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Episode 280 - Steve Clarke’s “Was it All a Big Mistake?”
28 Plays4 years ago
Josh and M review Steve Clarke's “Appealing to the Fundamental Attribution Error: Was it All a Big Mistake?” which was published in the 2006 edited collection "Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate."
P.S. Sorry about the noise on M's side of the recording; this was only picked up once the recording was finished.
—
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
Morrissey's Disguise and New Plans
00:00:16
Speaker
After the excitement in my bedroom, I needed a stiff drink, so I elected to take a brandy in the hotel restaurant while Morrissey tried out a suitable moustache. It was during this libation that a curious fellow from Cornwall tried to get my attention. I ignored him, as was both my want and his proper.
00:00:33
Speaker
Ooooh, argh! Excuse me, but I do not wish to be disturbed, especially not by the likes of you. The quiet gentleman, although I'm not sure such people are truly gentle, prodded me with his ornate cane. Ooooh, argh! Be gone, vile miscreant, before I summon the constabulary and send you back to the pirate hinterland from which you came. Sickle, it is me!
00:00:52
Speaker
My jaw dropped. Behind that Cornish moustache was indeed Lord Morrissey Morrissey, cunningly disguised. Morrissey! Why, never! The illusion is perfect! Indeed! Now, fix your moustache and let us see what the real Archibald and Mary Cat have in store.
Observing Intruders in the Restaurant
00:01:06
Speaker
Morrissey signalled the Mater D to usher us to our table, which was a tight and dark elk over the very back of the restaurant.
00:01:11
Speaker
I, for only a moment, thought this was hardly appropriate seating for both the Lord and a postmaster general, but I quickly came to my senses. We were about to surveil two men who had previously broken into my room. Discretion was the better part of an older-throb dinner. Ah, here come the two scoundrels now. Through the restaurant door came two heavily bandaged figures. One was tall, the other stocky. They were, in height and build, the very men who had recently jumped out my bedroom window. The worst for wear, too. Good, good. Morrissey stroked his false mustache thoughtfully.
00:01:39
Speaker
We have taken the liberty of ordering our food ahead of time, Puddles. I wish for us to be neither seen nor heard. My heart sunk a little. Morrissey would have ordered the fish for both of us. He was always on about improving my mental capacities through the digestion of seafood. If his lodge had had his way, I'd eat nothing but sturgeoned eggs for breakfast, salmon for lunch, and some curious Antipodean fish called Snapper for my tea.
Eavesdropping on Cryptic Conversations
00:02:00
Speaker
Our food arrived, and we waited for quite some time in silence before one of the men began to speak.
00:02:05
Speaker
So, let us get down to business. That past Lord Morosene, his latest monkey, seemed to have discovered something about our plans here in Orderthrob. I can't imagine that they're here by accident.
00:02:18
Speaker
Are we safe to talk then? I should think so. The only unusual characters here tonight are two business travellers, someone from Cornwall and a Frenchman. We should be able to talk business. My disguise was an undoubtable success. So, do you think that they know about the Wednesday protocol?
00:02:35
Speaker
I doubt it very much. When the Chancellor of the Cheka, the ex-Chancellor, was last here, Morrissey was unaware of his contingency plan. Rather, I suspect he simply saw that ridiculous advertisement in the newspaper and put two and two together to get three.
00:02:52
Speaker
Still, it would be wise for us to be cautious. I believe they visited the ruins earlier this afternoon. If Morrissey spotted- Even if he did, he does not know how to enter the crypt. That secret died with Stickle. Oh, I'm sorry.
00:03:07
Speaker
That secret died with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. Most unfortunately. But our brothers and sisters have managed to reconstruct the general scope of it from the hints he left in his diaries, thank God. I blanched at this blasphemy. Morrissey believed the official theory that they had been burnt by Stickel before his sad demise. Morrissey, I have been told, does have a tendency to uncritically accept the words of the authorities, but not for the Snyder chat. If we are to access the crypt before his lordship discovers our plot,
00:03:37
Speaker
We will need to act quickly. Yes, with the general election being held next weekend, we haven't much time to lose. To tomorrow morning. With this, they set about eating noisily. I say, Morrissey, I whispered. This all seems very rum. His lordship's face was strained. I fear, pluddles, that I have made not just a grave error of judgment, but a succession of them. How so, Morrissey?
