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Coady on Sunstein and Vermeule
28 Plays2 years ago
Josh and M review David Coady's review of the work of Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule...
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
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Transcript
Humorous Podcast Name Ideas
00:00:00
Speaker
So given this week's content, we're potentially going to need to change the name of the podcast. So new name, go. The podcasters guide to secret plots. Plots by definition secret. Okay. The podcasters guide to the secret. Oh, new AG. 10 tips the wellness industry doesn't want you to know about. The podcasters guide to the complex.
00:00:24
Speaker
Complot. Complot. No, it's just a synonym for conspiracy. The podcaster's guide to things formerly known as conspiracies and conspiracy theories. I think the prince estate might sue us. The podcaster's guide to the bad stuff they do. It's getting there. The podcaster's guide to the lying liars and their lying liars.
00:00:49
Speaker
Sorry, just trying to work out the potential paradoxes with that one. The podcaster's guide to excuses about talking about popular culture. Take your it. The podcaster's guide to your mum. Yeah, we have a winner. Your mum's a winner. Don't do a note. The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr.
Introductions and TV Show Critiques
00:01:18
Speaker
M. Denton.
00:01:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. I am Josh Addison in Auckland, New Zealand and in Zhuhai, China. We have Associate Professor of Philosophy, proficient in over 12 martial arts styles, sorry, over 12 hairstyles. It's Dr. M.R. Extended. Hello there.
00:01:39
Speaker
Actually, no, I've just gone, hello there, kids. Oh, that's the Obi-Wan thing. And I've been watching that new Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show. And I have to say, I'm just not impressed at all. Not impressed at all. Don't watch the first two. They seem fine. I don't know.
00:01:58
Speaker
But the thing is, being fine isn't really good enough when you're spending that amount of money on those actors. And they're going, you know, I guess I could appear in a scene, you know, maybe. Also, apparently, Darth Vader is afraid of fire, or at least not afraid of fire. He just can't do anything if there's a fire around. Well, can you? Yes. Yes. Yes, I can.
00:02:24
Speaker
Right. Now, we're not actually here to talk about Star Wars related TV shows, although we could, obviously. That being said, one of the characters that we're going to be talking about when I think about it has a kind of Star Wars-esque name.
00:02:40
Speaker
A little bit, a little bit, yes. But anyway, let's not spoil things immediately. Let's spoil them in approximately 30 seconds after I've said it's an episode of Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
Critique of Obi-Wan Kenobi Show
00:02:55
Speaker
we're going to be looking at a paper by David Cote on those wacky miscreants Cass Sunstein and Adrian Fermil again. And this is not the last time we'll be talking about them either because it turns out
00:03:10
Speaker
people do like dunking on that particular paper by Sunstein and Vermeule. Although what's interesting about David's piece here is whilst it's technically called Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule on conspiracy theories, quite a bit of the argument is about Cass Sunstein's chapter in his book Going to Extremes, which is interesting and notable by the absence of Adrian Vermeule as a co-author.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yes, well, I don't think there's anything else to say. So why don't you play a chime? Actually, why don't I play a chime? Because if this episode sounds different, and I have no way of knowing if it does at the time we record, it's because I'm doing the audio mixing this time.
00:03:55
Speaker
to take a little bit off of the good doctor's plate. You've given me the templates and all the stuff I need. I still, though, haven't seen the instructions on exactly where I put in all the fart sound effects.
00:04:10
Speaker
and the sort of the album and the chipmunks filter and all of that stuff. Is there a particular protocol
Introduction to Coady's Paper on Conspiracy Theories
00:04:16
Speaker
about when you add a boilerring and when you add a wah, wah, wah? Now the thing is, sound editing is both a science and an art. And I can teach you the science part, where to cut, how to cut, how to adjust levels. But when it comes to putting in the fart noises, Josh, that's the artistic side. And I can't tell you.
00:04:40
Speaker
where those noises go. I also can't tell you where to put the fnords in. Now, people long time listening to this podcast will be very aware of the very artful fnord placement in every episode. And Josh, you're just going to have to work that out yourself. There are some things you can only learn through experience, just like your mum. I'll just muddle through then, but I'm pretty sure at this point I can manage putting in a sting.
00:05:09
Speaker
Welcome to Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
00:05:19
Speaker
So, yes, today we are looking at the paper, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermule on Conspiracy Theories, which is written by David Coady, published in Argumenta in 2018. A special issue of Argumenta on Conspiracy Theories. I also appear in that, but of course we don't discuss my papers in this Masterpiece Theatre series because that would be weird. Would be a bit strange, you know.
00:05:43
Speaker
never really worked out a good solution for that. So like my reaction as a non-academic not working in the field was to begin with was like oh for goodness sake like the paper that was 2009 this is 2018 and people are still going on about them
00:05:59
Speaker
But did they really stir up that much of a hornet's nest? Is it just a case of everybody felt the need to give their particular take? So I'm in two minds about this, because on one level, I kind of agree, we do go on, and as we as in the academic community of philosophers working on conspiracy theory, we do go on about that paper probably more than it deserves. It is a very bad argument.
