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One time I was in an uber in Paris, and the uber driver felt it was his duty to tell me about all the shadow groups that control the world. The only problem is

One time I was in an uber in Paris, and the uber driver felt it was his duty to tell me about all the shadow groups that control the world. The only problem is that they were Parisian versions of shadow groups that would therefore have to be in direct competition with the American shadow groups that control the world. Anyway, nice to see the filter bubbles working so well. Haha, localized versions of controlling groups. No, but really, the flaw behind these master controlling group theories is that there are so many of them that would have to compete that its the same as none existing.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> No, but really, the flaw behind these master controlling group theories is that there are so many of them that would have to compete that its the same as none existing. Andrew Gelman has made this same observation, which he calls "the piranha problem", in the context of sociology and psychology papers. The typical paper identifies a random-looking stimulus that nevertheless has a large effect on some behavior like voting or accepting a romantic partner. And the problem is, there are so many of these papers, all showing large effects, that it's impossible for any of the effects to be reliable, because even if the effect a particular paper identifies is real, there are so many other effects influencing the same outcome that the effect described by the particular paper cannot have any meaningful influence.
int_19h 5y ago
Oh, it gets better. Once the conspiracy theorists discover each other online, they interact and mesh their theories together, including those "shadow groups". BTW, it can be rather amusing to see how the culture of different societies is reflected in their respective conspiracy tropes. For example, in US, we have "sovereign citizens", while Germany has "Reichsburgers". Both groups make broadly similar claims - asserting inapplicability of most laws to themselves etc. But while sovereign citizens are completely decentralized and don't even claim any legitimate central authority, the Reichsburgers have an ostensible shadow government-in-exile (although they disagree on which of the many is the legitimate one). And said "government" actually issues documents such as IDs and driver licenses, that are anathema to the sovereign citizens as a matter of principle. Ordnung muss sein?

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> No, but really, the flaw behind these master controlling group theories is that there are so many of them that would have to compete that its the same as none existing. Andrew Gelman has made this same observation, which he calls "the piranha problem", in the context of sociology and psychology papers. The typical paper identifies a random-looking stimulus that nevertheless has a large effect on some behavior like voting or accepting a romantic partner. And the problem is, there are so many of these papers, all showing large effects, that it's impossible for any of the effects to be reliable, because even if the effect a particular paper identifies is real, there are so many other effects influencing the same outcome that the effect described by the particular paper cannot have any meaningful influence.

int_19h 5y ago

Oh, it gets better. Once the conspiracy theorists discover each other online, they interact and mesh their theories together, including those "shadow groups". BTW, it can be rather amusing to see how the culture of different societies is reflected in their respective conspiracy tropes. For example, in US, we have "sovereign citizens", while Germany has "Reichsburgers". Both groups make broadly similar claims - asserting inapplicability of most laws to themselves etc. But while sovereign citizens are completely decentralized and don't even claim any legitimate central authority, the Reichsburgers have an ostensible shadow government-in-exile (although they disagree on which of the many is the legitimate one). And said "government" actually issues documents such as IDs and driver licenses, that are anathema to the sovereign citizens as a matter of principle. Ordnung muss sein?