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Charles Pigden's 'Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories'
30 Plays4 years ago
Josh and M review Charles Pigden's seminal paper 'Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories', which was published in Philosophy of the Social Sciences back in 1995.
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Classic Hot Takes' Series
00:00:00
Speaker
This week we begin a new series called... Josh, what are we calling this again? Classic hot takes in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory. That's... that's all we came up with. Well, not us. We are our dedicated team of researchers and helpers. We sat them down. Remotely, of course. Gave them a cup of tea or coffee. Well, asked them to prepare themselves a cup of tea or coffee. Jammed biscuits into their mouths. Yeah, sure. Whatever.
00:00:27
Speaker
and got them to brainstorm how we'd refer to our new fortnightly series where we go back and review classic articles on conspiracy theory from the Philosophy Archives. Classic hot takes on the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory, baby. Tell me, who, who exactly are these idiots, I mean, these crack researchers we've been using?
00:00:46
Speaker
uh well there's him and um and that one you've just described your household well maybe but they did eat the biscuits look i understand your children coming up with classic hot takes in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory
00:01:06
Speaker
But your partner? Wasn't she a fancy teacher of English or something? Well, I mean, yes, she did add another name. A democracy rules, Em, and when you're dealing with two very loud poop-obsessed children, classic hot takes and the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory is the best you can get.
00:01:22
Speaker
Hmm. Well, I mean, what would you prefer? Classic conspiracy theory theory? Well, yes, actually, that sounds great. Well, yeah, that was considered and taken off the table. Something about it sounding like poo? Bah. No, look, we have processes and mechanisms for a reason. So no, you can't have conspiracy theory theory hot takes or conspiracy theory masterpiece theater. There'll be no conspiracy theory theory classics. It's classic hot takes and the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory. And that's final PS poo. Bah.
00:01:52
Speaker
No. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. Roll the thing.
Dr. Dentith's Upcoming Article: 'Debunking Conspiracy Theories'
00:02:08
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:02:18
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Sitting here in Auckland, sensibly isolated as usual, it's Josh Addison and Dr. M. Dendith. It's a bit chilly. It's like autumn in a rush here in Auckland. It has got ever so slightly cold, I will say. But we're not here to talk about the weather, Joshua. We're here to talk about my recent victory over philosophy.
00:02:42
Speaker
You've won philosophy, you've beaten it, then pushed it? Yes, because I have a new article coming out in some days, which is one of the better philosophy journals. It's a Q1 journal, Joshua. Q1. Does it come out in the first quarter of the year?
00:02:58
Speaker
I mean yes and the second quarter and the third quarter and the fourth quarter basically there's a whole bunch of metrics which measure whether journals are good or bad and synthase is a q1 or a ranked journal according to a lot of those metrics and i've got an article called debunking conspiracy theories coming out in it and can you guess what the topic of debunking conspiracy theories is
00:03:23
Speaker
Could it possibly be about conspiracy theories and the debunking of them? Yes, but am I for or against said debunking? Oh, well, that's interesting. Because it's an interesting title. I mean, debunking conspiracy theories sounds like proactive, let's go debunk some conspiracy theories.
00:03:41
Speaker
Or is it on the topic of debunking theories and maybe you come out for or maybe you come out against? You know my method, Watson. You should be able to diagnose the content of a paper called debunking conspiracy theories. Just apply what I've taught you to the topic at hand. You mean inject myself with a serum of cocaine and heroin?
00:04:01
Speaker
Well, as long as it's a 10% solution, it should be fine. Very good then. So, sorry, what, when is it coming out in some days? So, it's been accepted for publication, so I still need to do the final proofs, one part of which is de-anonymising parts of the paper, because there are a few parts where I refer to my own work,
00:04:22
Speaker
in the third person, which you have to do when you double blind to paper to make sure that reviewers and editors don't know who it comes from, but looks rather odd when it's under your name and you keep referring to yourself as someone else. So there'll be a few situations where it'll go
00:04:39
Speaker
Dentith says to I have argued previously so that will happen in the next week or so and then it will probably be available in early access within the month actually hitting print will probably be a year or so away but that's why I have early access to put articles online so that people can experience them enjoy them and more importantly cite them as soon as possible
00:05:06
Speaker
Yes. Are you not tempted to keep into third-person references just for that sort of Roman emperor sort of feel? This displeases dentists.