00:06:27
Speaker
And it uses species reasoning to get to its conclusion. Its evidential base is pretty poor. The problem is, A, Cass Sunstein's relative position in the Obama administration at the time made it quite notable, and B, it does get cited quite a bit. And therein lies the issue. So it does look as if we're going on and on and on about it.
00:06:56
Speaker
But because it is being cited by scholars outside of philosophy, it's kind of, well, do we have to remind you again, this is not a good argument, because it's quite obviously a bad argument. And yet people are reading and citing it outside of philosophy as if it's actually a good one. So I'm in two minds.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yes, we do go on about it a lot. Bear does get cited a lot, which is why we then have to go back and go, you two realise this is bad, right? Right? Right? Right? That's it. Right? Right.
00:07:30
Speaker
That said, it does go in some interesting new directions, this paper, which we will see when I get into it, which I'm going to do right now. I think it's my turn on the abstract, so I'm going to do it. Josh, it has been your turn on the abstract now for several abstracts in a row. I think you just assume it's always your time on the abstract. OK. So I think it's my time to do it. So let me read the abstract. Far be it from
Coady's Argument Against Sunstein and Vermeule
00:07:56
Speaker
me.
00:07:56
Speaker
I criticise Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule's influential critique of conspiracy theories in conspiracy theories causes and cures. I argue that their position depends on an equivocation over the meaning of the term conspiracy theory. This equivocation reflects a widespread assumption that conspiracy theories tend to be false, unjustified and harmful, and that as a result, we can speak as if all conspiracy theories are objectionable
00:08:23
Speaker
in each of these three ways. I argue that this assumption is itself false, unjustified and harmful. There are many true, justified and or beneficial conspiracy theories. This is because people often conspire, we often have good reason to believe that people are conspiring, and there is often a significant public benefit in exposing their conspiracies.
00:08:47
Speaker
I compare conspiracy theories to scientific theories, arguing that just as most of us regard bad scientific theories, i.e. false, unjustified and harmful ones, as an acceptable price to pay for good scientific theories, we should regard bad conspiracy theories as an acceptable price to pay for good conspiracy theories.
00:09:07
Speaker
I go on to argue that Sunstein and Vumil's proposed cure for conspiracy theories is unlikely to work and is inconsistent with the values of liberal democracy. Indeed. Now, at the very end, in the conclusion section of this paper, David Coady starts by saying, I originally intended to write about Sunstein's latest book, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas,
00:09:32
Speaker
But only one chapter of that book is on conspiracy theories, or rather the things he calls conspiracy theories. And that is virtually identical with the article he co-authored with The Mules. So he does, he acknowledges the existence of the book. But... Yeah, so I called it going to extremes. It was another Sunstein book released around about the same time. As David also points out, I think when he's talking about the, I was going to talk about the book, not just this particular article. He points out there's actually something very weird.
00:10:02
Speaker
about the chapter and conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas, in that the mule doesn't get credited as a co-author on that chapter, despite the fact that the chapter is virtually identical apart from a few lines. And so it just seems kind of strange that a co-authored piece suddenly can become a single authored piece
00:10:24
Speaker
in a chapter by changing just a few words. It's almost as if someone's authorship attribution in the original wasn't very strong or someone is trying to avoid association with an author later on in life. And frankly, both hypotheses seem interesting and I don't know which one's actually plausible.
00:10:51
Speaker
Well, that aside, what we do know is that I didn't put my phone on mute, and that it's time to move into the introduction. So the introduction is familiar territory, I think, for us at least. For me, having looked over a lot of this stuff before, it's basically just, it introduces some Stephen V Mule's arguments as they put forward in their paper,
00:11:14
Speaker
argues why the things you just said basically before, why it's significant, why Sunstein in particular is significant due to his role in the American administration and the, you know, which leads to the possibility that some of these ideas might actually be put in practice, ideas which as we've seen and as we will see again in this paper are questionable.
00:11:40
Speaker
Now, David Cody says, this will not be the first work of philosophy to critique Sunstein and Fermil on this subject, but it will be the first to do so in the kind of depth which, given the above points, it seems to merit.
00:11:52
Speaker
Which seems like a bit of a backhanded compliment to previous authors, say like Curtis Hagen on the same issues. I don't know whether it's a case of David having not read those papers beforehand, or whether he's simply referring to
00:12:09
Speaker
the people who have, like me, given the kind of surface, this is a bad argument, here's why, and moved on. But it does seem, because I don't think this is actually the first work to do it in depth, truth be told, at least not by this particular point in time. But at any rate, he turns to the definition of conspiracy theory, and I think this is sort of going to be one of the central things about this paper, the way Sunstein and Fermule define conspiracy theory,
00:12:37
Speaker
or not, as the case may be. So he says, I will not be presenting my own definition of conspiracy theory or any related terms. I will consider only Sunstein and Vermeule's definitions.