00:04:00
Speaker
I thought the stickle affair had come to a close when he'd drowned at the well outside of Glasgow. But it seems I merely delayed his dastardly plot. Morrissey stood upright and pushed his meal to one side. Puddles, we must return to their churchyard tonight. Whatever those ruffians seek, we must find first. I will not be fooled again.
00:04:19
Speaker
I followed Morrissey towards the restaurant door, all the while catching the eye of the May to Dee. As two men of the lower ranks, we knew the common signs and codes which allowed us to coexist with high society. As such, I signaled to him wordlessly that I desired a beef and gravy sandwich with thick cut bread and lard rather than butter. With a flutter of my eyelids, I indicated that it must be delivered to my room immediately. With luck, tonight's meal would not be quite the disaster after all.
Podcast Introduction from New Zealand
00:04:54
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:05:04
Speaker
Hello, you're listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Edison in Auckland, New Zealand. They are Dr. M. Denteth in Hamilton, New Zealand. I'm Lockdown. How about you? No, things are free and easy here in Kiri-Kiriroa. We can go out to bars. We can mingle. We can hug. We don't even have to social distance, although we should. Yes. We just don't have to.
00:05:29
Speaker
Whereas we wear masks but don't have to. Or something, I don't know. I can work from home so I don't venture outside the house anyway. Ah, but you have dirty children that bring the illnesses in to you. Well that's true, yes, but not the Covid so far. I haven't been for a Covid test yet. I kind of should have, because I had a bit of a head cold and they say if you have head cold symptoms you should get yourself tested just as a matter of course.
00:05:55
Speaker
But then the morning I woke up feeling better like the head cold had passed was the day we went into level three lockdown. And that was also the day when queues at testing facilities suddenly stretched on forever and people were spending eight hours waiting to get tested. And I thought, I really don't want to do that. But the thing is though,
00:06:20
Speaker
Two years ago now, I had an operation on my sinuses. I think I must have had a week off the podcast or something when it happened. And so I've had metal fiber optic probes shoved up my sinuses and sort of curved hooky things sucking out blood clots and shit. So I kind of wanted to take a test just so that I can say, a cotton bud come back to me when it's a curved metal hook. But that's probably not the best, probably not the best motivation.
00:06:46
Speaker
You heard it here folks, Josh is patient zero and he refuses to be tested. Basically. But things have been a little more interesting for you in these times of misinformation and uncertainty and swirling conspiracy theories. You seem to have have sporulated like a fungus and just sort of settled gently across the length and breadth of New Zealand's media. Where have you shown up lately? Because it's been a lot.
00:07:12
Speaker
Well, so I've been in an article in Newsroom, which was written by Mark Delta. I appeared in a bonus episode of the one of 200 podcasts, an article in Stuff. I was on Magic Talk Radio.
00:07:28
Speaker
And when I got the phone call from the producer saying, hey, I'm a producer from MagicTalk, now for those of you people living overseas, MagicTalk Radio is kind of the worst of talkback in this country. And so I was afraid the producer would say, so Sean wants to talk to you, that would be Sean Plunkett, one of our worst broadcasters, or Peter Williams, who used to be a very respected sports broadcaster, and was turned into a terrible talkback host,
00:07:53
Speaker
but no it was lo and behold it was Graham Hill was actually one of our better radio DJ's slash interviewers because he used to, well probably still does, hold a whole bunch of skeptic discussions online so I was going oh yeah I'll talk with Graham, Graham's great.
00:08:12
Speaker
And I'm also going to be on a podcast attached to the TV3 TV show The Project. So basically, I've done about one media interview a day for the last week. And frankly, I'm just all over the place now. John Drunen will hate me.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yes. Well, you heard it here first. Dr. Emdenteth is hot property. Hot media property. It's true. I am definitely of the moment. Yes. But we're not going to talk about any of that today.
