Transcript
Speaker: The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison and M Denteth.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. but You know, I've been listening to real podcasts and they always start off with a... They always have a blurb. It's always, hello, welcome to this podcast, the podcast where we talk about blah, blah, blah. And we never do that. But I assume people who listen to us know that we talk about philosophy as it relates to conspiracy theories or conspiracy theories as they relate to philosophy. Maybe we need to come up with a... to itid Do we need a slogan? Do we need an elevator pitch? Yeah.
Speaker: do we need a blurb? I mean, i mean you're you're asking me to cold pitch on Pitch Yeah. It just occurred to me now, and maybe we do need to think about it. It's a podcast about conspiracies, but that doesn't really fit the philosophy part. The podcast is Guide to the Conspiracy. It's a philosophical discussion about conspiracy theories, but that sounds dry.
Speaker: Which is probably in keeping with this what this episode's going to be. It's an epistemically wacky time with Josh and Em. Maybe. I don't know. We'll work on something. We're to need to trial them over the next few episodes so we can come up with something that sticks. But nevertheless... I have a feeling, given it's been 10 years, I don't think we're going to be accruing much in the way of new audience by this point. Probably not. It's more of the audience we have dying off.
Speaker: Yeah. a Well, regardless of of whether or not you know exactly what we're doing here, then you probably do know that I am Josh Addison in Auckland, New Zealand, and they are Dr M Denteth in Zhuhai, China. um And yeah, I mean, you didn't we didn't want a blurb that sounded too dry and academic, but this is going to be one of those more dry, more academic episodes, yes, because we have another paper review. Do you have anything to add before we get right into it?
Speaker: No, not particularly. No, not a lot going I suppose I should say, it first of all, apologies that this one this the episode's a week later than normal. I was doing a bunch of stuff for a lot of last week, and it sort of was getting close to the close to our usual recording date. It was like, yeah, i'm and I'm not going to have these notes. I'm not going to read this paper and write these notes in time for that. So we we put it off. So it's entirely my fault that this one's a bit late. So I guess we'd better to hurry and get into it right now.
Speaker: Indeed, we don't want to admit to the real reason why you were late last week, which is due to all of those conspiratorial machinations you're involved in. Yeah, obviously we don't talk about that. And then we're going to talk about, is conspiracy theorising really epistemically problematic after the following chime?
Speaker: Welcome to Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
Speaker: Yes, so we have a paper from Curtis Hagan, who we haven't, I think we've seen anything by him in a little while. um It's, as you say, is conspiracy theorising really epistemically problematic, and it's one of those papers that's a response to another paper.
Speaker: And indeed, it's one of those papers that's a response to a paper by Keith Harris. We've we've looked at, what was it, some problems with particularism. that Keith Harris wrote. We have indeed. you You and others replied to him.
Speaker: this um that was that Some problems with particularism was from 2022. This paper is from 2020 and it's responding to something that Keith Harris wrote in 2019. called What's Epistemically Wrong with Conspiracy Theorising. So and as we found in previous times when we've done this, we're going to have to be a little bit, we're going have to make sure that we're clear when we're quoting Curtis and when we're quoting Keith and when we're quoting Curtis quoting Keith. I think i think if if if it's by Keith Harris, I think we'll probably call that out specifically. So if we don't see anything, you can assume...
Speaker: that we're quoting Curtis Hagan. I noticed they're both KHs as well, just to confuse things. I don't know about I think I'm going to refer to Keith Harris as Harris Curtis Hagan as Curtis. One last name, one first name. You want to them KH the Elder and KH the Younger? I'm trying to keep my Ks and Hs as separate as possible. I think this is the way that will cause me to make the fewest mistakes.
Speaker: You heard it here, people. Josh wishes to segregate the Ks and the Hs from one another. Disgusting behavior. It's only natural. Now, ah do you want to do the abstract or the introduction?
Speaker: I think it is my time to do the abstract. And i in the most abstract way, which is, I'm just going to read it out. yeah In an article based on a recent address to the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Keith Harris has argued that there is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorizing.
Speaker: Although he finds standard criticisms of conspiracy theories wanting, he argues that there are three subtle but significant problems with conspiracy theorizing. One, it relies on an invalid probabilistic version of modus tollens.
Speaker: Two, it involves a problematic combination of both epistemic virtues and vices. And three, it lacks an adequate basis for trust in its information sources.
Speaker: In response to Harris, this article argues that, like previous criticisms, these criticisms do little to undermine conspiracy theorizing as such, and they do not give us good reasons to dismiss any particular conspiracy theory without consideration of the relevant evidence.
Speaker: Indeed. So, we know we know where it's going to be going, but it starts, as all good papers do, with an introduction, which begins, For more than two decades, philosophers have been debating whether or not there is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theories.
Speaker: While there is some disagreement about the definition of conspiracy theory, all sides seem willing to stipulate that some conspiracy theory theories have turned out to be true or warranted, Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, for example.
Speaker: And thus, Keith Harris, whose recent article is reviewed here, concedes that, quote, dedicated investigators may amass sufficient evidence to rationally believe certain conspiracy theories, quoting his 2019 paper there.
Speaker: Then carries on with a summary of the difference between particularists and generalists and the people who argue with each for each approach, including your good self. It carries on to say, Harris focuses on conspiracy theorizing, By which he means, quote, the belief performing practices or reasoning processes whereby individuals come to believe conspiracy theories.
Speaker: Now, Harris points out that, quoting Harris, standard criticisms of conspiracy theorizing fail to demonstrate that the practice is invariably irrational.
