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Symposium on Conspiracy Theories - Causes and Cures
26 Plays3 years ago
Josh and M finally get around to discussing Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule's "Symposium on Conspiracy Theories - Causes and Cures."
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Transcript
The Adventures of Captain Corrin
00:00:00
Speaker
We present once again the adventures of Captain Corrin, space pirate and insurance salesman. I'd featured myself as Quantum Jim. Tonight Corrin takes on another piratical insurance salesperson,
00:00:25
Speaker
The crew were unusually restless after several weeks of sweeping the poop deck in dry dock, so I set the naughty Nautilus three stars to the right in order to find fresh plunder and a chance to brandish me cutlass. Saucy Susan had only just got her space peg legs when we spotted a viable target.
00:00:42
Speaker
Avast! Ah, Avast yourself, you landlubber, you jack-and-ape, you cretin' of the cretaceous. To'say, Admiral Mascot, space pirate and... insurance salesperson. No, that'd be my job. Oh, you don't say. Do you have any chance of redundancy insurance, because I believe you've just been trumped. Gah, but this is a turn out for the books. Here at Onion and Onion Financial Prudent. Which has just been amalgamated with the Barnard Star Assurance Systems conglomerate. Corin, I'd like you to meet your new boss.
00:01:11
Speaker
Me? Pleased to meet you, Mr... Admiral? Admiral Escott. Here, take my hand. Ah, there'd be a cutlass you'd be jabbing in my face. But you know, the old habits die hard. So, Bossio. What's the lay of the land, so to speak?
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, first, we need you to stop doing that atrocious accent. It'd be getting complaints, and frankly it's never been consistent. Well, I guess I could drop it. You must. Secondly, where do you think these sketches are going? Is there a point to them?
00:01:47
Speaker
It's a series of one-note jokes. Once you've heard one, Corrin, you've heard them all. Sorry, are you talking as Edmore S. Scott or as Josh here? I think you know who I'm talking to and who I'm talking as. Oh. Oh, indeed, Ulrike. Am I accents really that bad? Sign for your impeccable Poirot imitation, yes. Even my Nixon? Especially your Nixon.
00:02:09
Speaker
Well then. Guess it's the end of an era. Yep. Should need a hug. Yes. Yes, I do. Well, it sucks to be you then. On with the show.
Podcast Anniversary Reflections
00:02:27
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr Endentive.
00:02:37
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Edison. They are Dr. N. Dent of the Year sitting side by side popping corks in celebration here in Auckland, New Zealand on May the 20th. Do you know what May the 20th is? It's 16 days after May the 4th. That is correct. But also what it is, is the anniversary of the first episode of this podcast being put online.
00:03:10
Speaker
which happened in 2014, making this the seventh anniversary of this podcast. That's a lucky number. Lucky for some. Lucky for some. I have to say, and think of all the things we've achieved in the last seven years. And then I can't think of a single thing we've achieved. Well, I mean, we've stuck around for seven years. That's an achievement. A released two box.
00:03:33
Speaker
You have. We interviewed David Icke that one time. You interviewed David Farrier that one time. It's true. Actually been a fair number of interviews and things. Do you think we should abandon the current format of the podcast and just turn it into a podcast where we exclusively interview people called David? Ooh, the Dave Castor's Guide to the Dave Authority. Ooh.
00:03:54
Speaker
Dave and you can only say the word Dave. Yep. Just put just file that one away Well, we'll think about it shall do Dave Sheldon, but we do have some actual girl did Dave I'm sorry. I can't do that Dave. No, they're all dead Dave. They did Dave. They're all dead Dave. You're all dead Dave Well, that's true. I've been I've I've been a dead day for a long time. Yeah, what a twist now
00:04:19
Speaker
We do have content for this. We have non-Dave related content. Yes, no, I don't see any Dave's in the footnotes, but I could be not looking closely enough. We have another episode of Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre where we're going to be going through a lengthy paper.
Controversial Paper Introduction
00:04:36
Speaker
Is this a significant paper?
00:04:38
Speaker
It is. I mean, it's kind of a weirdly significant paper for the sheer fact that I wouldn't say that this particular paper is important, other than the fact that
00:04:53
Speaker
people are going to be referring to this paper a lot. So as a kind of spoiler, I do not like this paper. I have big issues with this paper, and in an ideal world, this paper would have just sunk like a stone. But due to the fact that one particular person was involved in writing it, and due to the fact that there is one very particular
00:05:18
Speaker
policy that is advocated towards the end of the paper, this paper is going to be discussed by a lot of people. So this paper is going to be discussed by Curtis Hagen very, very soon. It's going to be discussed by David Coady relatively soon. It's going to be discussed by Charles Pinkdom,
00:05:40
Speaker
I'm going to mention it in a variety of different places. Lee Basham is going to stick his dagger into the living corpse of Cass Sunstem. There is going to be an awful lot of discussion about this particular paper.
00:05:56
Speaker
which we're going to have to come back to again and again and again. So it ends up being a classic of the genre, not for the fact that I think it's particularly good, but because it's going to play a really outsized role in what people think about the literature going forward.
00:06:15
Speaker
So it's kind of interesting. So we have to discuss this paper to be able to discuss other papers, even though technically I'd be happy never discussing this paper ever again.
00:06:28
Speaker
Right. I think that's quite a good introduction to where this sits. So, shall we just play a chime and then we can start adding to the discussion on it ourselves? No, because the reason why I was vamping to such a large extent is that I actually failed to copy the appropriate chime over to the podcasting deck, which means I'm basically filling in time as a little progress bar moves across my computer screen.
00:06:55
Speaker
And I'm kind of hoping I've chosen the right sting here, because I've set up the sting to go to a particular button, but I actually don't know whether in my haste to get this done was vamping at the same time. I clicked on the right file or the wrong file. And so we are going to find out whether I've made a wise or a bad decision in about three, two, one.
00:07:23
Speaker
Welcome to Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
00:07:32
Speaker
And that is the equivalent of your tablet breaking down. It is a little bit, although I can usually cover it better, but it depends. It doesn't take as long for your tablet to reboot. That's probably true, actually. Well, it actually, for some reason, takes a really long time to copy files from the laptop to the podcast. And the thing was, as I was halfway through the process, I could have actually just played the sting from the laptop anyway. There was actually no need to do that in real time.
