I like the conspiracy theory/practice distinction and I hope Ed will write more on how we could pay more attention to the latter.
Noam Chomsky presents lots of evidence about outrageous acts of American government in his books, and he always claimed that it all comes from official and open government sources. Yet most people are either unaware or refuse to believe it anyway.
These are conspiracies done openly, because almost nobody wants to go through and find the smoking gun in the heaps of otherwise boring government documents.
One of my favorite Noam Chomsky moments is when a 9-11 "truther" is able to ask him a question about what he believes about the 9-11 conspiracy theories.
Chomsky responds with the typical comment that it would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to have so many people keep the secret that it doesn't even make sense.
But he continues to say that the US government has openly killed 100s of thousands of civilians around the globe, why would 3000 killed more be interesting at all? Essentially pointing out that you don't need the complexity of conspiracy theory to realize that the US government actively participates in large scale murder openly and all the time.
> Noam Chomsky presents lots of evidence about outrageous acts of American government in his books, and he always claimed that it all comes from official and open government sources. Yet most people are either unaware or refuse to believe it anyway.
Such is the power of the brand and the "good guys" narrative that facts often have little to do with it. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason their way in to.
It's easy to love the USA when it's not your neighborhood they're bombing[1], or your friends they're hiding forever in torture prisons without trial[2], or your children they're kidnapping and raping[3].
There's a lot in that idea to cover and I would actually think that it may be worth academic study. I see parallels to how institutions and governments are created etc...
Conspiracies happen constantly because people conspire to do nefarious things all the time. However nowadays the framework for evaluating those nefarious things (conspiracy theories) has been completely negated by those in corporate media conflating it with insanity and baseless, nonsensical accusations.
And there's a reason for that, which Snowden touches on. Namely, the world in its current form is largely run by such nefarious schemes. The bad guys won a long time ago. And by taking away the language we might even use to talk about what they did, and the scale of it, they have further insulated their power.
He says thhat conspiracy is inherently anti+democratic, so here is the antidote, strengthening democracy.
Another great point is in his last paragraph, that conspiracy theories are mostly bottom up events. You have a whole demographic doing conspiracy theorizing instead of talking about what it looks in practice.
There just was a president whose whole game was running a circus, everything was about the guy and his idea of The Enemy. Nothing of substance and nothing but misdirection.
Another problem is that day to day journalism isn’t epistemological, it’s just reporting, so you just get a flat view of what is happening.
The other reason for that, which he also touches on, is that conspiracies are now tied up in the narrative that undergirds identity, especially political identity. The extent of truth in a conspiracy theory isn't that relevant to the partisan news orgs. Be it systemic racism, lab leak hypothesis, influence of certain lobby groups, etc.
Or just question in general the motivation behind the decisions made by those in charge.
There are some very obviously dumb conspiracies that have no basis in reality, there are some possibly far out there conspiracies that could have some merit and then there's conspiracies that seemed ridiculous but actually turned out to be true.
The world is not black and white...it's very grey.
Again, I find it odd these things tend to all be labeled under one giant 'conspiracy theory' label. Much like any theories, some are possibly valid, others very obviously not.
Categorizing these things together as has been done in recent years makes no sense.
Personally, I have a tendency to lump them together because they always seem to be propagated by people with certain characteristics.
- They think "questioning everything" makes them smart even though many questions are answered to a point where being contrarian is irrational.
- They're generally just anti-intellectual. They enjoy talking about stuff without introducing any rigor.
- Probably the most interesting to me; they tend to have rather isolated jobs. I suppose they haven't been exposed to incompetence at scale.
You're right, it's not correct to just lump everything into one bucket. But when they seem to be pushed by a different incarnation of the same person every time, I get desensitized. Especially because, when I do bite and ask some follow up questions, I never seem to get any answers.
My favorite example of this is the tinfoil hat conspiracy of the early 2000’s. An open joke in the tech community that the government is always listening and knows what you do online.
> Categorizing these things together as has been done in recent years makes no sense.
I think it not only makes sense, but it was a brilliant strategy, the results of which can be seen on Reddit and even here, if the topic is other than a direct abstract discussion of conspiracy theories that is: it is a powerful subconscious heuristic, it has been very widely deployed, and can be activated when necessary.
