23 ms·

Conspiracy: In Theory and Practice

374 points by yellow_lead 5y ago

ArcturianDeath 5y ago
https://greenwald.substack.com/archive https://greenwald.substack.com/archive https://mattstoller.substack.com/archive https://mattstoller.substack.com/archive
h2odragon 5y ago
A group of people who organize to advocate for a cause are an NGO, and "affinity group", or a dangerous conspiracy or maybe even cult; depending on if you agree with them... by modern usage. Is The Federalist Society a conspiracy? They have open meetings. How about labor unions?
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  Did you read the article? His answer is yes, all organized action qualifies as a conspiracy, and that it's important to distinguish between conspiracy theory and conspiracy practice
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > all organized action qualifies as a conspiracy The dictionary definition disagrees. It adds qualifiers like 'secret' and 'unlawful' and/or 'harmful'.
    - mindcrime 5y ago
      In one definition. In another it simply says that "conspiracy" is "the act of conspiring" and one of the definitions of "conspire" is: to act in harmony toward a common end https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspire https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspire That said, I don't think there's much question that the more common-place, colloquial definition includes the "secret" and probably "unlawful" aspects. But somebody who uses these terms in the other sense isn't necessarily wrong.
      - cat199 5y ago
        agree.. fragmenting words by colloquialism tends to obscure the deeper and more complete 'sense' that existed before the fragmentation - so we're left with more precise words, but less linguistic cohesion a similar example of a word that has become so loaded by the negative sense would be 'propaganda' - technically all political speech is propaganda, but in colloquial usage the term is so bogged down to mean roughly 'blatant and overt totalitarian propaganda' that we can hardly see the inherent political bias in 'acceptable' political statements, and are more prone to be influenced by them as a result
    - scarecrowbob 5y ago
      I mean, how do would this present the FBI action against social movement groups in the 1970s? The actions against the black panthers, for instance, were secret and harmful to the group and the question of the legal status of those actions is open. The same could be said with regards the US treatment of the American Indian Movement, or many, many actions taken against labor organizers in the late 19th C. Much could be said of about anything the CIA has done in its history. IMO, it's more useful to just open up the term to any organization that acts in concert, because then a lot of the fuzzy distinctions between, say a government that isn't acting in the direct interests of its entire population and a criminal cartel. Those are clearly different kinds of organizations, but "harmful" and "legal" become questionable in many situations.
    - Taniwha 5y ago
      Ed does try to make the distinction between a 'true' conspiracy (ie one that is actually happening) and a 'false' one (one that's just made up, and doesn't actually exist except as in the minds of its believers) - one is possibly justifiable paranoia (for example what Ed showed us about the NSA), the other mass delusion (cough-q-cough)
      - varyherb 5y ago
        Ed? Do you know him?
        ifdefdebug 5y ago
        How is that different from everybody here calling Mr. Thorwalds by his given name?
abathur 5y ago
I think it may be helpful to evaluate the extent to which things have gravity, or create their own weather. Some things can be hard to make sense of if your perspective is either too local, or too global. I found the post interesting, but it also felt like he isn't seeing (or is perhaps not naming...) the forces that structure this corner of the universe?
- sukhbold 5y ago
  alpha draconians from sagittarius arms. test, can I delete my comment later? over.
noslenwerdna 5y ago
If it is done in the open, it is by definition not a conspiracy.
- lukifer 5y ago
  You’ve never heard of an “open secret”?
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    The conspiracy film by Gabe "lawsuit" Hoffman? I think it was more of a projectionary film. That guy is a creep.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  The act itself can be open but the true motive secret. Snowden's example of gerrymandering shows what he means, it's a practice ostensibly to balance voting districts but there is clearly a conspiracy to use it for political gain.
- cat199 5y ago
  but is it not 'conspiring' ? it's not a 'secret conspiracy' sure, but it is a 'product of conspiring'; and x-acy is a linguistic construct for expressing 'product of x'
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- harryf 5y ago
  Define “in the open”. Through lens of (social) media and through our own cognitive biases the idea of anything being done “in the open” seems more like self delusion.
js8 5y ago
I like the conspiracy theory/practice distinction and I hope Ed will write more on how we could pay more attention to the latter. Noam Chomsky presents lots of evidence about outrageous acts of American government in his books, and he always claimed that it all comes from official and open government sources. Yet most people are either unaware or refuse to believe it anyway. These are conspiracies done openly, because almost nobody wants to go through and find the smoking gun in the heaps of otherwise boring government documents.
- baron_harkonnen 5y ago
  One of my favorite Noam Chomsky moments is when a 9-11 "truther" is able to ask him a question about what he believes about the 9-11 conspiracy theories. Chomsky responds with the typical comment that it would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to have so many people keep the secret that it doesn't even make sense. But he continues to say that the US government has openly killed 100s of thousands of civilians around the globe, why would 3000 killed more be interesting at all? Essentially pointing out that you don't need the complexity of conspiracy theory to realize that the US government actively participates in large scale murder openly and all the time.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > Chomsky responds with the typical comment that it would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to have so many people keep the secret that it doesn't even make sense. I remember hearing that argument made back in the 00's about government surveilance. The secret doesn't have to be kept perfectly, it just has to be made ridiculous.
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - Judgmentality 5y ago
      Now I want to relearn all the 9/11 conspiracy theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories
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wisty 5y ago
> It took years — eight years and counting in exile — for me to realize that I was missing the point: we talk about conspiracy theories in order to avoid talking about conspiracy practices, which are often too daunting, too threatening, too total. I disagree. People (at least, some people) are just naturally drawn to mysteries. Imaginary things aren't interesting despite the lack of evidence for them, they're interesting because of the lack of evidence. Everyone likes a good mystery. Look at bigfoot. It's pretty much described as a great ape. It's described as being large, and being a little more bipedal than most apes, but there's no more interesting than a gorilla. I suppose it's a little interesting that an old world ape found its way to America (perhaps a descendent of the Yeti that travelled across through the arctic?), but there's similar interest in mysterious apes in most of the world. Somehow, a lot of people are more interested in imaginary apes than real apes. Here's a quote about Bigfoot I found on Wikipedia: > "Well now you will be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist."[162] She later added, chuckling, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist", and finally, "You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."