00:08:01
Speaker
So I was vamping for no particularly good reason. The magic of podcasting, people. The interesting thing, I guess, will be to see if you can be bothered going back to edit this bit out. No, I can't. I really can't. OK. Well, in that case, let's just barrel straight into it. We are going to be talking about today a paper called Symposium on Conspiracy Theories, Causes and Cures.
Exploring Conspiracy Theories
00:08:29
Speaker
This is in the Journal of Political Philosophy back in 2009, and it's written by Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian, and I think it's vermule, not vermule, but I actually don't know.
00:08:44
Speaker
The thing about these two authors is that Casa Sunstein was one of Barack Obama's information czars. So it's not just that he's a prominent jurisprudence expert in the US, who has also written on the notion of nudges.
00:09:03
Speaker
small economic nudges you can make to change the trajectory of your society. He was also involved in the Obama administration, which means that the policy suggestion he's going to make along with Adrian at the end of this paper is something which has been noticed by an awful lot of people. So it goes away from simply academics talking about something which they might like to do to someone who has a position of authority
00:09:32
Speaker
that people are going, are you actually doing this thing? I mean, you're advocating it and you're in the kind of position to whisper in the president's ear. That's a little bit disturbing. We'll find out what that policy promotion is towards the end of that discussion. Yes, no spoilers. But yes, this is 2009, so Obama is in power at the time that this one came out. And we lived in an age of hope. We did.
00:09:59
Speaker
It's quite a long paper as well, so I think we're going to have to skip through it fairly rapidly and jump over a lot of stuff. Are we going to tiptoe through the daisies? We might even. There are a lot of examples, a lot of quite good examples, but we could probably skip over a lot of that sort of stuff where it's just illustrating the points that they are going to make.
00:10:21
Speaker
It has quite a long introduction as well, but I think the section of it that seemed to be their real sort of statement of intention reads, what causes such theories, conspiracy theories obviously, to arise and spread? Are they important and perhaps even threatening or merely trivial and even amusing?
00:10:41
Speaker
What can and should government do about them? We aim here to sketch some psychological and social mechanisms that produce, sustain and spread these theories to show that some of them are quite important and should be taken seriously, and to offer suggestions for governmental responses both as a matter of policy and as a matter of law.
00:10:59
Speaker
Which I think, I think that pretty much lets you know what you're in for in the coming 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 14, 15, about 16, 16 or 17, depending how you count it, sections.
00:11:16
Speaker
So let us let us tear straight into these. After the introduction, but we have section one, definitions and mechanisms. And section 1a is definitional notes. So that's good. I start off with definitions. That's what that's what you want in a philosophy paper.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, and what's interesting is that the initial discussion they have about what they take to be a conspiracy theory kind of turns out to be a fairly general and non pejorative gloss on a conspiracy theory. But they very quickly narrow their focus down to a specific subset of these conspiracy theories, the ones which are harmful or have bad consequences.
00:12:02
Speaker
Yes, so they start off by saying there's been much discussion of what exactly counts as a conspiracy theory and about what, if anything, is wrong with those who hold one. Of course, it would be valuable
Defining and Understanding Conspiracy Theories
00:12:11
Speaker
to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for such theories in a way that would make it possible to make relevant distinctions. However, the various views that people label conspiracy theories may well relate to each other through a family resemblance structure such that necessary and sufficient conditions cannot be given even in principle.
00:12:27
Speaker
which I thought was an interesting point. But then, yes, so they give the sort of general account of it, but then start narrowing it down. But they're quite open about the fact that that's what they're doing. It's not, as we've seen in the past sometimes, where people would hop between talking about things in general in a specific definition. They say at the very beginning, we're only talking about these sorts of conspiracy theories, but what sorts of conspiracy theories are they talking about?
00:12:51
Speaker
Well, the efforts to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people who attempt to conceal their role, at least until their aims are accomplished. And they're really only interested in the ones involving powerful people.
00:13:07
Speaker
And that when we talk about conspiracy theories, it seems to capture the essence of the most prominent and influential conspiracy theories about public affairs. Yeah, so they say right at the start, you know, non powerful people, people just like you and I. Are you saying that I'm not powerful? I'm saying exactly that. I'm saying your powers are limited, old man. Now I am the master.
00:13:37
Speaker
This, my staring at you doesn't work as a podcast. Doesn't work as a podcast. Good steer, good piercing steer doesn't come across on a podcast. So they say that, they say they are also, actually, the one interesting thing I thought was nice that they said it quite explicitly was in this definitional section, they say, of course, some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, having just spoken about the ones that are obvious nonsense. And under our definition, they do not cease to be conspiracy theories for that reason, which is
00:14:06
Speaker
puts them apart from some other ones that we might have disagreed with. Yes, although of course I take it that actually, given their really general definition of what count as a conspiracy theory, I'd pretty much have to say that.
00:14:19
Speaker
Well, no, I mean, basically, because they're saying a conspiracy theory says any effort to explain some event or practice, then go, oh, by the way, anything which is a theory about a conspiracy, which is true, doesn't count as a conspiracy theory means it already artificially narrowing down something which appeared to be a nice open definition from the beginning is, oh, but by the way, we're not going to apply this label to everything which fits the definition.
00:14:44
Speaker
We're going to only apply the label to a subset of things that fit the definition, which means technically they're already contradicting themselves. They did say that they do not cease to be conspiracy theories just because they turn out to be true. Good point and well made. I've just been talking out of my arse. Hey, you'll never guess what just happened.
00:15:07
Speaker
Ah, the old classic. Everything breaks down again. Technology hates us. I'm just going to look over the shoulder while I read out the next bit of that bit, which is that... There's such a professional podcast. Well, that's how we got to be going for seven entire years. It's our high standards. It's also why we used to have over 800 listeners a week, and now we have about 250. I mean, it's, you know... It's just math.
00:15:32
Speaker
It is. They say our focus throughout is on demonstrably false conspiracy theories, demonstrably false conspiracy theories, such as the various 911 conspiracy theories, not ones that are true or whose truth is undetermined. They say within the set of false conspiracy theories, we also limit our focus to potentially harmful theories.