00:05:15
Speaker
Well, I mean, admit that if I do do that, I'll put a lot of exclamation marks at the end of those particular sentences to make sure they do look very declarative. Very good. Now, speaking of reputable articles and the citing of things and so on and so forth, we're starting a new regularish, I think. Every fortnight, basically. Every fortnight feature. We were going to be looking back at a bit of the the the academic literature on philosophy, conspiracy theory theory.
00:05:44
Speaker
And we're starting with, we'll probably get into this once we start discussing it properly, but with what is the, is it sort of the foundational piece in the modern study?
Key Papers in Conspiracy Theory Philosophy
00:05:56
Speaker
Basically, yes. So there are two papers which kind of started off the philosophical interest in conspiracy theory. There's Of Conspiracy Theories by Brian Alkely.
00:06:06
Speaker
which was published in 1999, and there's Charles Pigdon's Poppy Revisited or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories, which is the one we're discussing today, which was published in 1995. And these two pieces kind of jointly set the scene for a subsequent analysis of conspiracy theory and the development of conspiracy theory theory in philosophy.
00:06:31
Speaker
So this week we'll deal with Charles's paper since it comes first and is a very important corrective to a view of conspiracy theory being espoused in philosophy and elsewhere and next time we meet for our fancy book club we will talk about Brian's piece
00:06:50
Speaker
which does some fairly interesting work in the epistemology of conspiracy theory. Right, so I suppose, yeah, this is kind of where it all starts. We may in fact find ourselves using the word seminal at various cases and I'll try very hard not to snigger, but I make no promises.
00:07:11
Speaker
It's true. I mean, there is a lot of seminal work coming up and frankly, a lot of it gave birth to a lot of literature, which is why I'm now thinking of Julian Sands's
00:07:26
Speaker
poster portrayal in Warlock 2, the Armageddon, when he comes he'll tear your world apart. And the poster has him with a white substance in his hand which is glowing and radiating light. And I have to assume the person who designed that poster knew exactly what they were doing every step of the way.
00:07:50
Speaker
or at the very least to the person who came up with the tagline had seen that poster. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the image came first and then the person was who. So I can write anything down on this as long as it relates to the film. Or perhaps
00:08:06
Speaker
the poster artist happened to come up with a picture and the the the the the writer tagline person happened to come up with a tagline completely unrelated to each other and it was merely uh just a coincidence or perhaps cock up you might say that it came up that way i might have given us a segue yeah you may have given us a segue so let's use that segue get on that segue and trundle very slowly into the main content of today's episode yes let's
Critique of Popper's View on Conspiracy Theories
00:08:41
Speaker
Right, so today we are looking at the paper, Papa Revisited, or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories, which was released in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences in 1995, volume 25, number one, by, of course, Charles Pigdon, which he wrote. Now, I suppose before we start, tell me a little bit about Charles Pigdon.
00:09:00
Speaker
Charles Spicton is associate professor down at the University of Otago. He's a philosopher. He's a Russell scholar, by and large, and his work to date has predominantly been a kind of defense of error theory in metaethics.
00:09:19
Speaker
era theories a rather interesting view on how we should take moral claims when we talk about moral theories, but Charles has also been dabbling in the philosophy of conspiracy theories since 1995. I know Charles quite well, we're quite
00:09:38
Speaker
Pauli, both in email and in real life, he wrote the foreword to my first book. So, you know, I've had Charles's endorsement and he really is the first philosopher to consider the problem of conspiracy theory after the work of Karl Popper. And of course, it's the work of Karl Popper that Charles is responding to with Poppy Revisited or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories. Now, this is a perfect time to segue into the abstract.
00:10:08
Speaker
of the piece. Josh, do you want to deliver us your best sonorous tones when it comes to reading abstract in philosophy? Very well. The abstract of this paper reads, conspiracy theories are widely deemed to be superstitious, yet history appears to be littered with conspiracies successful and otherwise. For this reason, cock-up theories cannot in general replace conspiracy theories since in many cases the cock-ups simply failed conspiracies.
00:10:33
Speaker
Why then is it silly to suppose that historical events are sometimes due to conspiracy? The only argument available to this author is drawn from the work of the late Sir Karl Popper, who criticises what he calls the conspiracy theory of society in The Open Society and elsewhere. His critique of the conspiracy theory is indeed sound, but it is a theory no sane person maintains.