Speaker: Which may be why, again quoting, Curtis isn't so sure about that. He says,
Speaker: curtis isn't so sure about that he says the movement in the social sciences towards a charitable attitude has been in my view very modest What's your view? Curtis is engaged in classic understatement there. He's going, well, look, there is some movement in the social sciences towards a more charitable take on belief in conspiracy theories and the warrant of particular conspiracy theories. But it is very surface level analysis. People in the social sciences, and we're mostly talking about social psychology here, and there's a sidebar here, Some people say that actually social psychology isn't actually a social science. We'll just push that to one side.
Speaker: But the kind of work that Curtis is talking about pays lip service to the idea that some conspiracy theories turn out to be warranted And yet the work itself being produced by those social scientists continues to go, well, but most conspiracy theories are in some sense mad, bad, or dangerous. Now, I have a complicated view on this in that I think it's a very complicated situation. I think it is the case that many social scientists agree
Speaker: that conspiracy theories can be warranted and that there are more true conspiracy theories out there than people are aware of.
Speaker: The problem is often those social scientists then go on to say, oh but I'm interested in why do people come to believe certain kinds of conspiracy theories? Or why do people have certain types of conspiracy theorizing? And they're often not very precise in making a distinction. that they're talking about a contrast or relevance class.
Speaker: So it might be the case that Harris is right in one sense, that it is true that there's a more charitable attitude towards conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theorizing in recent years, in the sense that people are more likely to use a non-pejorative or neutral definition of conspiracy theory.
Speaker: But it's also the case, I think it's what Curtis is pointing towards, that even when they use those kinds of neutral, simple and minimal definitions, they end up talking about the bad conspiracy theories they are interested in in a way that then goes, yeah, but most conspiracy theories look like these bad ones.
Speaker: And so I think you can have it both ways, that yes, it does seem that social scientists are more willing to accept some tenets of particularism, but the kind of analysis they end up producing ends up being very generalizing.
Speaker: And I mean, this paper is from 2020, now six years later. Have things changed much in between now and then? Like, is there progress? Not really so Not really? No. Oh, wow. There's more stagnation. And I think actually the other problem, of course, is that if we're talking about a paper that was written in 2019, the Harris paper, and a response to that by Curtis in 2020, we have the pandemic in the years afterwards. There's been a lot more focus and interest in conspiracy theories over that time. And most of that focus has been on new people coming into the literature who have not done their literature reviews, and thus they are reinventing views, most of which are generalist views.
Speaker: Right, well, regardless of of of attitudes, Curtis says that generalism does seem to be a dead end, but there are still some who, like Harris, think, quote, there is something epistemically problematic about conspiracy theories generally, or about a closely related concept such as conspiracy theorising.
Speaker: So we move now into the first section of the paper proper, which is Harris's literature review, because Keith Harris starts his paper with the literature review of literature review, and he concludes that many of the supposed faults associated with conspiracy conspiracy theorizing are not faults at all.
Speaker: and He goes through a bunch of ah goes through and rejects a bunch of criticisms of conspiracy theories that we've seen before. He he thinks the idea that conspiracy theorizing is an epistemic vice doesn't hold up. We've talked about that before. I will agree with him there.
Speaker: He thinks that unfalsifiability isn't an epi epistemic problem for conspiracy theories. we've We've talked about that more than once. Yep, that was a point that Brian Keely brought up in 1999. he He looks at Steve Clark's idea of conspiracy theories as degenerating research programs and he also does not find that convincing.
Speaker: And I should point out here when Steve Clark talks about conspiracy theories as degenerating research programs, he's talking about certain kinds of conspiracy theories resembling degenerating research programs. So Steve is not making the claim that all conspiracy theories...
Speaker: Resemble degenerating research programs. He simply argues that some do so Harris kind of rejecting that to a large extent actually ignores the fact that Clark is not talking about a generalist attitude towards conspiracy theories He's saying those conspiracy theories that resemble degenerating research programs We should treat them like they are de generating research programs and we typically think degenerating research programs are are things which face a relatively high burden of proof.
Speaker: Right. but But basically, Harris thinks that standard criticisms of conspiracy theorising are misguided. And by standard, I assume he means generalist?
Speaker: Yeah, he means the standard generalist arguments for a critique of conspiracy theories end up being misguided. So he thinks those criticisms are misguided, but lucky for us, he's got some new criticisms.
Speaker: So again, quoting Harris from his paper. I argue that a range of epistemic errors are pervasive among conspiracy theorists. First, the refusal of conspiracy theorists to accept the official account of some target event often seems to be due to the exercise of a probabilistic and fallacious extension of modus tollens. Additionally, conspiracy theorists tend to be inconsistent in their intellectual attention insofar as the effort they expend on uncovering the truth excludes attention, Now, those are essentially the the
Speaker: now those are those are essentially the three things that curtis mentioned in the abstract and he's going to go through each of these critiques from from multiple angles in some cases and identify problems with them, and then he's going to ask, quoting Curtis, we Curtis's response is going to be there. Yes, it is. We do.
Speaker: and we know what curtis's response is going to be there yes it is so So ah this moves us into section two, confusingly critique number one, which is where he looks at this idea of conspiracy theorizing relying on a probabilistic modus tollens.
Speaker: Do you think at this stage in the podcast's life there is anybody listening who doesn't know what modus tollens is? Do we need to give a quick refresher? Oh.