Philosophical Debate on Conspiracy Theories
00:08:44
Speaker
We're having another episode of Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre and like the one of, not last time, but I think the time before, it's another short and sweet one.
00:08:53
Speaker
I think it's a very short and sweet one. Let's think for yourself and learn. So, in fact it's so short that I'm not going to introduce it at all before the bit because that will just eat up valuable, eat up time that we could spend talking about the thing itself when there's little enough to talk about as it is. So I think we should just dive straight in. Indeed. Play that sting. What are these stings?
00:09:23
Speaker
It's a fortress around my heart. What we're going to be talking about today is appealing to the fundamental attribution era. Was it all a big mistake? Question mark by Steve Clark, published in Conspiracy Theories, the Philosophical Debate 2006. Which was the first edited collection of the philosophical work on conspiracy theories, edited by David Cody. And it's quite an interesting book because it's not just
00:09:52
Speaker
pieces that had been written previously, it also replies or expansion on those pieces. So the piece we're looking at by Steve Clark is a response to the criticisms of his earlier paper on conspiracy theories, where he's going, look, I've been criticized about appealing to the fundamental attribution era
00:10:15
Speaker
in this chapter, I'm going to explain where I went wrong, and also possibly where I might still be right. So it's quite a fascinating book. It comes out quite early in the philosophical literature on conspiracy theories. So the people involved, your Lee Basham's, your Charles Pigdom's, your David Cody's, your Steve Clark, Neil Levy, whose work will be getting on to fairly sort of
00:10:41
Speaker
Oh yeah, I got very emotional because I tried to choke myself to death. But this chapter is a reply to a reply and a slight retraction of a view.
00:10:56
Speaker
Now, just a little recap. If you don't recall, I think it was nine episodes when we first talked about his first paper, Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorising. That was the one or one of the several ones that was a reaction to Brian Alkely. And it was the one where Steve Clark, is he a Steve or a Steven? I believe he's Steve as far as I'm aware.
00:11:21
Speaker
first of all disagreed basically with Keeley and took quite a different tack from some of the other ones that we've seen whereas he said that Keeley is wrong that the things that Keeley says about his unwarranted conspiracy theories aren't really the reason why they're unwarranted, the problem with them is actually a problem with the conspiracy theorists who cling to them and he was largely interested in these
00:11:44
Speaker
in the phenomenon of people who continue to stick to their conspiracy theories even after they don't appear to be warranted at all. So this is an example of someone who is very focused on the psychological nature of conspiracy theorists.
00:12:01
Speaker
So Steve doesn't deny that conspiracies occur or that conspiracy theories can be warranted. His worry is that there's a class of person out there who has a kind of irrational belief in conspiracy theories, the conspiracy theorists, and he's concerned with diagnosing that problem.
00:12:23
Speaker
Which almost sounds a little bit ad hominem-y, but I suppose it's not really. I sort of have the knee-jerk response when you hear, so you mean they're attacking the person, not their argument, but that's not really what's going on, is it? There's a little more in depth.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yes, I mean, it's a contentious point in the philosophical literature because it all depends on how you're defining who counts as being a conspiracy theorist.
Psychological Perspectives on Conspiracy Theories
00:12:51
Speaker
So if you follow Charles Pigton, as I do, you go, well, look, anyone who is historically or politically literate,
00:12:58
Speaker
believes in the, not just the existence of conspiracies, but will believe at least one conspiracy theory, epsi-factor, we are all conspiracy theorists. And so the term actually applies to the general class of these things called conspiracy theories. Well, Steve is going, no, actually, when we talk about conspiracy theorists,
00:13:21
Speaker
We're talking about a particular kind of person who tend to believe conspiracy theories for bad reasons. And so if you're a Pyxonian, a Pyxianator, a Pygnonian, I'm trying to work out how you'd actually make Pygden into, no, if you're a follower of Jewie, you're a Jewian, if you're a follower of Kant, you're a Kantian, so if you're a follower of Pygden, you're a Pygion,
00:13:50
Speaker
Sounds good to me. If you're one of the people who follows Picton on these particular issues, you go, well, no, actually, conspiracy theory isn't a, sorry, conspiracy theorists isn't a pejorative term, so we shouldn't be referring to them in this kind of narrow subclass. Well, Steven's going, no, actually, when we talk about conspiracy theorists, we're talking about a rather unusual group with a psychological problem, and we need to diagnose that problem. Hmm.
