Learning about useful models helps people escape anthropomorphizing human society or the economy or government. The latter is particularly salient. I think most people slip up occasionally in assuming that say something like the United States government can be successfully modelled as a single agent to explain most of its "actions".
As an interesting (to me, at least) aside, Gene Sharp's research on nonviolent resistance indicates that successful nonviolent resistance invariably involves taking to heart this little idea -- that governments are not single agents but systems of many agents pursuing their own ends -- and exploiting it to the max.
For anyone interested in conspiracy theories, Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is required reading. As the TvTropes article on the book says:
While The Da Vinci Code plays the conspiracy theory view of history completely straight, and Illuminatus!! subverts it wildly, this novel is an elaborate and sometimes savage Deconstruction.
The plot is basically that the narrator and a couple of friends, bored, skeptical intellectuals who work in a publishing company where they deal daily with crackpot conspiracy theorists, decide one day to invent just for kicks the ultimate conspiracy theory, a Plan that explains the whole history of the world. Not spoiling much when I say it doesn't end well.
Near the end there are some nice reflections on what lies behind the impulse to invent such theories. An excerpt:
Take stock-market crashes. They happen because each individual makes a wrong move, and all the wrong moves together create panic. Then whoever lacks steady nerves asks himself: Who's behind this plot, who's benefiting? He has to find an enemy, a plotter, or it will all be, God forbid, his fault.
This needs a lot more work before it's a great essay. The way I would write it is basically 'a classic evolutionary explanation of religion is overactive false-positive agent-detection; here's quotes from several books by the likes of Daniel Dennett etc and also here's a few studies courtesy of gwern about kids; now that we understand the idea and find it plausible, let me extend it to... conspiracy theories! and so on.'
We have plenty of historical examples of high-stakes conspiracies so we know they can be the right answer.
Examples (or links) would be good here, and would calibrate your point.
Examples (or links) would be good here, and would calibrate your point.
A very good point! Thank you for the feedback.
I will build up a list in this comment and then link to it from the original article. To keep the list from bloating, I'm going to stick to well known examples:
What would really be useful would be example of conspiracy theories that were accepted by a fringe group, rejected by the mainstream (for at least a decade, say), and ultimately found to be true. Maybe the COINTELPRO would qualify for this - were some of the targeted groups complaining about FBI targeting them?
Interesting edge case is the whole McCarthy stuff - he was right that there was a quite a bit of communist spying, but he appeared to have no evidence whatsoever for this (and his specific accusations were mostly random). Does accidentally being correct count? Or is this more another case of "reverse stupidity isn't intelligence"?
The Bavarian Illuminati are (rather ironically) an example of an actual political conspiracy whose beliefs would be pretty unremarkable today. They were liberal humanists; they believed in freedom of religion, reason, improving people's morals by studying secular ethics, and republican government. Why were they secretive and conspiratorial? Because they were operating in 18th-century Bavaria, a conservative Catholic monarchy where religious dissent was illegal, the secret police investigated social groups to uncover political dissent, and republicanism would mean overthrowing the government.
It's a silly counterfactual, but I can't resist imagining that if Weishaupt lived today, he'd post on Less Wrong.
Some significant counterexamples to your heuristic are the criminal organizations with old historical roots, such as the Camorra or the Cosa Nostra. Their operations have been deeply conspiratorial and at the same time immensely influential, at least at the level of local politics, with institutional continuity of roughly the same vintage as that ascribed to the Illuminati.
There is definitely a thinking failure mode associated with conspiracy theories. The trouble is that lots of things have been rejected as "conspiracy theories" and turned out to be true: look at what the Leveson Inquiry is revealing about the Murdoch press's association with politicians and police, for example. Or consider COINTELPRO.
I rather like this blog post on the subject alongside much of what that blogger has written.
This needs examples.
When I think of "conspiracy theories" I think of ones connected to JFK's assassination or 9/11. The official line is already that these "bad things happen because bad people cause them to happen." In the case of 9/11, the official line is that it was a conspiracy theory -- the disagreement is just about which bad people!
The lack of examples seems to me an extremely bad sign about the process you used to generate this essay.
I feared that if I used an example, it would be the only thing that people would remember. Or worse the only thing they would comment on.
When I think of "conspiracy theories" I think of ones connected to JFK's assassination or 9/11. The official line is already that these "bad things happen because bad people cause them to happen." In the case of 9/11, the official line is that it was a conspiracy theory -- the disagreement is just about which bad people!
When I think "conspiracy theories" I think Illuminati are ruling the world and this is why my life sucks or that chemtrails are sterilising us or the notion that the Apollo Moon landing was faked or that the US government is concealing information regarding extraterrestrial intelligent life. ect. ect. I generally think the "no! It was the other guy." conspiracies are better explained by the group dynamics I didn't want to tackle in this post.