00:10:53
Speaker
Moreover, it's falsehood is compatible with the prevalence of conspiracies. Nor do his arguments create any presumption against conspiracy theories of this or that. Thus, the belief that it is superstitious to posit conspiracies is itself a superstition. The article concludes with some speculations as to why the superstition is so widely believed. So, straight away, it starts to sound familiar. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
00:11:21
Speaker
You leave Stevie Onder out of this. But yes, I mean, just from listening to that, it certainly sounds very much like the sort of stuff we've been talking about here for the last five years or so. Christ, it's going to be six years. It's almost six years with this month. Six years this month. What the hell? What's going on, man?
00:11:37
Speaker
It's time. It's time, Josh. Actually, you see, before COVID-19, it was actually only two and a half years, but last six weeks has been a long time. It turns out we've put out a lot of content in the interim. Yeah, no, it's true. When you read the abstract,
00:11:54
Speaker
The abstract seems exactly like the kind of stuff we've been talking about, and exactly like the kind of work I've been doing. So it's important to note that whilst, and I'm not to denigrate the article, but it all seems a little bit old hat. But that's the sheer fact that it was a new hat at the time, and that new hat fit the head so well,
00:12:19
Speaker
it became an old hat by due to the stint it stayed on the head the entire time. I think I made that analogy work. I think it works pretty much. I mean the point is it's 25 years old so it can be forgiven for sounding a little dead. Interestingly, and we'll get into this in a minute, is the fact that a lot of conspiracy and conspiracy theories have popped up since this paper was written, including a couple of big ones that we'll mention shortly.
00:12:46
Speaker
Um, but basically he he sets out the fact that people sort of you know, the the whole division of conspiracy versus cock up and people who like to say No, it's yeah, if it's conspiracy or cock up go with the cock up every time really trying not to snigger um and talks about carl popper in particular as being the only person who's really sort of put down
00:13:08
Speaker
why we shouldn't be giving much time to conspiracy theories. But as he sort of looks into what Karl Poppers said, Poppers, it does seem to be quite the straw man, the sort of conspiracy theory and the sort of attitudes towards conspiracy theory that Popper puts forward don't really seem to be views that anyone holds or the way we talk about things.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, so it's what you might call to avoid the term straw man just for the gendered nature of the term, a kind of representational fallacy. It turns out that Karl Popper is correct in his assessment of the conspiracy theory of society, which we'll get into in just a minute.
00:13:46
Speaker
But the problem is it isn't clear at all that anyone actually subscribes to the conspiracy theory of society. So yes, it's true. If people believed the conspiracy theory of society, then subsequently belief in conspiracy theories based upon that would be prima facie irrational.
00:14:06
Speaker
But given there's no evidence that people subscribe to that particular thesis, Popper is tilting at a windmill and thus actually doesn't provide the rationale for being suspicious of conspiracy theories that may be not he, but the people who have cited him afterwards or used arguments of that type.
00:14:27
Speaker
think actually warrant their suspicion. So Charles basically starts off by talking about the fact that it's kind of a mistake to contrast conspiracy theories with cock-up theories in the first place because often when we're talking about a cock-up theory in politics we are talking or pointing to
00:14:48
Speaker
a known and failed conspiracy so often when you have a cock up theory in politics in case of look they tried to get away by covering up this particular thing but you know these people are incompetent so the information got out and Chelsea goes look
00:15:05
Speaker
If we accept this and we accept that criminal conspiracies are part of our accepted reality that prosecutors in the courts all the time, then we shouldn't be skeptical of the existence of conspiracies.
Examples of Historically Influential Conspiracies
00:15:20
Speaker
So there's going to be an argument against conspiracy theories. It needs to be something that actually accepts that conspiracies do occur, but then gives us a rationale to believe that people who theorize about conspiracies
00:15:34
Speaker
are somehow acting irrationally. Yeah, because he sort of, Popper appears to be saying that this view that Popper argues against appears to be the idea that all of history can be accounted for by conspiracy theories
00:15:51
Speaker
always achieving their intended goal. And Charles basically brings up a lot of all the points that we've talked about a million times here on this podcast. Conspiracies do occur. We know they do. We can look at all sorts of historical examples of people conspiring.
