Conspiracy Theories

[danthepoetman]

I usually find conspiracy theories entertaining in general. But I will admit that they eventually turn out to be dangerous. All of them, or better: all of them together.
No topic, no subject, no aspect of our society or political life seems exempt of some conspiracy theory. Anything can be the object of intense suspicion, nowadays.
Culture is not the privilege of the few, today. And of course it’s all for the best. Literacy is largely widespread, although less than we sometimes think. I had a friend who was working on literacy on a wide territory in North America who was telling me that functional analphabetism was reaching close to 35% of people on that territory in the early 80s! The expansion of electronic media has somewhat empowered people culturally, has given everybody the capacity to have an opinion and sometimes, to voice it. Most of them are obviously in good faith, but many find there the opportunity to make a lot of dough; they’re wolves amongst sheep. And the first weapon they will use is of course suspicion.
The greatest problem is that at some point, people feel totally manipulated and stop believing anything serious about anything. Any opinion seems equal to any other, and anyone, be they expert scientists, emeritus professors, or people who have work in the field being the object of the conspiracy all their life, as credible as anyone else, and not anymore. And the phenomenon has had such an expansion that you can find some elements of it in the arguments of well educated and very rational people, today. It has come to reinforce a tendency that has been enduring since the 70s (around maybe the Watergate and the Vietnam war time) of incredible cynicism, especially for the political class.
You just have the feeling that, as more and more people from more and more backgrounds, and for more and more different reasons, are trying to take advantage of it, the capacity of an ordinary man or woman to follow and understand actuality is diminish geometrically. So I’m suggesting to you we might be facing a conspiracy of gigantic proportion, here! Of course I’m joking… All in all I think the phenomenon is mainly linked to the internet (and electronic media), and is sociological in nature.

Although it is not a perfect argument, I like the falsifiability process as developed by Karl Popper. Any serious, positive hypothesis can be tested; you can apply some verification on it either to disprove it or simply to come to some common understanding on how to modify or to adjust it to the reality it refers to. Conspiracy theories are obviously pseudo-sciences or pseudo-knowledge because every time out, there’s absolutely no way not only to disprove it, but even to just get a grasp of any factor in the theory that you can discuss on in order to establish some verification. Your interlocutor will invariably slip on another aspect of the so called theory, invoke something else or even suspect you of being either naïve or a part of that very conspiracy. Not any principle of falsifiability in any conspiracy theory. Best example, the extra-terrestrial conspiracy. They’re here, are controlling things behind the scene, are known from governments, etc., yet there’s not even minimalistic evidence of any of this, and any discussion on the subject is futile, as we’ll invariably slip from one of these aspect to another without being able to grasp anything concrete nor going anywhere in terms of common understanding.

I actually had some fun debunking (for myself) the theory that a jet airliner crashing into a twin tower would be insufficient to bring it down...demonstrating that a gasoline fire (like a wood fire in a stone oven) can reach temperatures that would melt steel and the first inelastic collision of the top quarter of the tower with the scorched floor can create a series of inelastic collisions that proceed at pretty much the acceleration of gravity, so that the time of fall is on the order of the time of free fall; i.e. there is absolutely nothing inconsistent in the pancake theory of the twin tower collapse. Now just apply Occam's razor and there's no need the bizarre theory that Bush, or The Jews planted charges throughout the twin tower and timed their explosions with attacks on 9-11.

I’ll admit I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, Trish. So I don’t believe one word of it all… Of course, I’m joking! I still don’t understand much of your argument, but I do believe you. lol
Anyways, you know, to destroy a middle size building with several floors, lets say 50 or 60 units on 5 floors, it can take up to a couple of weeks of work by demolition experts to install the charges; they have to dig through pillars to put the charges and cut through wall to install the wires, which by the time it is ready, will be crossing on all the surface of each floor. It’s long, hard work. A bigger one can take up to a month, six weeks and more. Imagine the work it would have taken to destroy these towers, if they had been destroyed by explosives instead of planes, or by explosives at the moment a plane hit them…

[Stavros]

And the phenomenon has had such an expansion that you can find some elements of it in the arguments of well educated and very rational people, today. It has come to reinforce a tendency that has been enduring since the 70s (around maybe the Watergate and the Vietnam war time) of incredible cynicism, especially for the political class.
You just have the feeling that, as more and more people from more and more backgrounds, and for more and more different reasons, are trying to take advantage of it, the capacity of an ordinary man or woman to follow and understand actuality is diminish geometrically. So I’m suggesting to you we might be facing a conspiracy of gigantic proportion, here! Of course I’m joking… All in all I think the phenomenon is mainly linked to the internet (and electronic media), and is sociological in nature.

