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Buenting and Taylor's Fortuitous Data
29 Plays3 years ago
Josh and M present another episode of Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre, and review "Conspiracy Theories and Fortuitous Data" by Joel Buenting and Jason Taylor.
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
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Transcript
Captain Corrin: Pirate or Salesman?
00:00:00
Speaker
We present once again the adventures of Captain Corrin, space pirate, and insurance salesman. And featuring myself as Quantum Jim. Tonight Corrin offers advice on content insurance.
Plotting the Piracy Attack
00:00:24
Speaker
It had been a long and expensive day at the space races. We were on the way home, and I had the crew seeking out a rich vessel for a spot of the old piracy and plunder. Quantum Jim, the rapscallion, aspired a fat corporate space building slinking homeward, probably filled with a load of business times working late on the juice. We fired a broadside, and she soon stopped to allow us to board.
Selling Insurance During Piracy
00:00:50
Speaker
Dar! Good evening, sir. I was wondering whether I could possibly spare a moment of your time. Look, we're actually being attacked by pirates? That, sir, is precisely why I want to talk with you. My name's Corrin, and I represent Onion and Onion Financial Prudence, located out in Barnard Star. You're an insurance salesman? And part-time pirate, aye. Sir, a ship like this is a prime target for attack and plunder. Yes, I know. You're attacking us right now.
00:01:19
Speaker
See, it'd be lucky I'm here. Are you presently covered by content insurance? Is this really the time, Mr... It's Captain. Sorry, Captain Corrin? No, we're not, but is this really the time? Sir, I know how much damage a pirate can do. If you were attacked today... We are being attacked today. See, just how dangerous this region is, and you without content insurance. Just how much do you think he'd lose? Well, I don't know. Pretty much everything, really.
00:01:48
Speaker
Not pretty much everything, sir. Everything, everything. Now, how much do you think it will cost to replace? Well, taking inflation from the market minus the appreciation for the actual shoe...
Piracy and Insurance Deal Concluded
00:02:00
Speaker
It'll cost a lot, sir, won't it? Er, well, yes.
00:02:04
Speaker
What if I could offer you, right here and now, a comprehensive home and contents package that will guarantee you full replacement on all future attacks? Yes, but we're under attack now. At Onion and Onion, we pride ourselves on taking a blank slate approach to all our clients. Even when they presume to clear and present credit risk. Blank slate, sir, means blank slate. Well, where do I sign? Here. And here. And here. Yes, that all looks in order.
00:02:34
Speaker
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and be plundered. Good day, sir. Oh, and here's me being forgetful. Advance me hearty. Prepare to be boarded.
Meet the Hosts: Josh and Dr. M
00:02:56
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. Indented.
00:03:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Both in Auckland, New Zealand, as far as I'm aware. I am Josh Addison and they are Dr. M. Denteth. But we're still zooming it for reasons of me not being able to get over to M's place, essentially. But that's okay. It's the age of Zoom. I think everyone ought to be well used to it by now.
00:03:29
Speaker
Although I am beginning to hope that we can get past the age of Zoom.
Zoom's Role in Philosophy
00:03:33
Speaker
Actually, I actually don't mean that. Zoom has actually been really, really great for being able to bring people together during the pandemic, allowing people to engage in events overseas during the pandemic. It's just that sometimes you spend an awful lot of time on Zoom and you just get that kind of Zoom fatigue. Hmm.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yes, I mean, it's no replacement for local interaction. But yes, it's certainly certainly made international interaction a lot easier. You've been doing a bit of that, haven't you? At the wee wee hours of the morning? Yes. So on Wednesday this week, I gave a talk on fake news and the Narmore Symposium. So that's a philosophy symposium at Sacramento State in Sacramento.
00:04:19
Speaker
And then I also attended as panelist, the final two 45th Midwest Colloquium of Philosophy talks, one given by David Coady, and the other by Charles Pegden. Names that should be familiar to anyone who's been listening to this podcast for a while. So there you go, Zoom, it puts the world at your doorstep. This podcast is not affiliated with or sponsored by Zoom in any way. You know who it is sponsored by?
00:04:44
Speaker
Our patrons is where I started. Oh, okay. I thought you were about to reveal a deep dark secret. No, unfortunately no. We really can't mention. No, no, no, it's all good. Apparently we have a new patron, one who dare not speak their name. Yes, this is true. We have a new patron. They have pledged to the level that we simply mention their existence and then never mention them again. Funny how that works. You know who you are.
Conspiracy Theory Segment Introduction
00:05:11
Speaker
You know what you've done.
00:05:12
Speaker
You know that we know who you are and what you've done. And we know that you know that we know that you know that voodoo that you do so well.
00:05:26
Speaker
I think they actually came to a nice conclusion. I thought you were going to have trouble sticking the landing there, but you didn't, so good. Now, we have another episode of Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre for you this week, and I think unless there's anything else we need to announce right now, we should probably just go straight into
ASMR and Conspiracy Theories
00:05:43
Speaker
it. No, I think we should play this sting.
00:05:53
Speaker
And now we join our host for another episode on Conspiracy Masterpiece Theatre. I'll be honest, I prefer the new What the Conspiracies Sting, but that's still a mighty fine sting.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah, it does need a little bit of uptempo-ness, I feel. I wanted to go for something with a kind of classical feel, and I've gone for something which sounds like we're about to engage in guided meditation. Yes, I mean, ASMR is big at the moment. Maybe we could, maybe if we headed in that direction, we might get a bit more...
00:06:30
Speaker
bit more traction. This is the point in time where I don't want to look up conspiracy theory ASMR.
Seminal Paper on Conspiracy Theories
00:06:36
Speaker
I bet it's out there. I bet there's entire channels devoted to making sounds like Alex Jones. Go to sleep with the sounds of Alex Jones.