If you are wondering about the process I used. Well I was procrastinating online and ended up reading a bunch of wikipedia articles on conspiracy theories. I had some ideas about why people would find them appealing or plausible and I cross-checked ...
I think part of the problem is that people (both conspiracy theorists and debunkers) tend to confuse prospiracies and conspiracies.
A decent heuristic might be to recognize that any given conspiracy theory is very unlikely to be true, but also that they are probably many things going on that would be correctly considered conspiracy theories if found out even if you can never know what these are.
Wishful thinking also plays a role. A universe where bad things happen because bad people make them to happen is appealing. Getting rid of bad people, even very bad people, is easy compared to all the different things one has to do to make sure bad things don't happen in a universe that dosen't care about us and where really bad things are allowed to happen.
I don't think that's quite it. Huge progress has been made against infectious diseases in spite of the lack of a sentient enemy.
I think that, whether or not it's easier to succeed against human or no...
Honey can be used as a disinfectant because bacteria gorge themselves on simple sugars until they literally burst, just like an armed encampment can be put off their guard with an oversupply of food and wine.
Hm... When I asked on Wikipedia, I was told it was in part due to the hygroscopicness of honey: not enough water to support bacterial life.
These experimental findings on How honey kills bacteria attribute the bulk of the antibacterial action to a specific protein defensin-1 that the bees put into the honey.
Sorry, but why are these being upvoted? It's a cute analogy - but this is far from a "model" as was claimed. Try making some predictions from these explanations and see how horribly awry they go: why just honey? I should be shoving waffles into my wounds whenever I get a scratch, since everyone knows waffles are incredibly tasty. This analogy might work to convince an uncooperative child to take his antibiotics or get a shot, but it's not going to cut it as a useful model. The only reason this is working is that you already know the answers!
Is "agentic" a valid category of social explanations? I feel fairly confident that I can phrase almost any positive social explanation in agentic or mechanistic terms. This confusion may well exist at the level of reality: inanimate objects not arranged in very specific ways are not agentic, and those arranged in those very specific ways are, but large collections of agents just don't behave in ways that are adequately captured by our agent/nonagent binary language.
Of course it may well be that my agency-modelling has failed and this is just your point.
The Heterosexual White Males example rubs me the wrong way. I haven't heard of what I'd call conspiracy theories about that, and it doesn't match the ridiculousness of Satan or the Illuminati. It reads like someone who wants to get back at feminists or whomever, you know. A politically motivated and sort of mean-spirited low blow. I mean, maybe there are a bunch of people that believe that on a level that matches the rest of the examples, but this is the vibe I got.
The Heterosexual White Males example rubs me the wrong way.
The article deals tightly scapegoating and seeing malignant agency where there is none.
Our Dunbarian minds probably just plain can't get how a society can be that complex and unpredictable without it being "planned" by a cabal of Satan or Heterosexual White Males or the Illuminati (but I repeat myself twice) scheming to make weird things happen in our oblivious small stone age tribe.
The line was a joke alluding to acceptable targets. However since you responded seriously and with concern I think I should reply in kind.
I haven't heard of what I'd call conspiracy theories about that, and it doesn't match the ridiculousness of Satan or the Illuminati.
I find this hard to believe. They aren't really used in such theories exactly the way a devil would be (oh wait), but I dare say they are invoked in the same way Jews sometimes are. And surely a list of Satan, the Iluminati and the Jews makes intuitive sense? ;) Even the most ardent anti-semite in conversation assures you that while most Jews are annoying they probably aren't all involved in plots to enslave mankind. The MacDonald inspired anti-semite will...
Are conspiracy groups local? Apparently conspiracy have importance only if they have a non-negligible chance to become a powerful influence.
Related to: Consider Conspiracies, What causes people to believe in conspiracy theories?
Here I consider in some detail a failure mode that classical rationality often recognizes. Unfortunately nearly all heuristics normally used to detect it seem remarkably vulnerable to misfiring or being exploited by others. I advocate an approach where we try our best to account for the key bias, seeing agency where there is none, while trying to minimize the risk of being tricked into dismissing claims because of boo lights.
What is a conspiracy theory? Explanations that invoke plots orchestrated by covert groups are easily called or thought of as such. In a more legal sense conspiracy is an agreement between persons to mislead or defraud others. This simple story gets complicated because people aren't very clear on what they consider a conspiracy.
To give an example, is explicit negotiation or agreement really necessary to call something a conspiracy? Does silent cooperation on Prisoner's Dilemma count? What if the players are deceiving themselves that they are really following a different goal and the resulting cooperation is just a side effect? How could we tell the difference and would it matter? The latter is especially interesting if one applies the anthropic principle to social attitudes and norms.