I think the purpose of many conspiracy theories is simply to reduce trust in media. If you doubt everything then any theory is as good as any other. So you might as well trust the people who speak most loudly and convincingly.
That is because we have another word for it. Probability. If something crosses a threshold of being highly improbable yet people still believe it we call it a conspiracy theory.
You can think of it as humid weather vs rain. That’s just a spectrum too. And yes the world is grey but when it rains I’ll be damned not to know the difference.
YouTubers, TV shows, hollywood, newspapers make fun of conspiracy theorists every day for millions of views. That's how peoples opinions are formed.
There's also an amplifying effect where only unpopular people voice unpopular ideas - either they don't pick up on the social cues, or lack a sense of shame, or simply aren't very bright. Its a feedback loop adding to the stigma.
A group of people who organize to advocate for a cause are an NGO, and "affinity group", or a dangerous conspiracy or maybe even cult; depending on if you agree with them... by modern usage.
Is The Federalist Society a conspiracy? They have open meetings. How about labor unions?
Did you read the article? His answer is yes, all organized action qualifies as a conspiracy, and that it's important to distinguish between conspiracy theory and conspiracy practice
This goes to the heart of the mentality of full-time conspiracy theorists.
They aren't interested in conspiracies. They are largely marginalised lonely people looking for a hobby which provides status, an addiction, and a sense of control/power.
Conspiracy theorists engage in the free association of concepts which "Seem Important" and derive entirely uninformed connections between them for the sake of creating "insider knowledge".
The "boring conspiracies" all require you to be in the system, and fundamnetally, not marginalized. Broadly, you probably have to: have gone to university, understand recent political history, are across the news; have been familiar with the operation of business, governments and nation states. Probably have either met, or know via (eg., university): journalists, politicians, business leaders, etc. Or today, eg., listen to podcasts by these people.
If you dont have this knowledge, you really have very little idea of how the world works.
"Real Conspiracies" are "boring" in the sense that they are a result of obvious incentives that people have in highly complex systems which require quite an elite level of understanding to fully parse.
Conspiracy theorising, "chasing the addiction" through hours of youtube videos, blogs, -- connecting the dots -- etc. is really just an erzats video game played by people unable or unwilling to actually participate in the complex really-existing social world.
The "theorist" is a lonely player looking to fill their time with rewarding objectives that give them a sense of accomplishment. It isn't about actual conspiracy.
He has pointed out that it’s not a question of whether they start monitoring you, it’s that with bulk collection they are collecting your activity already for later filtering/reference, forever.
When most people talk about conspiracy theories, they are actually talking about motivational theories.
For example, with the 'China lab leak theory', there is no actual evidence of Sars-Cov2 in that lab before the outbreak. What does exist is the belief that 'the Chinese government lies'/'scientists lie'/'Chinese people lie' or some combination or offshoot of these. There is a belief that sinister things happen in labs. There is a belief that it would take serious coordinated effort by humans to cause this much disruption in our lives.
It is psychologically much easier to believe that if we could find the people responsible for this and stop them, we can prevent pandemics like this. It is very hard to hold in your head that disease agents can be transmitted from animal populations to human populations at any time and we have no significant control over this.
I'm sure I'm doing a lot of projection here, but then so is everyone else.
Just FYI - I think it is possible that the virus leaked from the lab, but it is significantly more likely that it was an animal virus (like 1000:1 in favor of 'natural' zoonotic origin)
It would be interesting to model modern identity politics as a kind of conspiracy. Here is an "Enemy Inside" variant that applies to any individual of a problematic identity. When some combination of tags white, male, straight, religious, disagrees-with-this applies to you, you are in a conspiracy whether you know it or not. It is a "conspiracy by default" that you must opt-out of in various ways, most importantly by being vocally supportive of the conspiracy theory itself!
As a conspiracy it blurs the distinction between "theory" and "practice" because there's a valid point to be made about systemic racism, and yet the theory goes much further.
> In sum, conspiracy theories do not inculcate powerlessness, so much as they are the signs and symptoms of powerlessness itself.