00:15:53
Speaker
So again, as they say, this is all going to culminate in some sort of policy recommendations. So they're wanting to look at sorts of conspiracy theories that you might want to have some sort of government response to, and ones that aren't actually doing any harm probably don't warrant that.
00:16:11
Speaker
Furthermore, our final narrowing condition is that we are concerned only with the many conspiracy theories that are false, harmful and unjustified, not in the sense of being irrationally held by those individuals who hold them, but from the standpoint of the information available in the society as a whole.
00:16:31
Speaker
Now, a recurrent problem I have with this paper, apart from not reading a section properly and reviewing it again, is that they're going to say, look, we're really only interested in conspiracy theories which are false, harmful and unjustified.
00:16:47
Speaker
But they're not really going to say much about what makes a conspiracy theory false, harmful or unjustified. They're going to make a lot of assumptions that certain conspiracy theories are false, harmful and unjustified, and thus we must deal with them. But they do very little work to establish the theories in question are false, harmful and unjustified.
00:17:11
Speaker
And they continue. I mean, this is a sort of a survey, is a big overall view of the literature and the area. I think it functions fairly well because they go through a whole bunch of stuff.
00:17:27
Speaker
But having talked about that, they spend a page on Popper and his views on conspiracy theories, and they make points about the effects of how open or closed a society is on how
00:17:42
Speaker
how likely people are to believe conspiracy theories and how justified they are in believing those conspiracy theories, which then leads them to Brian Elkely, obviously, who's talked about conspiracy theories in society. And in particular, his earlier claims that we've seen that one of the problems with sticking to, as he would say, mature unwarranted conspiracy theories is that it ends up leading you into that sort of extreme sort of scepticism where if you
00:18:11
Speaker
you know, if you don't believe this powerful fundamental government body is telling the truth, well then how can you believe anything at all? And they use as their example for that one 9-11. Mm-hmm. The interesting they said, this is not and is not intended to be a general claim that conspiracy theories are unjustified or unwarranted in all imaginable situations or societies.
00:18:34
Speaker
I think they sort of said that in relation to what they were saying, but what they were saying was in relation to what Brian was saying, which is the closest I think we've seen to someone pointing out that when Brian was talking about stuff, he wasn't actually talking about all conspiracy theories, just these unwarranted mature ones. Yes, which is kind of ironic because given that many people don't like this paper, it's one of the few cases where people seem to get Brian right.
00:19:03
Speaker
They have a good talk about Steve Clark and his mention of degenerating research programs being one of the problems with conspiracy theories or the bad sort, quite unquote. And sort of rounding things out, they say...
00:19:21
Speaker
So far, we've discussed
Sociological and Epistemological Aspects
00:19:23
Speaker
some epistemological features of conspiracy theories in the abstract, narrowed our focus to conspiracy theories that are false, harmful and unjustified from the standpoint of the wider society, although they may be justified from the standpoint of individuals, given the information they've received, or within the closed epistemological network of the conspiracy theorists.
00:19:41
Speaker
and suggested institutional grounds for thinking that in a free and open society there is usually good reason to believe that most conspiracy theories will lack adequate justification. We now turn to the sociology of conspiracy theorising, explaining the mechanisms by which such theories arise and expand. And I think here is where we might need to put our foot down on the accelerator a little bit to rock it through because there's
00:20:04
Speaker
There's a lot of a lot of sections and sub sections here. So we're getting into subsection 1b, how conspiracy theories arise and spread, which itself has eight sub sections below it.
00:20:19
Speaker
So basically, to begin with, the point of this section is why do people accept conspiracy theories? Basically, they say at the start, well, some people may be suffering from a diagnosable mental illness, a paranoia or a narcissism or something like that, but that certainly doesn't cover
00:20:38
Speaker
the majority of people who believe in these sorts of things. So what is it that brings them to accept the conspiracy theories in particular ones? They're looking at the ones that are harmful and false and what have you. And the first thing they talk about is probably an unfortunately named term. It is a little bit in this game. And they talk except that this
00:20:59
Speaker
This day and age, 2009 is actually still this day and age. Well it is and it isn't. 2008, one of the things people always remind me when talking about progress is that 2008 Barack Obama campaigned on marriages between a man and a woman. So that was
00:21:17
Speaker
That was not too long ago. That was a weird place. But anyway, so they call this crippled epistemology. It's not the nicest of words. And we are going to see this term used an awful lot in future, mostly as people criticising the notion of a crippled epistemology. But it is going to be echoed by a lot of writers over the time talking about Sun Sen and Vermeel and going, now I don't think I'm being consistent with Vermeel.
00:21:44
Speaker
Did I just say vermule or vermule? You said vermule at the start. I'm just going to use it interchangeably. Once again, you'll be right eventually. So yes, the crippled epistemology stuff is something we're going to see a lot of as time goes by.
00:22:00
Speaker
What does it mean then? They start by saying, for our purposes, the most useful way to understand the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories is to examine how people acquire their beliefs. For most of what they believe that they know, human beings lack personal or direct information. They must rely on what other people think. In some domains, people suffer from a quote unquote crippled epistemology in the sense that they know very few things and what they know is wrong.
00:22:24
Speaker
Which is basically to claim that conspiracy theorists hang out with other conspiracy theorists, and conspiracy theorists are stupid. Ooh.
00:22:32
Speaker
Or at least, yes, believe things that are not true and possibly don't have... Now actually, what's kind of interesting about this is that it's getting awfully close to what's called standpoint epistemology in philosophy. So if you're into standpoint epistemology, you take it that people with particular standing in society
00:22:54
Speaker
have better access to certain types of information. So for example if you are a woman then from your standpoint you know a lot more about institutional sexism than a man is going to experience because your standing in society means you experience these things in a way that a man is never going to experience them. In the same respect if you're Maori then your standing means you are more likely to experience racism
00:23:22
Speaker
than say a pฤkehฤ, which of course pฤkehฤ will not experience racism in the sense that Maori ever do. So standing ends up being important with respect to particular types of epistemology and the whole crippled epistemology is a kind of standpoint theory.
