events. And as with last week, and even more so than last week, current events have basically been death.
00:39:10
Speaker
death and more death that bit um what's it in it uh in in in Return of the King the last Nord of the Rings film when they're having there's there's the big battle at the end and King Theoden of the the the horse people gives his big speech which i can't remember any of what it says i just remember that he ends with him shouting death death death as they all do their charge and that that that seems to have been a fairly good approximation
00:39:37
Speaker
of the tenor of this week's news because we've lost a fair few people this week. We've lost the Iron Shake, the Titan of wrestling. We lost Treat Williams to a motorcycle accident. Treat Williams, fabulous actor. I personally would recommend Deep Rising as a personal favorite of mine. Excellent 90s monster movie. But he's been in a hell of a lot of stuff and you should watch it if you haven't because he was good and he will be missed. Cormac McCarthy.
00:40:06
Speaker
no greater literary figure than Cormac McCarthy also died this week. And similarly, great in his field, John Romita Sr. If you don't know that name, you've possibly never read a comic before and quite a few people haven't. But if you have any knowledge of comic books at all, you have heard the name John Romita Sr. He was one of the most well-known artists. He did all the classics, basically, all the earliest
00:40:32
Speaker
comic books. If you've ever seen a sort of classic bit of comic book art, if you've ever seen an article of anything where the cover of a comic book has shown up or something like that, when they had an example, chances are it was something that was drawn by John Romita Sr.
Unabomber and Influences on Conspiracy Narratives
00:40:48
Speaker
He was, I think, every bit as well regarded in the field of, in the genre of comic books as the likes of Cormac McCarthy were.
00:40:57
Speaker
in the field of literature. But while those were good people who will be dearly missed, there were some other less savory types who will perhaps not be as missed by as many, but who did leave lives considerably more conspiratorial, which makes them better for talking about on this particular podcast.
00:41:16
Speaker
So Robert Hanson, it turns out, was just the start of things. Earlier this week, or if it wasn't this week, it's certainly been in the week in between the last episode of this podcast coming out on this one. Ted Kaczynski died. Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber. Now, I don't know why. I had, for some reason, I got it into my head that he was called the Unabomber because at one point he tried to bomb the United Nations assembly and UNA stood for United Nations assembly. But I see reading
00:41:45
Speaker
from reading about him after his death that now it was because he mostly, to begin with, bombed universities and airports. So he was the UNA bomber, which became Unabomber, which is a little bit strange. Now, I may be a little bit cheating talking about Ted Kaczynski because as far as I can tell, he worked alone.
00:42:02
Speaker
and therefore did not conspire. But that's always been one of the things that we've talked about with one of the conditions on what counts as a conspiracy is that there have to be multiple conspirators, because it does feel a little bit weird to say that Ted Kaczynski doing stuff that had another person been involved or known about it in any way, pretty much, it would be a conspiracy, and yet
00:42:22
Speaker
simply the fact that he did it by himself was still doing the sorts of thing. He was still working in secret doing the sorts of things that we would expect conspirators to perhaps do. And we don't get to call him a conspirator, but any right.
00:42:37
Speaker
He led an interesting life. If you've only heard of him from the movie Good Will Hunting, you will at least know that he did quite well in the field of mathematics at Harvard initially. I see it's been pointed out that
00:42:53
Speaker
While he was in Harvard, he participated in a, quote, purposely brutalizing psychological experiment led by a psychologist at Harvard called Henry Murray. And it seemed to be basically they had to write a whole bunch about their personal beliefs and aspirations, and then someone would take what they'd written about themselves and just be incredibly abusive and mean to them.
00:43:20
Speaker
and just say horrible crap about them using these personal thoughts that they'd written down as ammunition, and then the subjects would sort of sit there and be monitored with electrodes to sort of try and study the
00:43:36
Speaker
the anger and the rage that was stimulated by this thing. And so it lasted three years. So every week for three years, Ted Kaczynski sat down and had someone abuse and humiliate him in the name of science. Now, he has said that he is, quote, quite confident that his experiences with Professor Murray had no significant effect on the course of my life.