Although it is not a perfect argument, I like the falsifiability process as developed by Karl Popper. Any serious, positive hypothesis can be tested; you can apply some verification on it either to disprove it or simply to come to some common understanding on how to modify or to adjust it to the reality it refers to.

Dan, consider the 1950s in the US with the McCarthy hearings and the hysteria over the communists in Hollywood and elsewhere who were loyal to an enemy of the USA. Conspiracies do not have to be politically 'right-wing' or ultra-conservative, Herbert Marcuse's theory of repressive tolerance was based on his view that capitalism had the ability to co-opt ordinary people into a repressive system they did not properly understand because they were diverted from the truth by household commodities that appeared to improve the quality of their lives at the same time as they were being exploited -is this any different, structurally, from the Matrix, other than Marcuse not claiming the people were offered two different coloured pills?

Popper's theory was long ago chaellenged by Thomas Kuhn's concept of shifting paradigms (in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) -scientific theories if dependent on the falsifiability hypothesis could remain unchanged for decades, but change the paradigm and ask a set of different questions and the problem moves toward a solution. It also argues/reinforces the viw that science most often progresses by accident rather than by patient and methodical testing, although I suspect both are involved. And you may be aware of the famous (?) encounter between Popper and Wittgenstein at the heart of which is the dependence of science on language without which it cannot describe what science is let alone explain it.

[Stavros]

Dan I forgot to add these two links to accounts of the encounter between Popper and Wittgenstein which might interest you:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001...firstbookaward

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/bo...l?pagewanted=1

[danthepoetman]

Yes, of course, hysteria is not typical of our era. But notice something interesting about our time: the incredible expansion and multiplication of the intellectual and artistic “messages”. We live in a society in which “information” (about anything) circulates as it never has at any time in history. And not only is it infinitely more plentiful, and in fact omnipresent, it is also almost every bit as diversify; not only is it more present in quantity, it is more diversified in quality. You can find absolutely anything culturally, today. Any book, any play, any text, you can find stuff on any topic, any opinion ever given, any theory, etc.; we live in an era of ecclectism like never before. There have been fears in the past, there has been conspiracy theories, but never as many and never on this scale. But what you’re referring to is interesting in that those that are present everywhere now seems to arise much less feeling or fear, and much less emotions than those you mentioned, for instance during the McCarthy era. I think one is related to the other: such a plethora that we don’t know where to turn anymore and get to be universally cynical. People are so filled with such discourses that they’re desensitized. Some kind of cynicism falling into dumb confusion.
Popper’s falsifiability test has been discussed and argued by many people in many scientific fields. It still retains validity simply because it’s a purely practical tool rather than a theory of science; a theory on how we can find what is a science rather than a scientific theory in itself; in other words, it’s a epistemological tool. Khun is most definitely right, and it’s one of the most fascinating aspect to observe, when you follow the history of ideas, these switches in a whole perspective on the world, as if everything was rewritten in relatively short amount of time; a bubble explode and leave room to another. But we have to remain careful: some other epistemologists have shown that sometimes, those changes in paradigms are more complex than they seem to be, and involve long, complex processes that they can often detail. As to Wittgenstein and in general the thinkers of circle of Vienna, I respect enormously their work and accomplishments. They have literally sanitized philosophy in particular and human sciences in general, despite the persistence of gibberish writers in both fields. But I can’t agree with the idea that every philosophical question is a pure linguistic problem, nor that the whole of thinking is linguistic, and not either that the process of thinking is purely linguistic. Such perspective would flatten any humanly important question. Neurology is teaching us more and more about the process of thinking today, and understand it as a complex exchange between different specialized parts of the brain, including the cerebral trunk and the limbic system, which are the center of sensations, emotions, territoriality and more primal way of processing sensitive information, as well as parts of the cortex, pre-frontal lobe, more associated with rationality, language related parts on the left side, spatial references on the right, parts which relate more to sensation with mirror cells in the parietal lobe, and so on. Thinking happens as a whole, and conceptualization is a matter of multiple neural connections. Language is the essential part of “philosophy”, but certainly not the whole of it. But anyways, it’s a very different issue. We’re not quite sure what happened in that Popper-Wittgenstein face-up, but it did revolved around such questions, and I'm not sure it's relevant to the question of the thread in itself. Thanks nontheless for the links, Stavros!

