On Responsible Conspiracy Theorism

A brief note on a concerning trend

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There’s a phenomenon I’ve watched growing since Covidtide that is really concerning to me.

It’s not so much the loss of trust in institutions, experts, officials, that came as a result of their abuse of power and influence as the conspiracy theorism that has rushed in to fill the vacuum left behind.

I get it. We've been betrayed, lied to, manipulated, gaslit, and in some cases, actively and intentionally harmed by people who are supposed to be our thought leaders, elected officials, and those who keep us safe.

But we can't simply presume that everyone associated with any official organization is a bad actor, impute imagined motives, and then act as though we've stumbled onto some hidden fact because we conjured up a theory.

We need a standard of evidence.

We need to check ourselves.

We need to recognize that we can't possibly gather all the facts on our own in order to make competent assessments. We don’t even have the same access to information that government officials or law enforcement agencies or the intelligence community does. Information that could very well change our view of a given situation.

And we really do need to remember that we are not experts or specialists outside of whatever our particular field of discipline is — and depending on our level of expertise, maybe not even then.

Our ability to discern whether forensics add up, or intel is good, or official stories about events make sense isn’t non-existent — we all have access to instincts, hunches, pattern recognition, and deductive or inductive reasoning — but it's also not at the level of professional competence either.

An armchair quarterback may know a lot about football, but he’s in an armchair and not on the field for a reason.

So yes, we can and should question things we see that don’t pass the smell test. We should deploy our dot-connecting abilities when we see a pattern that appears explanatory. But we should also have the humility to say, “Maybe I’m wrong, but when I look at this, this is what I see. Is it just me?” We should ask to have our work checked. We should have our theories reviewed for plot holes. And we should be ready to revise them based on the feedback we get.

If we choose instead to constantly throw our wild-ass conspiracy guesses out as facts, presenting ourselves as though we're part of some gnostic priesthood that sees the Matrix through the mass illusion, we're not doing ourselves or anyone else any favors.

Yes, there REALLY ARE conspiracies. Some of the ones that have proven to be true — like Project MKUltra or the Tuskegee Experiment — are almost too outlandish to accept. But if our standard of evidence is always, "Well this is what I think" and then we act as though what we think is the prevailing hypothesis everyone else should accept, we're not firing on all cylinders.

I find, almost without exception, that those who traffic most frequently in conspiracy theories they have zero evidence for (other than suspicion) also state them with the utmost confidence:

“Yeah, bro, that’s because it’s a psyop and you all are just brainwashed. Wake up, sheeple!”

“Oh, X happened? That’s because of conspiracy Y. Obvious to anyone paying attention.”

There’s almost never a caveat or a hint of doubt. It’s as definitive as dogma.

But here’s the thing: even if well-earned, distrust of all official narratives isn't an ethos. It's a path to madness. "Trust but verify" is a better heuristic, or perhaps more cautiously (and more necessarily, these days), "Tentatively accept with skepticism but verify."

Let’s do an example, based on the current news cycle.

If Person A says they have access to intelligence about an impending threat, and Person B says, "Well, I don't believe you, because other people who worked at the same place as you (CIA/FBI/etc.) have lied and misled us," where does that leave us?

If Person A is factually correct, and the threat is real, it matters whether or not we listen to them.

If Person B's suspicion is valid, but is wrong about Person A's intelligence, which is valid, they have now chosen to ignore a warning because of confirmation bias that might have kept them safe.

If Person A is factually incorrect, and the threat is a ruse, there is no way for Person B to know that unless the threat never comes to pass. But that's a Schrödinger's Terrorist situation, because until sufficient time is elapsed -- until the proverbial box with the cat is opened -- there's no way to independently verify if the threat is real or fake.

Reason and self-preservation therefore incline us to tentatively trust the intelligence rather than discount it, even if we are skeptical. To choose otherwise is to act against our own self-interest.

Remember: even the boy who cried wolf was eventually right, and when the people in his town didn't listen to him because of his legitimately earned distrust, tragedy struck.

Imagining that everyone and every event is part of some shadow cabal or richly imagined conspiracy (with no substantiating evidence) and continuously projecting these pet theories as explanations for every current thing makes us look like individuals for whom sound reasoning is a bit of a stretch. And worse, it might actively endanger us and our loved ones.

We need to have open minds, but high levels of discernment.