5 ms·

> Here's the thing about conspiracies: they have a shelf life. The amount of time you can keep a conspiracy secret is bounded by the number of conspirators, how

by User23 4y ago

> Here's the thing about conspiracies: they have a shelf life. The amount of time you can keep a conspiracy secret is bounded by the number of conspirators, how well you can get them to shut up, and how long it has been since the conspiracy occurred. You can take a secret only you know to your grave, but work in a group of ten and someone will confess before their death. As you effectively prove, any long running conspiracy must have tools to discredit defectors. I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that if, hypothetically, some WEF flunky went on twitter and started posting about a global depopulation conspiracy, that the prestige media would either ignore or deny (“debunk”) it and any alternative sources would be smeared and delegitimized somehow. One possible tool for discrediting tales of one’s real conspiracy would be spreading stories of various fake conspiracies and then lumping them all together as nonsense.

synu 4y ago
This only works as long as the defectors have no evidence, right? That seems like it would be harder to guarantee.
- User23 4y ago
  So long as the defectors have no credible evidence. Evidence and people both are observably fairly easily discredited for the majority of the population.
  - synu 4y ago
    Isn’t that a good thing? I can deliver a bunch of non-credible evidence for basically anything I make up. It’s unfortunate if a person is blowing a whistle on something real but can’t actually prove it, but the alternative is just believing whatever fits your biases. You end up with those alternative news sites where everyone just believes everything they hear and there are vast interconnected conspiracies running everything.
    - ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
      Non-credible is totally subjective. You are always taking someones word unless you check for yourself. Who do you believe? It's not the alternative it's the way things are. Evidence to the contrary doesn't discredit anything in the minds of most people... They are more likely to simply attack the person putting forth the evidence for causing them cognitive dissonance migraines.
      - synu 4y ago
        Credibility of evidence is not totally subjective. I (and you, and anyone) can personally prove in a variety of ways that the earth is not flat, but still many people believe there is a conspiracy that the earth is round. Of course they all tell each other that all facts are subjective anyway and wouldn’t it be cool and interesting if you were in on a big secret and everyone else except you and your new friends were sheep.. oh and by the way did you know that it’s actually lizard people who started the idea that the earth was round? Doesn’t that feel right and would explain why your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted? And so on. In this case I’m explicitly talking about making up non-credible evidence. If everything is subjective then whatever I made up is as good as anything else, I just need to tune it to your biases to make it feel as truthy as possible. But if you believe me then you’ll start to have problems when you need things to actually be true (like running a space program or military for example).
- ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
  Or no ability to speak -- like Neo.
kmeisthax 4y ago
The problem with conspiracy theories is that they tend to be less useful as a way to sus out actual abuses of power and more useful as an ink blot test. People see what they want to see, because humans are creatures of fiction that can't stand the thought of living in an objective reality where coincidences are just coincidences and the most boring explanation is probably true. The World Economic Forum is just a bog-standard capitalist outfit. Their more out-there views are not particularly divorced from the rentier capitalism of the New Gilded Age. To be unambiguous about it, that means a heady mix of international megacorporations, uncensored corporate speech[0], copyright maximalism, and the Brussels Effect[1]. The Occam's Razor explanation for the WEF is that greedy corporations that want to maximize profits are going to be greedy and profit-maximizing - in other words, it's the "capitalist agenda". But if you have particular kinds of brainworms[2], you're going to ignore the greed that you don't want to talk about and start making up reasons for their actions wholly unrelated to what they actually think. For example, if you think white people are being "replaced", then you'll look past the obvious explanation and into the fringes of the ink blots, and come back thinking that the WEF was created by the powerless to oppress the powerful with... power they don't have. In cases where conspiracies have actually tried to discredit defectors, it usually fails. In fact, it fails so hard that it becomes a meme, like "Russia denies" or "I did not have sexual relations[3] with that woman". Most actual conspiracies are just not that well thought out[4] enough for this to work, while the people writing the conspiracy theories are actually overthinking things. What actually kills conspiracy theories is conflicting information - i.e. the conspiracy theory not actually lining up with reality. There will always be people who still buy it, though, because conspiracy theories that are not true always substitute veracity with narrative salience. In fact, sometimes being widely known to be false benefits the conspiracy theory, because now you can work the debunking of obvious lies into your conspiracy narrative and make it more salient than ever. And there's no actual conspiracy on the debunking side, either. You are not being smeared by the media because they're all in on trying to hide the truth - remember, coordination leaves evidence. You are being smeared by the media because you are on the side of narrative fiction. [0] Sometimes complained about under the banner of "money is not speech" [1] The process by which treaties agreed to by rich countries tie the hands of non-party countries by way of tolerance. [2] Typically the "50s red scare" strain of anticommunism [3] it's only sex if the balls are touching - Bill Clinton [4] Reason being that being in a position of power gives you symptoms of brain damage. In order to implement a successful conspiracy you need power, and that power will blunt your reasoning over time.
ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
Muddy the waters... then you label anyone who notices as a water purist, and tell the dumb ones that the water purists are the ones who muddied the waters.

by User23 4y ago

synu 4y ago

This only works as long as the defectors have no evidence, right? That seems like it would be harder to guarantee.