Speaker: Oh, mean, yeah, do we want to get into the logic of conditionals? I mean, i guess we should do a brief gloss on the modus tollens, in part because some people will know what we mean if we talk about if A then B. And they go, but I i always get my modus tollens and the other one slightly confused. I mean, sometimes when I'm teaching, I get the Latin name, it goes, oh, now which Latin name are we meant to give this particular argument right here?
Speaker: Okay, well, so for those of you who need a refresher, Modus Tollens is the name of the argument form that goes, if A then B, not B, therefore not A. So if it rained, then the lawn will be wet.
Speaker: The lawn is not wet, therefore it didn't rain. And that's that's a valid argument form. But Harris says that conspiracy theorizing relies on a probabilistic conversion. Denying the conflict. Yeah.
Speaker: So Harris is saying that when people can conspiracy theorize, they're relying on a probabilistic version of this kind of argument. which So not if A then B, but rather if A then probably B, not B therefore probably not a which he says, which which is not valid in the way that that Standard Modest Hollands is. I could not think of a decent example with of conspiracy theories myself, but then I read ahead a little bit and it turns out they're going to talk about some later. So we'll we we'll see some worked examples in a minute.
Speaker: But um straight right off the top, Curtis has two problems with this. He says, one, Harris's analysis implicitly assumes, wrongly, that if evidence is not conclusive, or at least not very strong on its own, then it doesn't count as evidence at all. And two, it is not clear that conspiracy theorizing involves the form of reasoning Harris implies.
Speaker: Although conspiracy theorizing may be superficially similar to probabilistic modus tollens, nuances make a difference. And although an argument form that is not valid cannot establish its conclusion, a form of reasoning similar to it with a proper nuance applied may legitimately provide evidence for it.
Speaker: And so then then the example they talk about is a lottery. So Harris gives the example, if any given lottery with many participants is fair, it is improbable that any particular entrant will win.
Speaker: So that's if P then probably not Q. However, it would be absurd to conclude once a winner is named, so that's not not Q or Q, that the lottery was probably unfair.
Speaker: Probably not P. So i'd say yeah, it's very unlikely that a person would win, the author that any individual will win a lottery, but the fact that a person does win a lottery doesn't prove that the lottery was rigged. However,
Speaker: Curtis points out that while it's not proof, it could be evidence. For instance, to make it stronger, what if the person who wins is a relative of the person who draws the winner? What if they win multiple times? Again, that's not proof that the lottery is rigged. There are there are people who have won lotteries a bunch of times. I myself once won a raffle prize that was drawn by my own wife. And everybody went, ooh, but we all knew it was just just the luck literally the luck of the draw.
Speaker: Now, Missy, as I want to point out, this actually was a this was a extra fix, and Josh is just trying to publicly deny this claim. It was for a bottle of wine that I do not drink, so anyway. Josh is a terrible alcoholic, but is just not willing to admit it.
Speaker: Anyway, the point is, if a lottery is fair, it's even more unlikely that a person will win it a bunch of times. And it's also supposedly more unlikely that a person related to the winner will win it also, what with conjunctions of probabilities, all that stuff. Anyway, however, if those things do happen, again, they don't prove that the lottery is unfair, but they might be enough to make you start suspecting that maybe it's unfair. It's not proof, but maybe it's evidence. Yeah, it's a kind of probative evidence.
Speaker: Yeah. Now, Harris doesn't seem to buy this. He gets into a discussion of errant data, another thing that we've looked at a bunch, and and Harris says, "...a set of errant data does not tell against the official account in a fundamentally different way than a single errant datum does.
Speaker: The observation of any single errant datum is improbable if the official account is true, while the observation of a set of errant data is even more improbable." Nonetheless, to reject the official account because it would make one's observations improbable would be a mistake in either case.
Speaker: But that all depends on the amount of data. I mean, it's true have only a little bit of data that speaks against the hypothesis. You might go, well, that's just not sufficient on its own.
Speaker: But if you're talking about a set of Errand data, you need to ask about the quality and quantity of the set. You might have enough Errand data that it really does weigh on your conclusion.
Speaker: Yeah, and the point Curtis makes um over and over again in this section is that, yes, that data doesn't prove, it it's not 100% cast iron proof of your any particular theory, but it's evidence, and evidence matters and evidence counts, and more evidence counts for more.
Speaker: So it then turns into a discussion of Bunting and Taylor and their idea of fortuitous data. They get into some examples of around 9-11. So Bunting and Taylor, originally, they they discussed the discovery of Satama al-Sugami's Passport,
Speaker: Following the 9-11 attacks, both Harris and Curtis discuss the collapse of the the idea that the collapse of Building 7 was reported before it actually occurred um as being things that seem seem improbable if the official theory was true. But in both cases, Harris says these things don't make the official theory probably false. He says only an application of probabilistic modus tollens would lead one on this basis alone to conclude that the official account is probably false.
Speaker: Torch Curtis replies that no one thinks that the official vision official visionous false on these facts alone, as far as we know. Maybe there is someone out there who thinks the the discovery of that passport by itself entirely blows away the official theory. But but I think most 9-11 truthers rely on a whole bunch of evidence for their views.
Speaker: Yeah, so we'll go we'll look we'll we'll talk about the passport, we'll talk about the report of Building 7 being declared destroyed before it would but it being pulled before it actually was destroyed. They'll talk about Bush's reaction to finding about out about the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. and we'll say this greater set of is The thing which causes doubt so Curtis is right.
Speaker: I mean you're you're also right that there probably is at least one person out there who does believe a 9-11 inside job hypothesis on one particular errant piece of data but most people are talking about a set of errant data which probabilistically tells us well there might be something wrong with the official theory And there might be enough errant data, at least in the mind of those people, that they're going, i mean, this this shows the official theory is probably false based upon the large amount of data that cannot be explained. Now, of course, this can be problematic.