I realize I’m ridiculously writing a novel here. I apologize. All I meant was that the plethora of cultural information today gives everybody the possibility to share anything they feel. And in itself, it’s great! But some people abuse such possibility and take advantage of weaker or less informed people. The massive information era is that of the net and even more of the social network developing more now; and moreover with the possibility to reach mass information platforms with a small device or a miniature telephone. Never have we been in such a situation.
(On the topic, Marshall Mcluhan would have much more stimulating ideas for us).

[trish]

Unfortunately the acquisition of real knowledge is hard work. Is climate change happening and is it due in significant part to greenhouse gas emissions, or is it all a conspiracy to expand governmental control over private corporations? Short of becoming an expert in the relevant sciences and personally investigating all the leads in the conspiracy story, how does one legitimately judge these conflicting claims? What we can’t or won’t test and verify on our own is left to others, some of whom we take to be trustworthy authorities and some we don’t. How do legitimately pick and choose our authorities? Some say we shouldn’t; that we should instead remain skeptical on every issue until we ourselves have acquired the necessary expertise to make a serious judgment. Personally I think we have to make judgments on issues that go beyond our own expertise. Parents need to decide whether they are going to have their children inoculated against pertussis and measles and tetanus etc. Reliable public heath information is a service that government has provided through agencies like the CDC and FDA. But when conspiracy theories undercut the authority of the CDC and “big government” generally, then parents panic and make decisions that not only endanger their children but their community as well.

(btw, anyone interested here is a synopsis of the pancake model of collapse that I posted back in 2008 -> http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...71&postcount=4 )

[Stavros]

Unfortunately the acquisition of real knowledge is hard work. Is climate change happening and is it due in significant part to greenhouse gas emissions, or is it all a conspiracy to expand governmental control over private corporations? Short of becoming an expert in the relevant sciences and personally investigating all the leads in the conspiracy story, how does one legitimately judge these conflicting claims? What we can’t or won’t test and verify on our own is left to others, some of whom we take to be trustworthy authorities and some we don’t. How do legitimately pick and choose our authorities? Some say we shouldn’t; that we should instead remain skeptical on every issue until we ourselves have acquired the necessary expertise to make a serious judgment. Personally I think we have to make judgments on issues that go beyond our own expertise. Parents need to decide whether they are going to have their children inoculated against pertussis and measles and tetanus etc. Reliable public heath information is a service that government has provided through agencies like the CDC and FDA. But when conspiracy theories undercut the authority of the CDC and “big government” generally, then parents panic and make decisions that not only endanger their children but their community as well.

(btw, anyone interested here is a synopsis of the pancake model of collapse that I posted back in 2008 -> http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...71&postcount=4 )

Is it the case that language is critical because the way in which the science of climate change is described in language that people can understand determines whether or not people believe it? And is this not the same with all of science? Popper's -alleged- 'common sense' approach to language is at best naive, at worst an evasion, because science is also political, and can be manipulated, so that how one uses language is as important as the philosophical arguments that Wittgenstein wrestled with, some of which he himself was aware were obscure.

[Stavros]

Popper’s falsifiability test has been discussed and argued by many people in many scientific fields. It still retains validity simply because it’s a purely practical tool rather than a theory of science; a theory on how we can find what is a science rather than a scientific theory in itself; in other words, it’s a epistemological tool.

How can Popper's method be both a practical tool and an epistemology? Surely that is precisely what Wittgenstein was complaining about- that Popper's 'common sense' or 'practical reality' had no permanent meaning because it lacked a language to permamently express it? It was scientifically true for Aristotle that the sun moved round the earth, it is currently scientifically true that the earth moves round the sun; the language that gives meaning to these contradictions has changed as the science has changed, yet Popper seems to cling to a fixed meaning in language that Wittgenstein claims is not there, and is even an obstacle to thought. This is why critics of Wittgenstein accuse him of relativism, and why critics of Popper accuse him of a naive belief that if science has proven something to be true, it must always be true.