00:44:04
Speaker
So that's what he said. Apparently his defense lawyers tried to say that this was, you know, he may have had something to do with why he did what he did. Some people even suggested this study might have actually been part of Project MKUltra or I don't know.
00:44:21
Speaker
But that's an interesting little detail in his early life. And obviously he went and did well in mathematics and then resigned from the University of Berkeley or Berkeley. I don't even know how you pronounce it. It must be Berkeley in America because they say Berkeley in England and you guys have to do everything different, don't you?
00:44:38
Speaker
But he resigned from that, went and lived in a cabin in the woods, and started committing acts of arson and booby trapping and bombing, and sent quite a large number of bombs to a large number of places, claimed a number of lives with his bombs,
00:44:54
Speaker
And interestingly enough, much like Robert Hanson last week, he sort of got caught when people recognized his style because he basically blackmailed the media into publishing his manifesto, essentially said, someone needs to publish this manifesto of mine, or I'm going to keep doing bombings.
00:45:12
Speaker
and somebody did and it was because when his now let me check was his brother is bringing his his brother his brother having read this this manifesto basically recognized he said this this sounds like the way my brother talks and that seems to have been basically how they how they managed to get onto him
00:45:33
Speaker
I think that was sort of the start of it.
Controversial Figures and Wrap-Up
00:45:35
Speaker
And then just reading through an article here, that put the FBI on to him. Not everyone investigating the case was convinced that this actually was him, but once they arrested him and investigated him and found a whole bunch of bomb making stuff in his cabin, that was it for Ted Kaczynski, who died June the 10th, 2023.
00:45:57
Speaker
Now, who else died this week? Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson. Robertson. I always want to say Robinson. Pat Robertson, who will not be missed in certain segments of society. He was a Southern Baptist minister. He was a very conservative Christian who said a whole lot of the nastiest shit that we tend to associate with the more toxic breed of Christian conservative.
00:46:25
Speaker
I don't know that he specifically conspired much, but he certainly, I think he could be counted as a conspiracy theorist given the way he would blame anything bad that happened on the gays or the Muslims or the feminists or the liberals or what have you. He got in a bit of trouble immediately after September 11 when, to be fair, he didn't say this Jerry Falwell, who he was
00:46:54
Speaker
he was talking to said that he blamed September 11th to an extent on the ACLU as well as pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and lesbians. Robertson, however, did reply, I totally concur. And both he and so the two of them, Falwell and Robertson, both got in a bit of trouble for that. He implied that Hurricane Katrina
00:47:17
Speaker
was God's punishment in response to America's abortion policy, did similar things about the 2010 Haiti earthquake. He was not a nice person, and he did seem to see some sort of conspiracy. To be fair, actually, he published a book
00:47:34
Speaker
in 1919 called the New World Order, which I believe was largely, what have we got, Illuminati, Masons, doesn't specifically mention in the blurb specific anti-Semitic type conspiracy theories, although apparently that's basically what it comes down to. There's a whole lot of Jewish conspiracy stuff as well as Freemasons and Illuminati and so on there. So he was
00:48:03
Speaker
I don't think there's any denying that he was a conspiracy theorist of one kind or another and now he's dead. So where did that get you Pat? And then finally in the in the cavalcade of death that was the last movie we have Silvio Berlusconi. Good look now I had a quick look again I don't
00:48:23
Speaker
I don't know off the top of my head of any specific conspiracies that he was involved in, but he must have been. I mean, he's been he's been convicted of a bunch of stuff, or at least he's been tried of a bunch of stuff and convicted of some of it. But I had a look. I went straight to his Wikipedia page just for the summary. And most of these are like you go to Pat Robertson and all of these, the controversies subheading that you can look down to read a bunch of the stuff.
00:48:45
Speaker
that I was just talking about, go to Silvio Berlusconi's page, expand the controversy section. You think, gosh, that's quite a long controversy section. Click down to it. The first thing is a link to the main article. There is an entire Wikipedia article devoted to controversies surrounding Silvio Berlusconi. He was an interesting fellow.