00:06:47
Speaker
I can't imagine that. And I'm not going to try. No, no, it's really not worth it. Instead, let's talk about a seminal paper in the philosophy of conspiracy theory literature, conspiracy theories and fortuitous data, a paper which is both incredibly important, and also, in many respects, deeply weird. Hmm, it is a bit.
00:07:15
Speaker
This is a paper that appeared in the Philosophy of Social Sciences in May 2010, co-authored by, now how do you pronounce the surname of the first individual in question? So I think it's Joel Bulting and Jason Taylor, but given that no one in the philosophical side of discussing conspiracy theories seems to have ever talked with these gentlemen, we do not know.
Particularism vs. Generalism
00:07:41
Speaker
No, that'll do.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yes, B-U-E-N-T-I-N-G. As someone who did German in high school, I see a U.E. and think Bünting, but probably not if they're American. Anyway, Bünting and Taylor. So yes, we've not heard from them before. And as I believe you've implied in the past, we're not going to be hearing from them again.
00:08:00
Speaker
No, they do not appear at least in the conspiracy theory literature at all. Now, I don't know which of the two people I'm about to mention did this, but I remember talking about this paper with Brian L. Keeley and Lee Basham back in the Miami conference back in 2016.
00:08:20
Speaker
and one of them had tried to track these two people down, and as far as they were aware, they had written this one paper, left grad school, and then gone on to do non-academic work. So as far as I'm aware, they're not active philosophically at all. One of the projects I actually do want to engage in later on this year is to see whether I can find them, and also find out once I've found them,
00:08:50
Speaker
Do they realise just how important a section of their paper ended up being? And we'll see why it's important shortly, I think.
00:09:00
Speaker
indeed is actually the first line of the abstract. It actually yes. Do you want to do it or shall I? I think it's my turn to do it with the old abstract readings.
Fortuitous Data Explained
00:09:09
Speaker
So let me have a punt. We offer a particular defense of conspiratorial thinking. We explore the possibility that the presence of a certain kind of evidence, what we call fortuitous data, lends rational credence to conspiratorial thinking.
00:09:27
Speaker
In developing our argument, we introduce conspiracy theories and motivate our particular approach. We then introduce and define fortuitous data. Lastly, we locate an instance of fortuitous data in one real world conspiracy, the Watergate scandal. So yes, that very first sentence, we offer a particularist defense of conspiratorial thinking.
00:09:53
Speaker
And that is the first time that language gets used in the philosophical literature around conspiracy theories. But we'll get to that when they actually define those key terms later on in the paper. Yes, well, actually, pretty, pretty much, pretty much straight away, almost. They start the paper by basically talking about stuff that we've already covered in
Errant Data and Theory Choice
00:10:15
Speaker
the past. But the idea that conspiracy theories tend not to be taken seriously, that they're either
00:10:21
Speaker
thought of as a rational or simply as a punchline. They quote an old Onion article doing sort of a satirical… Well, not just that. They quote the Onion web series that existed all the way back in the early 2010s.
00:10:37
Speaker
That literally used conspiracy theory as a punchline. But the pro-weather conspiracy theory, that big weather is trying to persuade you to engage in buying umbrellas, raincoats and the like. Which kind of, I mean, like if this was prior to 2010,
00:11:01
Speaker
That still sounds close enough to some of the climate change stuff to barely count as satire anymore, but anyway. So they start bringing it into this arena by saying, issues surrounding the rationality of conspiracies have received increasing attention among epistemologists. Central to these discussions is the question of whether it's ever rational to accept or believe a conspiracy. Opposing views can be distinguished based on how they approach conspiracies. According to the generalist view,
00:11:30
Speaker
The rationality of conspiracy theories can be assessed without considering particular conspiracy theories.
Evaluating Evidence in Conspiracies
00:11:36
Speaker
On this view, conspiratorial thinking, qua conspiracy thinking, is itself irrational. The particularist view about conspiratorial thinking denies that the rationality of conspiracy theories can be assessed without considering particular conspiracy theories.
00:11:50
Speaker
And so there you have it, generalism and particularism. So I understand. So these were terms that were invented for the epistemology of conspiracy theories, though, were they? They existed elsewhere in social sciences? Yes. So you actually find the discussion of generalism and particularism to be quite endemic in ethics. So if you're a generalist about ethics,
00:12:15
Speaker
you take it that there are general moral principles that apply at all times. So for example, if you're a Kantian, you've got the categorical imperative. If you're a utilitarian, you're maximising utility. If you're a virtue ethicist, well, insert justification about moral principles there because virtue ethics is quite complex to describe.
00:12:38
Speaker
Well, so if you're a particularist, you'll go, well, no, actually, there are particular moral principles that apply only in certain situations. So you end up being a kind of contextualist. The appropriate response to this situation is to act in this way, but that isn't the appropriate response in another.
Fortuitous Data Examples: 9/11 and Watergate
00:12:58
Speaker
So a moral particularist will go, look, there are particular moral rules or codes that apply only at particular times. There are no
00:13:07
Speaker
general moral principles we need to apply to. Now, I don't know whether Booting and Taylor are taking the particularist versus generalist stuff wholesale from the discussion of ethics, because I don't really bring that up. They simply use the terminology, particularist and generalist, to describe the two camps of view of conspiracy theory. But I have to assume they've at least done some ethics.
00:13:35
Speaker
seen those terms and go, Oh, we can co-opt that into our epistemological discussion of these things called conspiracy theories. Now, when they in that sentence on this view, conspiratorial thinking, choir conspiracy thinking is itself irrational, they have a footnote which references the works of Brian Keeley, Steve Clark, and Pete Mandic, as being
00:14:00
Speaker
Essentially, these are examples of people who have generalist views, which I don't really think any of them can be seen to have, although that's the problem.