[163] In 2012, when asked again by the Huffington Post, Goodall said "I'm fascinated and would actually love them to exist," adding, "Of course, it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or hair of the Bigfoot, but I've read all the accounts."[164] This is Jane Goodall, who is probably the best known primatologist of all time, not some conspiracy theorist. If Jane Goodall can be impressed by an ape simply because it's so mysterious (because it doesn't exist), this says a lot about the allure of a mystery. But back to the main point - why is it that open conspiracies are less scary? I think it's fairly rational to be less worried at a visible threat, since a lack of widespread opposition shows that it's not taken to be a serious threat by the rest of the population. If the President announces that electronic communications are routinely being monitored, then that seems pretty safe. There's no serious opposition to it, so people must not care too much, so it's reasonable to assume it's not a great danger. On the other hand, if there was only a conspiracy theory, then you could assume that the lack of serious opposition was due to a lack of knowledge of the conspiracy. If (picking something outlandish) Bill Gates announced that he was implanting everyone with micro-chips to extend 5G networks and help the police track criminals, a lot of people would grumble, but I doubt there would be a serious opposition to it, and people would feel reassured that this means it's not a serious issue. How serious is mass surveillance, really? I certainly understand some people strongly objecting, but it's not like I do much more than use a VPN (which might be compromised anyway).
grawprog 5y ago
I've noticed people treat conspiracy theories with the same level of validity or non-validity regardless of the facts or details. Things like flat earth conspiracies have now inexplicably been lumped into the likes of those who believe in things like. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que... Or just question in general the motivation behind the decisions made by those in charge. There are some very obviously dumb conspiracies that have no basis in reality, there are some possibly far out there conspiracies that could have some merit and then there's conspiracies that seemed ridiculous but actually turned out to be true. The world is not black and white...it's very grey. Again, I find it odd these things tend to all be labeled under one giant 'conspiracy theory' label. Much like any theories, some are possibly valid, others very obviously not. Categorizing these things together as has been done in recent years makes no sense.
- Swizec 5y ago
  My favorite example of this is the tinfoil hat conspiracy of the early 2000’s. An open joke in the tech community that the government is always listening and knows what you do online. then Snowden happened
  - hammock 5y ago
    Echelon[1] and Room 641A[2] (and others) were well known among niche circles a long time before Snowden. These "conspiracies" were the kind of thing that people would call you a crackpot for if you told normies though. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
    - angrais 5y ago
      A reason others may refer to conspiracy theory supporters as "crackpots" could be attributed to the fact that there's now so many wild theories out there (UFOs, aliens, 9/11 inside job, etc). So if you support a few, then you'd be more likely to be considered a crackpot. In other words, while those two examples were true, many are likely not.
ypeterholmes 5y ago
Conspiracies happen constantly because people conspire to do nefarious things all the time. However nowadays the framework for evaluating those nefarious things (conspiracy theories) has been completely negated by those in corporate media conflating it with insanity and baseless, nonsensical accusations. And there's a reason for that, which Snowden touches on. Namely, the world in its current form is largely run by such nefarious schemes. The bad guys won a long time ago. And by taking away the language we might even use to talk about what they did, and the scale of it, they have further insulated their power.
- prox 5y ago
  He says thhat conspiracy is inherently anti+democratic, so here is the antidote, strengthening democracy. Another great point is in his last paragraph, that conspiracy theories are mostly bottom up events. You have a whole demographic doing conspiracy theorizing instead of talking about what it looks in practice. There just was a president whose whole game was running a circus, everything was about the guy and his idea of The Enemy. Nothing of substance and nothing but misdirection. Another problem is that day to day journalism isn’t epistemological, it’s just reporting, so you just get a flat view of what is happening.
  - AlphaDio 5y ago
    Well, I guess if he says they are anti-democratic, the question is solved and settled, and the solution is just easy-peasy! Have you considered that this president could have been himself the target of misdirection? The problem of day-to-day journalism is certainly not epistemology, the problem is that they rely on eyeballs, advertisers, and tribes, and thus tend to tailor their reporting, that might be the reason why everything that happened around that last president seemed like a circus.
    - prox 5y ago
      He was the president, he cannot be the target of misdirection. The last president needed the media in a symbiotic relationship. Something to rile against. In form he spoke badly about MSM, but in practice he needed them just as much to stay relevant and have something to rebel against. Yes, media need the clicks, but that’s portraying it wrongly imo.
cgb223 5y ago
If I subscribe to Ed Snowden’s Substack, on a scale of 1 to 10 how much “monitoring” am I about to be under…?
- sjg007 5y ago
  11
  - cookie_monsta 5y ago
    No doubt. But (if I may disappear further down the rabbit hole) for this to be meaningful we would have to know what level of monitoring we are under without subscribing.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  With what he has revealed, you'll realize that you’ve been monitored this whole time. All of us have.
- drivers99 5y ago
  He has pointed out that it’s not a question of whether they start monitoring you, it’s that with bulk collection they are collecting your activity already for later filtering/reference, forever.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"I'll begin by offering a fundamental proposition: namely, that to believe in any conspiracy, whether true or false, is to believe in a system or sector run not by popular consent but by an elite, acting in its own self-interest." This definition of "conspiracy" does not match the dictionary definition of the word "conspiracy". There is nothing about "system[s], sector[s], popular consent, elite or self-interest." The following definition is provided by the authors of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. 220 dict.dict.org dictd 1.12.1/rf on Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64 <auth.mime> <46338037.19753.1625025739@dict.dict.org> 150 27 definitions retrieved 151 "Conspiracy" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48" Conspiracy \Conspir"acy\, n.; pl. {Conspiracies}. [See {Conspiration}.] 1. A combination of people for an evil purpose; an agreement, between two or more persons, to commit a crime in concert, as treason; a plot. 2. A concurence or general tendency, as of circumstances, to one event, as if by agreement. 3. (Law) An agreement, manifesting itself in words or deeds, by which two or more persons confederate to do an unlawful act, or to use unlawful to do an act which is lawful; confederacy.
- gilgoomesh 5y ago