00:23:40
Speaker
except that it's taking it from the case of people with particular standing have better access to some information about the world and reversing that by saying, well, there are certain people who have standings that actually mean they know less about the world rather than more.
00:23:59
Speaker
The other bit that stuck out for me in this first section is that straight away they start talking about the link between conspiracy theories and terrorism. So they haven't explicitly said, here's the section where we're talking about the potential harms of it, but one of the things that they
00:24:15
Speaker
start bringing up right from the beginning is that acts of terror can be inspired or provoked by conspiracy theories. Yes, there is a little bit of the old guilt by association going on now. So, carrying on to subsubsection 1.b.2.
00:24:33
Speaker
Rumours and speculation. You've talked about rumours a bit in the past, haven't you? I have. I've written on rumours in the past. Well, there you go. So this should be right up your alley. It's quite interesting because the PDF I've got of this has me commenting on it back around about 2009.
00:24:51
Speaker
when I was working on my first rumour paper. So actually a lot of my focus in the original annotations is looking at rumour and gossip. And the conspiracy theory stuff is very much a secondary consideration for that reading back in those days.
00:25:09
Speaker
So, yes, at this point, they're saying, of course, it is necessary to specify how exactly conspiracy theories begin. Some such theories seem to bubble up spontaneously, appearing roughly simultaneously in many different social networks. Others are initiated and spread quite intentionally by conspiracy entrepreneurs who profit directly or indirectly from propagating their theories. That would be your Alex Jones or your David Icke.
00:25:34
Speaker
Conspiracy entrepreneur. I think they'd quite like that label. I mean, we're kind of unsuccessful conspiracy entrepreneur with our podcast, with diminishing listenership. Do you follow Jim Sterling?
00:25:49
Speaker
No, because he did a special this week about how ever since they came out as trans they've been losing thousands of followers per video so they were about to hit a million subscribers.
00:26:05
Speaker
and now they've held a special saying congratulations we're now at just under 900 000 subscribers and numbers are going down what a milestone we've been hitting it's all thanks to you thanks to you the viewership which is fleeing at a rate of knots quite well done wonderful
00:26:23
Speaker
Well, I'm glad I'm not part of the problem because I was never part of the solution. Yeah, I don't think we've actually mixed things any better for Jim. No, probably not. So Jim's Stephanie Sterling.
00:26:37
Speaker
Whenever a bad event has occurred, rumors and speculation are inevitable. Conspiracy theories like rumors may... Sorry, I should have said. Whenever a bad event has occurred, rumors and speculation are inevitable. There is then a gap there. I don't want to be accused of misquoting things, but then a little bit later it continues. Conspiracy theories like rumors may simultaneously relieve a primary emotional urge and offer an explanation. To those who accept the theory of why they feel as they do, the theory rationalises while it relieves.
00:27:06
Speaker
So in the first subsection, we were told that conspiracy theorists are stupid and they hang around with other stupid people. Now we're being told that conspiracy theorists are just too emotional. Well, I don't know about too emotional, but they're saying there's definitely an emotional component to how these things can be spread.
00:27:25
Speaker
I don't know. As they say at the start, we're getting into a bit of sociology here. I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable. I feel like I'm wading in treacherous waters. I associate with sociologists all the time.
00:27:37
Speaker
Do you wade in them with the waters? No, but I have drunk with them. Close enough. So I've passed the water with sociologists. OK, well then you'd best be my guiding hand here. So moving on to subsection three, we now start talking about conspiracy cascades, the next few sections.
00:27:57
Speaker
The next few sections will be talking about conspiracy cascades and the first one is the role of information in such. So they're talking about the concept of information cascades, which is where the fact that the fact that some people might endorse a view kind of encourages others to endorse it even if they might not
00:28:15
Speaker
have it by themselves. So they give the case of sort of, you know, one person says something, this person who kind of agree, who was kind of thinking that way when they hear the first person say, says, okay, yep, I'm going to say that thing as well. And then the next person who maybe was a little bit on the edge and wasn't so certain even at all, once now that he has two people say that, then is now happy to get on, to ride the train themselves. And so the idea is that
00:28:43
Speaker
Even if something had shaky foundations, the more people who say they agree with it, the more people say they agree with it, I think. Now, I want to point out that they use a series of examples here. And the people in their examples are Andrews, Barnes and Charlton. Charlton. But it would be better if it was Charleston, I think. Yes, I think so. Do the Charleston.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yes. Carrying on, as though that had never just happened, they say in a standard pattern the conspiracy theory is initially accepted by people with low thresholds for its acceptance. Perhaps the theory is limited in its acceptance to those with such thresholds.
00:29:36
Speaker
But sometimes the informational pressure builds to the point where many people with somewhat higher thresholds begin to accept that theory too. And when many people hold that belief, those with even higher thresholds may come to accept the theory leading to widespread acceptance of falsehoods. In theory, a conspiracy theory might be justifiably held by many, even though it is false and harmful, and even though only a few early movers suggested a strong commitment to it.
00:29:59
Speaker
Now this is all building upon previous work that Sunstein has done on informational cascade and echo chambers. So this is something he's written on quite a lot. And it's interesting to see how people treat this in the literature.
00:30:15
Speaker
in that there's a kind of intuitive plausibility to the idea of informational cascades. That information kind of flows through a network, and sometimes some beliefs start with only a very few people at the top, and yet due to belief thresholds being met, the belief suddenly spreads like wildfire in that network.
00:30:41
Speaker
But the actual discussion as to how information flows through these cascades is still very contentious. So the model he's presenting is something that Sunstein is quite convinced by, but other people are going, no, that's probably simplifying the story down to very large degree.
00:31:01
Speaker
and that it's kind of doing a peer pressure notion of how belief is inherited as opposed to, well, maybe these beliefs fit in with other people's beliefs. It's not about crossing particular thresholds, it's beliefs matching with other beliefs that make it a lot easier to adopt these beliefs as time goes by.
00:31:21
Speaker
It does, though, seem to speak to the sort of model, which will come up later in this paper, but which is also the sort of thing we've talked about with like Joe Ucinski, about how a conspiracy theory may have a lot of believers, but there may actually be only be a small core who are sort of hardcore believers and a lot of the rest of them may just sort of have a have a soft belief in it, not actually be that committed. You've got a soft belief in it. Yes, I do.
