New book on conspiracies and Shermer's skeptical take on the topic
In Scientific American, skeptic Michael Shermer presents his take on why people believe in conspiracies, even the most unlikely ones. Shermer raves about a new book on the subject by Arthur Goldwag, titled "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more." I find secret societies and cults to be immensely fascinating, so I'm looking forward to reading this book. And while much of Shermer's skeptical view makes sense to me, I think it's often more fun to imagine that some ultraweird and occult conspiracies do exist. From Scientific American:
"Why People Believe in Conspiracies" (SciAm)
Buy "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more" (Amazon)But as former Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy once told me (and he should know!), the problem with government conspiracies is that bureaucrats are incompetent and people can’t keep their mouths shut. Complex conspiracies are difficult to pull off, and so many people want their quarter hour of fame that even the Men in Black couldn’t squelch the squealers from spilling the beans. So there’s a good chance that the more elaborate a conspiracy theory is, and the more people that would need to be involved, the less likely it is true.
Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition.
Examples of these processes can be found in journalist Arthur Goldwag’s marvelous new book, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies (Vintage, 2009), which covers everything from the Freemasons, the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group to black helicopters and the New World Order. “When something momentous happens, everything leading up to and away from the event seems momentous, too. Even the most trivial detail seems to glow with significance,” Goldwag explains, noting the JFK assassination as a prime example...
"Why People Believe in Conspiracies" (SciAm)
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Oh don't be silly, of course there are conspiracies.
Just look at any history book, they are full of them. *That* is why people believe in conspiracies, they exist. Does the OPEC conspire to rise oil prices, such that oil countries can get more money? OF COURSE. That's their stated purpose anyway. Or what about the recently released Kreml transcripts that prove beyond all doubt what was known for a long time - that Germany was the only country that really felt like it was a good thing to be reunited, while the rest of the world forced a grin and discussed if and how to prevent it behind everyone's backs.
The other question is, if any given conspiracy theory is true. And most of them aren't. As usual, 90% of everything is crap (and 9% of the rest is old or obvious).
Actually, everyone should try to preserve an open mind and *use* it. You'll probably find several very true conspiracies and lots of publicly accepted ones that are not. (Like the old 9/11 Afghan-Taliban connection that never existed. Those guys came from Saudi Arabia (17 of them), Egypt, Lebanon and Libya. - Iraq is also not on the list.)
You may even find out that if it seems like Kim Yong Il acts like a madman, this may be a consequence of being treated like a madman ...
These people annoy me so much.
I engaged a few of them today (sept 11th) outside the world trade center.
They claimed that the passengers on the hijacked flights are all still alive, and then they accused me of being a zionist JEW.
The problem with the crazy, fake conspiracies is they de-legitimize explorations of the real ones.
I believe the main determinative factor is political agency. The less a person feels connected to the mainstream political process, the more likely they are to believe conspiracy theories that indirectly explain their powerlessness. The more connected and invested, the less likely. So when Bush and the Republicans were in power, conspiracy theories were way more prevalent on the left (9/11 was staged by Cheney to benefit Unocal, etc.) Now that the Republicans are totally out of power, there's a 180 degree shift, and it's the right wing heavily promoting conspiracy theories (Obama is secretly planning to institute death panels, socialist-fascism, etc. etc.) If that's true, that also means conspiracy theories will never go away, but at least in democratic societies they'll ebb and flow and never get pervasive. In autocratic societies, pretty much the entire public has no agency, and so conspiracy theories are rife.
That's just the kind of thing you'd expect a REPTILIAN to say.
@TP1024, you wrote:
"Oh don't be silly, of course there are conspiracies."
Where did I write that there is no such thing as a conspiracy? Where did Shermer writer that? In fact, he wrote, "Conspiracies do happen, of course."
Did you actually read this post? Or the article I link to?
The most astounding conspiracy of all is the development of public education. It began about 2,500 years ago. It has never been a secret and has never wavered from its purpose; everyone involved has freely admitted that their aim was to teach everybody to be good slaves. You can read the history here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
we make conspiracy since it is just too painful to accept how stupid we are.
@Brainspore
Now now, the reptilian agenda is perfectly peaceful and benign. Trust me.
Another bias that leads people to believe in conspiracies is that it's comforting to believe that SOMEONE is in control, even if it's a malicious, evil someone, rather than accept the alternative, that NO ONE is in control.