  Snowden’s description matches the definition you provide. The “two or more persons” is the “system”.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    Missing: sector, popular consent, self-interest, elite Further, the dictionary definition of "system" does not match the one you provide. Groups of people are not "systems". 220 dict.dict.org dictd 1.12.1/rf on Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64 <auth.mime> <46521789.8886.1625096684@dict.dict.org> 150 84 definitions retrieved 151 "System" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48" System \Sys"tem\, n. [L. systema, Gr. ?, fr. ? to place together; sy`n with + ? to place: cf. F. syst[`e]me. See {Stand}.] 1. An assemblage of objects arranged in regular subordination, or after some distinct method, usually logical or scientific; a complete whole of objects related by some common law, principle, or end; a complete exhibition of essential principles or facts, arranged in a rational dependence or connection; a regular union of principles or parts forming one entire thing; as, a system of philosophy; a system of government; a system of divinity; a system of botany or chemistry; a military system; the solar system. [1913 Webster] The best way to learn any science, is to begin with a regular system, or a short and plain scheme of that science well drawn up into a narrow compass. --I. Watts. [1913 Webster] 2. Hence, the whole scheme of created things regarded as forming one complete plan of whole; the universe. "The great system of the world." --Boyle. [1913 Webster] 3. Regular method or order; formal arrangement; plan; as, to have a system in one's business. [1913 Webster] 4. (Mus.) The collection of staves which form a full score. See {Score}, n. [1913 Webster] 5. (Biol.) An assemblage of parts or organs, either in animal or plant, essential to the performance of some particular function or functions which as a rule are of greater complexity than those manifested by a single organ; as, the capillary system, the muscular system, the digestive system, etc.; hence, the whole body as a functional unity. [1913 Webster] 6. (Zool.) One of the stellate or irregular clusters of intimately united zooids which are imbedded in, or scattered over, the surface of the common tissue of many compound ascidians. [1913 Webster] {Block system}, {Conservative system}, etc. See under {Block}, {Conservative}, etc. [1913 Webster] Systematic .
TeeMassive 5y ago
> Or to put it another way, conspiracy practices — the methods by which true conspiracies such as gerrymandering, or the debt industry, or mass surveillance are realized — are almost always overshadowed by conspiracy theorie There's a conspiracy theory about how Q Annon was actually a disinformation campaign crafted against Trump supporters and /pol/acks (you the kind I'm talking about). That's actually something I think is possible although it's all conjecture.
aurantia 5y ago
> the idea that conspiracies themselves are [..] a typology through which people who lack definite or satisfactory narratives as citizens explain to themselves [..] I really like this idea. To me it means that conspiracy theories create modern day mythology. Ancient people used myths to explain to themselves things they either didn't understand or feared. I've always wondered how did they come with these outrageous ideas but it now makes sense.
- mjburgess 5y ago
  The procedure to invent a conspiracy is quite simple. Write down all the topics which "seem important" right now. Eg., China, USA, Trump, Biden, AI, Virus, etc. (Where do these terms come from? Mostly the news, conversation. But each person will produce a different list.) Now all you have to do is connect all of them. This is, in reality, not possible. So one has to dispense with every greater "obvious truths" in order to make the connection work. It is in this attempt to rationalise a free association that we get such mythologies. It is the heart of how schizophrenics think. Psychosis is the mistaking of importance and connection in one's perceptions. And so it is quite common to find schizophrenia in the conspiracy theory population. However if you havent been taught to be sceptical of yourself, etc., its a fairly "natural" way to think.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    Similarly, if one hasn't been taught how to think relatively and absolutely simultaneously and at all times, the world can look very simple, like schizophrenics are prone to cognitive errors but normies are not. This is just one example from a very long list.
dools 5y ago
The number one thing that distinguishes conspiracy practises from conspiracy theories is how boring they are.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  Which are the more boring ones?
  - Lendal 5y ago
    Take your pick. As soon as I mention one your lack-of-interest meter will immediately shut it down. How about campaign finance? How about the fact that it is against the interest of the two American political parties to solve any politicized problem? Immigration, for instance, will never be solved because as long as it remains a political issue it brings in money to both parties. Nobody will harm that golden goose. It's the same reason that nobody inside Facebook will solve the problems with Facebook. Because those very problems are what fund the income of everyone who works there. Ergo, it will never be solved, at least not from within.
    - Joeboy 5y ago
      I just wasn't sure if they were saying fake conspiracies are more boring or real ones are more boring. I could imagine it being either. I suppose the ordering of the sentence implies it's the former that are more boring.
  - dools 5y ago
    Real conspiracies are super boring. For example we had this guy in Australia James Ashby who was the chief of staff for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. They play to a lot of the fake conspiracy types that also fall into the “basket of deplorables” from which other conservative governments globally garner their support. However all the outlandish shit that PHON either spread directly or nurture indirectly (such as NASA doctoring climate change data) is far more interesting than the actual conspiracy they were alleged to have perpetrated which was James Ashby pressuring candidates to use his signage company: https://www.afr.com/politics/knives-out-for-hanson-staffer-ashby-accused-of-profiting-off-candidates-20161220-gtepe4 https://www.afr.com/politics/knives-out-for-hanson-staffer-a...
grumblenum 5y ago
My pet theory is that Snowden's disclosure is both a bit of CIA/NSA sibling rivalry and a misinformation campaign to scare people into thinking that the NSA has far more surveillance capabilities than it really does. The goals being to frighten people into inaction and to herd them onto platforms these entities can monitor (TOR & ANOM come to mind). That Snowden is able to rake in book and movie deals while 'on the run' makes me doubt that anybody is actually interested in catching him.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Are those huge NSA data centers in Utah also just for the show, then?
  - grumblenum 5y ago
    No, but I think it's unlikely that anybody, including the NSA, can collect, index, catalog and parse meaning out of hundreds of GB _per second_ (I'm using Statista numbers for global IP traffic). I would be skeptical that it's even physically possible with any amount of hardware in existence. If you really want a concentrated haul of the most interesting stuff, then I would say that platforms which openly market themselves as safe venues for criminals and dissidents would be strong candidates. You would still have extraordinary data warehousing needs just for that limited subset of traffic.
    - posix_me_less 5y ago
      > unlikely that anybody, including the NSA, can collect, index, catalog and parse meaning out of hundreds of GB _per second No, it's actually very likely. I've noticed people often make this argument as if it is obvious that the data that is being processed is somehow too large to handle. But they misunderstand the ways this can be done and underestimate current technological capabilities. One big switch in single datacenter can handle all traffic of that datacenter, hundreds of GB/s. Make a special one with custom FPGA/cpus and in addition to switching, it can do decrypting, parsing, matching and filtering the way you like, hundreds of GB per second, real-time. This is a highly paralelizable job and the hardware is made to exploit that. The resulting stream of interesting data is probably much thinner and can be easily sent to some central location, realtime. The rest can be stored locally and sent on demand.
a0-prw 5y ago
Yes: an open conspiracy was the build up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
- atatatat 5y ago
  Or was it Afgha—....
- cdstyh 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
motohagiography 5y ago