00:16:07
Speaker
Um conspiracies aren't always successful. The result of a conspiracy is sometimes Not the intended result, but nevertheless came about because of the conspiracy. Um, so he sort of he picks holes in that straight away and then sort of maybe suggests that perhaps um Poppa we should be a little more uh, uh charitable about this and suggest well, maybe if we if we sort of soften poppers line a little bit and sort of say that you know, maybe conspiracies
00:16:36
Speaker
don't often happen, or if they do happen, they're not often successful, or that if they are successful, they don't end up having that big of an effect anyway. But then straight away, pretty much you can shoot holes in all of that as well. So he ends up, he ends up, I don't want to sound like a tabloid newspaper, but demolishing a lot of what Popper has to say. So where to from there?
00:17:02
Speaker
Well, I think it's important to note that when we have a discussion about Popper's view of the conspiracy theory of society. So, Popper accepts that conspiracies occur. Popper is not an art skeptic of the existence of conspiracies.
00:17:15
Speaker
rather he's a skeptic that conspiracy theories are a useful explanatory mechanism for things that go on in the world. So he thinks that they are really successful and when they are successful they have no real effect upon the world and we'll get on to both of those issues in just a second. But he does accept that conspiracies occur
00:17:38
Speaker
So he's not going, don't ever believe in the existence of conspiracies. He's simply saying, look, if you're the kind of person who tries to explain everything in the world by reference to a conspiracy, you are acting irrationally. And Charles agrees. If you are that kind of person who thinks that conspiracies explain everything, then I've got news for you. Sometimes non-conspiracies explains things as well.
00:18:03
Speaker
But it's just not clear that there are people, not even the most extreme conspiracy theorists, who believes every single event in the world is part of divine providence or some kind of orchestrated plan. So rather, Charles goes, look, here's a really modest proposal.
00:18:20
Speaker
let's say it's sometimes appropriate to cite conspiracies in the explanation of historical events and actually Charles even has an immodest proposal which is that conspiracies are common so actually we should be citing conspiracies in the explanation of events all the time but his argument doesn't need the immodest proposal it just needs the modest proposal
00:18:41
Speaker
Sometimes conspiracies are the appropriate cause of events in history. And then he goes, well, look, Pop is obviously wrong about the conspiracy theory of society. No one actually believes conspiracies explain everything.
00:18:55
Speaker
when people believe conspiracy theories they believe that this particular conspiracy explains something about the world and then he goes well let's be charitable to popopper and go you can't literally mean everybody believes this you must mean that you know conspiracies are seldom successful well that becomes a measurement issue how do you tell their
00:19:22
Speaker
really successful and Charles gives a lot of examples and we'll get into this when we talk about the kind of examples he cites but by and large he talks about Elizabethan plots or things that were going on in the court of George II of examples of conspiracies that were successful
00:19:44
Speaker
and thus show that actually sometimes it's appropriate to cite successful conspiracies as explanations for events in the world. And that often these kind of things aren't even talked about in the vein of conspiracy theory, even though they quite clearly are conspiratorial explanations of some kind. So then he goes, well, maybe what Papa actually means is that actually conspiracies don't have any real effect upon the world. And then the issue is, well,
00:20:14
Speaker
It's actually not quite clear that it does because a partial success is still success if you want to exterminate the Jewish people and you only exterminate several million Jewish people.
00:20:30
Speaker
then it would be a bit odd to then say that that conspiracy was unsuccessful because yes it's true as a nazi you have completely failed to wipe out the jewish people you've done a pretty good job of guessing part of the way to that end so it'd be odd to then say well that that conspiracy was unsuccessful and i actually use this example quite deliberately because it's an example popa users
00:20:57
Speaker
of an unsuccessful conspiracy in the open society. It says the Holocaust is an unsuccessful conspiracy. And I would go, no, it seems like it was actually quite successful. It just didn't succeed in its ultimate aim.
00:21:13
Speaker
And I think he also talks about, brings in the notion of a timeframe where he'll say, well, okay, maybe the conspirators succeeded in their goal initially, but if you look over the long term, the conspiracy theory didn't really play out.
