Over the break a friend of mine decided to return a Roethlisberger jersey because of his well-publicized character concerns, and exchanged it for a Rashard Mendenhall jersey, which then resulted in another (very minor) crisis of conscience after she remembered his controversial tweets following the assassination of Osama Bin Laden last year. The brief scandal, you may remember, involved Mendenhall's doubt that Bin Laden was responsible for 9-11, as well as his implying that the US government may have had a hand in the attacks. It will be a great day for the sport of football when players are replaced by genital-less cyborgs who are programmed to tweet only about weather forecasts.
Conspiracy theories are both fascinating and infuriating to me. I used to be shocked by how many intelligent, well-educated, and skeptical people I met who believed in various degrees of the 9-11 "truth" movement (which taught me, once again, how solipsistic it is to assume everyone agrees upon the obvious facts). But when I read that the percentage of liberals who identify with some aspects of Trutherism is similar to the percentage of conservatives who identify with the Birther movement, I began to understand that wacky conspiracy theories are dependent less on political affiliation and intelligence than they are on our pattern-seeking psychology.
Errol Morris, whose work often explores the countless interpretations of historical knowledge, directed a short piece in the Times about a popular JFK conspiracy. It features footage of a sinister man holding an open umbrella mere yards from where the president was shot. Why was his umbrella open? It was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Was he a spotter? Was he wielding some sort of hidden gun? Could he have been the second gunman? His behavior seems so nefarious, the coincidences seem too astronomical, that you just can't believe this guy wasn't in some way part of the assassination. The short six-minute documentary is a tremendous meditation on why our brains are seduced by conspiracies. There's also an amazing quote by Norman Mailer in there about how history is a lot like Quantum Mechanics.
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This is why (and I believe it is James the Elder who heavily disagrees with me) Foucault's Pendulum is such a great book, and often downright hysterical. Eco's mockery of conspiracy theories is done to perfection.
Unlike Foucault's Pendulum, which I was not able to finish, I had previously read the all references here, and they are fascinating, especially Errol Morris.
Despite my frustration during the 7,000 pages of the history of the masons, I think Ted hit the spot in saying Foucault's Pendulum, among other things, is a brilliant treatise on conspiracy theories. As Eco says in the book (and as James' Errol Morris reference refers) "The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power."
Eco could have been referring to the Umbrella Man when he said, "A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the Masonic secret. What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power."
Our "pattern-seeking psychology" may indeed promote conspiracy theories. We desperately yearn for indisputable truth and are frustrated every hour of every day. I've said this before, but it makes no sense to me why we have so many words for truth, fact, right, certainty, gospel, etc. and so few for "this has some measure of truth in it" when for millions of Darwinian years, that is what we experienced.
It even leads to this sort of situation. In reading an article about how Apple's patent litigation would help the stock price, there was a comment from someone who obviously had reached the breaking point of conspiracy theories and the notion of truth.
Okay, so now we have one analyst saying the patent thing could hurt shareholders and another saying it could help shareholders.
Apparently, as it turns out, all analysts are biased, all journalists are biased, all facts can be spun any way you want to to produce the results you desire. I had suspected this for years but was too gullible to accept it. Silly me.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Alternatively, the Razor has been quoted: Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence.
Another version:
Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory. —Sir Bernard Ingham
Perhaps Dennis Miller said it best: The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody's out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, you feel better now?
I wonder if there were conspiracy theories in the middle ages, in ancient Greece, etc.? I believe there was but most seemed justified considering the court activity of the times. maybe there are a lot of conspiracies but the public is just fixated on great universal schemes like the moon landing, 9/11, Kennedy, etc. it keeps us from looking at the lesser ones like congress insider trading, or lobbyist conspiring to pass tax breaks. it seems "great" conspiracies may not be true but how can one not believe those and still see what appears to be collusion on a level of activity on a bit of a lesser scale!
An interesting take on "seeing what we want to see and connecting the dots (wrongly)" is expressed in the "Dumas’ Club".
“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you”
Kurt Cobain
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