> In sum, conspiracy theories do not inculcate powerlessness, so much as they are the signs and symptoms of powerlessness itself. This captures it well. You can think of them as what people without power in a situation use to describe what they percieve the people who do have it are doing. There is the folk religion aspect of them, but even office politics are defined by similar conspiracy thinking. If you have thought you were being manipulated or managed with deception in an office environment, extending that to institutions is not a big leap. Maybe I'm way down the rabbit hole, but I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik. Meta-commentators calling out conspiracies and inconsistencies are a real threat to the narratives insiders use to sustain the necessary dissonance to navigate the dynamic of influence within their networks. When you are an insider, you have to sustain the fictions that the power of your group is legitimate, your colleagues are honest and aligned to the same values, and that you are believer. You have to sustain the official optimisim line because that is what it means to be aligned to power. Summers' famous quote, "the first rule of being an insider is you don't criticize other insiders" captures it well. If you let these fictions slip, you essentially fall and define as an outsider and you are out of the game. You're marked as "bitter," "a sore loser," "hard to work with," "a loose cannon," etc. Conspiracy theories 'concretize' counter narratives, which create a figure/ground relationship in an otherwise super complex dynamic, and this creates obstacles for the dynamic sustaining narratives. If you have ever heard someone accused of "black and white thinking," they are being accused of taking their ball and going home by attempting to end a dynamic power game by resolving it to a fact or constraint. Nobody goes meta- when they are playing the game. You can't narrate and speculate about it and win it at the same time. I often tell people we only call it politics when we're losing, and these are all related to this idea of reasoning about people and power as an outsider, hence conspiracy theories are self-defining as powerless. If you use a theory about others' motivations and incentives to explain their behavior and situate yourself outside of that dynamic, you're listening to commentators instead of getting into the game and playing.
- cryoshon 5y ago
  >I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik. yes, this has been my experience. as you said, it's an effective tactic to defuse genuine threats to the narrative as being "unreasonable" or "not serious". i have a hunch that learning to refrain from criticism of insiders is actually the biggest "lesson" taught at the universities and organizations that are traditional centers of elite power. it's part of the pedigree.
mhneu 5y ago
Corporations like Facebook and Google do far more surveillance of any citizen than the government does. Surveillance capitalism. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-profe... Russia surveilles its citizens mostly any way it wants. The US government has more controls (as long as the US remains a democracy.) The Church Committee actually made real reforms. And sadly, everything that Snowden writes now is approved by the Russian intelligence services. You can decide how that influences what you think of his writing.
csours 5y ago
When most people talk about conspiracy theories, they are actually talking about motivational theories. For example, with the 'China lab leak theory', there is no actual evidence of Sars-Cov2 in that lab before the outbreak. What does exist is the belief that 'the Chinese government lies'/'scientists lie'/'Chinese people lie' or some combination or offshoot of these. There is a belief that sinister things happen in labs. There is a belief that it would take serious coordinated effort by humans to cause this much disruption in our lives. It is psychologically much easier to believe that if we could find the people responsible for this and stop them, we can prevent pandemics like this. It is very hard to hold in your head that disease agents can be transmitted from animal populations to human populations at any time and we have no significant control over this. I'm sure I'm doing a lot of projection here, but then so is everyone else. Just FYI - I think it is possible that the virus leaked from the lab, but it is significantly more likely that it was an animal virus (like 1000:1 in favor of 'natural' zoonotic origin)
- tim333 5y ago
  People all over the world lie. I think lab leak speciation is more driven by a lab mucking about with bat coronaviruses being around the corner and the bats 600 miles away.
- HKH2 5y ago
  The standards of evidence you're used to cannot be the same in this instance. The CCP targets dissenters and has a long history of doing so, including openly killing them. Internally, news unfavorable to the CCP rarely comes from established outlets (so it's possible to dismiss it all as hearsay - try constructing your view of China using only Mainland Chinese mass media!). Also, how are you supposed to get evidence if they destroy it and don't allow independent researchers in? There is far too much damage control going on; is not blocking the steps needed to get the evidence you require, a red flag in itself for you?
  - csours 5y ago
    I think those are all very good questions. No one should be shouted down for asking them. I think it is very important to be critical of media controlled by a political party. These are all very natural feelings, and as context they are important. However, there is more context that is important. For instance, there are many many examples of viruses making the jump from animals to humans, some recent examples are Sars-COV1, MERS, and H5N1. The questions you ask sound like the ones raised about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - Saddam Hussein certainly was motivated to lie and cover up, but even with all those red flags, no WMDs were found. In other words, to make a real case requires more than red flags. The motivation of the people raising the accusations should also be examined. In the case of Iraq's WMDs, there was a desire to remove Hussein from power. In the case of China, there is a desire to discredit and diminish China's power on the world stage.
javajosh 5y ago
It would be interesting to model modern identity politics as a kind of conspiracy. Here is an "Enemy Inside" variant that applies to any individual of a problematic identity. When some combination of tags white, male, straight, religious, disagrees-with-this applies to you, you are in a conspiracy whether you know it or not. It is a "conspiracy by default" that you must opt-out of in various ways, most importantly by being vocally supportive of the conspiracy theory itself! As a conspiracy it blurs the distinction between "theory" and "practice" because there's a valid point to be made about systemic racism, and yet the theory goes much further.
giardini 5y ago
So is the NSA spying on Tucker Carlson? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57663136 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57663136 The NSA did not said "No we are not spying on you." which would have been the best and easiest way to refute Tucker.
justshowpost 5y ago
I love how they illustrated "conspiracy" with the picture of Trump. Trump derangement syndrome much? Anyway, most of Trump's statements previously labelled by leftist media as "conspiracy" turned out to be... true. By the way, program named ECHELON didn't go anywhere, it got legalized and civilized under the name of Five Eyes global SIGINT alliance. And don't let "five" to fool you, there more like 15 countries are just fine with mass surveillance with the generous help from No Such Agency. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with improving public safety and stuff but they've been so busy spying on citizens so managed to overlook, for example, rather trivial and almost decade-old open sesame in SolarWinds.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
Well I'm sad that I missed this conversation, but I'm thankful for all the people here who actually gave some very nuanced looks at the topic. This should give me a great start to understanding how to approach the topic on HN in the future. As for the article, I think it's interesting but doesn't go far enough, getting wrapped up in the meta too much for my tastes, but I understand why that approach is the one Snowden wanted to take.