00:31:48
Speaker
But so, moving ahead, just skip through the next bunch because they're all talking, just expanding on the idea of how conspiracy cascades work. Because we've got the role of reputation. When do we have the role of reputation? As they say, reputational pressures help account for conspiracy theories and they feed conspiracy cascades. In a reputational cascade, people think they know what is right or what is likely to be right, but they nonetheless go along with the crowd in order to maintain the good opinion of others. So that's even more explicitly peer pressure, I guess. Yeah. In that one. And then we've got the role of availability.
00:32:17
Speaker
Informational and reputational cascades can occur without any particular triggering event, but a distinctive kind of cascade arises when such an event is highly salient or cognitively available. Conspiracy theory is often driven through the same mechanisms. A particular event becomes available
00:32:37
Speaker
And conspiracy theories are invoked both in explaining it and using it as a symbol for broader social forces and large narratives about political life, casting doubt on accepted wisdom in many domains. Which sounds like the fact that any time there's a mass shooting, people jump on it and say, false flag. False flag? False flag. False flag. And then the last aspect here in conspiracy cascades is the role of emotions.
00:33:03
Speaker
So they say it is clear that effective factors and not mere information play a large role in the circulation of rumours of all kinds. Many rumours persist and spread because they serve to justify or to rationalise an antecedent emotional state produced by some important event such as a disaster or a war.
00:33:21
Speaker
So, again, getting into the idea that there are emotional factors at play, which I guess already kind of relates to the reputational business as well, people wanting to feel good about themselves or caring about what other people feel towards them.
00:33:40
Speaker
I mean, my issue with this particular emotional stuff that comes up again and again and again in this paper is that why are we picking on conspiracy theorists for the role of emotion in the adoption of these beliefs? I mean, surely, if they're right, this is just a recurrent feature of all informational cascades with or without conspiracy theories being involved.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it does sort of seem like, well, there are these informational cascades and they can happen to conspiracy theories too. But yes, I think everything that comes up here could be applied more generally. Yes, I mean, for example, emotional attachments of this particular kind are going to explain a lot of political beliefs if you take Sunstein and I'm trying to look at a new pronunciation for vermule or vermule. Vermule.
00:34:32
Speaker
So, yes, for Sun Tsing and Woon Lee, it would apply to politics as well. I get very emotional about my politics. I mean, there was a budget today. People got very emotional about the budget. No, they missed it. Neil Jones cried and other people cried with dismay.
00:34:48
Speaker
As they put it, the applications to conspiracy theories should not be obscure. When a terrible event has occurred, acceptance of such theories may justify or rationalise the effective state produced by that event. Consider conspiracy theories in response to political assassinations. In addition, such theories typically involve accounts or rumours that create intense emotions, such as indignation, thus producing a kind of emotional selection that will spread the least from one person to another.
00:35:13
Speaker
Of course, evidence matters, and so as long as there is some kind of process for meeting falsehoods with truth, mistaken beliefs can be corrected, but sometimes the conditions for correction are not present. Do the dun dun dun.
00:35:30
Speaker
It sounded a bit ominous to me, I think. You do realise you could actually just press the button yourself. Well, I could, but I've got to reach part of your tablets in the way. I'd have to elbow you aside, which I'll do quite happily, if that's the invitation. Just a good, good elbow right to the face so I can dive onto the button like a maniac. The look on your face and the idea of commencing physical harm upon my person indicates that actually you're... Dryden's my day. I'm thinking about it now. You sure are.
00:36:01
Speaker
I'm scared. Well, maybe we can just adjust the thing so that you proceed the dun dun dun
Group Polarization and Rumors
00:36:08
Speaker
with the sound effect. If you go, Amy knows, but we want to do that now because we should carry on. We're done with talking about conspiracy cascades, but there are still more factors that influence why conspiracy theories can become accepted. Like group polarisation. Group polarisation.
00:36:25
Speaker
They say there are clear links between cascades and the well-established phenomenon of group polarisation by which members of a deliberating group typically end up in a more extreme position in line with their tendencies before deliberation began. Which again sounds a little bit, a little bit sociologists, a little bit psychological, I'm frightened, hold me.
00:36:44
Speaker
No, you wouldn't hold me at the end of the intro this week, so I'm not holding you now just because you're afraid of a bit of sociology and psychology. I'll be honest, I just wanted you to move in closer so I get a bit of a shot at the old nose with my elbow there. Your violent tendencies are making me think of... Bow runger. As well you should, as well you all should.
00:37:04
Speaker
There's actually a whole bunch of New Zealand references that people overseas are just not going to get in this episode. But that's the fault, quite frankly. Well, it's true. That is probably why we keep driving away our listenership. Well, that might have something to do. We talked about the NBA last week. I mean, I know you don't remember, but we actually talked about something that was of interest to people in the States and not at all. The National Boat Association. Yeah, that's what we did.
00:37:26
Speaker
Talked about boats. It was great. I'm sorry you missed it. I like boats. I'd remember us talking about boats. Yeah, sailing's kind of a sport when it's done competitively. What's sailing? Yeah, exactly. So they say, still talking about group polarisation, for purposes of understanding the spread of conspiracy theories, it's especially important to note that group polarisation is particularly likely and particularly pronounced when people have a shared sense of identity and are connected by bonds of solidarity.
00:37:52
Speaker
These are circumstances in which arguments by outsiders unconnected with the group will lack much credibility and fail to have much of an effect in reducing polarisation.
00:38:01
Speaker
Now, what's particularly interesting about this is Sunstein is very much your classic liberal and thinks that the way to enact any kind of political change is through consensus building. And there's kind of been a theory within liberalism that consensus is kind of how things are always meant to work. And there's been pushback about this particularly recently with people going, actually, when we look at political situations in the past,
00:38:30
Speaker
There wasn't much consensus in the past, which is kind of why in the early 20th century left-wing governments in Australasia and the UK engaged in massive rebuilding works or development to welfare states, because they knew that they weren't going to be able to get a consensus.