00:21:30
Speaker
uh, Pigdon seems to doesn't really have a lot of time for that really, because you could kind of use that sort of justification to say anything you want. If you, if you, you know, put the timeframe out, frame out long enough, a few billion years, the heat death of the universal and everything we know. So, so surely nothing was successful in the end. That's why we should give up with any kind of hope or dream, Josh, because eventually the universe ends. Yeah. There is a, it's a related claim here, which is if you don't keep your conspiracy secret,
00:22:00
Speaker
It's not really a proper conspiracy you can theorise about, which apart from the fact that it's self-sealing, how can you theorise about something you never know about?
00:22:10
Speaker
It's also the case of you have to keep your conspiracy secret forever. You just have to keep it secret long enough to achieve part of what you want to achieve. There's no I mean the assassins of Caesar wanted to talk about the fact they assassinated Caesar as soon as the deed was done because they wanted to take responsibility and gain power.
00:22:33
Speaker
So they had to keep it secret up until the time Caesar died. But after that, they really wanted everyone to know what's going on. Or any terrorist sort of incident. The people behind those are always fairly quick to claim responsibility because that's the point. They're trying to raise their own profile and get attention.
00:22:53
Speaker
But the other point that Charles makes is that even if it turns out that you don't get what you achieve, sometimes not getting what you achieved but some other outcome can be pretty disastrous as well. So for example, if you're trying to cover up a chemical spill,
00:23:15
Speaker
because you're going to clean up that chemical spill was time. So you just need a little bit of time to get the cleanup crew up and running. And then it turns out you have an environmental disaster. Then your conspiracy to cover up what you're doing has kind of failed. But the consequences of that disaster are actually really, really bad. So yes, you don't always achieve what you want to achieve.
00:23:42
Speaker
But even when you don't achieve what you want to achieve, what you've managed to achieve, trying to make sure I'm tracking my my tenses there, sounds right, can be pretty bad. So we can't even do the they don't achieve what they wanted to achieve, because sometimes you are interested in what they did, not what they intended to do.
Why Dismiss Conspiracy Theories?
00:24:02
Speaker
And if we're talking about positing a conspiracy theory as an explanation of something, whether or not it was successful as basically immaterial, you can still say, there was this conspiracy, and as a result of this conspiracy, this thing happened.
00:24:18
Speaker
and whether or not what happened was the goal of the conspiracy is immaterial if you're, you know, there is still a causal link and that's what you're talking about. And towards the end he then starts sort of suggesting why do people still nevertheless like to say that conspiracy theories are either very rare or really successful or largely inconsequential?
00:24:41
Speaker
which gets, I don't know, perhaps a little more into the psychology of things than the philosophy of it. But he sort of, you know, has a lot of ideas of self-interest or institutional interest. The idea that if you want to get away with conspiracies, then it is actually in your interest to have people think that they're not probably not actually going on. A bit of the old, what I think our friend Jean-Paul Sartre would call the old bad faith,
00:25:09
Speaker
thinking, you know, conspiracies are bad. I'm not bad. Therefore, what I'm doing can't be a conspiracy or I can't be a conspirator. And sort of the idea that people people like to think that they're above this sort of thing, even if what they're doing is explicitly or even implicitly fostering conspiracies.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yes, so it's to a certain extent what our friend of the show, Lee Basham, will describe to be a political party. We either don't like to think that we live in a society which has conspired, so we don't want to talk about conspiracy theories.
00:25:47
Speaker
Or as you say, the bad faith argument, well, I'm not a bad person. So yes, I'm doing some underhead things, but it's for the greater good. And so for that reason, I'm not really conspiring. I'm just engaging in politics by other means.
00:26:03
Speaker
And that allows people to then go, well, I can now happily say that conspiracy theories are bad and I don't conspire. I also don't believe conspiracies occur in my society. So conspiracy theories and their theorists are obviously people who are just a wee bit stupid and irrational. Case closed, Joshua. Case closed.
00:26:24
Speaker
So in terms of looking at the paper as a whole, I mean, we set up the top. This is one of the two sort of seminal pieces. Did this come out of the blue? Is it a thing like, you know, you hear a lot of the stuff like old Charles Darwin with On the Origin of the Species. It was stuff that a bunch of people were talking about and he sort of rushed his work into publication so he could get out there first. Was this sort of stuff things that had been percolating a bit in academia or did Charles just kind of
00:26:54
Speaker
come up with it all on his own. So I actually asked Charles about this years ago because I was I had the very same question what was it that means we had this huge time jump from Karl Popper in the 40s and 50s writing on the conspiracy theory of society which I should point out is a really really short section in the open society and its enemies and in the next book Conjectures and Refutation.