374 points by yellow_lead 5y ago

https://greenwald.substack.com/archive https://greenwald.substack.com/archive https://mattstoller.substack.com/archive https://mattstoller.substack.com/archive

h2odragon 5y ago

A group of people who organize to advocate for a cause are an NGO, and "affinity group", or a dangerous conspiracy or maybe even cult; depending on if you agree with them... by modern usage. Is The Federalist Society a conspiracy? They have open meetings. How about labor unions?

TremendousJudge 5y ago
Did you read the article? His answer is yes, all organized action qualifies as a conspiracy, and that it's important to distinguish between conspiracy theory and conspiracy practice
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > all organized action qualifies as a conspiracy The dictionary definition disagrees. It adds qualifiers like 'secret' and 'unlawful' and/or 'harmful'.
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    In one definition. In another it simply says that "conspiracy" is "the act of conspiring" and one of the definitions of "conspire" is: to act in harmony toward a common end https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspire https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspire That said, I don't think there's much question that the more common-place, colloquial definition includes the "secret" and probably "unlawful" aspects. But somebody who uses these terms in the other sense isn't necessarily wrong.
    - cat199 5y ago
      agree.. fragmenting words by colloquialism tends to obscure the deeper and more complete 'sense' that existed before the fragmentation - so we're left with more precise words, but less linguistic cohesion a similar example of a word that has become so loaded by the negative sense would be 'propaganda' - technically all political speech is propaganda, but in colloquial usage the term is so bogged down to mean roughly 'blatant and overt totalitarian propaganda' that we can hardly see the inherent political bias in 'acceptable' political statements, and are more prone to be influenced by them as a result
  - scarecrowbob 5y ago
    I mean, how do would this present the FBI action against social movement groups in the 1970s? The actions against the black panthers, for instance, were secret and harmful to the group and the question of the legal status of those actions is open. The same could be said with regards the US treatment of the American Indian Movement, or many, many actions taken against labor organizers in the late 19th C. Much could be said of about anything the CIA has done in its history. IMO, it's more useful to just open up the term to any organization that acts in concert, because then a lot of the fuzzy distinctions between, say a government that isn't acting in the direct interests of its entire population and a criminal cartel. Those are clearly different kinds of organizations, but "harmful" and "legal" become questionable in many situations.
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    Ed does try to make the distinction between a 'true' conspiracy (ie one that is actually happening) and a 'false' one (one that's just made up, and doesn't actually exist except as in the minds of its believers) - one is possibly justifiable paranoia (for example what Ed showed us about the NSA), the other mass delusion (cough-q-cough)
    - varyherb 5y ago
      Ed? Do you know him?
      - ifdefdebug 5y ago
        How is that different from everybody here calling Mr. Thorwalds by his given name?

abathur 5y ago

I think it may be helpful to evaluate the extent to which things have gravity, or create their own weather. Some things can be hard to make sense of if your perspective is either too local, or too global. I found the post interesting, but it also felt like he isn't seeing (or is perhaps not naming...) the forces that structure this corner of the universe?

sukhbold 5y ago
alpha draconians from sagittarius arms. test, can I delete my comment later? over.

noslenwerdna 5y ago

If it is done in the open, it is by definition not a conspiracy.

lukifer 5y ago
You’ve never heard of an “open secret”?
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  The conspiracy film by Gabe "lawsuit" Hoffman? I think it was more of a projectionary film. That guy is a creep.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
The act itself can be open but the true motive secret. Snowden's example of gerrymandering shows what he means, it's a practice ostensibly to balance voting districts but there is clearly a conspiracy to use it for political gain.
cat199 5y ago
but is it not 'conspiring' ? it's not a 'secret conspiracy' sure, but it is a 'product of conspiring'; and x-acy is a linguistic construct for expressing 'product of x'
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harryf 5y ago
Define “in the open”. Through lens of (social) media and through our own cognitive biases the idea of anything being done “in the open” seems more like self delusion.

js8 5y ago

I like the conspiracy theory/practice distinction and I hope Ed will write more on how we could pay more attention to the latter. Noam Chomsky presents lots of evidence about outrageous acts of American government in his books, and he always claimed that it all comes from official and open government sources. Yet most people are either unaware or refuse to believe it anyway. These are conspiracies done openly, because almost nobody wants to go through and find the smoking gun in the heaps of otherwise boring government documents.

baron_harkonnen 5y ago
One of my favorite Noam Chomsky moments is when a 9-11 "truther" is able to ask him a question about what he believes about the 9-11 conspiracy theories. Chomsky responds with the typical comment that it would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to have so many people keep the secret that it doesn't even make sense. But he continues to say that the US government has openly killed 100s of thousands of civilians around the globe, why would 3000 killed more be interesting at all? Essentially pointing out that you don't need the complexity of conspiracy theory to realize that the US government actively participates in large scale murder openly and all the time.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > Chomsky responds with the typical comment that it would take an unprecedented amount of coordination to have so many people keep the secret that it doesn't even make sense. I remember hearing that argument made back in the 00's about government surveilance. The secret doesn't have to be kept perfectly, it just has to be made ridiculous.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - Judgmentality 5y ago
    Now I want to relearn all the 9/11 conspiracy theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

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wisty 5y ago

> It took years — eight years and counting in exile — for me to realize that I was missing the point: we talk about conspiracy theories in order to avoid talking about conspiracy practices, which are often too daunting, too threatening, too total. I disagree. People (at least, some people) are just naturally drawn to mysteries. Imaginary things aren't interesting despite the lack of evidence for them, they're interesting because of the lack of evidence. Everyone likes a good mystery. Look at bigfoot. It's pretty much described as a great ape. It's described as being large, and being a little more bipedal than most apes, but there's no more interesting than a gorilla. I suppose it's a little interesting that an old world ape found its way to America (perhaps a descendent of the Yeti that travelled across through the arctic?), but there's similar interest in mysterious apes in most of the world. Somehow, a lot of people are more interested in imaginary apes than real apes. Here's a quote about Bigfoot I found on Wikipedia: > "Well now you will be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist."[162] She later added, chuckling, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist", and finally, "You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."[163] In 2012, when asked again by the Huffington Post, Goodall said "I'm fascinated and would actually love them to exist," adding, "Of course, it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or hair of the Bigfoot, but I've read all the accounts."[164] This is Jane Goodall, who is probably the best known primatologist of all time, not some conspiracy theorist. If Jane Goodall can be impressed by an ape simply because it's so mysterious (because it doesn't exist), this says a lot about the allure of a mystery. But back to the main point - why is it that open conspiracies are less scary? I think it's fairly rational to be less worried at a visible threat, since a lack of widespread opposition shows that it's not taken to be a serious threat by the rest of the population. If the President announces that electronic communications are routinely being monitored, then that seems pretty safe. There's no serious opposition to it, so people must not care too much, so it's reasonable to assume it's not a great danger. On the other hand, if there was only a conspiracy theory, then you could assume that the lack of serious opposition was due to a lack of knowledge of the conspiracy. If (picking something outlandish) Bill Gates announced that he was implanting everyone with micro-chips to extend 5G networks and help the police track criminals, a lot of people would grumble, but I doubt there would be a serious opposition to it, and people would feel reassured that this means it's not a serious issue. How serious is mass surveillance, really? I certainly understand some people strongly objecting, but it's not like I do much more than use a VPN (which might be compromised anyway).