This captures it well. You can think of them as what people without power in a situation use to describe what they percieve the people who do have it are doing. There is the folk religion aspect of them, but even office politics are defined by similar conspiracy thinking. If you have thought you were being manipulated or managed with deception in an office environment, extending that to institutions is not a big leap.
Maybe I'm way down the rabbit hole, but I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik.
Meta-commentators calling out conspiracies and inconsistencies are a real threat to the narratives insiders use to sustain the necessary dissonance to navigate the dynamic of influence within their networks. When you are an insider, you have to sustain the fictions that the power of your group is legitimate, your colleagues are honest and aligned to the same values, and that you are believer. You have to sustain the official optimisim line because that is what it means to be aligned to power. Summers' famous quote, "the first rule of being an insider is you don't criticize other insiders" captures it well. If you let these fictions slip, you essentially fall and define as an outsider and you are out of the game. You're marked as "bitter," "a sore loser," "hard to work with," "a loose cannon," etc.
Conspiracy theories 'concretize' counter narratives, which create a figure/ground relationship in an otherwise super complex dynamic, and this creates obstacles for the dynamic sustaining narratives. If you have ever heard someone accused of "black and white thinking," they are being accused of taking their ball and going home by attempting to end a dynamic power game by resolving it to a fact or constraint.
Nobody goes meta- when they are playing the game. You can't narrate and speculate about it and win it at the same time. I often tell people we only call it politics when we're losing, and these are all related to this idea of reasoning about people and power as an outsider, hence conspiracy theories are self-defining as powerless.
If you use a theory about others' motivations and incentives to explain their behavior and situate yourself outside of that dynamic, you're listening to commentators instead of getting into the game and playing.
> the idea that conspiracies themselves are [..] a typology through which people who lack definite or satisfactory narratives as citizens explain to themselves [..]
I really like this idea. To me it means that conspiracy theories create modern day mythology. Ancient people used myths to explain to themselves things they either didn't understand or feared. I've always wondered how did they come with these outrageous ideas but it now makes sense.
Well I'm sad that I missed this conversation, but I'm thankful for all the people here who actually gave some very nuanced looks at the topic. This should give me a great start to understanding how to approach the topic on HN in the future. As for the article, I think it's interesting but doesn't go far enough, getting wrapped up in the meta too much for my tastes, but I understand why that approach is the one Snowden wanted to take.
> It took years — eight years and counting in exile — for me to realize that I was missing the point: we talk about conspiracy theories in order to avoid talking about conspiracy practices, which are often too daunting, too threatening, too total.
I disagree. People (at least, some people) are just naturally drawn to mysteries. Imaginary things aren't interesting despite the lack of evidence for them, they're interesting because of the lack of evidence. Everyone likes a good mystery.
Look at bigfoot. It's pretty much described as a great ape. It's described as being large, and being a little more bipedal than most apes, but there's no more interesting than a gorilla. I suppose it's a little interesting that an old world ape found its way to America (perhaps a descendent of the Yeti that travelled across through the arctic?), but there's similar interest in mysterious apes in most of the world.
Somehow, a lot of people are more interested in imaginary apes than real apes. Here's a quote about Bigfoot I found on Wikipedia:
> "Well now you will be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist."[162] She later added, chuckling, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist", and finally, "You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."[163] In 2012, when asked again by the Huffington Post, Goodall said "I'm fascinated and would actually love them to exist," adding, "Of course, it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or hair of the Bigfoot, but I've read all the accounts."[164]
This is Jane Goodall, who is probably the best known primatologist of all time, not some conspiracy theorist. If Jane Goodall can be impressed by an ape simply because it's so mysterious (because it doesn't exist), this says a lot about the allure of a mystery.
But back to the main point - why is it that open conspiracies are less scary? I think it's fairly rational to be less worried at a visible threat, since a lack of widespread opposition shows that it's not taken to be a serious threat by the rest of the population. If the President announces that electronic communications are routinely being monitored, then that seems pretty safe. There's no serious opposition to it, so people must not care too much, so it's reasonable to assume it's not a great danger. On the other hand, if there was only a conspiracy theory, then you could assume that the lack of serious opposition was due to a lack of knowledge of the conspiracy.
