I’ve been planning to write a post around the same lines. Well done.
Due to a historically terrible name, people assume that conspiracy theories are about the existence of conspiracies. That everything that supposes that there may be a conspiracy—is a conspiracy theory. This makes such reference class extremely unhelpful. There have always been actual conspiracies. People lie and plot and conceal information. We can’t put all the actual examples of conspiracies in the same category as Flat Earth and treat the whole category as a priory implausiable.
What conspiracy theories are actually about, the core flawed belief that unifies them all, and distincts them from valid hypothesises about the world is, what I call “conspiracy epistemology”. Though maybe “minority epistemology” or even anti-epistemology would be a better term. This is the idea that the most of evidence about a cause is falsified and so we should give preference to a small minority of the counter evidence. ANd of course to explain how such falsification took place there have to be invoked a conspiracy that did it, but it’s a symptom. Such belief is deeply anti-epistemological for obvious reasons. It’s easier to faslsify the minority of evidence than the majority of it. Every attempt of forgery leaves some traces, more evidence to be discovered than can reveal the whole plot. Lie once and truth will forever become your enemy.
Most actual conspiracies actively propagate such minority anti-epistemology. They find or forge some minor amount of evidence in theor favour and then claim that everything else is not trustworthy, replacing the whole institutional mechanisms of human civilization that are supposed to catch lies with just themselves.
I’ve been planning to write a post around the same lines. Well done.
Due to a historically terrible name, people assume that conspiracy theories are about the existence of conspiracies. That everything that supposes that there may be a conspiracy—is a conspiracy theory. This makes such reference class extremely unhelpful. There have always been actual conspiracies. People lie and plot and conceal information. We can’t put all the actual examples of conspiracies in the same category as Flat Earth and treat the whole category as a priory implausiable.
What conspiracy theories are actually about, the core flawed belief that unifies them all, and distincts them from valid hypothesises about the world is, what I call “conspiracy epistemology”. Though maybe “minority epistemology” or even anti-epistemology would be a better term. This is the idea that the most of evidence about a cause is falsified and so we should give preference to a small minority of the counter evidence. ANd of course to explain how such falsification took place there have to be invoked a conspiracy that did it, but it’s a symptom. Such belief is deeply anti-epistemological for obvious reasons. It’s easier to faslsify the minority of evidence than the majority of it. Every attempt of forgery leaves some traces, more evidence to be discovered than can reveal the whole plot. Lie once and truth will forever become your enemy.
Most actual conspiracies actively propagate such minority anti-epistemology. They find or forge some minor amount of evidence in theor favour and then claim that everything else is not trustworthy, replacing the whole institutional mechanisms of human civilization that are supposed to catch lies with just themselves.