00:12:49
Speaker
The reason for this is simply that I do not believe there is such a thing as the right definition of conspiracy theory, or even that there are any good definitions. I'm committed to the normative, indeed the ethical thesis, that we should refrain from using the term conspiracy theory, or any of the terms associated with it, such as conspiracy theorist, conspiracist, conspiracism, and so on, and that we should discourage others from doing so as well.
00:13:11
Speaker
And then on a footnote, for this reason, this article can be understood as a contribution to the growing field of applied philosophy of language. And it was this point that was like, oh, OK, now I'm paying attention.
Ethical Implications of Labeling Conspiracy Theories
00:13:21
Speaker
Philosophy of language, eh? But this is the move that you've alluded to several times in the past, where David Cote basically says we shouldn't be using the term conspiracy theory.
00:13:32
Speaker
Yes, and it's a move he's also making with respect to fake news as well. And I think there's more merit to the fake news nomenclature than there is with respect to the conspiracy theory stuff, because you can quite plausibly argue, even if the phenomenon of fake news is old, the term fake news is relatively...
00:13:52
Speaker
modern, it was invented in our lifetimes. It is a term which was used initially satirically and has now taken on a very different epistemic stance. So maybe there's a project to go look, it might not be too late to eliminate the term fake news from our lexicons and simply refer to the pathology of news it represents. But when it comes to the conspiracy theory stuff,
00:14:16
Speaker
my basic argument is, good luck trying to stop people from using this term, especially good luck trying to stop politicians from using this term to smear things they don't want said about them. Because the worry I have with the elimination strategy around terms like conspiracy theories, even if you persuade academics to stop talking about conspiracy theories, politicians are going to label things they don't like
00:14:45
Speaker
as conspiracy theories very successfully as a rhetorical move. And if there is an academic pushback saying, actually, by this we mean, this will actually make the situation worse, not better. Yeah, I mean, there's always been those terms that when you look at it, don't actually have any meaning other than thing I don't like. Woke seems to be the latest one, which is just political correctness in a new disguise.
00:15:12
Speaker
There's a bunch of them around that, you know, if you're wanting to give any sort of a structured, logical analysis of them, you find out, well, they're basically worthless as a term because they have no real meaning. It's just whatever the speaker wants them to mean at the time. And yet people keep using them and have been one way or another for a long time. So, yeah, maybe that's not going to change. But anyway, getting ahead of our sides a little bit. So having said, he says we should refrain from using these terms. He says, why? The fact that these terms are multiply ambiguous has been well documented and
00:15:42
Speaker
Of course, that's true. We've spent plenty of time. Lots of people use the word conspiracy theory to mean different things and attach lots of different baggage to it. Now, he says, of course, ambiguity isn't much on itself. There's lots and lots of ambiguous words out there.
00:15:58
Speaker
But he says, talking about ambiguous words, in most contexts it is clear, or at any rate clear enough, what they mean. By contrast, the terms conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorists are routinely used equivocally, and arguments that these theories and or theorists are a problem that need addressing are routinely guilty of the fallacy of equivocation. It seemed to me like there's a big, big emphasis on equivocation at the start of the paper, and then that kind of goes away later on, although maybe it's just having been established, we were just supposed to be
00:16:28
Speaker
That's just what we should be keeping in mind as we go through. Equivocation, of course, using the same term in two different ways and possibly not realising about it, which has always been... Aristotle was dead against equivocations. He always cautioned you to watch out for them when you don't know that you're doing it.
00:16:47
Speaker
See, I think Aristotle was dead against equivocation
Government Conspiracies in Open Societies: Are They Rare?
00:16:51
Speaker
because he was very aware that a lot of Socrates' arguments relied on equivocating at key points because, ah Joshua, you've just said x, but actually what I meant was y. So you look foolish now because you weren't aware that when you said x, I was actually talking about y. You poor dreadful idiot. I think Aristotle, yeah, that's the bit I didn't actually like about Socrates. So I'm going to be very much against that kind of move.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yes, there he was. So that's the introductory section out of the way. So the main body of the paper is just titled Sunstein and Fermule's Argument, and he goes through and critically analyzes their argument. He starts by saying that he's going to be using
00:17:34
Speaker
As he said in the introduction, he's going to be using Sunstein and Vermeule's definition of a conspiracy all the way through. He says, in their original paper, Sunstein and Vermeule rather tentatively define a conspiracy theory as an effort 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 so he then says, when I use the term conspiracy theory, I simply mean the things which fit Sunstein and Vermeule's definition of a conspiracy theory.
00:18:03
Speaker
And that is how he sets out and basically how he continues. So as it all goes through, as you'll see, I think there was that comment earlier on in the introduction when he talks about has the little little bar about conspiracy theories or at least the sort of thing they call conspiracy theories that carries all the way through here.