00:38:49
Speaker
with the conservatives or Tories across the aisle so they simply press forward with what they thought was good and then the idea of consensus building with the kind of liberalism of the 60s has eroded that by going you're not allowed to make big bold changes you've got to get everyone on board to get a political consensus going forward rather than the old way of doing things which was to go well actually if we just do the thing now the other side kind of has to
00:39:18
Speaker
live with it or lump it. So the point here is not actually to make a political point as to which is the right system to use. The point is Sunstein and Vimalay's notion of polarisation is something which is considered to be ever so slightly contentious for the sheer fact that people are going, we're not actually entirely sure
00:39:44
Speaker
that polarisation is pathological in the way that Sunstein and Vermeil think it is.
00:39:52
Speaker
And then finally, we have subsection eight, selection effects, which is basically, they say, a crippled epistemology can arise not only from information on reputational dynamics within a given group, but also from self selection of members into and out of groups with extreme views, which I guess sort of makes some sort of sense. The people who are in these communities, I mean, look at the targeted individuals, communities, people who have self selected into a community like that.
00:40:22
Speaker
are much more susceptible to the sorts of conspiracy theories that they go thrown around. Although once again this is kind of buying into the notion of centrism within a liberal political framework because as Jack Bratich, a media scholar's media studies scholar, has pointed out liberalism is all about going well anything which is left or right of the centre is de facto extreme.
00:40:50
Speaker
because the only sensible views are centrist views. So once you start to deviate from the centre, then actually you're going to extremes no matter how far left or right from the centre you're actually getting. But anyway, oddly enough, one of Sunstein's books is called Going to Extremes.
00:41:11
Speaker
Now, all of this leads us into section two, governmental responses, which is the guts
Governmental Strategies
00:41:16
Speaker
of it. And good God, I'm scrolling and we still have lots to cover. So I'm going to start reading faster, I think. So it begins. What can the government do about conspiracy theories and what should it do?
00:41:27
Speaker
One, government might ban conspiracy theories, somehow defined. Two, government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. Three, government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshalling arguments to de-credit conspiracy theories. Four, government... I'm counting on my hand, but I'm counting one every time. I think I'm just gesturing like Bill Clinton at this point.
00:41:50
Speaker
Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech. 5. Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. Our aim policy claim here is that government should engage in โ and here it is in italics โ cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories.
00:42:19
Speaker
which involves a mix of three, four and five. And they started out by maintaining an open as open a society as possible, I guess is a good first step in discouraging the proliferation of conspiracy theories. But we're talking about what governments can actually do. I mean, let's talk about this suggestion. Let's do that.
00:42:40
Speaker
We suggest two concrete ideas for government officials attempting to fashion a response to such theories. First, responding to more rather than fewer conspiracy theories has a kind of synergy benefit. It reduces the legitimating effect of responding to any one of them because it dilutes the contrast with unrebuted theories.
00:43:01
Speaker
Second, we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hardcore of extremists who supply conspiracy theories. Cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies, acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously, or undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by plotting doubts about the theories and stylised facts,
00:43:25
Speaker
that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. So effectively, a person connected with the Obama administration had said, look, the best way to deal with bad conspiracy theories would be for the government to encourage agents of the government to infiltrate conspiracy theory for a
00:43:48
Speaker
and kind of seed doubts about those conspiracy theories, which is the same thing as saying the best way to defeat conspiracy theorists would be to engage in a conspiracy against the conspiracy theorists. Now, I don't know about you, but if I read this in a publicly available academic article and I was a conspiracy theorist of a particular stripe, I'd be going, look,
00:44:16
Speaker
They're literally planning to do the thing that we think they've been doing for a while. They actually might be doing that particular thing. I mean, it seems a bit stupid to say, oh, the best way to solve conspiracy theories? Conspire against the conspiracy theorists. They'll have no reason to believe in conspiracy theories after we've conspired against them.
00:44:38
Speaker
So I think they're going to say that almost explicitly later on, but first of all, sections 2a and 2b are basically setting up the groundwork and the considerations, I suppose, that they want us to think they've taken on board when coming to these views. So section 2a is do conspiracy theories matter? So on the one hand,
00:44:59
Speaker
Not a lot of people, comparatively speaking, hold to these ones, especially the extreme ones. And as we said before, of the people who hold them, a lot of them are sort of quasi believers or soft believers in the theory. So that might make you think, well, maybe they don't actually matter that much if they're not that big. But on the other hand,
00:45:17
Speaker
As they say, a belief in conspiracies has often played a significant role in producing violence. Conspiracy theories have had large effects on behaviour, and even if only a small fraction of adherence to a particular conspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may be enough to cause serious harms. And they go on to talk about the Oklahoma City bombing, of course, which was a couple of guys. Or was it a couple? Or was it two? Or was there the third man?
00:45:43
Speaker
who were strong believers in this conspiracy theory, and they were able to cause enormous damage and great loss of life.
00:45:52
Speaker
But it leads them on to section 2b, which are the various dilemmas one encounters when thinking about this and their responses. And they have two dilemmas that they consider. They say the first dilemma is whether to ignore or rebut the theory. The second is whether to address the supply side of conspiracy theorising by attempting to debias or disable its purveyors, to address the demand side by attempting to immunise third-party audiences from the theory's effects, or to do both if resource constraints
00:46:21
Speaker
And that's not a dilemma. A dilemma is supposed to have two options and two options only. You're not allowed to choose both. Anyway. I'm sure that depends on whether you think your aura is inclusive or exclusive.
00:46:33
Speaker
Well, traditionally the word dilemma is specifically where you have two things that you must choose between. So that's always exclusive. But on the other hand, I'm being pedantic about definitions and as a good linguist, I should point out that English changes over time and so sticking to an old definition of a word is actually not justifiable. You've just been hoist by your own petard. I've literally, well, I kind of have, yes.
00:46:56
Speaker
So in the ignore or rebut dilemma, they sort of look at essentially the upsides and downsides of both. So they say ignoring a conspiracy can make it look like it's just not worth consideration. It's insignificant.
00:47:12
Speaker
Or it may look like the government can't rebut it. Maybe the government's being silent because there's just nothing to say because it's not worthy of consideration. Maybe the government's being silent because they know it's true and they know they can't deny it. And obviously, as they say, the suppliers of the conspiracy theories will propose the second inference.