User23 4y ago
So long as the defectors have no credible evidence. Evidence and people both are observably fairly easily discredited for the majority of the population.
- synu 4y ago
  Isn’t that a good thing? I can deliver a bunch of non-credible evidence for basically anything I make up. It’s unfortunate if a person is blowing a whistle on something real but can’t actually prove it, but the alternative is just believing whatever fits your biases. You end up with those alternative news sites where everyone just believes everything they hear and there are vast interconnected conspiracies running everything.
  - ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
    Non-credible is totally subjective. You are always taking someones word unless you check for yourself. Who do you believe? It's not the alternative it's the way things are. Evidence to the contrary doesn't discredit anything in the minds of most people... They are more likely to simply attack the person putting forth the evidence for causing them cognitive dissonance migraines.
    - synu 4y ago
      Credibility of evidence is not totally subjective. I (and you, and anyone) can personally prove in a variety of ways that the earth is not flat, but still many people believe there is a conspiracy that the earth is round. Of course they all tell each other that all facts are subjective anyway and wouldn’t it be cool and interesting if you were in on a big secret and everyone else except you and your new friends were sheep.. oh and by the way did you know that it’s actually lizard people who started the idea that the earth was round? Doesn’t that feel right and would explain why your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted? And so on. In this case I’m explicitly talking about making up non-credible evidence. If everything is subjective then whatever I made up is as good as anything else, I just need to tune it to your biases to make it feel as truthy as possible. But if you believe me then you’ll start to have problems when you need things to actually be true (like running a space program or military for example).
ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
Or no ability to speak -- like Neo.

kmeisthax 4y ago

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they tend to be less useful as a way to sus out actual abuses of power and more useful as an ink blot test. People see what they want to see, because humans are creatures of fiction that can't stand the thought of living in an objective reality where coincidences are just coincidences and the most boring explanation is probably true. The World Economic Forum is just a bog-standard capitalist outfit. Their more out-there views are not particularly divorced from the rentier capitalism of the New Gilded Age. To be unambiguous about it, that means a heady mix of international megacorporations, uncensored corporate speech[0], copyright maximalism, and the Brussels Effect[1]. The Occam's Razor explanation for the WEF is that greedy corporations that want to maximize profits are going to be greedy and profit-maximizing - in other words, it's the "capitalist agenda". But if you have particular kinds of brainworms[2], you're going to ignore the greed that you don't want to talk about and start making up reasons for their actions wholly unrelated to what they actually think. For example, if you think white people are being "replaced", then you'll look past the obvious explanation and into the fringes of the ink blots, and come back thinking that the WEF was created by the powerless to oppress the powerful with... power they don't have. In cases where conspiracies have actually tried to discredit defectors, it usually fails. In fact, it fails so hard that it becomes a meme, like "Russia denies" or "I did not have sexual relations[3] with that woman". Most actual conspiracies are just not that well thought out[4] enough for this to work, while the people writing the conspiracy theories are actually overthinking things. What actually kills conspiracy theories is conflicting information - i.e. the conspiracy theory not actually lining up with reality. There will always be people who still buy it, though, because conspiracy theories that are not true always substitute veracity with narrative salience. In fact, sometimes being widely known to be false benefits the conspiracy theory, because now you can work the debunking of obvious lies into your conspiracy narrative and make it more salient than ever. And there's no actual conspiracy on the debunking side, either. You are not being smeared by the media because they're all in on trying to hide the truth - remember, coordination leaves evidence. You are being smeared by the media because you are on the side of narrative fiction. [0] Sometimes complained about under the banner of "money is not speech" [1] The process by which treaties agreed to by rich countries tie the hands of non-party countries by way of tolerance. [2] Typically the "50s red scare" strain of anticommunism [3] it's only sex if the balls are touching - Bill Clinton [4] Reason being that being in a position of power gives you symptoms of brain damage. In order to implement a successful conspiracy you need power, and that power will blunt your reasoning over time.

ospzfmbbzr 4y ago

Muddy the waters... then you label anyone who notices as a water purist, and tell the dumb ones that the water purists are the ones who muddied the waters.