Speaker: If you look at JFK conspiracy theories, you'll sometimes get... people who don't believe the official theory doing a kind of gish gallop response by going ahead of x or y or z or a or b or c and it can sometimes be hard to judge the quality of that set whether actually x y z a b and c count against the official theory or not but they are collecting errant data and saying each piece of errant data lowers the probability the conclusion is true.
Speaker: And it might be the case you get enough of that stuff that you end up do using a probabilistic form of modus tollens that does seem to give us the kind of result the conspiracy theorists think has warranted.
Speaker: Yeah, and so again, Harris harris is talking proof, Curtis is saying it's not proof isn't the issue, it's evidence. And yeah, there's good evidence and there's bad evidence. A whole lot of bad evidence is not doesn't count for much, but it's still it's still all evidence that can, again, not prove a conspiracy theory, but may justify you in suspecting that a conspiracy theory applies.
Speaker: Yeah, and at that point, the bit of the trust is going to go you have to then look at the set of evidence. And annoyingly, you need to look at each piece in it to work out whether it counts or not.
Speaker: So we we get a bunch more examples. They talk about good old molten steel at the World Trade Centre sites. They talk about the RFK assassination and the JFK assassination and the various sort of, you know, people, contradictory evidence, people claiming they saw different things or things didn't happen the way the official version said. He finishes off talking about the the supposed testimony from people who attended to JFK's body, after his assassination, claiming that it showed evidence he'd been shot from the front.
Speaker: And he took after talking about that, he he finishes up this section by saying, I'm not trying to adjudicate the strength of this evidence or the plausibility of the responses to it, but I am asserting that such adjudication, taking into account all the relevant evidence, is precisely what is necessary to determine whether or not the lone gunman theory is the best one.
Speaker: Simply making a point about probabilistic modus tollens just isn't going to do it. In fact, it does not help at all. Indeed, it is positively misleading, for it wrongly suggests that data that seems to problematize an official account cannot be relevant.
Speaker: So that's him done with his probabilistic modus tollenses. Now we get into section three, which is the first of two takes at Harris's second critique. This is critique 2A, the combination of intellectual effort and confirmation bias is problematic.
Speaker: So Harris does not think that conspiracy theorists are necessarily intellectually lazy. mean, this is a thing we've talked about in the past when it's come to epistemic vice and so on. and You can't accuse, there are lots of conspiracy theorists who are the the opposite of lazy in terms of how dogged they are at hunting down evidence and investigating and stuff like that.
Speaker: So harris Harris doesn't think conspiracy theorists are intellectually lazy, but they are susceptible to the kinds of biases that everybody is susceptible to. But he does think that there is another way in which conspiracy theorising involves a combination of epistemic vices.
Speaker: So, quoting Harris here, In short, the fact that conspiracy theorists' enthusiasm for the pursuit of truth is not matched by a correspondingly heightened sensitivity to their own cognitive biases and potential for error exposes conspiracy theorists to unique epistemic criticism.
Speaker: which when you look at it it seems like a slightly odd thing to say. He's basically saying the problem with conspiracy theorists is their biases are worse but because of how not lazy they are. And I think what he's getting at is that there there there can be a mismatch. there's if you're If you're being especially intellectually hardworking, then you need to be especially conscious of your own biases. And I think he's claiming, although I don't think he ever actually proves it in any way, that the problem with conspiracy theorizing is that this heightened intellectual activity doesn't come with heightened attention on biases.
Speaker: um In his Harris's words, greater intellectual effort in general has the potential to go awry if it is not matched by greater intellectual caution. But again, he doesn't say whether or not it is matched by greater intellectual caution. He also, he doesn't say that it happens more so than it does with anyone else. Curtis points out, you know, there are plenty of intellectually active people around conspiracy theories. There are conspiracy debunkers who put a lot of work into their debunking. There are journalists who put a lot of work into investigating conspiracy theories. And Harris doesn't seem to have a problem with them or think that they're are more susceptible to to not paying attention to their biases.
Speaker: I mean, part of the problem here, I think, is that I don't think Harris is actually very interested in what conspiracy theorists say. And I say that because there are a number of books putting forward alternative theories to the official theory with respect to the assassination of JFK, the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and the like. And many of these books, whether we agree with their conclusions or not,
Speaker: tend to be quite detailed in both putting forward an argument as to why you should reject the official theory, and also go through and explain why the claims they're making are not absurd or unusual claims. So often accounts take into account the kind of standard responses you might put forward. So I just don't think it's clear that conspiracy theorists are dogged in their pursuit of truth, but not dogged in having caution about that pursuit of truth. I think if you actually spend time with conspiracy theorists, you find that actually they are doing both.
Speaker: They might be getting it wrong some of the time, but they are doing both. I think that this is a theme that's going to come up a few times throughout this paper. Certainly, Curtis ends this section by saying, the proper conclusion one should draw from this is not that there is something wrong with conspiracy theorizing, but only that one should be careful when one exerts intellectual effort to determine the truth of contested claims, whichever side one initially tends to favor.
Speaker: Certainly we should not conclude that the best thing to do, given the pervasive propensity for confirmation bias, is to remain as intellectually disengaged as possible. Rather, it seems, when people engage with evidence relevant to conspiracy theories, both those who are inclined toward conventionalist thinking and those who are inclined more toward conspiracy theorizing should do so with as much intellectual fairness and caution as they can muster.