If (picking something outlandish) Bill Gates announced that he was implanting everyone with micro-chips to extend 5G networks and help the police track criminals, a lot of people would grumble, but I doubt there would be a serious opposition to it, and people would feel reassured that this means it's not a serious issue.
How serious is mass surveillance, really? I certainly understand some people strongly objecting, but it's not like I do much more than use a VPN (which might be compromised anyway).
To respond to your last question: I think the issue is that it puts a lot of power in the hands of whomever is controlling then surveillance system.
This can be bad because of rogue operators (creep spying on women, blackmail, spionage to get info for insider trading, data leaks, etc etc)
But even if you have some 'perfect system to prevent unauthorized use', and a 'perfect system to determine authorisation' (both of which are highly theoretical) the issue remains.
For you may agree with whomever controls the surveillance system currently ('the state'), but that may change.
If Donald Trump had won a second term, or successfuly stolen it, and the US was more and more transformed.. would you still be OK with the state having that capability? Same argument but in reverse with Sanders if you're a republican.
To give a concrete historical example: during the 1930's there was a census in the Netherlands. All the law abiding citizens gently filled in a form, stating the religion of their family. After all, no harm for the government to know all that, right?
Unfortunately 10 years later that government was controlled by Nazi Germany. And they knew exactly where to find the jews.
Result: 95% of Dutch Jewish citizens died during WW II. For reference, in France, where even today the state has a less detailed and precise administration, this number is 25%.
Conspiracy theories are a placebo effect for control. I can't control the world but I can control what I want to believe about the world and that helps me feel like I'm in control.
My pet theory is that Snowden's disclosure is both a bit of CIA/NSA sibling rivalry and a misinformation campaign to scare people into thinking that the NSA has far more surveillance capabilities than it really does. The goals being to frighten people into inaction and to herd them onto platforms these entities can monitor (TOR & ANOM come to mind).
That Snowden is able to rake in book and movie deals while 'on the run' makes me doubt that anybody is actually interested in catching him.
> Or to put it another way, conspiracy practices — the methods by which true conspiracies such as gerrymandering, or the debt industry, or mass surveillance are realized — are almost always overshadowed by conspiracy theorie
There's a conspiracy theory about how Q Annon was actually a disinformation campaign crafted against Trump supporters and /pol/acks (you the kind I'm talking about). That's actually something I think is possible although it's all conjecture.
I love how they illustrated "conspiracy" with the picture of Trump. Trump derangement syndrome much? Anyway, most of Trump's statements previously labelled by leftist media as "conspiracy" turned out to be... true.
By the way, program named ECHELON didn't go anywhere, it got legalized and civilized under the name of Five Eyes global SIGINT alliance. And don't let "five" to fool you, there more like 15 countries are just fine with mass surveillance with the generous help from No Such Agency. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with improving public safety and stuff but they've been so busy spying on citizens so managed to overlook, for example, rather trivial and almost decade-old open sesame in SolarWinds.
[+] [-] js8|4 years ago|reply
Noam Chomsky presents lots of evidence about outrageous acts of American government in his books, and he always claimed that it all comes from official and open government sources. Yet most people are either unaware or refuse to believe it anyway.
These are conspiracies done openly, because almost nobody wants to go through and find the smoking gun in the heaps of otherwise boring government documents.
[+] [-] baron_harkonnen|4 years ago|reply
Chomsky responds with the typical comment that it would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to have so many people keep the secret that it doesn't even make sense.
But he continues to say that the US government has openly killed 100s of thousands of civilians around the globe, why would 3000 killed more be interesting at all? Essentially pointing out that you don't need the complexity of conspiracy theory to realize that the US government actively participates in large scale murder openly and all the time.
[+] [-] sneak|4 years ago|reply
Such is the power of the brand and the "good guys" narrative that facts often have little to do with it. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason their way in to.
It's easy to love the USA when it's not your neighborhood they're bombing[1], or your friends they're hiding forever in torture prisons without trial[2], or your children they're kidnapping and raping[3].
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/us/politics/us-airstrikes...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/10/cia-senate-i...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sex...