00:18:23
Speaker
So, he goes over the way that Sun Stem for Mule, in his words, brush aside the fact that many conspiracy theories, even conspiracy theories that meet their definition, are rational or harmless or have been proven true.
00:18:40
Speaker
and then only focus on the conspiracy theories that are, again, in their words, false, harmful, and unjustified. Which is a problem that Curtis also identified with Sunstein and Vermeer's account, which is the idea that, well, you know, they seem to have a kind of intuitive understanding of when a theory is false, harmful, and unjustified without either arguing why some theories are false, harmful, and unjustified.
00:19:10
Speaker
This is where the equivocation comes in. They first use the term conspiracy theory specifically to mean false, harmful and unjustified conspiracy theory. But then later on when they're using the term, it certainly sounds like they're using it.
00:19:25
Speaker
mean all conspiracy theories overall, which did cause some problems with the various earliest of Brian's papers where, as we saw in the reaction to some of them, a lot of it seemed to be down to people getting confused over whether we were talking about conspiracy theories in general, or those specific unwarranted mature conspiracy theories. But that got sorted out. But some of the students from Newell, I think, seemed to
00:19:52
Speaker
seem to be a bit more guilty of it all the way through. Now, as he said in the introduction, he goes on to compare conspiracy theories to scientific theories. And basically, if you were to talk about scientific theories, the way we talk about conspiracy theories, it would be obvious nonsense if we said that there are some scientific theories are bad, some scientific theories have been quite harmful historically.
00:20:20
Speaker
especially things involving race and stuff like that have been used to justify very bad things. If we were to take that and then talk about scientific theories in general, as though they were all these ridiculous, disproven, and potentially harmful things, I think fairly quickly you would see that's a fairly rubbish way to be talking about science and scientific theories. But
00:20:46
Speaker
when it comes to conspiracy theories, David Cote is claiming, that's kind of what people do. So he then tries to, he sort of does the thought experiment where he's like, okay, this seems a bad move, but how could Sunstein and Vermeule justify the decision to focus only on these bad conspiracy theories? And he comes up with a few reasons why a person might
00:21:12
Speaker
try to defend only focusing on this particular subset, but unsurprisingly rejects a lot of them. So he's sort of continuing with the scientific theory analogy. He says, well, okay, maybe you'd say it's worth focusing only on these bad scientific theories, because scientific theories are well-respected, and so because people respect theories in general,
00:21:37
Speaker
that makes it dangerous that you have these bad ones that people may attach to the same level of respect to. Of course, conspiracy theories are not normally well respected, certainly in colloquial and everyday usage, so that particular justification falls over.
00:21:55
Speaker
Another justification you could think of would be that maybe you'd want to say, well, okay, yeah, there's good ones and there's bad ones, but the good ones, or at least the not bad ones, they're very rare. So we can just, we could ignore, we cannot bother talking about those ones because the bad ones are also common.
00:22:15
Speaker
Indeed, he says, Sunstein and Vermeule do not explicitly say it, but they strongly imply that conspiracies by powerful people, and hence true conspiracy theories on their definition, are rare and unimportant. Insofar as they present an argument for this view, however, it applies not to conspiracy theories in general, but to a particular subset of conspiracy theories, those which involve governments of so-called open societies.
00:22:38
Speaker
And we get back into, who was it who used to talk about open societies? It was Lee arguing with Brian or Charles? Well, it was Lee objecting to what we might take to be the naive treatment of Brian's work. So the idea that Brian's work implies a kind of public trust skepticism, a view which even I accuse Brian of having, even though now in retrospect, I think
00:23:03
Speaker
I think both Lee and myself were wrong to think this is a consequence of Brian's argument, but Lee's argument is well look we don't live in a sufficiently open society to be able to say that there isn't one large-scale conspiracy going on in the background, we just don't have the justification for the disbelief in the existence of a large-scale conspiracy going on, which is not to say there is a conspiracy going on, we just don't live in the kind of society where we could be
00:23:32
Speaker
guaranteed of the truth of the claim. That such a thing isn't happening. And this gets us into this open society thing, which is societies can look really, really open. But as long as there's hierarchy, and as long as there is control of information by people in positions of authority, a society can look a lot more open than it actually is.
00:23:59
Speaker
And so we kind of look at examples like the US, the UK, and France. Yes. So those are the three examples that are brought up is what an open society might be. I think part of the problem here is that it isn't clear what even Sunstein and Fumule mean by an open society, but they certainly seem to think societies like the US
00:24:21
Speaker
and the UK and France are such. And so their argument, their sort of line of reasoning would be that these not bad conspiracies, the ones that are actually true, the ones that we are justified in believing in,
00:24:34
Speaker
They tend to fail in an open society because in an open society information flows more freely and the information about these conspiracies will come out making it so that they can't remain secret for long enough at least to succeed. They'll ensure their secret to begin with but they get found out too quickly.