00:47:34
Speaker
But then they get concerned that maybe rebutting a conspiracy theory will inadvertently legitimate a conspiracy theory.
00:47:43
Speaker
They go through that point initially saying there is the opposite risk of you make it look like it is worth considering if you deign to give attention to it. Which is the infamous story about why NASA were very confused about what to do with Moon landing hoax conspiracy theories because they would go well look
00:48:07
Speaker
Every time we talk about it, people go, oh, they're spending a lot of effort trying to tell us we went to the moon. There must be something they're covering up. And if they didn't say anything about it, people go, well, NASA's got no response to when people talk about how we didn't go to the moon. That indicates that they can't rebut the idea that it's all a cover-up and a conspiracy. And if you end up going, well, it's not really worth our time, people go, oh,
00:48:36
Speaker
NASA doesn't think we need to know about what really happens, and there must be something suspicious about the story anyway. And so NASA were going, well, we're kind of damned if we do, and damned if we don't, and we seem to be in some kind of weird trilemma in that there are just too many options.
00:48:52
Speaker
So, yeah, they do it on the one hand and then on the other hand, and then they do it on the other hand, saying, however, the concern that rebuttal will inadvertently legitimate a conspiracy theory overlooks an important synergistic gain, rebutting many conspiracy theories can reduce the legitimating effect of rebutting any one of them.
00:49:12
Speaker
When government rebuts a particular theory while ignoring most others, the legitimating effect arises at least in part because of a contrast between the foreground and the background. The inference is that government has picked the theory it is rebutting out of the larger set because this theory, unlike the others, is inherently plausible or is gaining traction among some sectors of the mass audience. The more theories government rebuts, the weaker is the implicit legitimating signal sent by the very fact of rebuttal.
00:49:39
Speaker
I just like saying but a lot to be perfectly honest. True, and rebuttal has got a great rolling sound. It really does, yeah. So that's an interesting other aspect to whether or not it is good or not to give these things oxygen.
00:49:58
Speaker
And so then they turn to the other dilemma about the audience. They say, should governmental responses be addressed to the suppliers, as the suppliers of conspiracy theories, with a view to persuading or silencing them, or rather be addressed to the mass audience with a view to inoculating them from pernicious theories? But of course, these two strategies are not mutually exclusive. But they say, but maybe you don't have the resources to pursue both strategies. So in that case, which one do you choose?
00:50:28
Speaker
And they point out that conspiracy suppliers are notoriously resistant to contrary evidence, especially when it's coming from the people they think are responsible for the conspiracies, the government.
00:50:42
Speaker
They mentioned the idea that drafting in experts to bolster the government's case can help, but then that runs the dangers of, you have to be very careful to make sure that the experts are seen to be independent from the government, because if there's any suggestion that the government is sort of influencing these experts they've brought in, then they'll be dismissed just as quickly as people will want to dismiss the government.
00:51:08
Speaker
And so, because changing the minds of these sort of these hardcore conspiracists, these conspiracy suppliers can be too hard, the governments often motivate or may be motivated to communicate to just to the public at large. Yeah, so you change your audience there. You move away from let's persuade the conspiracy theorists, hereby defined as the hardcore of people who are really, really sure about it, to, well,
00:51:36
Speaker
We can't change their minds, or at least it might be really hard to change their minds. So what about the undoctrinated wider public? Maybe we can talk to them instead and inoculate them against these pernicious conspiracy theories.
00:51:52
Speaker
However, they say, the problem with this line of argument, however, is that there are intrinsic costs to the strategy of giving up on the hardcore of conspiracy theorists and directing government efforts solely towards inoculating the mass audience. For one thing, the hardcore may itself provide the most serious threat.
00:52:11
Speaker
For another, a response geared to a mass audience, whether or not nominally pitched as a response to the conspiracy theorists, will lead some to embrace rather than reject the conspiracy theory the government is trying to rebut. This is the Legitimation Dilemma again. To begin a programme of inoculation is to signal that the disease is already widespread and threatening.
00:52:30
Speaker
Now in this respect, what they're referring to is the bankfire effect. But sometimes talking about a thing that you want to refute or debunk is also going to be the kind of thing which brings new people into the thing you're trying to rebuke and refute.
00:52:49
Speaker
I'm just making up words now. So there's actually a nice example of this in our history. So about 15 years ago, there was a documentary about the reproachment between Taranaki Iwi and the Moriwori called Feathers of Peace. And Feathers of Peace was a documentary talking about how the Moriwori were driven out of the mainland of the North Island to settle in the chatons.
00:53:19
Speaker
and this was due to a variety of factors including colonisation, warfare between Iwi and the like, and how there had been a process in the last few years which meant that there was an approach between the Iwi's which had formerly been antagonistic towards each other.
00:53:40
Speaker
Now an interesting facet in our history is that for a period of time, for reasons which aren't really particularly clear, Paquia in particular were taught that the Maori'ori were a pre-Maori tribe, probably of Melanesian origin, who had arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand before the Maori did, and that they were driven out by the Maori before the Europeans arrived.
00:54:10
Speaker
Now, this is not true. This is what we might call fake news. It's a false history of the place. And the documentary Feathers of Peace is very clear about what really happened. But people did a whole bunch of surveys both before the documentary played on public TV and afterwards, and they discovered that despite the fact that the documentary reiterates the real history,
00:54:37
Speaker
Most Pฤkehฤ, after watching the documentary, were convinced that the fake history was correct. And the survey holders went, well, we just have to assume that these people watched the documentary but they didn't pay any attention to it. They simply watched the documentary whilst recalling things they had learnt at school.
00:54:58
Speaker
And then people were perhaps part of the issue here is that the false history is reiterated in the documentary to be debunked, but people didn't take the debunking in. They simply heard the reiteration of what they'd been taught at school and went, oh, of course, I remember that and paid no attention to the voice going, of course, this part of the history is completely wrong. What really happened, people weren't paying attention by that point.