Speaker: So yeah, this this this is this is a concern and a point that should apply to everyone. It's not unique to conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorizing at all. Yeah, so if you go into if you're going to ding the conspiracy theorist, then you should also be dinging the conspiracy debunker.
Speaker: So this leads into section four, which is critique 2b. This is the second aspect of this critique of Harris's that Curtis wants to look at, which is the view promoted in, well, the claim that the view promoted in the mainstream is unbiased.
Speaker: So this section starts, there is one other element in the above argument, the suggestion that when conspiracy theorists are intellectually active, they tend to consult non-mainstream sources.
Speaker: However, this does not really distinguish them from intellectually active conventionalists. And it is not clear that those who come to believe conspiracy theories are less attentive to their own biases than journalists who are compelled to be active, or least ought to be active, in their inquiry regarding the issues in question.
Speaker: So Harris paris seems to be saying that mainstream information sources are better, so it's better to stick to mainstream beliefs. And Curtis then spends the next six and a half pages of this, I think, 20-page paper with some fairly substantial footnotes saying why the mainstream media is not necessarily good. He he has strong feelings on this topic from the looks of things.
Speaker: He does say, in one one of the first footnotes in this section, reads, Although Harris does not actually say very much about the media, responding to what he does say requires saying a fair amount. This is because his arguments rely heavily on the assumption that viewpoints promoted by mainstream sources should be adopted without consulting alternative sources.
Speaker: And although he merely appeals to a simple intuition about what is necessary to adequately ensure the reliability of the mainstream media, it is an intuition that many people seem ready to accept, even if counterintuitions are presented.
Speaker: And so even though I think the burden of providing empirical evidence should really rest on Harris, since he is advancing a position which is in some respects audacious. that people should shut themselves off from sources of information outside mainstream channels, responding to them effectively will nevertheless require the discussion of examples in addition to conceptual analysis.
Speaker: So yes, quite a long section next. The editor of highlights of which are, I mean, first he asks, how how do we assess the reliability of mainstream media without going outside it? You you could you can't just believe the mainstream media because the mainstream media says so.
Speaker: Ideas of o Fox News calling itself fear and balanced spring to mind. He brings up the idea that that that journalists who challenge mainstream narratives often want to run into what what one such journalist referred to as buzzsaw, the idea that journalists who even want to investigate things outside the mainstream may find their stories getting spiked or resistance.
Speaker: Curtis points out that mainstream media is controlled by largely a few big corporations whose interests don't always involve telling the unvarnished truth. And that, you know, while while people point out in media, media does have an interest in telling the truth, because if they obviously lie, then people are going to know, well, those people are a bunch of lies. I'm going to go listen to a different news station.
Speaker: But nevertheless, there can be times when the interests of the corporations in control don't fully match up with with interests of truth telling. Or in some cases, simply don't report on some issues. So they don't lie, they just don't report certain issues, even though they are true or going on.
Speaker: Yes, yes, we'll come back to that in a minute as well, I think. Curtis talks about the fact that allegations regarding conspiracy theories can become toxic in the in the Lee Basham sense, toxic truths, which then are less reported on in the media.
Speaker: And in quotes, Joe Uysinski, talking about Watergate in some of the terms. He says that Harris argues that the mainstream media is, quote, subjected to at least some degree of truth-oriented filtering.
Speaker: Curtis points out that so do all media sources, but the question is, are they reliable, quote, when it comes to certain kinds of controversial issues, such as war provocations or political assassinations? And Curtis suggests that in these particular cases, especially media sources might not be subjected to to truth-oriented filtering as much, looking at, for example, the coverage of the the war in Iraq.
Speaker: Or if we use a more modern example, which you know postdates the discussion in both Curtis and Keith's papers, the way that trans issues are reported by the British press.
Speaker: Yes, definitely. Curtis points out a little bit later, there's at least some tension between the idea that the mainstream media can be trusted because it's heavily scrutinized and the idea that because it can be trusted, it need not be scrutinized.
Speaker: He talks about the fact that media outlets may have incentives not to report simple matters of fact, again, because people say, well, these guys are full of lies, or I won't listen to them, but they can definitely display biases. that Look at the the the comparison between Fox News and MSNBC.
Speaker: In the States, for instance, I don't think i don't think you know. Yeah, so I mean, you might get a situation where you report the cognitive deficiencies of a Joe Biden, but you don't report the cognitive deficiencies of a Donald J. Trump, even though they're both going on at the same time.
Speaker: Yes. then he goes on to say that at any rate, we're often we're not interested in these simple matters of fact. They've been talking about official accounts and conspiracy theories are often quite complex. And again, yeah, media, they they may report some factual matters pertaining to such an event, but it may ignore others. And that's that's where your errant data comes in. This errant data may not be reported.
Speaker: by the mainstream sources. And by the fact it's not reported, often it ends up being in the category of errant data. Brings up Building 7 at this point as a thing that the the claim was that Building 7 barely ever gets mentioned in the media at all.
Speaker: I don't know how true that is, and I don't know if that's if that's a matter of bias or if it's just a matter of the fact that Building 7 is nothing compared to the the just the stark image of the Twin Towers falling. It's it's it's much less of a spectacle.
Speaker: I think that could possibly be why it's it's in the news a lot less. But anyway, and he finishes off by talking about suddenly the idea of spin, which you mentioned before, the the idea that people, agencies, mainstream agencies can leave out data that conspiracy theorists appeal to in favor of data that supports the official theory. And he follows finishes this up with some more examples about nine eleven truth and a but a bit bit about JFK assassination, a bit about good old Russiagate, but it all in service of the same point.