00:14:19
Speaker
Now, David Coady, as we saw last time, I think, basically took issue with, oh, no, hang on, sorry, I'm jumping ahead because, of course, the specific psychological flaw that Clark diagnoses sort of these conspiracy theorists with is that they are committing the fundamental attribution error.
00:14:43
Speaker
which is a psychological phenomenon where people have been seen to favour dispositional explanations of things over situational explanations of things. So, dispositional is more, how would you describe it, facts about people, whereas situation is facts about the situations that those people are in.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yes, so I mean, when I do deal with this in my work, I think of dispositions more with respect to the way we talk about intention. So people who favor dispositional explanations think that intentions play a much bigger role.
00:15:19
Speaker
in explanations of complex social phenomena than situations people are in. Now, of course, the problem with the FAA, the fundamental attribution error, is not that people don't have dispositional explanations. The question is the balance of dispositions or intentions versus situations. Also, as we're going to see in this discussion, the initial evidence
00:15:45
Speaker
that the fundamental attribution error applies to the case of the conspiracy theory, and thus the conspiracy theorist may not be as easily generalizable as Clarke made it out to be in his earlier piece.
00:16:00
Speaker
No. As I was going to say before, I forgot I hadn't set up the actual main point. David Cody, when he looked at it, basically just argued against the fundamental attribution era itself. He didn't have a lot to say from what I can recall, other than to disagree with the evidence for it.
00:16:18
Speaker
But then also made a point, which we'll go into more shortly as we go through this, that often people who appeal to the fundamental attribution error are actually committing the fundamental attribution error themselves. So this starts to look a lot more dodgy. But I guess we should actually start talking about the paper that we're wanting to talk about today. Whose turn is it to do the abstract? Is it me or is it you? Ooh, I haven't been... I think it's me. I think it's me. I haven't been... Yeah, let's just say it's you. Let's not be keeping score.
00:16:48
Speaker
Right, so the opening paragraph of the paper appealing to the fundamental attribution error was at all a big mistake reads. In conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorising, I argued that we're entitled to an attitude of prima facie scepticism to the theories propounded by conspiracy theorists. Many commentators, such as Keeley, might agree that we're entitled to such an attitude because conspiracy theorists are advocates of conspiracy theories, and they allege a significant class of conspiracy theories have fatal epistemic deficiencies.
00:17:16
Speaker
However, my approach was not to find fault with conspiracy theories, but to focus on the psychology of those conspiracy theorists who fail to abandon conspiracy theories when these theories have taken on the appearance of what Lakatos referred to as degenerating research programs.
00:17:31
Speaker
which seemed a little, as it goes forward, I suppose it is more accurate, but the fact that it starts with characterizing Keeley as saying we're entitled to an attitude because conspiracy theorists are advocates of conspiracy theories which can be dodgy, whereas I thought the whole point was that Keeley didn't really look at conspiracy theorists at all and focused entirely on conspiracy. It seems like he's sort of casting the problem to favour his
00:17:55
Speaker
way of looking at it in the first place. I think this also fits into a long-standing issue that people have misinterpreted Keeley to a very large extent over the course of the literature and maybe a necessary corrective needs to be published to remind people of what Keeley actually said as opposed to how people have misinterpreted Keeley over time.