@ The Lizardman:
"Peaceful and benign" by your standards, sure- but some of us don't want live bugs to be a regular part of our menu.
And your disguise sucks, by the way.
the molluscs pre-date the reptiles. Noob.
The word is apophenia.
All you have to do is label something a conspiracy theory and presto! Anyone who might want to discuss the possibility is marginalized. No thinking(tm) required!
I love the term "conspiratorial cognition".
@Brainspore
I am hiding in plain sight, seems to be working quite well actually. Try the bugs, they are good and good for you.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see WTC7 mentioned in a rather intelligent way today by the BBC. It boggles the mind how many otherwise very smart people still believe the US Govt. line about what really happened on 9/11. We'll probably never know the truth, the whole story, all the characters involved in our lifetimes, but then again.....?
JEWELS,
Don't you mean 250 years ago? Or does Ol' [so.krayts] have to take the rap for that too?
I'm skeptical of skepticism.
Anyone who subscribes to these types of things should read the "Illuminatus" trilogy. It may take a year or two to recover, but after that you'll be pretty much immune to this nonsense.
The Rothschilds went to Mars in 1957. Fact.
Apparently there is a special brand of gullible people who like to call themselves "sceptic".
The easiest way to prove that government conspiracies (on the order of Roswell or Kennedy or fake moon landings or 9/11) are untenable is to work for, or closely with, a government agency.
After working for several years on various government contracts, I'm pretty much convinced that, as Liddy is quoted, the government, as an organization, is too incompetent and people too likely to talk to maintain any decent-sized conspiracy.
That's even ignoring the antics of our senators and representatives, none of whom I would trust with keeping a surprise birthday party secret, much less the details of world-changing conspiracy.
Basically, as I get older and work with some of the folks in Washington, I realize that everyone in the government, from the lowliest aide or lobbyist to the president, is not really any different from my coworkers and friends. It helps to understand that, but it's still a really scary thought.
@20 I don't believe that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism
@10:
That's a darn good point you make.
for pure conspiracy entertainment (bathroom reading) "Behold a Pale Horse" by William Cooper. Mine was borrowed by my conspracy minded buddy, never to be seen again. Conspracy to keep me from the "truth". HA!
Not sure why, but yesterday I stumbled upon the RollingStone article from '07 about E. Howard Hunt and his deathbed confessions about JFK.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt
He named names and drew the lines to connect them.
We've been taking down your names. Carry on.
What about the CIA. The CIA is by definition a conspiracy. No one doubts that the CIA is real. They are only a conspiracy that keeps everything they do top secret.
What about the Manhattan project. The Manhattan project was a conspiracy. No one doubts that it is real. The proof is in the pudding.
I think the question here isn't whether or not people would talk, it's whether anyone actually listens or believes those people. I disagree with the primary assertion here that it matters.
It's not that surprising that people might talk about a conspiracy and just be ignored, especially with the masses that simply refuse to believe anything negative about a given group.
A good example is Dick Cheney. It's been demonstrated a few times that he's doing things that at the very least could be considered shady, but ask the average Republican what they think about him, and he's a stand up guy. Add to that the glut of misinformation that comes from the news and it's even more difficult to know what to believe.
So, organizing a conspiracy doesn't necessarily require everyone to be in on it. As X-Files taught me, it just requires enough plausible deniability to protect the key players. :)
Bias toward belief works in both directions.
Many people are unwilling to consider the evidence government conspiracies (including a government-9-11 conspiracy) because the consequence of such a scenario is too frightening to accept.
And yet, history has shown (Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods) that governments are willing to conspire to harm innocent people including their own citizens to accomplish their political goals.
It should also be relatively easy for intelligence agencies to disrupt discovery of their conspiratorial operations merely by flooding the conspiracy theorist world with alternate false positives, thus discrediting and drowning out any leads that may be factual.
I think the conspiracy theorists themselves planted the demolition charges in the WTC buildings.
They were trying to prove themselves right.
And I suspect the conspiracy theorists assassinated JFK, too, and set up several suspicious false front groups as suspects so they'd have something to yammer about for decades.
Oh, and all those people victimized by mysterious "alien abductions?"
Not aliens. It was conspiracy theorists in costume.
RE G Gordon Liddy. Anyone ever hear of special operation that he was involved in that succeeded?