grawprog 5y ago

I've noticed people treat conspiracy theories with the same level of validity or non-validity regardless of the facts or details. Things like flat earth conspiracies have now inexplicably been lumped into the likes of those who believe in things like. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que... Or just question in general the motivation behind the decisions made by those in charge. There are some very obviously dumb conspiracies that have no basis in reality, there are some possibly far out there conspiracies that could have some merit and then there's conspiracies that seemed ridiculous but actually turned out to be true. The world is not black and white...it's very grey. Again, I find it odd these things tend to all be labeled under one giant 'conspiracy theory' label. Much like any theories, some are possibly valid, others very obviously not. Categorizing these things together as has been done in recent years makes no sense.

Swizec 5y ago
My favorite example of this is the tinfoil hat conspiracy of the early 2000’s. An open joke in the tech community that the government is always listening and knows what you do online. then Snowden happened
- hammock 5y ago
  Echelon[1] and Room 641A[2] (and others) were well known among niche circles a long time before Snowden. These "conspiracies" were the kind of thing that people would call you a crackpot for if you told normies though. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
  - angrais 5y ago
    A reason others may refer to conspiracy theory supporters as "crackpots" could be attributed to the fact that there's now so many wild theories out there (UFOs, aliens, 9/11 inside job, etc). So if you support a few, then you'd be more likely to be considered a crackpot. In other words, while those two examples were true, many are likely not.

ypeterholmes 5y ago

Conspiracies happen constantly because people conspire to do nefarious things all the time. However nowadays the framework for evaluating those nefarious things (conspiracy theories) has been completely negated by those in corporate media conflating it with insanity and baseless, nonsensical accusations. And there's a reason for that, which Snowden touches on. Namely, the world in its current form is largely run by such nefarious schemes. The bad guys won a long time ago. And by taking away the language we might even use to talk about what they did, and the scale of it, they have further insulated their power.

prox 5y ago
He says thhat conspiracy is inherently anti+democratic, so here is the antidote, strengthening democracy. Another great point is in his last paragraph, that conspiracy theories are mostly bottom up events. You have a whole demographic doing conspiracy theorizing instead of talking about what it looks in practice. There just was a president whose whole game was running a circus, everything was about the guy and his idea of The Enemy. Nothing of substance and nothing but misdirection. Another problem is that day to day journalism isn’t epistemological, it’s just reporting, so you just get a flat view of what is happening.
- AlphaDio 5y ago
  Well, I guess if he says they are anti-democratic, the question is solved and settled, and the solution is just easy-peasy! Have you considered that this president could have been himself the target of misdirection? The problem of day-to-day journalism is certainly not epistemology, the problem is that they rely on eyeballs, advertisers, and tribes, and thus tend to tailor their reporting, that might be the reason why everything that happened around that last president seemed like a circus.
  - prox 5y ago
    He was the president, he cannot be the target of misdirection. The last president needed the media in a symbiotic relationship. Something to rile against. In form he spoke badly about MSM, but in practice he needed them just as much to stay relevant and have something to rebel against. Yes, media need the clicks, but that’s portraying it wrongly imo.

cgb223 5y ago

If I subscribe to Ed Snowden’s Substack, on a scale of 1 to 10 how much “monitoring” am I about to be under…?

sjg007 5y ago
11
- cookie_monsta 5y ago
  No doubt. But (if I may disappear further down the rabbit hole) for this to be meaningful we would have to know what level of monitoring we are under without subscribing.
BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
With what he has revealed, you'll realize that you’ve been monitored this whole time. All of us have.
drivers99 5y ago
He has pointed out that it’s not a question of whether they start monitoring you, it’s that with bulk collection they are collecting your activity already for later filtering/reference, forever.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"I'll begin by offering a fundamental proposition: namely, that to believe in any conspiracy, whether true or false, is to believe in a system or sector run not by popular consent but by an elite, acting in its own self-interest." This definition of "conspiracy" does not match the dictionary definition of the word "conspiracy". There is nothing about "system[s], sector[s], popular consent, elite or self-interest." The following definition is provided by the authors of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. 220 dict.dict.org dictd 1.12.1/rf on Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64 <auth.mime> <46338037.19753.1625025739@dict.dict.org> 150 27 definitions retrieved 151 "Conspiracy" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48" Conspiracy \Conspir"acy\, n.; pl. {Conspiracies}. [See {Conspiration}.] 1. A combination of people for an evil purpose; an agreement, between two or more persons, to commit a crime in concert, as treason; a plot. 2. A concurence or general tendency, as of circumstances, to one event, as if by agreement. 3. (Law) An agreement, manifesting itself in words or deeds, by which two or more persons confederate to do an unlawful act, or to use unlawful to do an act which is lawful; confederacy.