00:14:16
Speaker
come up more than once that people sort of try to put generalist words in Brian Kelly's mouth. And I always have to go back and make sure I wasn't imagining it. But in his first one and of conspiracy theories, 1999, in the conclusion, he says, for Hume, miracles are by definition explanations that we are never warranted
Watergate Scandal Case Study
00:14:35
Speaker
in believing.
00:14:35
Speaker
If my analysis here is correct, however, we cannot say the same thing about conspiracy theories. They are not, by definition, unwarranted. It's starting to irk me that people seem to keep missing that. But anyway, it's not actually relevant to the arguments that are being made here. Josh, never read my book. OK, because I also make this mistake about Keighley.
00:14:55
Speaker
And it seems to be a thing where everyone is reading commentaries on Keely. Those initial commentaries get Keely wrong. Those commentaries then inform subsequent work on Keely's work.
00:15:11
Speaker
And thus it just gets being hammered home again and again and again that Brian thinks that belief in conspiracy theories is prima facie unwarranted whilst you are correct. That is not the case. And I've got a piece under peer review, which
00:15:29
Speaker
in one section actually tries to address that quite briefly. There's another paper I've been working on for the last few years, which I kind of dip my toes into from time to time, where I'm actually going to do the whole Mia Culper, I got Brian wrong, and try to diagnose exactly why I got Brian wrong.
00:15:49
Speaker
But it's not actually that important to the general thrust of this paper. Well, it probably is to one of the listeners of this podcast. Yes, yes. Brian L. Keeley. Probably, but in terms of the actual argumentation. But anyway, it's something... Well, except it does come up again. It does come up again. And actually, they also make some weird claims about Keeley generally throughout this paper. It's not just getting him wrong, it's inventing positions that he does not have.
00:16:19
Speaker
But at any rate, so that's basically the introduction. That sets things up. And that's where it comes from, generalist versus particularist. And they start in the first section of the paper proper, conspiracy theories and theory choice.
00:16:37
Speaker
giving their reasons for why they go for the particularist approach. So they start, as all good philosophers do, by defining their terms. And they use David Cody's definition of conspiracy theory, which if you recall, he sort of takes the one that sort of Brian Kelly and Steve Clark used the whole multiple people acting in secret to achieve a certain name. And then he added on the conditions that
00:17:02
Speaker
the aim that they achieve has to be the aim that they intended, in particular, that the conspiracy theory has to be in opposition to an official story, which is something that we've cast out on in the past. But that particular one, they really, they sort of say, we really want to emphasize that last one has to be in opposition to an official story, because that becomes important later.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I do remember when David Cody talked about that, one of the things I thought was weird, because it sort of suggested that something can go from being a
Rationality of Conspiracy Theories
00:17:37
Speaker
conspiracy theory to being not a conspiracy theory, if it becomes the official story eventually, or it may be the official story in some places, but they're not in others. And David Cody, since he talks about a sort of cultural context, that kind of makes it okay. But I don't know if this paper ever avoids that problem. But at any rate... Well, actually, there's a bit at the end where they
00:17:59
Speaker
If they're using Cody's definition, then they make a claim at the end that makes no sense. So I think they're picking out what was at the time the most recent attempt to define what counts as a conspiracy theory and going, well, this is what flossers believe. But yes, there is there are problems with this definition which come back to haunt them.
00:18:23
Speaker
But having stressed that point, they say, why do we accept a particularist approach to conspiratorial thinking? Choosing to believe a conspiracy theory is the choice to believe in one theory, the conspiracy, over another theory, the official story.
00:18:38
Speaker
Though this may seem obvious, it's crucial to note because it draws to attention the idea that a rational choice to believe any theory depends on considerations of evidence. Judging any theory to be insufficient independently of considerations regarding the evidence is irrational. Thus, a rejection of conspiracy theories' simplicity seems irrational. Rational rejection or acceptance of a theory must supervene on the quality of evidence for or against that theory.
00:19:03
Speaker
Which, yeah, that's that particularist approach. That's something that we've been talking about for a long time.
Terminology's Impact on Discourse
00:19:11
Speaker
And they go on to say that evidence which suggests that conspiratorial thinking in some cases can be rational comes from the fact that we have uncovered actual conspiracies. This suggests that it cannot always be irrational to believe in a conspiracy theory. At that point, they reference Charles Pigdon. I can't actually remember which of his papers, but I know in the complex of Mischief 1, he made a great point about the fact that these conspiracies happen all the time, and then the one before that he did as well. But I mean, Brian did as well.
00:19:40
Speaker
But Josh, Josh, they've already said that Brian says that belief in conspiracy theories is irrational. They can't then reference him saying that belief in conspiracy theories can be rational. Well, that would be inconsistent. Precisely. But yeah, so this section basically
00:19:57
Speaker
They just focus on the idea that evidence is what counts. They say adjudication of how irrational it is to believe in a particular theory requires consideration about the actual evidence in favor of the theory. Thus, if we're to substantiate claims that believing in a conspiracy theory is irrational, the finger needs to be pointed at the unacceptable evidence or reasons conspiracy theorists have for accepting particular conspiracies are true.
00:20:23
Speaker
Again, yeah, that's the thing we've been harping on about for who knows how long. And indeed, this entire section of the paper, I was looking back at the notes I made back in around about 2011 when I read it, and most of it is yes, I agree, nice, or I've made a similar point in my writing. And then they carry on to say just shortly after that,
00:20:53
Speaker
If the conspiracy theorist wants her pet theory to be taken seriously, she needs to support her position, which runs counter to the official story, with evidence that supports her position without seeming unduly selective of what counts as good evidence. Our aim in the next section is to do precisely this. We hope to provide a criterion that can be used to differentiate the rational acceptable conspiracy theories from irrational unacceptable ones. This criterion is the presence of what we call fortuitous data. First, however, we turn to broader concerns regarding evidence.