Speaker: So having done that, we move on to Keith Harris's third point, which is about how conspiracy theorists act with regards towards mainstream sources and alternative sources of information. So section five is critique 3A, conspiracy theorists have no basis for believing their information sources.
Speaker: This section starts, Harris's third critique shifts the focus from how conspiracy theorists can disbelieve conventional accounts to how they can affirm alternative ones. Conspiracy theorists get their information from a variety of sources, including both mainstream media sources and alternative media sources.
Speaker: Harris is particularly concerned with how they can rely on the latter, but I will address with both, starting with the former. so So in this section, he talks about both how conspiracy theorists in particular can trust mainstream sources and how they can trust alternative sources.
Speaker: So talking about mainstream sources, he says that not many people believe that mainstream media is just all lies, just don't don't don't believe a word of it, rather that, quote, there are powerful or powerfully connected interested parties that can influence information sources when deemed sufficiently important.
Speaker: And in particular, he points out the the idea that if if media outlets report on something that is potentially against the interests of the benefactors, then that would give a person more reason to believe it. He he he sort of gives the analogy of people in in a courtroom saying something that possibly makes them look bad when providing evidence against themselves. You know, that the whole, yeah, I hated the guy, but I didn't kill him. Or, yeah, I was at the crime scene, but I wasn't there at the right time or something. And people supposedly will be...
Speaker: the that The fact that a person is willing to to give out information which maybe is is not in their best interests initially, people tend to weigh that more toward believing the rest of it.
Speaker: Yes, mean, we find the examples of that in the US. When when Fox News starts to criticise both the Republican Party and Donald Trump, you're going, oh, actually, this story has got big enough that even Fox News is willing to say, yeah, there's something wrong with the presidency.
Speaker: So it's not necessarily hypocritical or contradictory to trust mainstream sources more when they say things that support a counter-narrative, which can be sort yeah the accusation, oh, sure, you believe the mainstream media when they're saying the stuff that you already want to believe. But Curtis is saying, well, it's not necessarily as simple as that. The fact that they are challenging the official narrative, usually that that's not something they normally do unless there is there is really something behind it.
Speaker: Armini points out that, you know, most journalists aren't government plants running psyops on the on the on the population, although who doesn't say that none are? But most journalists are just people trying to do a job. They're people who want you want to be journalists, they want to do the job, and they're just trying to do it, but they may be incentivized to avoid those those toxic counter-narratives.
Speaker: So that's why he says it's it's fine to, there's no contradictions or problems involved in conspiracy theorists trusting mainstream sources at times. Then he talks to the idea of trust ah trusting alternative sources, which this is the thing that Harris seems more concerned about. Harris talks about conspiracy theorists dogmatically accepting alternative sources.
Speaker: Although plenty often don't. Harris says, given the level of skepticism that conspiracy theorists must adopt towards certain sources of information, it is unclear how a conspiracy theorist can maintain trust in the alternative sources need to derive warrant for the preferred conspiratorial explanation.
Speaker: Which reminds me a little bit of what we talked about last episode, and and we're talking about the Lockerbie podcast, how we had Dr. dr Jim Swire. And one of the things they sort of said was he was completely distrusting of the CIA and a sort sort of of American and British intelligence agencies as an information source, but had no problem accepting information from what he believed was a Mossad agent.
Speaker: And so I think i think Harris is is trying to say the same sort of thing that conspiracy theorists, you know, if if they're that, a bit a bit in the opposite direction, if they're if they're that sceptical of the mainstream media, why aren't they as sceptical of these alternative sources? Yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, and that is fair in some situations, but once again, it's not all conspiracy theorists. People like Edwin end up being kind of extraordinary in that they are rare individuals in that kind of space.
Speaker: And so Curtis says, again, it's not clear that conspiracy theorists' scepticism or dogmatism is such that it wouldn't be possible to trust alternative sources. He says, for one thing, it is often possible to check these secondary sources with primary sources. For example, much of the work produced by the JFK research community is well-sourced to official documents, including the 26 volumes of documents produced by the Warren Commission.
Speaker: So again, the idea is that yeah he he basically just flat out denies the idea that there's a dogmatic attitude towards alternative alternative sources, or indeed a blind skepticism towards mainstream sources.
Speaker: Yes, it's often a mix. Yeah. So that leads on to section six, which is the the second critique of Harris's third point, critique 3b. There's no basis for choosing between alternative conspiratorial accounts.
Speaker: So here, Harris has to say, this is what Harris has to say. Because any number of conspiratorial explanations can be constructed, all of which account for the data equally well, the conspiracy theorist often lacks sufficient warrant for belief in any particular conspiratorial explanation.
Speaker: The conspiracy theorist has no basis for determining that some particular group of conspirators, as opposed to some other group, is responsible for the event in question. Now, Curtis says well there's not there's not no basis for choosing between conspiracy theories. Curtis says the underdetermination of theory by data is also an issue in science in which one is often presented with competing theories that at least largely fit the data.
Speaker: Broadly speaking, prior probability considerations and explanatory power both have to be considered and fitting the data is only one aspect of explanatory power. It's one thing to fit, i.e. not can contradict a theory. It is another to explain and still another to predict.
Speaker: So he's he's sort of saying, yeah, conspiracy theories aren't all created equal. you You might have like, look at, say, the JFK assassination. You might say the government was behind it. You might say the mafia was behind it. You might say the Cubans were behind it. You might say space aliens were behind it.