00:24:55
Speaker
One thing which always kind of strikes me about the open society hypothesis is that you can actually imagine a situation where a society is trying really hard to be open, but kind of failing to do so. So you don't need to think it's a closed society just pretending to be open. You might go, look, we're trying to be as open and transparent as humanly possible, but things keep getting in the way. And the US is a great example of that. Nobody knows how many
00:25:24
Speaker
intelligence agencies and groups are operating in the United States at the moment. Due to the compartmentalized way that the intelligence agencies work, there are a lot of small agencies that are not in communication with other agencies, and the American intelligence establishment has kind of lost track of how many of these groups do we have at any given time.
00:25:50
Speaker
So there's no conspiracy to hide the intelligence community. It's more of a case of the people at the top literally don't know who they're funding and who's kind of responsible for that funding. And they would love to find out. And maybe if they found out, they would then create a master list so the public could find out what's going on. But at the moment, nobody knows.
00:26:14
Speaker
And in that kind of situation, you're going, well, I mean, you're trying to be open, but you're actually not sufficiently open enough if even you don't know how many closed groups might be operating in your society. And yeah, at this point, the paper, having spoken in fairly general terms up until this point, then kind of goes into
00:26:35
Speaker
an examination of whether the US government specifically is capable of keeping things secret for any length of time, which, if we are to believe this consequence of Sunstein and Vermeule's views, they shouldn't be able to be sufficiently open. So Sunstein and Vermeule, in their paper, they did give
00:26:57
Speaker
examples of governmental conspiracies, which were things that I don't have the exact excerpt now, but I believe they were like, you know, here are dodgy things the US got up to, and we found out about them, right, because of the openness.
Historical Examples of US Government Secrecy
00:27:12
Speaker
But a lot of these things that the spying, the sort of the NSA stuff that
00:27:18
Speaker
Edward Snowden eventually blew the whistle on the whole extraordinary rendition. What was their euphemism for torture? Enhanced interrogation. Enhanced interrogation, yes. These things went on for years, for starters, before we found out about them. And after we found out about them, there wasn't really much in the way of consequence. There wasn't a lot of sort of punishment or anything handed out for it.
00:27:43
Speaker
And not just that, but A, a huge amount of resistance to admitting to those things in the first place, and B, punishing, or at least attempting to punish the people who revealed those things afterwards.
00:27:59
Speaker
So it's one thing to say that, oh, you know, we now admit that the NSA was surveilling American citizens. But you can't say, oh, and we don't need to worry about this as a, as a, a contributory cause to belief in conspiracy theories without going, and yeah, the person who revealed that had to flee the country and can't ever really go back to the United States because he'll be prosecuted. So that's
00:28:26
Speaker
That's not going, oh, we can just ignore that. OK, so look, if you're still thinking about suing or imprisoning the person who revealed the bad things you did, then yeah, sure, we know about it. But you obviously don't want us to know about it. And you'll do whatever you can to try and ensure that we don't find out about it in future. So he looks at some of the mules' examples of
00:28:53
Speaker
conspiracies on the part of the US government which were Watergate, MKUltra and Operation Northwoods. And I think that basically kind of accuses Sunstone for Mule of underselling them, saying that they were actually worse and ran for a lot longer and in the case of Operation Northwoods were more seriously considered.
00:29:11
Speaker
then Sun Sen of Samuel made it sound. At this point, David himself brings up COINTELPRO, the programme that we have devoted in episode two, although he specifically mentions the suicide of Gene Seaberg, who I don't think we talked about in the COINTELPRO episode. No, I don't think we did. Also, every time I see COINTELPRO, I always read it mentally as COINTELPRO.
00:29:36
Speaker
COINTELPRO, yeah. Or as we said at the beginning, because the CO stands for counter, surely it should be CalINTELPRO anyway, but anyway. Gen Seaberg was an actress in the 50s, 50s I think, who committed suicide after being the subject of a COINTELPRO
00:29:56
Speaker
smear campaign, basically, run at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover himself, as I recall. So there was an actual body count associated with COINTELPRO, and it ran for a long time. It went as far as Nixon's presidency. I can't remember where it started. Truman? Something like that. It lasted multiple, multiple presidencies.
00:30:19
Speaker
incomplete secret, which which kind of calls into question, I suppose, the whole open society thing that they, that Sunstein and Vermeule try to put forth. So after this, he says, we've seen that Sunstein and Vermeule's implicit assumption that conspiracy theories are false and unjustified is itself false and unjustified. We've also seen that their argument that conspiracy theories are unlikely to be justified when they posit conspiracies on the part of governments of so-called open societies is unsound.
00:30:49
Speaker
What about the alleged harmfulness of conspiracy theories, the third of the trifecta of objectionable qualities of conspiracy theories? So having looked at the idea of the false and unjustifiable, we haven't yet addressed whether or not conspiracy theories do harm.