[+] [-] sjg007|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyuser583|4 years ago|reply
He regularly presents things that are heavily debated as established fact.
He doesn’t lie or even repeat blatant falsehoods. He just misrepresents the level of certainty regarding historical events.
In his recent essay Prospects for Survival, he talks about Stalin’s offer to unite East and West Germany as though it were a good faith offer.
He equivocates with “we can’t be sure”, but then acts like it’s a reasonable proposition.
While the absolute truth died with Stalin, there’s no evidence anyone in the Soviet Union or East Germany was prepared to surrender control.
[+] [-] ypeterholmes|4 years ago|reply
And there's a reason for that, which Snowden touches on. Namely, the world in its current form is largely run by such nefarious schemes. The bad guys won a long time ago. And by taking away the language we might even use to talk about what they did, and the scale of it, they have further insulated their power.
[+] [-] prox|4 years ago|reply
Another great point is in his last paragraph, that conspiracy theories are mostly bottom up events. You have a whole demographic doing conspiracy theorizing instead of talking about what it looks in practice.
There just was a president whose whole game was running a circus, everything was about the guy and his idea of The Enemy. Nothing of substance and nothing but misdirection.
Another problem is that day to day journalism isn’t epistemological, it’s just reporting, so you just get a flat view of what is happening.
[+] [-] cannabis_sam|4 years ago|reply
I’ve slowly come to the same conclusion, and my first reaction was pretty much hopelessness and despair.
But I think it’s important to realize that most people through history, who fought for change, faced similar or worse adversaries.
(Absolutely not an endorsement of historical atrocities)
[+] [-] fighterpilot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grawprog|4 years ago|reply
Things like flat earth conspiracies have now inexplicably been lumped into the likes of those who believe in things like.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que...
Or just question in general the motivation behind the decisions made by those in charge.
There are some very obviously dumb conspiracies that have no basis in reality, there are some possibly far out there conspiracies that could have some merit and then there's conspiracies that seemed ridiculous but actually turned out to be true.
The world is not black and white...it's very grey.
Again, I find it odd these things tend to all be labeled under one giant 'conspiracy theory' label. Much like any theories, some are possibly valid, others very obviously not.
Categorizing these things together as has been done in recent years makes no sense.
[+] [-] somethingAlex|4 years ago|reply
- They think "questioning everything" makes them smart even though many questions are answered to a point where being contrarian is irrational.
- They're generally just anti-intellectual. They enjoy talking about stuff without introducing any rigor.
- Probably the most interesting to me; they tend to have rather isolated jobs. I suppose they haven't been exposed to incompetence at scale.
You're right, it's not correct to just lump everything into one bucket. But when they seem to be pushed by a different incarnation of the same person every time, I get desensitized. Especially because, when I do bite and ask some follow up questions, I never seem to get any answers.
[+] [-] Swizec|4 years ago|reply
then Snowden happened
[+] [-] mistermann|4 years ago|reply
I think it not only makes sense, but it was a brilliant strategy, the results of which can be seen on Reddit and even here, if the topic is other than a direct abstract discussion of conspiracy theories that is: it is a powerful subconscious heuristic, it has been very widely deployed, and can be activated when necessary.
[+] [-] atatatat|4 years ago|reply
Many of which are psyops.
[+] [-] galaxyLogic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdstyh|4 years ago|reply
The more I read about any topic, the more I realize how true this is. I used to think in absolutes but now I realize how nuanced everything is.
[+] [-] soheil|4 years ago|reply
You can think of it as humid weather vs rain. That’s just a spectrum too. And yes the world is grey but when it rains I’ll be damned not to know the difference.
[+] [-] skindoe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] txxxxxa|4 years ago|reply
There's also an amplifying effect where only unpopular people voice unpopular ideas - either they don't pick up on the social cues, or lack a sense of shame, or simply aren't very bright. Its a feedback loop adding to the stigma.
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
Is The Federalist Society a conspiracy? They have open meetings. How about labor unions?
[+] [-] TremendousJudge|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjburgess|4 years ago|reply
They aren't interested in conspiracies. They are largely marginalised lonely people looking for a hobby which provides status, an addiction, and a sense of control/power.