00:27:21
Speaker
So Poppa doesn't spend much time on it. It's kind of a footnote, but it's an important footnote because people kind of took it in. Oh, Poppa's done the work. We can ignore these things now.
00:27:32
Speaker
And so I asked Charles, what was it that inspired you about this? And it was basically reading Papa and then giving a afternoon seminar and writing that up and then going, actually, I think there's a journal piece in this, I'll submit it somewhere. So no, there wasn't a,
00:27:53
Speaker
a need to get something out because there was the threat of a burgeoning literature. It was very much a, this is an interesting point that Popper made, I should point out Charles is a leftie,
00:28:07
Speaker
People on the left have been fairly skeptical of Popper's approach towards conspiracy theory for a long time, because they've kind of seen it as legitimizing being skeptical towards conspiracy theories generally, which has had the effect of people not investigating potential conspiracies in their governments. So I think Charles was probably more politically motivated
00:28:30
Speaker
to get to the philosophy rather than finding it just to be an interesting tricky philosophical point. But no, I mean what's interesting about this is you have this piece in 95, we'll get Brian in 99 in a fortnight's time,
00:28:47
Speaker
and then there's a little, a smaller time jump before we start getting more work and then the literature starts to explode. So no, there wasn't, it doesn't seem like it was a fuse ready to go off, it was a slow burn for five or six years before the philosophical literature went, oh we should probably do something more with this. So I mean that was, that's 25 years now since the paper came out
00:29:17
Speaker
Has any of what he said been overturned in any way? Or have there been modifications? How has the field moved on? And indeed, has Childes himself refined his views since this?
00:29:33
Speaker
I don't think there's been any particular change of heart by Charles. I think Charles is probably even more convinced that his critique of Papa was a timely thing to do, which I agree, and he's continued to write in that particular vein.
00:29:49
Speaker
as someone who also writes in that particular vein. Of course I'm not going to go, well that was a silly thing for him to do. I find Charles's work to be very important within the field. I mean so important that he was one of my PhD examiners. So I owe a debt of gratitude towards Charles and the work that he's done. Of course also it makes me entirely the wrong person to then go, so what what did Charles get wrong? Because effectively basically nothing. I suppose the only thing you can critique Charles on
00:30:19
Speaker
is writing his paper just a little bit too soon because in 1995 Watergate and JFK are kind of receding from memory and the really big conspiracy theories that we take to be ushering in the 21st century have
00:30:40
Speaker
have yet to occur. So 1995 is pre-9-11 by six years. This paper is actually published a month before the Oklahoma City bombing which doesn't actually mean much at all because due to the way that peer review and the like made it was probably submitted six months before that so it predates the Oklahoma City bombing. It may well have been written around about the time of Waco but even then
00:31:10
Speaker
conspiracy theories about Waco didn't really emerge as a major phenomena until the Oklahoma City bombing became a thing and so it's kind of telling that the references that Charles uses or at least the examples Charles uses
Historical Examples and Contextual Critique
00:31:25
Speaker
of conspiracy theories in his paper are Elizabethan plots and aspects of English political history, because there aren't any big hissing, big name conspiracy theories at that time to talk about. And this is a problem we'll also get with respect to Brian's 1999 paper, which makes the mistake of coming out two years before 9-11.
00:31:51
Speaker
These people are not using their psychic abilities to work out the right time to publish papers. No, they are not. No, yeah, there's a big section on a conspiracy theory involving the Court of George II, which I have to admit I really couldn't follow. It ended up with King George getting more money, I think, because he did it about
00:32:13
Speaker
Well, so basically there was his preferred character for prime minister and the existing prime minister. And it seems that was Charles the second, George the second.
00:32:27
Speaker
favored one particular man, Georgia Stecken's wife favored another, and it does seem that there were machinations in the background to ensure that her choice became prime minister because she was a more canny political operator, but couldn't be seen to be manipulated to see because she wasn't the king.
00:32:47
Speaker
so engaged in kind of underhanded conspiracy theory like tactics. But yeah, so the paper mentions Watergate. I didn't notice anything about JFK in there though. He briefly mentions the Reagan around hostage type conspiracy theory that we've talked about a couple of times now, I think.