The phrase is also a convenient tool to mark an opponent's tale as low status and unworthy of further investigation. A boo light easily applied to anything that has people acting in something that can be framed as self-interest and happens to be few inferential jumps away from the audience. Not only is its use in this way well known, this is arguably the primary meaning of calling an argument a conspiracy theory.
We have plenty of historical examples of high-stakes conspiracies so we know they can be the right answer. Noting this and putting aside the misuse of the label, people do engage in crafting conspiracy theories when they just aren't needed. Entire communities can fixate on them or fail to call such bad thinking out. Why does this happen? Humans being the social animals that we are, the group dynamics at work probably need an article or sequence of their own. It should suffice for now to point to belief as attire, the bandwagon effect and Robin Hanson's take on status. Let's rather consider the question of why individuals may be biased towards such explanations. Why do they privilege the hypothesis?
First off we have a hard time understanding that coordination is hard. Seeing a large pay off available and thinking it easily in reach if "we could just get along" seems like a classical failing. Our pro-social sentiments lead us to downplay such barriers in our future plans. Motivated cognition on behalf of assessing the threat potential of perceived enemies or strangers likely shares this problem. Even if we avoid this, we may still be lost since the second big relevant thing is our tendency for anthropomorphizing things that better not be. Ours is a paranoid brain seeing agency in every shadow or strange sound. The cost of false positives was once reasonably low, while the cost of a false negative very high.
Our minds are also just plain lazy. We are pretty good at modelling other human minds and considering just how hard the task really is, we do a pretty remarkable job of it. If you are stuck in relative ignorance on a subject, say the weather, dancing to appease the sky spirits makes sense. After all the weather is pretty capricious and angry sky spirits is a model that makes as much or more sense as any other model you know. Unlike some other models this one is at least cheap to run on your brain! The modern world is remarkably complex. Do we see ghosts in it?
Our Dunbarian minds probably just plain can't get how a society can be that complex and unpredictable without it being "planned" by a cabal of Satan or Heterosexual White Males or the Illuminati (but I repeat myself twice) scheming to make weird things happen in our oblivious small stone age tribe. Learning about useful models helps people escape anthropomorphizing human society or the economy or government. The latter is particularly salient. I think most people slip up occasionally in assuming that say something like the United States government can be successfully modelled as a single agent to explain most of its "actions". To make matters worse it is a common literary device used by pundits.
A mysterious malignant agency or someone keeping a secret playing the role of the villain makes a good story. Humans love stories. Its fun to think in stories. Any real conspiracy revealed will probably be widely publicized. Peter Knight in his 2003 book cites historians who have put forward the idea, that the United States is something of a home for popular conspiracy theories because so many high-level ones have been undertaken and uncovered since the 1960s. We are more likely to hear about real confirmed conspiracies today than ever before.
Wishful thinking also plays a role. A universe where bad things happen because bad people make them to is appealing. Getting rid of bad people, even very bad people, is easy compared to all the different things one has to do to make sure bad things don't happen in a universe that doesn't care about us and where really bad things are allowed to happen. Finding bad people whether there are or aren't is a problematic tendency. The sad thing is that this may also be how we often manage to coordinate. Do all theories of legitimacy also perhaps rest on the same cognitive failings that conspiracy theories do? The difference between a shadowy cabal we need to get rid of and an institution worthy of respect may be just some bad luck.
Putting aside such wild speculation, what should we take away from this? When do conspiracy theories seem more likely than they are?
When you see these features you probably find the theory more plausible than it is.
But how many here are likely to accept "conspiracy theories"? To do so with stuff that actually gets called a conspiracy theory doesn't fit our tribal attire. Reverse stupidity may be particularly problematic for us on this topic. Being open to thinking conspiracy is recommended. Just remember to compare how probable it is in relation to other explanations. It is important to call out people who misuse the tag for rhetorical gain.
This applies to debunking as well. Don't go wildly contrarian. But remember that even things that are tagged conspiracy theories are surprisingly popular. How popular might false theories that avoid that tag be? History shows us we don't have the luxury of hoping that kind of thing just doesn't happen in human societies. When assessing an explanation sharing the key features that make conspiracy theories seem more plausible than they are, compensate as you would with a conspiracy theory.
But don't listen to me, I'm talking conspiracy theories.
Note: This article started out as a public draft, feedback to other such drafts is always welcomed. Special thanks to user Villiam_Bur for his commentary and user copt for proofreading and suggestions. Also thanks to the LessWrong IRC chatroom for last minute corrections and stylistic tips.