00:21:22
Speaker
And they don't reference Lee Basham in this paper. I didn't notice him in the footnotes, but their approach does seem to avoid his critique. I remember he was talking about the arguments of Keeley and Clark and his
00:21:41
Speaker
critique was that essentially when you boil down to it, what the earlier papers say is that good conspiracy theories are good and bad conspiracy theories are bad, when the real question is, how do you tell the good from the bad? And that seems to be what these guys are setting, trying to set out a framework for.
00:22:01
Speaker
in the next section. I'm just having a look at the references because when you said they, they don't mention Leo's going, actually, don't they? In case of no, they, there's one reference to Steve Clark, one reference to David Cody, one reference to Brian Keeley, reference to Charles Picton, Pete Manduck, and then there's basically three other references.
00:22:25
Speaker
to John Leslie, Matthew Tempest, and Peter Varnentagen. Yeah, I remember him. So tiny reference list, absolutely small, which is kind of odd because as we've covered quite a lot of papers now in the Masterpiece Thesis series, there are a lot more references they could be making at this time. Nevertheless,
00:22:52
Speaker
The next section, Evidence, Conspiracy Theories and Furtuitous Data, starts with a reference. It starts, Brian Keighley, 1999, is the philosopher who is thought the most about evidence in conspiratorial contexts. Keighley calls the evidence that best supports conspiracy theories errant data. Errant data focuses on non-trivial facts or events that remain either unexplained by or contradict the official story.
00:23:18
Speaker
Again, that doesn't quite sound right. It didn't seem to me like Brian was saying, errant data.
00:23:26
Speaker
is the thing that best supports conspiracy theories. It's, I guess you could say, he was saying, in some cases, it's the thing that supports the choice to believe the conspiracy theory because the conspiracy theories can explain this errant data that the official story can't. And indeed, part of his argument is there's always going to be data errant to any theory of an explanatory kind you put forward.
00:23:56
Speaker
So conspiracy theories will explain some data, which is errant to the official theory using Cody's gloss. And in many cases, the official theory is going to feature data which is errant to the conspiracy theory. It's just a feature of theory choice. And conspiracy theories might make use of data errant to official theories. But it's certainly not the evidence that best supports conspiracy theories.
00:24:25
Speaker
It's just a feature of theory choice, as you say. So they say, here's a rough approximation of how errant data is used by a conspiracy theorist. To begin with, conspiracy theorists emphasize one, the perceived importance of non-trivial facts that remain unexplained by the official story, in conjunction with two, the explanation that one ought to be explained.
00:24:49
Speaker
By one, a high degree of significance is attached to contradictory or unexplained data, and by two, this data requires explanation. But errant data is not explained well, if at all, by the official story. If there's enough errant data, then our natural tendency is to regard with increasing suspicion the explanation provided by the official story. Now, this is a classic case of
00:25:11
Speaker
If an explanation of an event starts diverging from standard explanations of events, then we tend to get very suspicious. So if your explanation as to how a building fell requires you to not cite the laws of physics and the weight of the building,
00:25:31
Speaker
but talk an awful lot about wind speed, unicorns and pixie dust, we end up going, that's a lot of errant data. And you're using an awful lot of it to come up with an alternative explanation. And we find that suspicious. So that's the kind of the worry about errant data. If there's too much errant data in an explanation,
00:25:54
Speaker
then it kind of diverges from reality in such a way that people go, I don't think that's the case. A little errant data, absolutely fine. Too much, people end up being suspicious.
00:26:09
Speaker
And so, I mean, they do say, they come to the conclusion that Keeley is basically saying that conspiracy theories are explanatory, have greater explanatory power than the official story. They say they are superior. In a footnote, say, C. Keeley, 1999, who thinks that despite this explanatory power, conspiratorial thinking is irrational, to which again, I say, oh, he bloody doesn't. But anyway,
00:26:36
Speaker
It was the fashion of the time, say that Brian made these claims. So then they get into this idea of fortuitous data. So they don't think errant data is specifically errant data is what we need to be looking for. We need to look at something called fortuitous data. And they set this out saying, but of course, we do not believe that all conspiracy theories are rational, even those with tremendous explanatory power.
00:27:02
Speaker
we take the difference between a rational and an irrational conspiracy theory to hinge not only on its explanatory power, but also on one feature of the evidence for the official story to which it is opposed, called fortuitous data. What is fortuitous data? It is data that one, supports the official story, but two, fits the official story too well, is too good to be true. And finally three, the lucky nature of the data is left unexplained by the official story.
00:27:31
Speaker
So, I mean, that bit in the middle too good to be true. I mean, that really seems to be the core of it all. If they think the official theory rests on something that's too good to be true, too convenient, too much of a coincidence,
00:27:49
Speaker
That's when you need to start looking at the conspiracy theory They they I think it's at that point where they mentioned Pete Mandik with his with his shit happens paper Do you have the bleep do we need to bleep things out again? I can bleep myself
00:28:04
Speaker
happens. But if you try to say it, and we'll try to get the timing right. So try and say the title of that paper. That paper called shit happens. See, that doesn't block you out. No, certainly. When I try to say happens, then every time I try to say or, or you
00:28:32
Speaker
Sorry, actually, that was a message from a ship out in the harbour. I think the Titanic is sinking. Again, anyway, they reject this idea, essentially. The point is, they say, yeah, sometimes stuff can just happen, sure, but not always. You can't always just say, whenever something looks too good to be true or too weird or what have you, you can't always just use that as a cop-out to say,
00:29:01
Speaker
sometimes just stuff just happens that way, you never know. So they start looking at examples of fortuitous data and
00:29:09
Speaker
They pick some interesting examples, wouldn't you say? They do. In fact, there's quite a 9-11 flavor to these examples. So the first one they talk about is that pesky Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon just four miles away from the White House. Brian will be aware that we had an entire discussion about the location of the Pentagon earlier today.
