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> A conspiracy theory is a belief there should be a conspiracy but without the necessary qualified evidence. That is an arbitrarily high standard. Just becaus

> A conspiracy theory is a belief there should be a conspiracy but without the necessary qualified evidence. That is an arbitrarily high standard. Just because the subject of a hypothesis is that there is a conspiracy doesn't automatically make lack of evidence problematic. Even for natural phenomena there can go decades before a hypothesis is backed with evidence if ever (e.g. Einstein), human interactions and particularly intent is much more unlikely to leave a trail of evidence so I don't get how being even more strict with it helps with our knowledge gathering process. All conspiracies that turned out to be true were conspiracy hypotheses before they were proven and this defense could have been (and was, and is) used to stifle the process of evidence gathering. This doesn't mean most of the conspiracy hypotheses aren't far fetched, emotional and poorly argued, nor that all is entitled to public attention equally, but we can't apply different epistemological standards between conspiracies or natural phenomena (science) when we are faced with unknowns. > Given the terms I find it’s not at all far fetched to conclude there exists some common mental health defect If we judged this premise by the standard you've posited, it would be equally problematic. In fact, we know in the past, states have abused psychiatry to discredit dissenters. Check out Soviet Union and their "creative" diagnostic labels used against political dissenters as an example.

austincheney 6y ago
> That is an arbitrarily high standard. Which likely explains why conspiracy theories proliferate.
- acituan 6y ago
  > Which likely explains why conspiracy theories proliferate. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but setting an arbitrarily high standard is problematic. Human life is complex, interactions are combinatorially so. Just because uncertainty makes us uncomfortable doesn't mean we should move the bar higher to only deal with the comfortable territory (those with readily available evidence). History is full of atrocities that didn't immediately produced evidence, and even in the face of evidence we denied it could be happening for a long while. Even evidence is no panacea for our biased knowledge-seeking machinery. Not all beliefs are bad. Not all truths are comfortable. Therefore it is imperative we be careful with what we ignore and what we don't.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > Therefore it is imperative we be careful with what we ignore and what we don't. That is why investigations are a thing. The need for proofs is completely unrelated to complexity.
    - acituan 6y ago
      > That is why investigations are a thing My point was exactly how states in the past could not un-corrupt themselves through investigations. That is why observing, questioning eyes of everyone is needed. > The need for proofs is completely unrelated to complexity. You couldn't be more wrong. Number of possible moves in a game of chess is 10^43. It exhausts the computation capacity of the most powerful computer, let alone a human's. They have to use heuristics, in other words, they have to decide what is relevant and what is not. Real life is infinitely more complex, rules are not self evident and there are many more players. Therefore we always have to decide how we will deal with complexity, therefore e.g. what we choose to investigate or what criteria we will use to assess the claims is much more consequential than you acknowledge. You are suggesting an arbitrarily high bar for investigation, assuming anything that doesn't readily have evidence will not be relevant. This is one way to narrow the problem space indeed, but it is not a good one. Things that have the most evidence are not always the things that are most relevant and vice versa.
      - austincheney 6y ago
        > Real life is infinitely more complex As somebody who has conducted lawful investigations I am fully aware. In a real life investigation where the outcome can bring legal sanctions that destroys a person's life or career the opinion of the investigator has weight, but that opinion is irrelevant without evidence to connect the dots. A conspiracy theory will sink the credibility of the investigation. What matters is what you can prove and what the attorney finds is legally qualified. > You are suggesting an arbitrarily high bar for investigation As I should.
        acituan 6y ago

austincheney 6y ago

> That is an arbitrarily high standard. Which likely explains why conspiracy theories proliferate.

acituan 6y ago
> Which likely explains why conspiracy theories proliferate. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but setting an arbitrarily high standard is problematic. Human life is complex, interactions are combinatorially so. Just because uncertainty makes us uncomfortable doesn't mean we should move the bar higher to only deal with the comfortable territory (those with readily available evidence). History is full of atrocities that didn't immediately produced evidence, and even in the face of evidence we denied it could be happening for a long while. Even evidence is no panacea for our biased knowledge-seeking machinery. Not all beliefs are bad. Not all truths are comfortable. Therefore it is imperative we be careful with what we ignore and what we don't.
- austincheney 6y ago
  > Therefore it is imperative we be careful with what we ignore and what we don't. That is why investigations are a thing. The need for proofs is completely unrelated to complexity.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > That is why investigations are a thing My point was exactly how states in the past could not un-corrupt themselves through investigations. That is why observing, questioning eyes of everyone is needed. > The need for proofs is completely unrelated to complexity. You couldn't be more wrong. Number of possible moves in a game of chess is 10^43. It exhausts the computation capacity of the most powerful computer, let alone a human's. They have to use heuristics, in other words, they have to decide what is relevant and what is not. Real life is infinitely more complex, rules are not self evident and there are many more players. Therefore we always have to decide how we will deal with complexity, therefore e.g. what we choose to investigate or what criteria we will use to assess the claims is much more consequential than you acknowledge. You are suggesting an arbitrarily high bar for investigation, assuming anything that doesn't readily have evidence will not be relevant. This is one way to narrow the problem space indeed, but it is not a good one. Things that have the most evidence are not always the things that are most relevant and vice versa.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      > Real life is infinitely more complex As somebody who has conducted lawful investigations I am fully aware. In a real life investigation where the outcome can bring legal sanctions that destroys a person's life or career the opinion of the investigator has weight, but that opinion is irrelevant without evidence to connect the dots. A conspiracy theory will sink the credibility of the investigation. What matters is what you can prove and what the attorney finds is legally qualified. > You are suggesting an arbitrarily high bar for investigation As I should.
      - acituan 6y ago