00:49:05
Speaker
A lot of stuff around conflicts of interest with him being when he was in power are the economic or media control type conflicts of interest. But this stuff just goes on and on and on. And then there's also all this stuff. Then you get the jokes, gestures and blunders section, which is almost longer than the
00:49:26
Speaker
The other one's combined. What sort of things did he say? Going all the way back to 2003, he said his opponent should play a Nazi concentration camp guard in a film. He said that people should invest in Italy because they have the most beautiful secretaries in the world.
00:49:43
Speaker
He said Mussolini had been a benign dictator who did not murder opponents but set them quote-unquote on holiday. Oh god, he referred to Obama as young, handsome and even-tanned, which sounds like it should be racist.
00:49:59
Speaker
Oh, there's some stuff I'm not going to repeat on this podcast. He was into a lot of stuff, although to be honest, I can't think of him and not laugh purely because of Frankie Boyle's bit on Mock the Week, which I can still remember now, where he basically appeared Silvio Belisconi to an old-style sort of fixer and offering to set Gordon Brown up with whatever he wanted, drugs, woman, men, women men,
00:50:27
Speaker
Hunt man, hunt girl, hate arm, four arms and four legs, like making love to a man's spider and then going on and on and on about man's, but it's, look up Frankie Boyle talking about Sylvia Berlusconi. It does actually make a lot of sense when he says it. There's the whole Bunga Bunga business, which I'm pretty sure is racist just off the top. I'm pretty sure Bunga Bunga is meant to be some sort of African sounding thing. So there's your stuff off the top, but those were his notorious parties.
00:50:55
Speaker
He was involved in the Panama Papers, the Panama Papers stuff, which we have talked about a bunch of times that provided a whole bunch of information about his various assets that he had squirreled away. It just goes on and on and on and on and on. And I could go through it with a fine tooth comb and pull out the bits of it that are explicitly conspiratorial. But frankly, I can't be bothered. He also appears to have been a bit of a dick and now he's dead.
00:51:25
Speaker
Once again, where did that get you, Silvio? So there you go. Death, death, death, death, and more death. Who knows what the next week will bring? Probably more death. Be interesting to see, I suppose. So I'm going to put my foot down and say this is episode 405 of the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. We're back into regular episodes. This one had me and it had Emma. I say that counts. But next episode,
00:51:50
Speaker
Next episode will definitely have me and have him, he says, presumably before immediately contracting COVID or getting in an amusing car accident or something. So he will have to do it for a few weeks. Who knows? Life does work out that way. But I know of no reason sitting here right now.
00:52:08
Speaker
why Em and I will not be recording the next episode together. So make of that what you will. But at any rate, next week, in whatever form we are, we will be back with something. There'll definitely be something. So listen out for that. It just occurs to me I haven't been doing the usual Patreon plug thing, which is probably good because we haven't been putting out bonus episodes all the while while I've just been doing little filler ones.
00:52:33
Speaker
We'll have to start that up again. And when we do, if you want to listen to them, you can sign up to our Patreon by going to patreon.com and searching for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and signing yourself up. You get our Discord where we never post anyway, but we might. We could. We might. One day you can talk to us. I check it every now and then. It does actually happen. But I think that is enough.
00:52:56
Speaker
for this particular week actually hang on let me let me just check let me just right now go on google and check to see has anyone else died in the time that i have been talking to you
00:53:12
Speaker
No, I don't. I don't see any more significant deaths. I think we're safe. I think we're safe for the moment. So I better quit. Well, better quit now while I can and simply wish you all a good, hopefully death free week. That would be that would be the absolute ideal, I think. And until next week, I'm just going to say goodbye.
00:53:37
Speaker
The podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy stars Josh Addison and myself, associate professor M.R.X. Stentors. 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,
00:54:04
Speaker
Nothing is real. Everything is permitted. But conditions apply.