00:29:35
Speaker
in Charles Pigton's session at the 45th Midwest Colloquium of Philosophy. And one of the things which is really interesting about Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon is it hit the one reinforced wall on the Pentagon, such that it did as minimal damage as a
00:29:58
Speaker
I'm about to say a fighter plane can do, of course, not a commercial airliner. I don't know why I'm confusing my commercial airliners with fighter jets. A commercial airliner can do and they're going, that's kind of fortuitous in that the plane actually does turn to approach the Pentagon.
00:30:19
Speaker
at which point you go, it's quite lucky it struck that particular wall rather than some other wall. They had five to choose from. Yes, you need to explain why they chose that wall.
00:30:35
Speaker
Did they intend to hit that spot? The one reinforced spot on the Pentagon? Yes and even the paper they actually say that the plane hit the refurbished section of the Pentagon rather than anywhere else suggests in italics that the pilots intended in italics to hit just that spot which got me like the when I first was like is this it?
00:30:54
Speaker
Is this my living truth, Packer? Is this like that dear to Kiawan we looked at the other day? But I don't think it is. But and then the other the other bit of futurist example of futurist data they talk about is the discovery of the passport of Satam al-Sugami, which I often hear this people talking about how they found Muhammad Ata's passport. But that wasn't I think they're thinking of this one. This was the passport that was found by a civilian on the ground in New York.
00:31:24
Speaker
following the 9-11 attacks and was the passport of one of the hijackers. And it's one I've seen come up. This isn't related exactly to this paper, but I've always had a question about that one, which is, it's always presented in isolation. The 9-11 truth is we'll say, look at this, they found this passport completely, completely unharmed, just lying on the ground. How do you explain that?
00:31:50
Speaker
And I've never seen anywhere any account of what other stuff they found from either of the planes. So I don't know how remarkable that is. If there was a bunch of wreckage that was ejected from the planes during the crash and was found on the ground, then the discovery of this particular passport
00:32:08
Speaker
isn't actually that great a big deal on the other hand if as they sort of imply this was the only artifact recovered by one of the planes and it just happens to bolster the official story then yes that would be suspicious but I don't actually know either way so I believe although I'm working on memory here that actually quite a lot of debris was recovered from those flights in New York
00:32:33
Speaker
So they did discover a whole bunch of personal effects belonging to passengers, and thus also the terrorists on those planes. And so in isolation, yes, finding a single passport seems very fortuitous. There was a lot more debris from the planes than people think, because you do have the impact of the planes
00:32:55
Speaker
colliding and flying into the buildings, but you've also got the blowback from that event at the same time where loose belongings such as luggage and the like is going to be affected by that momentum and move backwards as the main mass is moving forward. So it's not unexpected to find small objects of that kind after a disaster of this type.
00:33:22
Speaker
But anyway, for the purposes of this pipe, they want to point out, here's a bit of data that just seems too good to be true. You've got something that just fits the official story like a glove, and yet the provenance of it seems a little bit dodgy. And they contrast this, though, with things such as the fact that Flight 175, which hit one of the two towers, hit it between the 78th and 82nd floors.
00:33:49
Speaker
Now that's a fact, it's true, but unlike in the case of the Pentagon, there doesn't seem to be anything significant about the site of that particular impact. So they don't consider that for tuitus data, that's just data. But for tuitus stuff is where there is this element of it being particularly lucky for the official theory.
00:34:18
Speaker
Now, they go on to talk about this by they say, supporters of an official story do not normally find the lucky nature of fortuitous data problematic. Conspiracy theorists do, emphasizing the fact that the lucky nature of the data points towards a different explanation. Is the conspiracy theorists justified in holding this?
00:34:36
Speaker
Consider the Pentagon case again. How does the official story account for the vocation of the plane crash? Insofar as it is merely a plane hitting the Pentagon, the official story can account for this by pointing to the supposed terrorists who hijack Flight 77, period. But the official story is silent about why the plane hit the Pentagon where it actually hit the Pentagon.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I read this whole section and it just didn't feel convincing to me. It all just seemed quite, quite vague and quite sort of subjective. Furtuitous data is fortuitous because you've chosen to focus on a particular aspect of it.
00:35:15
Speaker
But I don't know that they sort of give a justification. Okay, yes, the plane hits the one reinforced wall of it, but why is that significant when the location of where it hit the other towers isn't? It only sort of really seems that way because you're choosing to focus on that one. It's particularly, you know, you're choosing to focus on this one passport that was found and not any of the other one. It just seems like more of a subjective choice than any sort of hard and fast principle they can point to.
00:35:43
Speaker
Now, this was a worry I had when I first read this paper. And I think it's in the thesis, it's definitely in the book, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories, published in 2016. Yes, that's correct. No, 2014, getting all my dates wrong. 2014, Pelgrave, Macmillan, probably not available in any decent bookseller because no one sells academic volumes, especially when they cost a hundred US dollars a pop. My argues there,
00:36:13
Speaker
that actually what they should be focusing on is the phenomena of fortunate data, which is data which is merely lucky. So isn't it lucky?
00:36:23
Speaker
from the perspective of the Pentagon, that Flight 77 hit that particular wall. And isn't it lucky for the investigators of the terrorist event of 9-11 that they found a passport belonging to one of the terrorists? Because unlikely things happen all the time. It's one of the few things mathematicians are really certain on. Unlucky events are happening constantly. That's how people win the lottery.