00:18:20
Speaker
But anyways, as he says, his approach is to focus on the psychology of the conspiracy theorists, and in particular, the fundamental attribution era of what FAE is, it's mostly all the way through, because that's a little bit easier, is the thing that they all have in common. That's the fallacy that they all fall into. Again, I think when we looked at that one, the little paper of
00:18:48
Speaker
Was it Brian Keeley? Yes, I think that we looked at a couple of times ago. There were sort of six pages long and only really in the last page did he actually say something new, having summarised everything leading up to there. This one's kind of the same. It's about three pages long and the actual new material comes in about halfway down the last page. So we're still sort of summarising what's come before.
00:19:07
Speaker
There's a bit of contextualization here, so what Clarke does in this chapter is go look, I said the FAA is a likely candidate for explaining why we are suspicious about the psychology of conspiracy theorists,
00:19:25
Speaker
I have to now admit, speaking in Clark's voice, that the evidence for the FAA is nowhere near as strong as I made it out to be at the time. So the first, say, two-thirds of the paper is a, actually, the FAA isn't quite as generalizable in a broad sense as maybe I thought it was, and here's why.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yes, so he starts looking at the FAE. He says the FAE is an error involving a bias in favour of dispositional explanations, appeal to character traits, attitudes and the like, and a condescending bias against situational explanations.
00:20:04
Speaker
Ed and Clark, 2002, that's his previous paper, I followed Ross and Lisbitt in arguing that the FAA is a very widespread phenomenon. However, a deeper acquaintance with evidence for the FAA leads me to experience two sorts of doubts about the case for a pervasive FAA. And then, yes, as you say, he looks into the idea that maybe the fundamental attribution era isn't actually as widespread as we think it is, and therefore maybe isn't as good a candidate for explaining
00:20:32
Speaker
explaining away unwarranted conspiracy theories. And one of these rationales, because Clark talks about two, is that actually it might be the choice of examples that social psychologists use, which are misleading. Social psychologists tend to focus on particular situations that are of interest to them.
00:20:53
Speaker
But it's not clear that just because we find the effect in one situation, that this can be then generalised to all situations that psychological or epistemic agents experience. Yes. So he basically looks at the in the past, he appealed to experimental evidence, these these experienced
00:21:16
Speaker
undertaken by social psychologists, the ones about whether or not a person stops to help someone and then whether or not they stop to help someone when they're in a hurry and people's attitudes towards them and so on. But yes, as he says, there are sorts of situations that social psychologists
00:21:36
Speaker
are interested in, and those are the ones that they conduct experiments on, but they don't appear to have looked for the FAE across what you might call a broad range of human experience, across a general
00:21:53
Speaker
set of situations. So maybe there isn't actually evidence to say that it's something that crops up a lot in all situations all the time. Maybe it's something that is possibly common in the scenarios that they actually look at, but not so common in other ones.
00:22:07
Speaker
And he sort of says, you know, there's tons of experimental evidence here, lots of experience being done. He's not going to spend his time here going through them all. He just sort of points out that this does appear to be the case. And then he gets onto his second problem, where he says, and I quote, the second problem with the case for the FAA is that there may be dispositional explanations available that can account for many of the FAA experiments, which proponents of the FAA have attributed to the power of situational factors.
00:22:38
Speaker
So he's kind of, I guess, undercutting what those experiments possibly show and that even when it looks like people, situational factors were the guiding thing, maybe it was actually dispositional factors all along and people aren't making a mistake when they assume that dispositional factors are the salient ones. Am I getting that right?
00:23:01
Speaker
Yes, so the example that he uses, which is actually Cody's criticism of Clark, is the famous seminarian example. So this is an example which actually I remember being taught back in secondary school by, of all things, a Catholic priest in what used to be called Christian living and then became religious education, which was an experiment where a whole bunch of people training for the priesthood
00:23:27
Speaker
are told you're about to go and attend a class on the Good Samaritan, but they're told, look, you're actually with run over time, you're running late, you need to get to class really quickly. And so all of these trainee priests suddenly run out of class and they bypass someone who's lying on the ground and needs help.