Harms of Conspiracy Theories and Government Concerns
00:31:04
Speaker
So now he turns to that aspect of it. He says, Sun Tseung-woo will go further, portraying both the people and the theories as positively harmful.
00:31:13
Speaker
so harmful that they require a public policy response. Since you'll cite some examples of false conspiracy theories that have done harm, but anyone can play this game with any category of theory. And so returning again to the analogy of scientific theories, you can point to scientific theories that have done actual harm. He brings up phrenology, scientific race theory, and Lysenkoism, another thing that we've done in the episode in the past, which was the, how would you describe it? A socialist agriculture?
00:31:42
Speaker
Well, actually, I think it would be unfair to call it socialist agriculture because that besperches socialism. I mean, it's pseudo-biology with the weird kind of caveat that for some reason evolution by natural selection was some kind of capitalist plot.
00:32:04
Speaker
It was very weird, but yeah, Lysenkoism is a very interesting thesis. I always find this particular move interesting because I've also made this move that look, if we start doing comparisons of warranted versus unwarranted theories, scientific theories often actually look pretty bad because there are more bad scientific theories than there are scientific theories which have been investigated and found good.
00:32:29
Speaker
I think one of the reasons why people object to the term conspiracy theory is that when we talk about things such as phrenology, scientific race theory, and lysenkoism, we go, oh, but that's not real science. It's not real science because the theories aren't true. So they kind of discard all the bad scientific theories. We go, oh, it's a definitional fact, a scientific thing.
00:32:55
Speaker
theory appeals to, say, a natural law or some kind of scientific truth about the world. So they separate out the practice of scientific theorizing from the product, scientific theories, whilst they don't do the same thing with the practice of conspiracy theorizing which can go wrong.
00:33:16
Speaker
versus conspiracy theories themselves which are propositions which are going to either be true or false. So yeah, there's a really interesting move that people make when they kind of dismiss the number of scientific theories which have turned out to, on the basis of the evidence, not be very good.
00:33:35
Speaker
However, the paper continues, Sunstein and Vermeule however claim that conspiracy theories are special because there are certain features of false and harmful conspiracy theories that make them distinct from and sometimes more damaging than other false and harmful beliefs.
00:33:53
Speaker
What are these features? Sunstein and Vermeule's answer seems to be that conspiracy theories, again they do not specify just the false and or unjustified ones, can have quote, pernicious effects from the government's point of view, either by inducing unjustifiably widespread public scepticism about the government's assertions, or by dampening public mobilisation and participation in government-led efforts.
00:34:16
Speaker
And then further on, it is striking, however, that Sunstein and Vermeule appear to be exclusively concerned with things that may be harmful from the government's point of view, rather than with things that may be harmful from the citizen's point of view, which is possibly playing back to the fact that Sunstein was essentially part of the government.
00:34:36
Speaker
for a while there, so it does call into question when you see him saying, or seeming to say, I suppose, that what we need to be worried about is how conspiracy theories might harm the government rather than harm people.
00:34:50
Speaker
And then finally we get into, of course, you can't discuss this on a single Vimeo paper without discussing their actual conclusion, their proposed solutions to what we should do about conspiracy theories, which was their good old cognitive infiltration.
Critique of Cognitive Infiltration and Open Society Logic
00:35:06
Speaker
And you'll be surprised to learn that David Cote does not approve of cognitive infiltration. I am surprised to learn that. I'm very surprised indeed.
00:35:16
Speaker
But interestingly, thinking back, most of the commentary around this was, to begin with, obviously this is just bad on ethical grounds, essentially. To have a government conspiring against its own people is just plain morally bad. And then there's also the slight contradiction of
00:35:39
Speaker
you say conspiracy theories are bad and yet here you are conspiring against the people who are spreading these conspiracy theories. But David Cote does take this sort of a step further and actually refers back to the earlier parts of the argument to show the contradictions in perhaps more
00:35:59
Speaker
obvious relief. The first thing is, you say, okay, so the government needs to essentially conspire against these groups that are spreading conspiracy theories. But hang on a second. Just before, we were talking about how the US was an open society.
00:36:17
Speaker
a society in which conspiracies don't stay secret for long enough for them to actually come to fruition. So on one hand, supposedly the government should be conspiring, and yet you've just said it should not be possible for the government to conspire in the sort of society that something of a mule kind we live in.
00:36:38
Speaker
He then moves on to the more sort of ethical dimension of it, saying that it's also a worry when someone recommends, sorry, quoting here again, when someone recommends that government officials secretively and deceptively manipulate public opinion. We should be especially worried when someone like Sunstein, who was until recently himself a powerful government official, recommends that government officials behave in that way.
00:37:04
Speaker
To summarise, on the one hand, Sunstein and Vermeule reassure us that we do not have to worry about government conspiracy because we live in an open society. On the other hand, they recommend policies which could never be successful in a truly open society and which, to the extent that they are successful, would make our society less open.