Conspiracy theorists engage in the free association of concepts which "Seem Important" and derive entirely uninformed connections between them for the sake of creating "insider knowledge".
The "boring conspiracies" all require you to be in the system, and fundamnetally, not marginalized. Broadly, you probably have to: have gone to university, understand recent political history, are across the news; have been familiar with the operation of business, governments and nation states. Probably have either met, or know via (eg., university): journalists, politicians, business leaders, etc. Or today, eg., listen to podcasts by these people.
If you dont have this knowledge, you really have very little idea of how the world works.
"Real Conspiracies" are "boring" in the sense that they are a result of obvious incentives that people have in highly complex systems which require quite an elite level of understanding to fully parse.
Conspiracy theorising, "chasing the addiction" through hours of youtube videos, blogs, -- connecting the dots -- etc. is really just an erzats video game played by people unable or unwilling to actually participate in the complex really-existing social world.
The "theorist" is a lonely player looking to fill their time with rewarding objectives that give them a sense of accomplishment. It isn't about actual conspiracy.
[+] [-] bartimus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joeboy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgb223|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BuyMyBitcoins|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivers99|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csours|4 years ago|reply
For example, with the 'China lab leak theory', there is no actual evidence of Sars-Cov2 in that lab before the outbreak. What does exist is the belief that 'the Chinese government lies'/'scientists lie'/'Chinese people lie' or some combination or offshoot of these. There is a belief that sinister things happen in labs. There is a belief that it would take serious coordinated effort by humans to cause this much disruption in our lives.
It is psychologically much easier to believe that if we could find the people responsible for this and stop them, we can prevent pandemics like this. It is very hard to hold in your head that disease agents can be transmitted from animal populations to human populations at any time and we have no significant control over this.
I'm sure I'm doing a lot of projection here, but then so is everyone else.
Just FYI - I think it is possible that the virus leaked from the lab, but it is significantly more likely that it was an animal virus (like 1000:1 in favor of 'natural' zoonotic origin)
[+] [-] a0-prw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdstyh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atatatat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javajosh|4 years ago|reply
As a conspiracy it blurs the distinction between "theory" and "practice" because there's a valid point to be made about systemic racism, and yet the theory goes much further.
[+] [-] motohagiography|4 years ago|reply
This captures it well. You can think of them as what people without power in a situation use to describe what they percieve the people who do have it are doing. There is the folk religion aspect of them, but even office politics are defined by similar conspiracy thinking. If you have thought you were being manipulated or managed with deception in an office environment, extending that to institutions is not a big leap.
Maybe I'm way down the rabbit hole, but I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik.
Meta-commentators calling out conspiracies and inconsistencies are a real threat to the narratives insiders use to sustain the necessary dissonance to navigate the dynamic of influence within their networks. When you are an insider, you have to sustain the fictions that the power of your group is legitimate, your colleagues are honest and aligned to the same values, and that you are believer. You have to sustain the official optimisim line because that is what it means to be aligned to power. Summers' famous quote, "the first rule of being an insider is you don't criticize other insiders" captures it well. If you let these fictions slip, you essentially fall and define as an outsider and you are out of the game. You're marked as "bitter," "a sore loser," "hard to work with," "a loose cannon," etc.
Conspiracy theories 'concretize' counter narratives, which create a figure/ground relationship in an otherwise super complex dynamic, and this creates obstacles for the dynamic sustaining narratives. If you have ever heard someone accused of "black and white thinking," they are being accused of taking their ball and going home by attempting to end a dynamic power game by resolving it to a fact or constraint.
Nobody goes meta- when they are playing the game. You can't narrate and speculate about it and win it at the same time. I often tell people we only call it politics when we're losing, and these are all related to this idea of reasoning about people and power as an outsider, hence conspiracy theories are self-defining as powerless.
If you use a theory about others' motivations and incentives to explain their behavior and situate yourself outside of that dynamic, you're listening to commentators instead of getting into the game and playing.
[+] [-] aurantia|4 years ago|reply
I really like this idea. To me it means that conspiracy theories create modern day mythology. Ancient people used myths to explain to themselves things they either didn't understand or feared. I've always wondered how did they come with these outrageous ideas but it now makes sense.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] arminiusreturns|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] giardini|4 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57663136
The NSA did not said "No we are not spying on you." which would have been the best and easiest way to refute Tucker.