00:23:48
Speaker
And people took this to be an example of, you put people into a particular situation of getting them to hurry from one space to another, and even though they should be primed to have the disposition, given they've been told that you're about to tend the class on the Good Samaritan, they should have the disposition to take care of people in distress they see around them. Because of the situation they're in, they rush past.
00:24:14
Speaker
And as Cody points out, and as many critics of the FAE have pointed out, there actually might be a disposition in operation there, which is, it's rude and embarrassing to be late. So the disposition of hurrying to class is actually part of, sorry, the situation of hurrying to class.
00:24:36
Speaker
also carries with it the disposition I don't want to be embarrassed and thus that actually might be playing the role. Now the argument here isn't that the disposition trump the situation. The argument here is we don't know exactly what's going on in this situation
00:24:57
Speaker
If you only cast it in situational factors, then you can bring the disposition in. In the same respect, if you cast the entire story as a dispositional explanation, someone could say, but what about the situation? We literally don't know what's going on here.
00:25:13
Speaker
He also points out in a footnote that the fundamental attribution era seems to be more of a Western phenomenon and that similar experiments in other cultures don't necessarily show the results that we've seen in our cultures. I know this is something
00:25:35
Speaker
I know very little about the field of psychology and experimentation and so on, but I've heard it said that it's a problem in psychology with these sorts of experiments that they tend to not have a super representative sample and that a lot of these experiments are conducted at universities and therefore their subjects are university students because they are the ones who are nearby and willing to participate. And university students aren't necessarily a representative cross-section of society.
00:26:04
Speaker
I know there's that project, isn't there, of trying to replicate the results of famous experiments, and they've had fairly patchy success in the past? Yes, there is what's called the replication crisis going on in psychology at the moment, because yes, a lot of the famous experiments are meant to show egg supplies to psychological agents,
00:26:28
Speaker
either have never been tested again or it turns out that when you look at the tests the tests or the replications are as you say small sample sizes made up of university students and thus not generalizable to the entire human population and when you start testing bigger sample sizes which are more diverse the effect that people saw in controlled environment often ends up being a lot more amorphous
00:26:58
Speaker
than people initially thought. So, yeah, the FAA is starting to look a little more shaky, and then he gets to the point that David Cody himself
00:27:12
Speaker
basically took issue with appeals to the FAAE and pointed out and has paid one of the things, as we said, that often there are, you can look at when people appeal to the fundamental attribution error, there's often, you can often sort of point to dispositional issues that lead them to come to that conclusion in the first place. And often you can make the case that people who overly appeal to the FAAE are in fact committing the fundamental attribution error themselves.
00:27:44
Speaker
There's always a mixture of situation and disposition, and it's quite murky as to exactly how much of each is in play at any one time.
00:27:54
Speaker
So to the point where he says, where Clark says, Cody is of course right that possible explanations of behavior should appeal to a combination of situation and dispositions. The sensible view is not disputed by me or even by staunch situationists such as Ross. And my apologies to readers if the brief sketch of the case for the FAE presented in his previous paper led them to think otherwise.
00:28:16
Speaker
So it's starting to look a little more shaky for the fundamental attribution error. Does this mean then that his paper, his initial view in his paper is becoming more and more shaky? Well, so therein lies the issue because Steve wants to have it that he was wrong to rely heavily on the FAA.
00:28:43
Speaker
But at the same time, he still thinks he's largely right if we make certain assumptions. So he doesn't, while he admits that the FAE is less cut and dried, less absolute than it certainly appeared as he presented it in his original paper, he doesn't think that this invalidates his previous argument, especially if you cast his argument as
00:29:13
Speaker
The important factor that explains why people cling to unwarranted conspiracy theories is not to do with conspiracy theories themselves, it's to do with the psychology of the conspiracy theorists. Now, he says that there are
00:29:32
Speaker
It's not a problem in one of two ways either. You could say that, okay, the fundamental attribution era isn't as widespread as we thought, but that simply shows that these conspiracy theorists who are committing the fundamental attribution era are the exception to the rule, which is kind of what we thought anyway.