00:37:23
Speaker
At the start, we did cast a small amount of shade on David's claim that he's going into it in more detail than perhaps others have. But I think that is the most detailed case against the cognitive infiltration suggestion that I've seen in a paper so far.
00:37:41
Speaker
So I think part of what's interesting about what's going on with Sunstein and Vermeule here is that, yes, it seems that they're saying, our society can't conspire. Let's conspire against the people who say that we can. But I think it's also because of, to use a fancy psychological term, the cognitive dissonance they have about
00:38:04
Speaker
the intelligence apparatus in places like the United States. They don't think of intelligence, intelligence gathering, and surveillance as being, prima flocce, a form of conspiracy. Oh, that's just a natural thing that everybody knows goes on in the background.
00:38:22
Speaker
So given everybody knows this is going on, it's a kind of open secret and thus really isn't particularly conspiratorial. So we can just add on to what those agencies do the additional task of infiltrating conspiracy fora to dissuade people from believing in conspiracy theories. So I don't think they consider their policy proposal as being even conspiratorial.
00:38:51
Speaker
even though by definition it is conspiratorial and also according to their definition of a conspiracy theory it would generate conspiracy theories which are pernicious and harmful because if people found out the government was conspiring against conspiracy theorists that would lead to a loss of trust in the government but because they don't see the proposal
00:39:16
Speaker
as being conspiratorial in the sense it actually is. They go, well, you know, this is perfectly normal activity. Buying on other people, perfectly normal activity in an open society, surveilling people is a perfectly normal thing for an open society to do.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yes, I mean, under their definition, what do they call a conspiracy theory? Effort to explain some of mental practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people who attempt to conceal their role, at least until their aims are accomplished. Well, I mean, the US government are powerful people and they're attempting to keep things secret, so yeah, it does certainly seem to fit their definition.
00:39:52
Speaker
unless, unless they think the intelligence agencies are incompetent. Because, oh no, they're actually not that, you know, they're powerful people, but they're not very good at achieving their end, or they just pretend to be powerful, but they don't actually get anything done. Which, arguably, I can see someone who's been involved in the intelligence community going, yeah, you might think the people behind the scenes are incredibly clever, but let me introduce you to Stan.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It seems from their point of view, they're doing the thing of they've decided conspiracy theories are bad, but what they're proposing is good. So therefore what they're proposing isn't a conspiracy theory, which obviously is a deeply dodgy logical move. And it almost sort of comes to what we're talking about right at the beginning, the idea that conspiracy theory becomes a slightly meaningless term that just means the ones I don't like.
00:40:51
Speaker
and is no more strictly defined than that, which is possibly what leads David Cody to his conclusion. The conclusion has a few parts to it. To begin with, he talks about, as we set up the top, how he was going to react to Cass Sunstein's more recent book rather than the paper from at this time eight or nine years ago, but that the book is essentially identical to the paper.
00:41:15
Speaker
But so then he talks about using the term conspiracy theory. He says, I said at the beginning that we should not use the terms conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist, or any of the language associated with these terms. Each time we do so, we are implying, even if we do not mean to, that there is something wrong with believing, wanting to investigate, or giving any credence at all to the possibility that powerful people, and especially governments or government agencies of Western countries, are engaged in secretive or deceptive behavior.
00:41:45
Speaker
And I mean, as I recall from David's earlier papers, he was a real stickliff for the, including the colloquial definition and definitions of conspiracy theory, wasn't he? He was, he was... Yeah, he really does want people to make sure that when we talk about conspiracy theories, they're in conflict with some kind of official story.
00:42:03
Speaker
As you say, it doesn't sound like a particularly plausible thing. Like, yeah, you get philosophers to stop using it, maybe, but you're not going to stop other people from using it, certainly not politicians for whom it can be a useful rhetorical tool. And overall, it just seems a bit defeatist, essentially, to point out that there are problems with this pejorative generalist definition of conspiracy theory.
00:42:31
Speaker
and rather than saying we should work against them to maybe redefine, to change the definition, to just conclude that we should ditch the term altogether. It doesn't sound like a winning strategy. No, and it's one which I've argued against. I mean, there's an entire literature as to whether philosophers or just academics in general can change common usage. And I can get go and look for academic discussions.
00:42:59
Speaker
maybe we should avoid particular terms.
00:43:02
Speaker
But I also think the way that particulars have defined what counts as a conspiracy theory is a very useful way of analyzing a particular phenomena in the world. And I don't think we'd be doing the service of analyzing claims of conspiracy theories, given the pejorative labeling practices that go on, by simply saying we're just not going to use the term. I really don't think that's a very useful move to make.
00:43:32
Speaker
And then finally he turns to the cognitive infiltration aspect of things and the reaction it's got.
Alternatives to Cognitive Infiltration and Sunstein's Evolving Stance
00:43:40
Speaker
And the whole paper concludes as follows.