Speaker: those aren't that that that they all They all account for the same event by proposing a set of conspirators, but they're not necessarily all the same, and there isn't no way of choosing in between them.
Speaker: And he says there may be different ways to account for the data, but not all theories account for it equally well. So he says, an explanation that relies on a large number of unlikely conspirators to account for some data does not account for it as well as an alternative conspiratorial explanation, which is more modest in scope and implicates only individuals with plausible motives.
Speaker: And I have to say, at that point, i I read that not so true. Like, it sounds sensible, but it it seems like a bit of it just kind of sounds like a bit of an assumption that, yeah, it's, Conspiracy theory with lots of lots of conspirators and weird motives is just naturally a better explanation, or a worse explanation than a conspiracy theory with a small number of conspirators and has less wacky motives.
Speaker: I mean... what but what what did you mean you know would it would It would depend on the details or the particulars of the theory itself. i mean, in part, you might also go, well, look, under one account, these conspirators seem unlikely to be working together. But with another assumption, actually, it's understandable why they may be working together in a particular way. So it does depend on the particulars here. i mean, i'm these i like you, I'm going, i mean, it sounds sensible, but at the same time, you're going to be able to find counterexamples.
Speaker: Yeah. But it india the the wider point, though, is that there there are print plenty of criteria by which you can choose between conspiracy theories, which is is what Harris was saying you could not do.
Speaker: So at this point, Curtis has been through each of Harris's critiques of conspiracy theorizing and found them all wanting. But he then turns to a final point, which is his section seven, is Harris's critique a generalist one?
Speaker: So Harris right up the top there critiqued critique the general generalist view as, in his words, plainly unfounded, but curtis but basically asked what is his argument if not a generalist one?
Speaker: Curtis says, but if his points are not generalist ones, if they don't undermine conspiracy theorising as a legitimate activity based on generalisations about it, then what force do they have? Although some of his points have no force at all, or so I have argued, some of them suggest to this.
Speaker: conspiracy theorizing should be carried out with a certain kind of care, and when this care is lacking, that is criticizable. But according to Curtis, Harris, quote, has not, even by his own lights, shown that conspiracy theorizing is inherently problematic, but only that it can be done badly, fact that is only too obvious.
Speaker: Yes, like he theorizing. It can be done well, it can be done badly. When it is done badly, you can bring up these kinds of points. But these kinds of points don't tell us that all theorizing of that kind is done equally badly in all cases.
Speaker: Yes, so the only ah implication of Harris's points seem to be that you should be cautious when conspiracy theorizing exactly the same way you should be cautious when doing any other kind of theorizing. So Harris said, we we quoted him at the start saying standard criticisms of conspiracy theorizing fail to demonstrate that the practice is invariably irrational. And his own criticism also seems to fail to demonstrate that conspiracy theorizing is invariably irrational. Yeah, it just shows it needs to be undertaken with caution.
Speaker: Yeah. So so what what then is the problem with conspiracy theorizing, according to Harris? Yeah. going Going by what he says, it sounds like he he seems to argue that it's just a matter of degree, that epistemic errors are, quote, heavily implicated in conspiracy theorizing.
Speaker: But he doesn't really do anything to show that. He just he just sort of seems to suggest that there are conspiracy theorizing is perhaps more prone to these errors, or we see them more, but... He doesn't show it. Curtis says,
Speaker: harris's critique of probabilistic modus tolins turns out to be inapplicable in addition it's not clear that conspiracy theorizing involves less attention to one's biases than conspiracy debunking or other intellectually active efforts of conventionalists and it's not clear that intellectual sloth or blind acceptance of official stories is preferable further it's not clear that conspiracy theorizing cannot be grounded in judicious assessments of the credibility of relevant information sources And he talks about some other problems with conspiracy theorising that Harris brings up, and they're things that we've also seen before, the old, those studies by Michael Wood and, is Karen Douglas? Yes, Karen Douglas, Wood and Douglas.
Speaker: The conspiracy theorists are more likely to believe other conspiracy theories thing, which often the reply to that is, yeah. what's wrong with that? Yeah, and more modern work on that particular hypothesis is going, well, actually, the claim that Wood and Douglas elicited, which is that conspiracy theorists seem to believe contradictory theories, is actually better explained by the fact that people who believe the official theory reject contrary conspiracy theories. So belief in an official theory predicts
Speaker: non-belief in rival conspiracy theories. Well, conspiracy the theorists who reject the official theory are more likely to consider that some rival hypotheses should at least be considered as plausible.
Speaker: They're not making a judgment as to which one is the most plausible. They're often going, well look, if we reject the official theory, then that leaves us with a multitude, in some cases, of rival conspiracy theories, And we now need to work out which one of those we should believe.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. That was the other paper, the old, the one that that's always reported as saying that conspiracy theorists even believe completely contradictory theories when that wasn't what the, that's something we looked at a long time ago, I think, but it was the question they were asked were, how likely do you find these? Would you be willing to believe in these things? Not are these things true? So when people said they were willing to believe multiple contradictory theories, They weren't saying they believed all of them at the same time, they just believed that one of these is likely to be true.
Speaker: But leaving all that aside, what what if we assume that it's true? If we assume that Harris is right, that, quote, conspiracy theorists have a tendency to certain types of poor reasoning that is measurably greater than the average. Sorry, that was that was Curtis's words, Harris's. If we assume that that is actually true, even though it doesn't appear to have been established, what would the implications of that be?