00:55:26
Speaker
Now the bankfire effect is contentious, there is a lot of literature being produced in social psychology and sociology to this day questioning as to whether it a is as big an effect as people make it out to be and also b what other factors may contribute to this effect
00:55:46
Speaker
So it is contentious, but it is something which is studied and appears to be, at least if not a real effect, something which you can point to in a variety of interesting cases.
00:55:58
Speaker
So all of this brings them to section 2B3, which has the delightful title, cognitive infiltration and persuasion. So they say, rather than taking the continued existence of the hardcore as a constraint and addressing itself solely to the third party mass audience, government might undertake legal
00:56:19
Speaker
tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hardcore and reinforce it in turn.
Cognitive Infiltration Strategy
00:56:27
Speaker
One potentially promising task is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean 1960s style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions. Rather we mean that the government efforts might succeed in weakening or even breaking up the epistemological complexes that constitute these networks and groups.
00:56:47
Speaker
I mean, I like how they go, look, it's not going to be as bad as the 1960s. We're just going to infiltrate your groups and sow disinformation. I mean, it's completely different. Well, counter-information, I suppose. It's about the people in those groups who are going to see that as a disinformation ploy. Just going, look, we've got the most noble of purposes. That's why we're going to infiltrate your group and try and persuade you not to believe the things you do.
00:57:15
Speaker
isn't the kind of thing that people go, oh, of course, I mean, that's fine. I mean, we're all idiots and we're overly emotional as well. So it's really good you're infiltrating our groups and telling us to be sensible. So as they put it, going into a bit more detail, government agents and their allies might enter chat rooms, online social networks and even real space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises cause a logic or implications for action, political or otherwise.
00:57:43
Speaker
Now, I realise that this meme is a lot more recent than this paper, but all I can think of is the guy with the coffee mug and the table at the university with the persuade me sign on my mind. Change my mind, yes. So we're just going to get a whole bunch of these reply guys and we're just going to sit them inside chat rooms and go, you know, change my mind, persuade me that your conspiracy theory is true. That's basically what they're advocating.
00:58:12
Speaker
Then they look at the idea of, should this be done anonymously or should it be done by people who are open about the fact that they are coming from the government? And so they say, well, on one hand, if they're open about working from the government, then some people will just discount anything they have to say right from the start. It doesn't matter. Hello.
00:58:32
Speaker
My name's John Doe, I work for the CIA and I really want to join your 9-11 Inside Job Conspiracy Theory Group because I really want to talk to you about the doctrine of our Lord and Saviour, the Director General of the CIA. On the other hand,
00:58:48
Speaker
if you do it anonymously, then that has the added risk that should anyone get found out, that's going to make things a hell of a lot worse. That's sort of, again, proof positive that people are conspiring. On the other other hand,
00:59:02
Speaker
There could be a good side to doing this anonymously and then getting unmasked because that could then so discord among these conspiracy suppliers now that they know there are these undercover agents, these infiltrators in their midst. It could just sort of cause conflict within the group as people become more paranoid and less distrustful of their compatriots. Is there a on the other, other, other hand? No, I ran out of hands at that point.
00:59:30
Speaker
I mean, they actually do seem to only have three arms in the story. And a little bit of question about whether this should be done online purely or talking to actual human beings in the real world. So all of this leads us to the conclusion, which reads thusly.
Conclusion and Need for Intervention
00:59:50
Speaker
Our goal here has been to understand the sources of false and harmful conspiracy theories and to examine potential government responses. Most people lack direct or personal information about the explanations for terrible events and they are often tempted to attribute such events to some nefarious actor, in part because of their outrage.
01:00:06
Speaker
The temptation is less likely to be resisted if others are making the same attributions. Conspiracy cascades arise through the same processes that fuel many kinds of social errors. What makes such cascades most distinctive and relevantly different from other cascades involving beliefs that are also both false and harmful is their self-insulating quality. The very statements and facts that might dissolve conspiracy cascades can be taken as further evidence on their behalf. These points make it especially difficult for outsiders, including governments, to debunk them.
01:00:33
Speaker
Some false conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate. In extreme cases, they create or fuel violence. If government can dispel such theories, it should do so. One problem is that its efforts might be counterproductive, because efforts to rebut conspiracy theories also legitimate them.
01:00:55
Speaker
We have suggested however that government can minimise this effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals and by cognitive infiltration designed to break out the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and information isolated social networks.
01:01:17
Speaker
And there you have it. To be honest, I didn't quite get this paper really. It did kind of read as the sort of thing you'd expect to get plonked down on the President's desk, or rather some person who works for the President a few levels lower. As you hear in my recommendations about governmental policy, as a paper in a philosophical journal,
01:01:41
Speaker
it seemed a bit light on the philosophising, good sort of surveying, good laying out of a space and talking through the issues and so on, but I didn't, I kind of found myself wondering what's the point of this a lot of the time.
01:01:54
Speaker
I mean, I'm not going to comment too much on this because as I said in the introduction, people are going to be writing about this paper for a while. In fact, the very next paper that we're going to be looking at, I believe does touch upon this episode slightly. So it's probably wise to leave that to Curtis when we reconvene in three weeks time.
01:02:18
Speaker
I think what's really fascinating about this paper is the kind of openly, eh, want to just infiltrate conspiracy theory fora and solve the problem that way. Which, if this had simply been two academics that had no connection to the political establishment in the US whatsoever,
01:02:40
Speaker
you might go, well, that's a kooky idea. But you know, anything's on the table when you're engaging in these discussions. But given the role that the two authors play, it suddenly goes from being a kooky idea to it's actually a little bit disturbing that this is one of their policy recommendations. And so we're going to see a lot of that be discussed in papers in the, for us the next few weeks. Right on.
01:03:10
Speaker
Well, then I guess that's maybe all we should say about it for now. So an interesting paper, a bit different perhaps. And if, as you say, it's going to become significant for one reason or another, it's probably a good thing that we've talked about it. But for now, I think we've talked enough. I think we've talked enough and we should just end this episode. I agree entirely. Thank you, President Nixon.
01:03:35
Speaker
So, it's goodbye from President Nixon. I am not a crook. And it's I am not a crook from me. I actually am a crook.
01:04:02
Speaker
And remember, it's just a step to the left. Your course man hears is causing issue with my soundscape.