gilgoomesh 5y ago
Snowden’s description matches the definition you provide. The “two or more persons” is the “system”.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  Missing: sector, popular consent, self-interest, elite Further, the dictionary definition of "system" does not match the one you provide. Groups of people are not "systems". 220 dict.dict.org dictd 1.12.1/rf on Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64 <auth.mime> <46521789.8886.1625096684@dict.dict.org> 150 84 definitions retrieved 151 "System" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48" System \Sys"tem\, n. [L. systema, Gr. ?, fr. ? to place together; sy`n with + ? to place: cf. F. syst[`e]me. See {Stand}.] 1. An assemblage of objects arranged in regular subordination, or after some distinct method, usually logical or scientific; a complete whole of objects related by some common law, principle, or end; a complete exhibition of essential principles or facts, arranged in a rational dependence or connection; a regular union of principles or parts forming one entire thing; as, a system of philosophy; a system of government; a system of divinity; a system of botany or chemistry; a military system; the solar system. [1913 Webster] The best way to learn any science, is to begin with a regular system, or a short and plain scheme of that science well drawn up into a narrow compass. --I. Watts. [1913 Webster] 2. Hence, the whole scheme of created things regarded as forming one complete plan of whole; the universe. "The great system of the world." --Boyle. [1913 Webster] 3. Regular method or order; formal arrangement; plan; as, to have a system in one's business. [1913 Webster] 4. (Mus.) The collection of staves which form a full score. See {Score}, n. [1913 Webster] 5. (Biol.) An assemblage of parts or organs, either in animal or plant, essential to the performance of some particular function or functions which as a rule are of greater complexity than those manifested by a single organ; as, the capillary system, the muscular system, the digestive system, etc.; hence, the whole body as a functional unity. [1913 Webster] 6. (Zool.) One of the stellate or irregular clusters of intimately united zooids which are imbedded in, or scattered over, the surface of the common tissue of many compound ascidians. [1913 Webster] {Block system}, {Conservative system}, etc. See under {Block}, {Conservative}, etc. [1913 Webster] Systematic .

TeeMassive 5y ago

> Or to put it another way, conspiracy practices — the methods by which true conspiracies such as gerrymandering, or the debt industry, or mass surveillance are realized — are almost always overshadowed by conspiracy theorie There's a conspiracy theory about how Q Annon was actually a disinformation campaign crafted against Trump supporters and /pol/acks (you the kind I'm talking about). That's actually something I think is possible although it's all conjecture.

aurantia 5y ago

> the idea that conspiracies themselves are [..] a typology through which people who lack definite or satisfactory narratives as citizens explain to themselves [..] I really like this idea. To me it means that conspiracy theories create modern day mythology. Ancient people used myths to explain to themselves things they either didn't understand or feared. I've always wondered how did they come with these outrageous ideas but it now makes sense.

mjburgess 5y ago
The procedure to invent a conspiracy is quite simple. Write down all the topics which "seem important" right now. Eg., China, USA, Trump, Biden, AI, Virus, etc. (Where do these terms come from? Mostly the news, conversation. But each person will produce a different list.) Now all you have to do is connect all of them. This is, in reality, not possible. So one has to dispense with every greater "obvious truths" in order to make the connection work. It is in this attempt to rationalise a free association that we get such mythologies. It is the heart of how schizophrenics think. Psychosis is the mistaking of importance and connection in one's perceptions. And so it is quite common to find schizophrenia in the conspiracy theory population. However if you havent been taught to be sceptical of yourself, etc., its a fairly "natural" way to think.
- mistermann 5y ago
  Similarly, if one hasn't been taught how to think relatively and absolutely simultaneously and at all times, the world can look very simple, like schizophrenics are prone to cognitive errors but normies are not. This is just one example from a very long list.

dools 5y ago

The number one thing that distinguishes conspiracy practises from conspiracy theories is how boring they are.

Joeboy 5y ago
Which are the more boring ones?
- Lendal 5y ago
  Take your pick. As soon as I mention one your lack-of-interest meter will immediately shut it down. How about campaign finance? How about the fact that it is against the interest of the two American political parties to solve any politicized problem? Immigration, for instance, will never be solved because as long as it remains a political issue it brings in money to both parties. Nobody will harm that golden goose. It's the same reason that nobody inside Facebook will solve the problems with Facebook. Because those very problems are what fund the income of everyone who works there. Ergo, it will never be solved, at least not from within.
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    I just wasn't sure if they were saying fake conspiracies are more boring or real ones are more boring. I could imagine it being either. I suppose the ordering of the sentence implies it's the former that are more boring.
- dools 5y ago
  Real conspiracies are super boring. For example we had this guy in Australia James Ashby who was the chief of staff for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. They play to a lot of the fake conspiracy types that also fall into the “basket of deplorables” from which other conservative governments globally garner their support. However all the outlandish shit that PHON either spread directly or nurture indirectly (such as NASA doctoring climate change data) is far more interesting than the actual conspiracy they were alleged to have perpetrated which was James Ashby pressuring candidates to use his signage company: https://www.afr.com/politics/knives-out-for-hanson-staffer-ashby-accused-of-profiting-off-candidates-20161220-gtepe4 https://www.afr.com/politics/knives-out-for-hanson-staffer-a...

grumblenum 5y ago

My pet theory is that Snowden's disclosure is both a bit of CIA/NSA sibling rivalry and a misinformation campaign to scare people into thinking that the NSA has far more surveillance capabilities than it really does. The goals being to frighten people into inaction and to herd them onto platforms these entities can monitor (TOR & ANOM come to mind). That Snowden is able to rake in book and movie deals while 'on the run' makes me doubt that anybody is actually interested in catching him.

int_19h 5y ago
Are those huge NSA data centers in Utah also just for the show, then?
- grumblenum 5y ago
  No, but I think it's unlikely that anybody, including the NSA, can collect, index, catalog and parse meaning out of hundreds of GB _per second_ (I'm using Statista numbers for global IP traffic). I would be skeptical that it's even physically possible with any amount of hardware in existence. If you really want a concentrated haul of the most interesting stuff, then I would say that platforms which openly market themselves as safe venues for criminals and dissidents would be strong candidates. You would still have extraordinary data warehousing needs just for that limited subset of traffic.
  - posix_me_less 5y ago
    > unlikely that anybody, including the NSA, can collect, index, catalog and parse meaning out of hundreds of GB _per second No, it's actually very likely. I've noticed people often make this argument as if it is obvious that the data that is being processed is somehow too large to handle. But they misunderstand the ways this can be done and underestimate current technological capabilities. One big switch in single datacenter can handle all traffic of that datacenter, hundreds of GB/s. Make a special one with custom FPGA/cpus and in addition to switching, it can do decrypting, parsing, matching and filtering the way you like, hundreds of GB per second, real-time. This is a highly paralelizable job and the hardware is made to exploit that. The resulting stream of interesting data is probably much thinner and can be easily sent to some central location, realtime. The rest can be stored locally and sent on demand.