My benchmarks are "Is this too conveniently released?" You know like Bush and the al Qaeda or prisoner "confessions" or the terror alerts that never led to anything excepting causing fear and anxiety.
Does the investigation lead to a dead end? Like has anyone found a family in Saudi Arabia that lost sons in the attacks?
Is the whole thing just too elaborate? Like when Nixon was covering up his white house tapes and the person who ratted him out was a C i lying A "former" employee. The Deep Throat character that kept the investigation going by two naive reporters for the Washington Post was a senior F lying B I official. Sorry there just too many cooks in this oven. It was a conspiracy, by whom I doubt we will ever know.
Do parts pop up in the mainstream media and then die when they should be a Big Story? Check out the Phoenix program in Vietnam. Little pieces kept popping up but then silence.
Had a stoned First Sergeant in Vietnam that told me unbelievable tales of participating in cold blooded murders. I was still a "believer," I thought it disgusting that a man of his rank would tell such a horrible story.
He wasn't lying.
Now there is historical debate about how many murders happened, lowest number 10 thousand, highest number 70 thousand. There was a story somewhere that said that basically the North Vietnamese in Vietnam infiltrated our "intelligence" system and suckered the us invaders into killing all of the heads of the moderates so when they took over there would be no opposition. Who knows?
Do I believe there are conspiracies. Yes especially among huge corporations that rig bids and split up the work.
Conspiracies that buy up legislatures like I would buy a sack of popcorn.
Does the mob qualify as a conspiracy? Yes, there really is a Mafia. I've personally worked for them as a low grade runner and bookkeeper in NYC,
hung out in the bar run by the head of the Denver mob's son who ran a call girl ring out of a jazz club.
Been threatened by their thugs when I accidentally dated a soon to be exwife of a capo in Denver who had taken me into her husband's
club without telling me. She, also, failed to tell me she had been just released from committal to a state mental home for attacking men with baseball bats. Never saw her again.
This is the same Michael Shermer who would also condescendingly "explain" why people believe so passionately in crazy things like "global warming" ... until he decided that particular position was no longer politically tenable, in 2006 or so?
This meme, that only crazy people disbelieve official proclamations, has often been promoted in totalitarian societies. To the U.S. it is "new."
How does Michael Shermer decide what propositions are foolish and deserving of ridicule, and which ones are reasonable and appropriate for debate? Why, he looks to "evangelical Christians" -- really!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-flipping-point
Go to sleep knowing the world is a rational place.
I guess it's easy for me to believe in conspiracy, since whenever military or government people are questioned about anything sensitive on the news, they tend to uphold the principle of secrecy very well, even to a frustrating degree.
I would guess that the ability to keep a secret is actually not that hard if it is ingrained well enough.
If you're into conspiracies (especially if you "think it's often more fun to imagine that some ultraweird and occult conspiracies do exist"), I highly recommend RAW's Everything is Under Control. The scholarship is top-notch, and everything is presented with the High Ambiguity/High Weirdness that no one could do as well as RAW (RIP).
QFT. It's not a conspiracy if it's not a secret! That's what the conspiro buffs won't admit; deep down inside, they all believe that if only the people knew, then the conspirators would be brought to justice. Sadly, no! Let Leonard Cohen break it down for you if you have trouble wrapping your brains around the concept.
Nixon was a conspiracy
http://www.alternet.org/story/12666/
I like Iain Banks' concept of Synthetic Evil.
some would argue it's just human culture.
remember when photos were evidence?
http://repairstemcell.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/president-bush-eats-kitten-1259.jpg
@#34 raises a very interesting point, that remarkably I am seeing for the first time. Has anyone ever met or heard from any families in Saudi Arabia that lost sons on those planes on 9/11!?!?! I would be amazed if it was covered somewhere and I had missed it.
The word skeptic here is being wielded, Orwellian-like, backwards against actual skepticism.
If you believe what the government tells you, that doesn't make you a "skeptic." If you repeat the words that everyone must say in order to get along and get ahead, that doesn't make you a "skeptic."
And any time somebody really wants to go on and on about his opponent's supposed mental problems and unconscious motivations, one might wonder why it's become so important to change the subject away from the facts actually in dispute.
If you believe G. Gordon Liddy, of all people, that "someone would have talked", then let me ask:
Jimmy Hoffa?