00:43:43
Speaker
He says that Sunstein and Fermule have clearly, quite rightly, received some negative feedback for that proposal, and Sunstein has now demoted it to one possible policy response among others, along with banning conspiracy theories and imposing a tax on them. And he's anxious to assure the reader that he is not advocating, quote, 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information possibly for use in future prosecutions, quote.
00:44:09
Speaker
And further, that the cognitive infiltration he favours must be consistent with domestic law. But he gives us no reason for believing that things would be different from the 1960s in those ways, and no reason for believing that his recommendations would be legal either. Once again, Sunstein's message is that you can trust the government because it means well. In this respect, he's like other government propagandists. He's distinctive in that he has a further, rather more sinister message. If you do not think the government means well, you're a problem.
00:44:37
Speaker
And we're going to have to do something about it. Love to see how you'd impose a tax on conspiracy theories. Look, Josh, we've detected in the last 12 months of the financial year, so the entire financial year, you've engaged in exactly six and a half conspiracy theories, which means we do have to put you into the top tax bracket.
00:44:59
Speaker
for the duration there. So, you know, you owe the crown a lot of money because of your conspiracy theorizing. So, you know, keep it up and pay that higher tax or stop the conspiracy theorizing and get some kind of tax credit. I mean, I would love to know how that would work.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that would require a legal definition of conspiracy theory, wouldn't it? It's not like home, where it's pay as you earn. In America, you have to fill out tax forms. So there'd be section 3.2, conspiracy theories. In the last 12 months, have you engaged in a conspiracy
00:45:41
Speaker
or spread a conspiracy theory, yes or no? Have you filled in your WBN54 conspiracy theory tax-adjacent form? Has it been frank by the Franklin Munch, the paperwork around taxing people on conspiracy theories? I would love to see it. I would absolutely love to see it.
00:46:04
Speaker
So anyway, that is the very end of the paper, and being a Russian medium, it wasn't possible to stick a dun dun dun sound effect on it, but that did seem to be the tone, and I guess that's
Reflections on Coady's Critique of Sunstein and Vermeule
00:46:17
Speaker
all there is. So I mean, I, yeah, I went into it thinking, this again, another bloody someone sticking their boot into Sunstone for Mule, but I didn't think this one was different enough.
00:46:29
Speaker
and brought up enough new stuff to be justified. Yeah, I'm not on board with the ditching the term conspiracy theorist thing, but I thought it was probably the most, just in terms of how it dismantled Sunstein and familiar's theories in a quite sort of logical manner.
00:46:52
Speaker
as on top of the end also this is obviously a bloody foolish morally wrong thing to do i guess well we'll be seeing more critiques of sunstein and vermule going forward so look forward to seeing them demolished again i will and again i will and again i will and again no not that time that's too much and believe me by the end you'll be going oh
00:47:22
Speaker
Haven't they suffered enough? And suddenly you'll go, yep, I'm going to support them now. I'm going to support the cognitive infiltration of conspiracy fora because people are so against them, I've got to be for them, which for some reason is a political move some people make. If you're a get it, I'm going to be for it. Yeah, yeah, that's a slight worry. And I believe that is all we have to talk about this week then.
00:47:46
Speaker
We do indeed. But of course we do have more to talk about, but only to our beloved patrons. What do we have in the patron bonus episode this week? We are going to talk about flickering lights in the skies in the 1950s, a bomb threat at Otago, and some identity theft back harm. Most conspiratorial, I'm sure you'll agree. Indeed.
00:48:13
Speaker
So if you'd like to hear about that, go sign yourself up as a patron. You can do that at patreon.com just by looking for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. And if you're already a patron, well, then you're sorted. You're sweet. Everything is as it should be. All is right on earth and in the heaven. So if you're a patron, buckle up for that bonus content. If you're not a patron, well, thanks for listening all the way to the end of this episode as usual.
00:48:36
Speaker
See, I wish you all you can say, if you're a patron, buckle up. If you're not a patron and you're driving down a fast road, just undo that seat belt and continue to live life dangerously. No. Buckle down. Buckles down non-patrons. Buckle down listeners, whether they're patrons or not, but you're welcome to. That's entirely your thing.
00:48:59
Speaker
But no, I have nothing more to say, so before we blather on any further, I'm just going to cut a line in the sand, I'm going to put my foot down, I'm going to make a few other cliches, and just say goodbye. Fluxion Durango! The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy is Josh Addison and me, Dr. M. R. X. Dentist. You can contact us at PodcastConspiracyGmail.com, and please do consider supporting the podcast via our Patreon.
00:49:27
Speaker
And remember, the truth is out there, but not quite where you think you left it. Every time I take a really deep breath, that threatens to trigger a cough. Try not breathing. Try not breathing. Have you tried not breathing?
00:49:44
Speaker
Uh, only recreationally. I think it's sexual context. I mean, we've all been there. That's a clip for the end for the post credits, I think. Anyway.