A Reasoned Conspirology, or The Right Way to Wear a Foil Hat

Eugène-François Vidocq

Here we are going to review the typical talking points against the so called conspirology, to reveal what is wrong with them, and to decide how to respond on them. What makes our task easier is the fact that they are basically few and being repeated and reused again and again. Nothing is going to be said about particular conspiracy theories, since any of them can be argumented both for and against.

— Nobody is interested to spy on you. You aren't any notable person that can be target of somebody's evil plans. Put a foil hat on!

That is right, but also wrong. This is the most basic talking point that sounds even boring. Calling an opponent crazy is the dumbest psychological manipulation.

How to distinguish between sanity and madness? An old lady screaming that her neighbors try to kill her with microwave rays is probably paranoid. Edward Snowden saying that the intelligence services eavesdrop our telephones and read our mail is probably sane. What is the difference between them? It is in the focus.

A real paranoid believes that somebody is spying on him personally, because his illness is a manic spectrum disorder, which means that he views himself as the center of the Universe. He is great, he is a new Jesus or Napoleon, and this is why they target personally him.

F. Nietzsche said that, if people don't have an explanation for something, they see a malicious intent behind it. However, in everyday life, someone's intent can really lie behind the events that we see; it's just not necessarily malicious from that one's viewpoint, and does not target specifically us.

A farmer has installed a scarecrow to protect his harvest. He is not an enemy of one particular crow; he just cares for his business. If the crows could think up a theory that the farmer conspires against them, they would have a good meal at that farm. But no, it's paranoia, it's totally crazy to believe in a fake man on a pole! Put a foil band on your beak!

— That's right, you aren't a notable person. They will make and implement their plans, and won't care about you and whether you view them as malicious.

— That's fiction! You watch too many trash movies, but real life is different! You want it to be a thriller, but in reality it's boring.

They pretend to know real life, but they don't.

Yes, in reality it's boring. There are no super-evil guys trying to destroy the Galaxy, but mere ordinary guys with their financial and political interests.

Do you realize that real life is not just métro, boulot, dodo (French: subway, job, sleep)? Some guys have so much money that their everyday life is to purchase a football club, to travel several countries in a single day, even to start a war. What you imagine as a colossal project possible only for a global secret organization from James Bond movies with underwater skyscrapers and flying tanks, for them is just their usual business.

When they throw in an idea on a conference, thousands of people start trying to implement this idea, because they want to get at least a little bit of their money and influence. Always take the scale into account. You are the boss of a five persons team, but they can give orders to millions. You buy a “Mars” chocolate; they plan a flight to Mars.

No conspiracies are necessary to make significant changes in the world. Mere mistakes of the top managers of global banks can collapse the economy of a whole country. This happens quite often, you can read it in the news. And this results in social processes in this country that can look like an evil conspiracy from an outsider's point of view.

Yes, it's boring. The boss of an intelligence agency can issue a boring order to his subordinates. They can follow this order and kill many innocent people. Then they can lie that it's been a terrorist attack… There is nothing unreal in this. Maybe you really watch too many trash movies? Maybe those movies are being produced to persuade people that such things happen in movies only?

So, why do you keep on arguing that it's all fiction? Maybe you are from that intelligence agency that is doing it? Otherwise it's strange of you to defend them so staunchly. Think about this: even if they have not been doing it by now, they can anyway. There is nothing that could stop them. Is not it really this that scares you?

Real evil guys don't eat kids for lunch; they can even adopt kids from poor countries and give money to charities. They are humans, not movie characters. They just run their business and don't care about the consequences for common people like you.

— Big finance and big politics don't look like spy movies. They are just boring everyday business for those who are in. If you think otherwise, it's because you want them to be exciting like in the movies, instead of scary as they are in real life.

— First try to lead a small business. Then you'll realize how difficult it is to organize anything, how nearly impossible it is to organize anything on global scale, and how unreal it is to keep everything secret.

This point is plain stupid. Its aim is to humiliate the opponents with their assumed lack of experience.

First, small and big businesses exist, and are sufficiently well organized to be able to keep on running. Moreover, the more people work there, the more opportunities exist to correct a mistake if it's been made.