00:36:51
Speaker
The problem is when you get too much fortunate data that you start to see a pattern and you end up going
00:37:01
Speaker
This data isn't just lucky. It's too lucky at this point. There's a pattern of fortunate data which suggests that maybe it's not luck after all. Maybe the event has been engineered or people are manipulating the evidence.
00:37:22
Speaker
to make some theory look warranted when it isn't warranted. So they need to be looking for patterns of data, which then suggests there's a fortuitous pattern to the fortunate data. And then and only then are you justified in being suspicious about what's going on there. Their problem is they focus on single events and go, well, that's just too lucky to be true.
00:37:49
Speaker
But actually, you can't distinguish between it being too lucky to be true, and it just being lucky. And in fact, yeah, that's interesting that you say that because later on, they do give an example of a series of good luck. Whereas up until that point, they've just been talking about the individual ones. I always think that the one about the plane hitting the Pentagon is quite difficult because it's
00:38:13
Speaker
It's assuming intentions on the part of the pilot, and we'll never know what was going through the pilot's mind as they targeted the Pentagon. But you could tell stories, you know, they're choosing to assume that the fact that it approached the Pentagon from one side, then looped around and went into it from another side, shows that they'd singled out that that one particular side is the one they really wanted to crash into. But I mean, you could tell a story that they intended to go for that original side, but realized they weren't
00:38:43
Speaker
weren't not declining. What do you call it when a plane goes down? Diving. Descending. Descending. There we go. I'm a speaker of the English language. I know words. They realized they weren't descending fast enough to hit that one, so then had to loop around as they came in lowest and were then forced to go to that other side and it wasn't their choice at all. You know, you could make up a story to suit it either way and we'll just never know. So I don't know that that one
00:39:07
Speaker
The species since so many of the 911 911 911 conspiracy theories, in the pejorative sense, the ones that people think to be mad, weird or bad, often focus on how you can't really believe that these untrained Arab terrorists were able to fly planes, you might go well, actually, if we if we accept that,
00:39:34
Speaker
actually remarkable they hit the Pentagon at all. And so it probably was a random selection of wall depending on the pilot going, I need to hit that object. That's the wall I can get. I'm going for it now. Now, so in the paper, they say that
00:39:51
Speaker
The official story should always at least remark upon this fortuitous data. They don't have to say this fortuitous data invalidates our theory. They can, of course, just say, yep, it's true. It's just luck. It's just good luck. Or indeed, I mean, with the Pentagon, well, I guess it's kind of bad luck really for the terrorists, assuming they'd want to cause as much destruction as possible. It's bad luck that they happen to go into the most
00:40:14
Speaker
sturdy part of the building. But then sometimes they say, you can't always just appeal to luck. Sometimes it's not going to cut it. They say,
00:40:24
Speaker
This type of reasoning is an appeal to a vision of a principle formalized by Peter van Inwagen, an appeal to by John Leslie. We cannot explain an event by appealing to chance if a good explanation other than mere chance suggests itself. And here, they give the example of a person winning lotto 10 times in a row. Yes, it's very good luck to win once, super good luck to win twice, 10 times in a row, though. Now you're talking about a series of occurrences that does seem to, while not impossible,
00:40:53
Speaker
really does seem to stretch the bounds of possibility. And it does start to present itself to the idea that maybe you're cheating, maybe there is another explanation other than just good luck. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, yeah, that's the case where they start looking at patterns, because it is unusual that someone would win Lotto 10 times in a row. It's not impossible, once again, statistically, unlike the events actually happen more often than people think they will.
00:41:23
Speaker
But at the same time, if that person buys 10 winning Lotto tickets in a row from the same kiosk in the same store week after week after week, you might end up going, yeah, there's something a little bit suspicious about this run of good luck. Maybe there's some kind of inside job going on there.
00:41:47
Speaker
And so relating all of this back to how fortuitous data affects belief in conspiracy theories, they say, we suggest that if there is fortuitous data that supports the official story, that is, if there are highly fortunate incidences within the official story that suggest alternative explanations,
00:42:04
Speaker
Then supporters of the official story need to offer good reasons not to accept the conspiratorial account. Without such reasons, we submit that it is irrational to believe the official story instead of the conspiracy theory because of the fishy nature of the evidence for the official story. Or rather, we submit that it is rational to believe the conspiracy theory.
00:42:23
Speaker
So, I mean, they're setting out a template for when it can be rational to believe in a conspiracy theory, and it relies on the evidence. So a good, particularist approach. I'm not sure if I agree with this specific approach, especially that it all relies on the idea that a conspiracy theory runs counter to an official theory. Well, yes, and a point that Charles Picton has made time and time again about things like 9-11.
00:42:48
Speaker
If you believe in the events of 9-11 as promulgated by the official theory, you believe a conspiracy theory, because no matter what you think, Al-Qaeda were involved in a conspiracy to commit a terrorist plot.
00:43:05
Speaker
we theorized about that it turned out to be warranted. It's a warranted conspiracy theory. There's no contrast here between an official theory and a conspiracy theory. It's conspiracy theories all the way down. Indeed.
00:43:21
Speaker
So in the next section, they go to their worked example. The next section, Watergate and Fortuna Stata, they use the Watergate scandal as an example of where the Fortuna Stata relied upon by the official story shows that the conspiracy theory was the rational thing to believe in. Now, actually, so Mr. Nixon would like to step in and go, I am not a crook.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yep, well, too bad, Richard, you are. But no, they say that the Watergate scandal is both an accepted conspiracy theory, and it also contains at least one instance of fortuitous data, which is the only time I think they use the phrase an accepted conspiracy theory. And I'm not quite sure how an accepted conspiracy theory is different from an official story. This is the problem. They're talking about accepted conspiracy theories, despite the fact that they've bought Cody's definition.