00:29:50
Speaker
So there's, he sort of, he has that as one possibility, or then he admits, okay, but, but, or maybe, maybe the FAA just doesn't apply. Maybe the whole project is wrong. But in that case, he still suggests that it's another psychological factor that's behind their behavior. He says, I argue that the apparent implausibility of those conspiracy theories that are popularly propounded is best explained by appealing to the psychology of conspiracy theorists.
00:30:20
Speaker
I sort of get to this point and I'm like, well, I don't know enough about psychology to say either way. Do philosophers know enough about psychology to say either way? Or should we just leave this to the psychologists? Wow. So a lot of this does depend on your definitions because the assumption that Clark relies upon for this conclusion that either the FAA is in play
00:30:45
Speaker
But conspiracy theorists are the exception rather than the rule. Or there is some other psychological explanation which is able to explain why people believe conspiracy theories. It's kind of based upon this line he has that, look, conspiracy theorists are in the minority for now. And that for now part is important.
00:31:05
Speaker
So he's going, look, we're restricting talk of belief in conspiracy theories to a very small, problematic belief in conspiracy theories, to a very small set of people, the prejoratively labeled conspiracy theorists, which we can see with our examples of say, your David Ikes, your Alex Joneses, your Billy T.K. Jr. and the like.
00:31:32
Speaker
And we need to explain why it is that they are unusual and weird. And the best way to do that is via their psychology. But that requires you to buy into a pejorative gloss as to who counts as being a conspiracy theorist. If you open the franchise of conspiracy theorists, just anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory, this psychological account isn't going to work.
00:32:00
Speaker
because there's warranted belief in conspiracy theories and there are examples of things that were labeled as conspiracy theories and thus the people who believed them labeled as conspiracy theorists. That turned out to be things we ought to have believed in the first instance.
00:32:18
Speaker
So we can kind of sidestep the do we need to engage with the psychologist here by going actually an awful lot is reliant upon who count as being a conspiracy theorist in this particular type of argument.
00:32:36
Speaker
Now, would it be fair to say that Clark is a generalist rather than a particularist? I mean, he certainly seems to be saying that the content of the conspiracy theories is almost irrelevant next to the category of people who believe in them. I would say that Clark actually still is a particularist in so far that he does believe that conspiracy theories can be warranted.
00:33:02
Speaker
He is a kind of generalist when it comes to conspiracy theorists. So he does take it that whilst we can't just assume things about things which are labeled as conspiracy theories because conspiracies occur, he is willing to bite the bullet and say, if you've been labeled as a conspiracy theorist, then that is a general class of people who act irrationally.
00:33:28
Speaker
So, and the reason why I say this is I know Steve, I've corresponded with Steve at one point earlier this year, we were working on a research proposal around COVID-19 conspiracy theories. And I thus know what he thinks about the conspiracy theories as opposed to the conspiracy theorists.
00:33:49
Speaker
He was willing to work with me on a project looking at how we analyze COVID-19 conspiracy theories to try and have an evidential debate about which ones we ought to take seriously and which ones we might have a rationale for putting to one side. So I don't think he can end up being a generalist about conspiracy theories, but I do think he ends up being a generalist about these people called conspiracy theorists.
00:34:17
Speaker
Because I do recall from his previous paper, he said at the end something to the effect of, and it's probably worth putting up with all these degenerative research programs and so on, because eventually they do come up with one that is real, and it's important that we find out about these real things like Watergate.
00:34:38
Speaker
So am I inviting spoilers if I say how have things gone from here? Have his views evolved much? Have people responded to things? Or will we get into those responses in the fullness of time? Well, we're not going to see much more of Clark. We're going to see one more paper by Clark, Conspiracy Theories and the Internet, which then has a subtitle about controlled demolition.
00:35:08
Speaker
which is actually going to be an analysis of how conspiracy theories have done in the online world. But by and large, after that, Steve kind of leaves the literature. But I do believe he's quite keen to get back into it. And I say that because I did invite him to be a contributor to taking conspiracy theories seriously, published back in 2018.