00:33:07
Speaker
He mentions the COINTELPRO project. A topic we've actually never really talked about. No, we've mentioned it, but yeah, maybe that's another one we need to come back and do a proper episode on. I actually put that into the notes recently that we should probably actually cover that because it is the massive story and it's kind of odd we've never talked about it.
00:33:27
Speaker
But I think the thing that really cements it as a proper philosophical discussion is that right at the very end of the paper, he makes a reference to Robocop 2 indeed in the final paragraph. So I think it just goes to show that it is right and proper for philosophical discussions to eventually bottom out in pop culture references. And indeed, I mean, also one of the things which I loved about this paper the first time I read it. So I was in London.
00:33:56
Speaker
and reading this particular paper and got to the end and went, that's a pop culture reference. That's the kind of thing that I would like to put in a paper. This is the literature for me. And yes, Charles does know his pop culture references. He may well be a classicist and well educated in his history, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know a bit of the old pop culture as well, which is precisely how a person should be.
00:34:25
Speaker
If you're curious, he ends up talking about how if you know where to look, you can sort of see the prevalence of conspiracies by the fact that people may not be explicitly
00:34:41
Speaker
The language people use can be very subtle when they're conspiracising. That's not the right word. It'll do. And he uses as an example the discussion during World War II where the OmniCorp executives are basically plotting to murder the mayor of Detroit, but saying it in such sort of euphemistic
00:35:06
Speaker
subtle language that it's not explicitly conspiratorial, but that's surely exactly what it is, which I guess is a good example and therefore a fitting excuse for why he would be talking about Robocop 2, which was a little bit naff compared to the classic, which of course is the first Robocop.
00:35:25
Speaker
And of course, written by one of the most naff modern day comic book writers of all time, Frank Miller. Mr. Frank Miller. Yeah. Did you see, uh, Robocop's going to be in the next Mortal Kombat game? I saw that today. It's just weird, but good on them. I think we've talked about this before, haven't we? I'm pretty sure everyone who works at the other realms is some sort of a low grade psychopath, but, um, they are producing fun games. So good on them.
00:35:52
Speaker
I do like people ripping spines out of other people and I believe that's not just in games.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yes, yes, exactly. So as the paper ends with pop culture references, we end with pop culture references, and I think that brings to a conclusion the first episode. I actually like Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre. I think we even need a kind of riff on the Masterpiece Theatre theme music. I am Ellis De Cookie, and welcome to Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, something like that. We'll work on it for next time. But next time is not next week, because we'll do something else next week. Who knows? It might even be COINTELPRO. It might. At which point we'll spend a lot of time going, is it COINTELPRO, COINTELPRO? COINTELPRO, COINTELPRO. Yeah. Who was it? I remember there was, I think it was Bill Walsh, who was an editor of a newspaper who I followed in my professional capacity.
00:36:51
Speaker
who actually who died of cancer a couple of years ago the first time i've ever the first person i've ever like followed on the internet and then seen a message sorry guys this guy died which was quite weird uh but he he hated the fact that these the way um
00:37:06
Speaker
the names of projects and organizations, they'll just sort of chop them up, you know, they won't make a proper acronym out of them, they'll just sort of chop enough bits of words out of them to make something that sounds like a word. I think UNESCO was the one he came up with, which is sort of UEN, but then the S is something else, and the co is short for company or something, suggesting that the United Nations should be calling itself UNI-NATI.
00:37:28
Speaker
But anyway, yes, maybe it'll be Co-Intel Pro. Maybe it'll be something else. You don't know. We don't know. But we will eventually. What we do know, though, is that when we finish recording this one, we're going to go record our next bonus episode for our patrons, where we'll be talking about a bunch of newsy stuff. We didn't talk about newsy stuff last week, so we can catch up on a little bit. Kim Jong-un's there. A bit more COVID stuff, obviously.
00:37:55
Speaker
Got some UFOs. Got some UFOs. Got a bit of David Icke. Got a bit of Nicholas Cage. And a bit of Nicholas Maduro. Everything's better with Nicholas Cage. And I think that's all we have to say before we close this episode. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being a patron. If you're one of our patrons, if you'd like to be one of our patrons, go to the Patrion and search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and do all that jazz. But I think for now, it is simply time for us to say goodbye. Harry Mason. Goodbye.
00:38:26
Speaker
you
00:38:32
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron, via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:39:33
Speaker
And remember, it's just a step to the left.