[danthepoetman]

How can Popper's method be both a practical tool and an epistemology? Surely that is precisely what Wittgenstein was complaining about- that Popper's 'common sense' or 'practical reality' had no permanent meaning because it lacked a language to permamently express it? It was scientifically true for Aristotle that the sun moved round the earth, it is currently scientifically true that the earth moves round the sun; the language that gives meaning to these contradictions has changed as the science has changed, yet Popper seems to cling to a fixed meaning in language that Wittgenstein claims is not there, and is even an obstacle to thought. This is why critics of Wittgenstein accuse him of relativism, and why critics of Popper accuse him of a naive belief that if science has proven something to be true, it must always be true.

I said it’s an epistemological tool. As such it allows us to examine and determine, and in this case, to know if a “knowledge” or a field or a theory is science or not.

For Witgenstein, Stavros, philosophy is pure language. So is thinking. Language must reflect as he says, “what is the case” (and by that he means a structure within reality that must be seek by verifying). Anything above that, to him, is a chimera. He means to be a language police in philosophy and human sciences. In essence, questions related to reality are entirely dependent on how they are expressed. And not just from a historical perspective, but as a matter of fact. I don’t know if it’s relativistic; I suppose you can see it that way. I personally find it simply a bit thin, in terms of exploring philosophical, or existential, matters. I do not believe that such questions are purely dependant on their linguistic expression. And Popper neither. Both are realists, and believe in a reality totally independent from the mind. Popper believes in the progression of science, but not in unalterable scientific truths. The falsifiability principle works precisely to the opposite: a theory is always modifiable as our knowledge changes. But it is precisely because we can verify it and come to a common understanding as how to modify it, that we know it is a scientific theory. It’s interesting discussing that, Stavros, but once again, I’m not sure it has anything to do with the thread topic. I was just invoking Popper’s principle as an easy way (a practical tool) of finding if any one of these conspiracy theories has any credibility or not.

(And oups! thanks for the pancake, Trish!)

[trish]

Is it the case that language is critical because the way in which the science of climate change is described in language that people can understand determines whether or not people believe it? And is this not the same with all of science? Popper's -alleged- 'common sense' approach to language is at best naive, at worst an evasion, because science is also political, and can be manipulated, so that how one uses language is as important as the philosophical arguments that Wittgenstein wrestled with, some of which he himself was aware were obscure.

The art of transliterating a scientific argument into lay terms is always a challenge and almost always critical to getting the lay-public to understand and care about the argument. I do think the basic mechanisms of climatology are easier to convey than the symmetry breaking mechanisms that underlie condensed matter physics. This may be why there is in fact a public discussion of climate change and why the Superconducting Super Collider was never built.

There is politics in science, though it’s rarely the left vs right issues that most people associate with the word “politics.” In any academic department there are factions who fight hard to hire people who research this rather than that. There are of course the politics that accompany the personal jealousies that arise in any organization. The organizations and panels that are responsible each year for gifting awards and grants are pressured by people who think this field is trivial and that field is cutting edge. There is also fraud in science. But Kuhn not withstanding, these flaws rarely delay progress toward honest understanding. Most researchers are fairly quick at recognizing which models are working and which are not, and in a rush to make or maintain their own reputations they will be guided by the ones that work. Progress moves so fast in the 21st century no one can afford to get hung up on ideas that show no promise.

What Popper has right is that falsifiability is an epistemological virtue. If he was attempting to describe how one SHOULD proceed in the aquisition of knowledge, he was on the right track, but dangerously close to the very metaphysics he eschewed (since a “should” claim would be metaphysical). If he was attempting to describe what scientists do when they do science he did leave out the “political” component. What Wittenstein got right is that the correspondence theory of truth is probably too simplistic a model of language. But do we really want to go so far as to claim, as did Wittgenstein, that talk of truth is just a language game.

[martin48]

Why is it when one of these threads gets started, it quickly falls into - what is science anyway? Climate change is not proved (We will have attacks on evolution within two pages)? Oh, and a tendency to boast about our epistemological knowledge?

Can we accept this:

The scientific method — the method wherein inquiry regards itself as fallible and purposely tests itself and criticizes, corrects, and improves itself.

As a starting point