Speaker: Curtis says, if there are problematic traits or reasoning strategies characteristic of conspiracy theorizing, there may be prima facie grounds for skepticism about the epistemic merits of conspiracy theorizing, even if certain instances of conspiracy theorizing are epistemically unimpeachable.
Speaker: Which sounds like kind of a generalist thing to me. he certainly he Curtis points out that this certainly wouldn't be the basis for scepticism of any particular conspiracy theory.
Speaker: Curtis says, even if there are measurable differences in the average quality of reasoning between conspiracy theorising and coming to accept official accounts, that would not justify treating any particular case of conspiracy theorising uncharitably or giving any particular conspiracy theory anything less than a fair hearing. A fair hearing could still be a short one if the theory had obviously serious problems, such as implicating lizard people. always Always a good paper that mentions lizard people, I think. I say hurrah for the lizard people.
Speaker: And shortly after that, he rounds things out by saying, the strength of the arguments provided by more careful and reflective conspiracy theorists does not depend on whether the number of sloppy and unreflective conspiracy theorists goes up or down.
Speaker: So a good conspiracy theory is a good conspiracy theory because it's a good theory because it's well supported by evidence and what have you. It doesn't matter that there are a whole bunch of other people out there doing conspiracy theorizing badly. So that's it all. It leads us to the conclusion. You did the abstract. Do you want to want to wrap things up?
Speaker: Yes, why not? Has Harris succeeded in showing that a range of epistemic errors are pervasive among conspiracy theorists? Not really. While perhaps there are pervasive errors, Harris has not shown that conspiracy theorizing involves an invalid appeal to probabilistic modus tollens, or that errant data cannot constitute significant evidence. He's also not shown that the conspiracy theorizing is significantly more problematic than the belief-forming processes of intellectually slothful conventionalists, intellectually active conspiracy debunkers, or investigators embedded in institutions with conflicts of interest.
Speaker: And he has not shown that conspiracy theories can have no basis for trusting the information sources or for making judgments between alternative theories. Harris's arguments do suggest that the conspiracy theorizing can be done badly, but that was already obvious. And while it may be the case that conspiracy theorizing is often done badly, conventionalist thinking can also be done badly, and probably is often done badly as well.
Speaker: Further, even if it turns out that conspiracy theorizing is statistically worse than conventionalist thinking, which is likely, but beyond the scope of either Harris's article or this one to determine, that would not provide us with a good reason to think conspiracy theorizing itself is problematic.
Speaker: Nor would it give us a solid justification for dismissing conspiracy theories rather than being mindful of our own biases as we evaluate the relevant arguments and evidence. and make judgments about the reliability of sources.
Speaker: In other words, acting like good little particularists. Indeed. So, yeah, I mean, that ah that this the paper all all made good sense to me, I think. Harris's arguments don't really work, and... Well, they work insofar that they say, look, you should be cautious about belief in some conspiracy theory. And Curtis's argument is that, look, these are issues with theorizing in general.
Speaker: And it is true we can find some examples of this kind of theorizing amongst conspiracy theorists. But A, it's not unique to conspiracy theorizing. And B, it's not...
Speaker: emblematic of all conspiracy theorizing so all harris has done is gone well look you can conspiracy theorize badly particulars have always admitted there's unwarranted conspiracy theories out there there are people who conspiracy theorize in a psychologically or epistemically unideal manner You just can't generalize from those people to all conspiracy theorists.
Speaker: There are people like Alex Jones, Candace Owen, and Tucker Carlson out there doing the terrible things that they do. But there they are not emblematic of every single conspiracy theorist, and it's a mistake to take their views and generalize from them, which is precisely what Harris is doing in the paper that Curtis is responding to.
Speaker: Yes, I mean, Harris's paper was what's epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorizing. What he really shows is what's epistemically wrong with just theorizing badly. It's not out not specific to conspiracy theories at all.
Speaker: Not at all. Indeed. So that brings us to the end of this episode. But we, of course, have a bonus episode. And now next in this week's bonus episode, we're going to talk about balls.
Speaker: Lots of balls. Rubbing your balls on stuff. Ball tampering. Tampering with your balls. Yeah, a lot of balls. So much balls, so much tampering. And and and an issue that we know virtually nothing about.
Speaker: I know a little bit about, but we'll see. And just just enough to get me in trouble, I think. So if you want to hear us talk about balls, if you want to hear us talk about balls. And ball tampering.
Speaker: And tampering thereof, become a patron. And if you're a patron, good news. You're getting you're getting all the balls you can handle. Guaranteed. And more. And more.
Speaker: So yes, I guess I should say if you want to be a patron, go to patreon.com slash podcastersguide to the conspiracy, I think. Or at least search for podcastersguide to the conspiracy. That's the other thing should be doing at the beginning of the episode. We should be advertising the Patreon at the beginning because statistically, most people don't finish listening to podcasts. So we should be doing the advertising at the beginning.
Speaker: and then reminding people about the Patreon bonus episode at the end. It's taken us 10 minutes, Josh, but think we might be about to actually grasp how SEO works for podcasts. Yeah, I mean, it does kind of imply that we're a real podcast, and I just reject that wholeheartedly. So it's kind of not the thing that New Zealanders are actually very good at doing, self-promotion. Not so much.
Speaker: na No, no. Well, whatever. We're going to talk about balls, and and you can get on it if you want. But if you don't want, or if this is if if you're done for now, then thank you for listening all the way through anyway, um and we'll see you next main episode. But until then, I think all I can really do is say goodbye.
Speaker: I'll say balls. Balls.
Speaker: podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
Speaker: You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not mum.
Speaker: And remember, groove is in the heart.