a0-prw 5y ago

Yes: an open conspiracy was the build up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

atatatat 5y ago
Or was it Afgha—....
cdstyh 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

motohagiography 5y ago

> In sum, conspiracy theories do not inculcate powerlessness, so much as they are the signs and symptoms of powerlessness itself. This captures it well. You can think of them as what people without power in a situation use to describe what they percieve the people who do have it are doing. There is the folk religion aspect of them, but even office politics are defined by similar conspiracy thinking. If you have thought you were being manipulated or managed with deception in an office environment, extending that to institutions is not a big leap. Maybe I'm way down the rabbit hole, but I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik. Meta-commentators calling out conspiracies and inconsistencies are a real threat to the narratives insiders use to sustain the necessary dissonance to navigate the dynamic of influence within their networks. When you are an insider, you have to sustain the fictions that the power of your group is legitimate, your colleagues are honest and aligned to the same values, and that you are believer. You have to sustain the official optimisim line because that is what it means to be aligned to power. Summers' famous quote, "the first rule of being an insider is you don't criticize other insiders" captures it well. If you let these fictions slip, you essentially fall and define as an outsider and you are out of the game. You're marked as "bitter," "a sore loser," "hard to work with," "a loose cannon," etc. Conspiracy theories 'concretize' counter narratives, which create a figure/ground relationship in an otherwise super complex dynamic, and this creates obstacles for the dynamic sustaining narratives. If you have ever heard someone accused of "black and white thinking," they are being accused of taking their ball and going home by attempting to end a dynamic power game by resolving it to a fact or constraint. Nobody goes meta- when they are playing the game. You can't narrate and speculate about it and win it at the same time. I often tell people we only call it politics when we're losing, and these are all related to this idea of reasoning about people and power as an outsider, hence conspiracy theories are self-defining as powerless. If you use a theory about others' motivations and incentives to explain their behavior and situate yourself outside of that dynamic, you're listening to commentators instead of getting into the game and playing.

cryoshon 5y ago
>I've often thought the crappy conspiracy theories with coarse and cartoonish explanations get actively promoted to discourage, discredit and isolate people who reason about real incentives and realpolitik. yes, this has been my experience. as you said, it's an effective tactic to defuse genuine threats to the narrative as being "unreasonable" or "not serious". i have a hunch that learning to refrain from criticism of insiders is actually the biggest "lesson" taught at the universities and organizations that are traditional centers of elite power. it's part of the pedigree.

mhneu 5y ago

Corporations like Facebook and Google do far more surveillance of any citizen than the government does. Surveillance capitalism. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-profe... Russia surveilles its citizens mostly any way it wants. The US government has more controls (as long as the US remains a democracy.) The Church Committee actually made real reforms. And sadly, everything that Snowden writes now is approved by the Russian intelligence services. You can decide how that influences what you think of his writing.

csours 5y ago

When most people talk about conspiracy theories, they are actually talking about motivational theories. For example, with the 'China lab leak theory', there is no actual evidence of Sars-Cov2 in that lab before the outbreak. What does exist is the belief that 'the Chinese government lies'/'scientists lie'/'Chinese people lie' or some combination or offshoot of these. There is a belief that sinister things happen in labs. There is a belief that it would take serious coordinated effort by humans to cause this much disruption in our lives. It is psychologically much easier to believe that if we could find the people responsible for this and stop them, we can prevent pandemics like this. It is very hard to hold in your head that disease agents can be transmitted from animal populations to human populations at any time and we have no significant control over this. I'm sure I'm doing a lot of projection here, but then so is everyone else. Just FYI - I think it is possible that the virus leaked from the lab, but it is significantly more likely that it was an animal virus (like 1000:1 in favor of 'natural' zoonotic origin)

tim333 5y ago
People all over the world lie. I think lab leak speciation is more driven by a lab mucking about with bat coronaviruses being around the corner and the bats 600 miles away.
HKH2 5y ago
The standards of evidence you're used to cannot be the same in this instance. The CCP targets dissenters and has a long history of doing so, including openly killing them. Internally, news unfavorable to the CCP rarely comes from established outlets (so it's possible to dismiss it all as hearsay - try constructing your view of China using only Mainland Chinese mass media!). Also, how are you supposed to get evidence if they destroy it and don't allow independent researchers in? There is far too much damage control going on; is not blocking the steps needed to get the evidence you require, a red flag in itself for you?
- csours 5y ago
  I think those are all very good questions. No one should be shouted down for asking them. I think it is very important to be critical of media controlled by a political party. These are all very natural feelings, and as context they are important. However, there is more context that is important. For instance, there are many many examples of viruses making the jump from animals to humans, some recent examples are Sars-COV1, MERS, and H5N1. The questions you ask sound like the ones raised about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - Saddam Hussein certainly was motivated to lie and cover up, but even with all those red flags, no WMDs were found. In other words, to make a real case requires more than red flags. The motivation of the people raising the accusations should also be examined. In the case of Iraq's WMDs, there was a desire to remove Hussein from power. In the case of China, there is a desire to discredit and diminish China's power on the world stage.

javajosh 5y ago

It would be interesting to model modern identity politics as a kind of conspiracy. Here is an "Enemy Inside" variant that applies to any individual of a problematic identity. When some combination of tags white, male, straight, religious, disagrees-with-this applies to you, you are in a conspiracy whether you know it or not. It is a "conspiracy by default" that you must opt-out of in various ways, most importantly by being vocally supportive of the conspiracy theory itself! As a conspiracy it blurs the distinction between "theory" and "practice" because there's a valid point to be made about systemic racism, and yet the theory goes much further.

giardini 5y ago

So is the NSA spying on Tucker Carlson? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57663136 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57663136 The NSA did not said "No we are not spying on you." which would have been the best and easiest way to refute Tucker.

justshowpost 5y ago

I love how they illustrated "conspiracy" with the picture of Trump. Trump derangement syndrome much? Anyway, most of Trump's statements previously labelled by leftist media as "conspiracy" turned out to be... true. By the way, program named ECHELON didn't go anywhere, it got legalized and civilized under the name of Five Eyes global SIGINT alliance. And don't let "five" to fool you, there more like 15 countries are just fine with mass surveillance with the generous help from No Such Agency. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with improving public safety and stuff but they've been so busy spying on citizens so managed to overlook, for example, rather trivial and almost decade-old open sesame in SolarWinds.

arminiusreturns 5y ago

Well I'm sad that I missed this conversation, but I'm thankful for all the people here who actually gave some very nuanced looks at the topic. This should give me a great start to understanding how to approach the topic on HN in the future. As for the article, I think it's interesting but doesn't go far enough, getting wrapped up in the meta too much for my tastes, but I understand why that approach is the one Snowden wanted to take.