00:44:11
Speaker
at which point that's an official theory. It's not an accepted conspiracy theory. That's an official theory. I thought they were talking about the role of fortuitous starter with respect to conspiracy theories. This is a conspiracy theory by their definition. I mean, I suppose you could say at the time, the Nixon was the president. So his version of events was the official story. But I mean, certainly these days, it's very much the accepted version of events that the conspiracy theory was true.
00:44:39
Speaker
And of course, so the bit of fortuitous data that they say counted against the official that is Nixon's story and counted for a conspiracy theory is the missing 18 and a half minutes from Nixon's tapes. So we all remember Nixon was known to record everything that went on in his office and yet
00:44:58
Speaker
record secretly. Because I mean, this is the this is the kind of fascinating thing about Nixon's downfall is that no one knew aside from Nixon and some of his closest aides that he was recording what was going on in the Oval Office until someone let slip that Nixon had installed recording devices, which would be useful for Nixon historians to be able to look back on his presidency.
00:45:27
Speaker
And it turns out if you're going to install recording devices in your own office and effectively spy upon yourself, what you shouldn't do is engage in any conspiratorial activity, which is captured on those tapes.
00:45:43
Speaker
And so then when he had these tapes, and there just happened to be 18 and a half minutes, that just wasn't there and nobody quite knew why. And it certainly seemed like, based on the context, those 18 and a half minutes would have shown that Nixon knew about the rum doings at the Watergate. Was I still maintain those 18 and a half minutes was Nixon doing John Wayne impressions?
00:46:07
Speaker
And he was just so embarrassed by them. But he went, no, you have to get rid of that tape. Although I'm told his Alfred Hitchcock was very, very bad as well. I am Alfred Hitchcock and this is the Twilight Zone.
00:46:23
Speaker
something that I imagine that's exactly what he sounds like, but we'll never know, because those eight and a half minutes are gone. But no, so back in the paper, they say, this then is a prime example of fortuitous evidence that the tapes had such a gap while showing no involvement on the part of Nixon. One, supports Nixon's story, i.e. the official story, but two, the gap in recording is, quote unquote, too good to be true, which suggests that Nixon is hiding something. And finally, three, the tapes gap goes unexplained by the official story.
00:46:53
Speaker
At the very least, accepting the official story, Nixon's version, means ruling out the suggested alternative that arises from the gap in the tapes.
00:47:01
Speaker
So that's the example I want to look at. We have this what they want to call fortuitous data. The official story at the time did not account for the fortuitousness of this data. And when you look at an alternative theory that Nixon had indeed been conspiring and that this missing evidence would have proved it if it were still to be found, it shows that the conspiracy theory is the irrational one to believe in and believe in it
00:47:31
Speaker
people did. Although still, I mean, as we always said, it took it took some two years to get booted out. It wasn't it wasn't accepted. During the the whole Fandango. So allegations came out. He ran a successful election campaign. He was more popular than ever. And then he shot himself in his own foot, metaphorically, metaphorically, yes.
00:47:58
Speaker
And so there we have it basically. They've suggested a particularist approach. They've defended the use of a particularist approach. They've brought up this idea of fortuitous data as being the decider in rational versus irrational conspiracy theories and given their example, which leads them all to their conclusion.
00:48:16
Speaker
and they conclude thusly. Consider the path we have traced so far. We've argued that believing in conspiracies cannot be irrational just in virtue of there being conspiracies. That is, we've rejected the generalist approach for a particularist account of conspiracies. We've tried to substantiate this shift by suggesting that there have been uncovered conspiracies.
00:48:37
Speaker
Part and parcel of the particularist approach is the examination of evidence, which we turn to next. We suggested that if supporting evidence fits the fortuitous mould, this was one criterion for determining if a conspiracy theory is potentially rational to believe in. Again, we suggested that when an official story contains fortuitous data, this is a strike against the rationality of believing in the official story and a point in favour of accepting the conspiracy theory that opposes it. If the supporter of the official story can't rule out the alternative suggested account.
00:49:07
Speaker
In support of fortuitous data as a criterion for discrimination, we've tried to give a real-world example of a now-accepted conspiracy theory, Watergate, for which the official story contained fortuitous data. Of course, we have suggested that other real-world incidents have exemplars of fortuitous data too, i.e. the passport case and the Pentagon case, but we refrain from pronouncing one over the other on these more recent events. Seriously, are these guys 9-11 truthers?
00:49:30
Speaker
I do not know. I must admit when I first read the paper, I did think that these were just cute examples. Now that you've pointed out that actually the way that they use them is kind of a just asking questions approach.
00:49:47
Speaker
maybe they were maybe this is the first 911 truth paper within the philosophical community. It certainly isn't the last, but it is kind of interesting that no one really talks about that aspect. But then again, no one really talks about the fortuitous data aspect. Everyone talks about Buting and Taylor with respect to the nomenclature of particularism and generalism.
00:50:13
Speaker
the rest of their contribution to the philosophical canon does go largely unnoticed. Well, yeah, I mean, so having read through the whole thing, I did think, yeah, obviously, there's there's the enormous significance of these of this terminology being introduced, which I assume once was there a lot of hey, yeah, sort of reactions when it showed up. That's it. That's the idea I was trying to put my finger on. So
00:50:42
Speaker
I was thinking about this earlier today, and I think I might be the person who helped popularize those terms. I used them in the thesis. I used them in the book. I cite Buting and Taylor quite widely in the first suite of papers that I produce after my PhD.
00:51:05
Speaker
And I think people start picking up on the term, because I'm spending so much time promoting the terminology. So certainly when I read the paper went aha, those are useful terms to describe two positions on what you take to be the warrant of conspiracy theory as a class, if you're a generalist,
00:51:27
Speaker
or the worry that there is no class of conspiracy theories we consider to be prima facie unwarranted, which is the particulars camp. I think people then picked up on those terms, because I spent so much time going, look, this is a really useful way to demarcate the work that we philosophers are doing.