[+] [-] wisty|4 years ago|reply
I disagree. People (at least, some people) are just naturally drawn to mysteries. Imaginary things aren't interesting despite the lack of evidence for them, they're interesting because of the lack of evidence. Everyone likes a good mystery.
Look at bigfoot. It's pretty much described as a great ape. It's described as being large, and being a little more bipedal than most apes, but there's no more interesting than a gorilla. I suppose it's a little interesting that an old world ape found its way to America (perhaps a descendent of the Yeti that travelled across through the arctic?), but there's similar interest in mysterious apes in most of the world.
Somehow, a lot of people are more interested in imaginary apes than real apes. Here's a quote about Bigfoot I found on Wikipedia:
> "Well now you will be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist."[162] She later added, chuckling, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist", and finally, "You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."[163] In 2012, when asked again by the Huffington Post, Goodall said "I'm fascinated and would actually love them to exist," adding, "Of course, it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or hair of the Bigfoot, but I've read all the accounts."[164]
This is Jane Goodall, who is probably the best known primatologist of all time, not some conspiracy theorist. If Jane Goodall can be impressed by an ape simply because it's so mysterious (because it doesn't exist), this says a lot about the allure of a mystery.
But back to the main point - why is it that open conspiracies are less scary? I think it's fairly rational to be less worried at a visible threat, since a lack of widespread opposition shows that it's not taken to be a serious threat by the rest of the population. If the President announces that electronic communications are routinely being monitored, then that seems pretty safe. There's no serious opposition to it, so people must not care too much, so it's reasonable to assume it's not a great danger. On the other hand, if there was only a conspiracy theory, then you could assume that the lack of serious opposition was due to a lack of knowledge of the conspiracy.
If (picking something outlandish) Bill Gates announced that he was implanting everyone with micro-chips to extend 5G networks and help the police track criminals, a lot of people would grumble, but I doubt there would be a serious opposition to it, and people would feel reassured that this means it's not a serious issue.
How serious is mass surveillance, really? I certainly understand some people strongly objecting, but it's not like I do much more than use a VPN (which might be compromised anyway).
[+] [-] ArnoVW|4 years ago|reply
This can be bad because of rogue operators (creep spying on women, blackmail, spionage to get info for insider trading, data leaks, etc etc)
But even if you have some 'perfect system to prevent unauthorized use', and a 'perfect system to determine authorisation' (both of which are highly theoretical) the issue remains.
For you may agree with whomever controls the surveillance system currently ('the state'), but that may change.
If Donald Trump had won a second term, or successfuly stolen it, and the US was more and more transformed.. would you still be OK with the state having that capability? Same argument but in reverse with Sanders if you're a republican.
To give a concrete historical example: during the 1930's there was a census in the Netherlands. All the law abiding citizens gently filled in a form, stating the religion of their family. After all, no harm for the government to know all that, right?
Unfortunately 10 years later that government was controlled by Nazi Germany. And they knew exactly where to find the jews.
Result: 95% of Dutch Jewish citizens died during WW II. For reference, in France, where even today the state has a less detailed and precise administration, this number is 25%.
[+] [-] dempsey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seppin|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] grumblenum|4 years ago|reply
That Snowden is able to rake in book and movie deals while 'on the run' makes me doubt that anybody is actually interested in catching him.
[+] [-] int_19h|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixelrevision|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
There's a conspiracy theory about how Q Annon was actually a disinformation campaign crafted against Trump supporters and /pol/acks (you the kind I'm talking about). That's actually something I think is possible although it's all conjecture.
[+] [-] justshowpost|4 years ago|reply
By the way, program named ECHELON didn't go anywhere, it got legalized and civilized under the name of Five Eyes global SIGINT alliance. And don't let "five" to fool you, there more like 15 countries are just fine with mass surveillance with the generous help from No Such Agency. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with improving public safety and stuff but they've been so busy spying on citizens so managed to overlook, for example, rather trivial and almost decade-old open sesame in SolarWinds.