00:35:35
Speaker
And initially, he was quite keen. And then he did some background reading and went, look, I need to do more reading of the current state of the literature before I can contribute. But I think he's quite interested in doing that. So so we'll have one more paper by Clark. And I suspect we'll have more papers by Clark in future. Well, there you go.
00:35:57
Speaker
Now that one reference is controlled demolition, so I assume at that point people have finally started talking about 9-11 in earnest. Oh yes. I did a very interesting comparison between 9-11 and JFK conspiracy theories.
00:36:11
Speaker
I actually, I finally found out the other day, Loose Change came out in 2007, so even this paper, which was published in a book in 2006, predates the documentary that really started. Now, I'm just going to ask you which version of Loose Change, is that the first edition of Loose Change? I think it was. It's been at least three.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's a point. Yes, I just read a thing that talked about Loose Change, which came out in 2007, but I assume that must be the first one. But Loose Change was certainly the- The Final Cut has narration by Charlie Shane. Back when he was famous. Yes, Loose Change being sort of the plandemic, I guess, of 9-11, which really kicked things off.
00:36:58
Speaker
Anyway, that is it for appealing to the fundamental attribution era. Was it all a big mistake? And in keeping with the fact that supposedly any headline, any title you read that has a question and it can always be answered with no, that's pretty much what Steve Clark does. So good, I guess, no surprises.
00:37:22
Speaker
Indeed, that does bring us to an end of another exciting episode of Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre. So for those of you who aren't Patrons, you'll need to wait until next week for what might be an exciting instalment of the podcast as Guide to the Conspiracy, but for our Patrons,
00:37:40
Speaker
Well, we've got some humdinger material for you. We'll be talking about David Ferrier, talking about Dylan Reeve, talking about the originator of a dodgy COVID-19 outbreak rumour in this country.
00:37:56
Speaker
We'll be hearing from Byron Clark about Kerry Bolton recording yet another podcast episode with Action Zalandia. We'll be checking in on the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the last US election, which has some startling conclusions for fans of Donald Trump.
00:38:16
Speaker
We'll be asking questions about why Jerry Brownlee continues to ask questions. And finally, there's a brand new birther theory in US politics.
00:38:32
Speaker
Also, just suddenly realised, in the notes, I haven't written Jerry Brownley. I've written Jerry Brownless. Jerry Brownless? Well, I mean, that's true, I guess. Not much brown on him that I'm aware of. No, he's actually one of the whitest men of all time. He is quite a white person.
00:38:48
Speaker
uh yes so if you're a patron stick around and um you can you can get into some of that straight away if you're not a patron but you'd like to be one then go to patreon and look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and that would be just peachy it would indeed
00:39:03
Speaker
happy to have you on board. Not only would you get access to these bonus episodes, you can also go on our Discord and send us messages and basically tell us what to do and how to run our lives, essentially. I'm pretty sure you get that right once you've signed up as a patron.
00:39:20
Speaker
You can even actually listen in live to the recording of these episodes and find out about all the crap that we do in between takes and find out when we mess stuff up and have to do it again, we can't hide anything from you. So yeah, that's the best selling of it I can do, I think. You've convinced me, if it made sense to contribute to my own podcast, I'd be in with the quid.
00:39:50
Speaker
But if I haven't convinced you and you don't want to become a patron, that's fine also. We're quite happy to just have you as our audience, to be perfectly honest. But to you, our audience, we have no more to say this week. I think that was quite a quick episode, wasn't it? Like we said, short and sweet. Actually, it's still going to be around about 40 minutes in length.
00:40:10
Speaker
Well, there we go. We do like to waffle, don't we? We do. Well, let's cut it short anyway, no matter the final length. Call things to a close and simply say goodbye from me. And it's hello from me. Mmm. Confronting.
00:40:36
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.
00:41:37
Speaker
And remember, remember, oh December was a night. You could have put one more in there. That's much better.