00:51:46
Speaker
from work that is found elsewhere. I might be wrong about that. I could probably do a literature review and see whether anyone else is citing Buting and Taylor before me, but I have a suspicion I might be the person responsible for promoting these people's work and thus promoting these terms in common usage in the literature now.
00:52:10
Speaker
Well, there you go. And of course, I mean, we should say that these are very useful new terms, but they apply to positions that people already had. They just hadn't come upon the language to demarcate their positions. But yeah, I mean, as far as the rest of the paper goes, I'm certainly not convinced the whole fortuitous data thing. I mean, I understand the intuition that we should be suspicious when things sound too good to be true.
00:52:35
Speaker
But what counts as too good to be true, I think will depend, can be quite subjective and influenced by your sort of prior beliefs and what you were inclined to believe. And I mean, in practice, we hear this sort of thing come up a lot of the time in conspiracy theories that we would generally think of being as unwarranted. We see a lot of, you know, oh, that's a little too convenient, isn't it? That's
00:53:01
Speaker
You know, what wasn't it like? I mean, it comes across as the sort of innuendo that things like loose change are full of a lot of, you know, are we really expected to believe that blah, blah, blah, isn't it convenient that blah, blah, blah, which it just doesn't seem like it's a strong enough sort of foundation to be making claims about whole classes of conspiracy theories.
00:53:25
Speaker
No, I agree. It's a nice idea, and I do think there is something to patterns of data, given that we tend to infer to things based upon patterns of data. If it turns out there's too much fortunate data being used to support a particular theory, and the theory appears to be too lucky, then that is grounds to be suspicious of that pattern of data.
00:53:52
Speaker
But we are kind of operating with assumptions about how we think the world works at that point. And we might just be wrong about that. You can win the lottery 10 times in a row. There's nothing that actually prevents that event from occurring. And it would look very suspicious, but it might arise naturally.
00:54:13
Speaker
And so just because a pattern of data looks too lucky, that doesn't mean it's too lucky to be true, especially if you're only looking at single data points and go, Oh, isn't it lucky they hit that particular wall? Okay, so
00:54:30
Speaker
Yeah, but at the same time, maybe they just did. Maybe they just did. And, you know, some passports are going to survive a plane crash due to the way that things move around in a plane as it's crashing into an object. So, yeah, I mean, it's lucky that a terrorist passport survived. But at the same time, it's not unlikely in the sense that it could never happen.
00:54:56
Speaker
It probably happens more often than we think. But actually, this would be a great place to start thinking about things like the Lockerbie bombings and the like, cases of other terrorist events and go, actually, what was left behind in those events? Be quite curious to look at that stuff.
00:55:14
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, I think that sort of equivocation, the going from talking about single events to then talking about a series of events like winning Lotto 10 times is a bit of a weakness of the paper as well. There's a bit of a leap there that they either don't acknowledge that they're making or aren't aware that they're making. Well, yes, because when you go from the single event to the really, really unlikely event of winning Lotto 10 times in a row,
00:55:44
Speaker
are the is the errant data which is fortuitous in the discussion they're having is it like the latter case winning Lotto 10 times in a row which seems really really suspicious or is it the more minor kind of
00:56:00
Speaker
hitting a particular wall, which seems moderately suspicious, but certainly nowhere near as suspicious as someone who says, Oh, I've just won five billion pounds for the 10th time in a row this week. Hmm.
00:56:16
Speaker
And, of course, the large part of the post-defending particularism part of the paper rests on this definition of conspiracy theories that says they're always in opposition to the official theory. And that's something we've talked about before in the past that I certainly don't buy. I don't think it's a necessary or particularly useful distinction to make in the definition.
00:56:40
Speaker
But a lot of this paper rests on the idea that you're deciding between a conspiracy theory and an official story and what is the rational way to make that decision. So yeah, I'm not convinced. Significant, but ultimately I don't buy the main thrust of their paper.
00:57:00
Speaker
Yes, as I say, it's a seminal paper because of the way the terminology gets introduced to the debate and the fact that that terminology is now kind of standard in the philosophy of conspiracy theory. But it is also interesting that that's not the topic of the paper. The topic of the paper is a discussion of fortuitous data.
00:57:22
Speaker
and I might be the only person who's actually fisked that particular part of the paper and hasn't had any real contribution to the ongoing literature at all.
00:57:32
Speaker
Hmm, there we go. So I think that's a good place to call this episode to an end. We of course have a bonus episode coming up where understand things get a little drastic. All they do, we're going to be talking about a decentralized radical autonomous search team investigating COVID-19. And you won't believe what links them to a bank in this country.
00:57:57
Speaker
You might, after we've explained it all. Well, but only Patreon will ever know about that. That's true. Yeah, it's a bonus episode for our patrons, whom we love and cherish above all others in this world. If you'd like to become a patron, just go to Betrayon and search for the podcaster's guide to the galaxy. Galaxy? Did I finally do it? You did. You finally have all this time. We've had a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. You've committed the era that I've committed several times.
00:58:27
Speaker
podcast is going to the conspiracy you might as well just give the entire game away and go actually we we're just a spin off of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy actually we should now become the hitchhiker's guide to the conspiracy we probably should actually yeah anyway uh this episode has gone on long enough i think so um i'm simply going to call things to a close by saying goodbye and i'm going to call things to a close by going good
00:58:56
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy is Josh Addison and me, Dr. M.R. Exdenteth. You can contact us at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com, and please do consider supporting the podcast via our Patreon. And remember, it's just a step to the left.