Look at soldiers marching, or at employees at a corporate training session. How can those thousands of people synchronously perform their rituals? Is there any conspiracy behind of this? Then the collective activities of ants are a conspiracy too.

Second, why should there be any perfect organization of the process? This is a requirement that nobody has set. There can be traitors at war, risk factors in business, and human mistakes everywhere. However, when the scale of the business is large, the law of big numbers starts to work on your side. If you sell smartphones in a village, you will not make much, but if you sell them in the whole world, you will do, even if some rogue states don't buy them. And then you can call those who criticize your product “conspiracy theorists”; it sells well in the whole world, who can object to it?

Third, secrets do leak, but finding a truth among heaps of hot news in media of doubtful credibility and conspiracy theories can be a real challenge. If a retired politician tells reporters that his government was plotting something, people will think that he has dementia. (And if he does not have dementia, he will never tell reporters anything like this.)

Do you think that you will believe in UFOs and aliens as soon as you see them? Maybe yes, but if you do, other people will tell you to put a foil hat on.

Finally, why do you think that those participating in a conspiracy should know it? Ants carry their tiny twigs and never see the ant queen. Ordinary employees do their job and don't know what the big bosses are planning. What secrets can they leak — the size of that tiny twig?

— I've been manager of small and bigger business. It's no rocket science to organize something.

— You say so just because you and your nearest and dearest have not encountered this problem. Otherwise you would change your mind!

This is actually an inverted variant of the previous talking point. It appeals to personal experience the same way, and also presses on emotions.

First, it's a manipulation that tries to put blame on you for troubles that can eventually happen somewhere beyond your control: “What if something happens to someone's grandma just because I questioned the official narrative?” Maybe it could even make sense, if it weren't just an inverted survivorship bias:

— You are saying this just because you've got into trouble. Alas, such a bad luck…

So the seemingly reasonable argument from personal experience turns into a battle of two statistics that are both biased and can be just plain false. Neither my nor your family and friends make any decisive statistics on national or even global scale.

Second, what has to change in order for you to agree with such an argument from someone else's experience? You will change your mind if you personally encounter the things that someone else has told you? OK, you have done it, but does it mean that now you know the truth? No way! It means only that anybody can easily convince you. If you get scared sufficiently much, you can start to believe in whatever explanation you have been told. Then, if you get scared once again and given a directly opposite explanation of this, will you change your beliefs again? Why not? As for me, I would lose respect to myself if I did so.

— If your position is based solely on your personal experience, it's not worth anything, because it can be easily disproved by an opposite experience of someone else.

— Experts (scientists, doctors, engineers) say so, and I trust them. You are not an expert and cannot say anything on this matter.

In theory, this should be the most reasonable point. Really: how can someone argue with experts on their field of expertise? They have been doing it for decades, they make their living on it, they have degrees and diplomas; how can you compare your ignorant opinion with their professional knowledge?

Unfortunately, it would be so simple only in an ideal world. It's even sad that it does not work this way; the world would be better if it did.

In fact, this is a lazy argument by appeal to authority. It can be turned down by a similar argument: “Those scientists say so, but other scientist say otherwise”. You reply that they are just science freaks — but how can you know it? You say that you aren't an expert in this area, right? Therefore, you cannot know for sure, who are real experts and who are freaks. They may know it, but you can only believe them or not.

Looking deeper into this, it's worth noticing the remark that those named experts make their living on their area of expertise. Unfortunately, the human factor can manifest itself even in science. It will be those experts who are paid to “scientifically prove” the narrative that politicians promote. It will be them, again, to defend old theories against younger scholars who want to disprove them. It's, once again, “experts” who “prove in tests” the wonderful properties of drinks and bubblegum that the advertisements claim.

And, finally: it was the religious “experts” who burned Giordano Bruno and condemned Galileo Galilei.

— Rats are experts in garbage. They say that garbage is good for environment. Trust the rats! Make more garbage!

***

Here your opponent is out of his arguments and starts calling you “idiot” and “conspiracy theorist”. He does not argue anymore; he is just sure that he is right and you are crazy. And others are crazy too. Only he is sane and always right.

Now, put a foil hat on his head.

Translated by Milchar