Three Rules for an Airtight Conspiracy Theory, or: How To Tell A Bullshit Conspiracy Theory

[icarus]

The boyfriend has a coworker who is absolutely certain that the Bush adminstration destroyed the Twin Towers on 9/11 as an excuse to go into Iraq. I keep explaining to wildernessguru why this is idiotic. The trouble with specific conspiracy theories is that people (who hate and distrust Bush, for example) want to believe them so badly, logic starts to fray in the face of their fervor.

I'm not against all conspiracy theories. I believe that JFK was assassinated by more than one shooter. But the JFK assassination theory passes my Three Rules.

Wait. You haven't heard of my Three Rules?

Three Rules for an Airtight Conspiracy Theory, or: How To Tell A Bullshit Conspiracy Theory From One That Makes Sense

Rule One: No cherry-picking the facts.

The conspiracy theory has to take into account all the facts available, even if the theory argues with them. If any inconvenient facts are dismissed out of hand ("oh, of course the government says that"), you have a crackpot theory – do not pass go, do not collect $200. The strength of a good conspiracy theory is in the additional information not covered by the mainstream media not in ignoring well-established facts.

Rule Two: No one is a super-genius (except in James Bond).

The conspiracy theory can't presume the culprit becomes suddenly brilliant and competent when they've proved to be a bumbling idiot in the past and since. The bad guy (or guys) has to be capable of pulling it off. A good conspiracy theory doesn't expect the culprit(s) to act out of character or be any smarter than they are on an average day.

An off-shoot of this is the cast of thousands all acting like super-geniuses rule. The more people that are involved in a conspiracy, the more likely the secret will get out, and the more likely the conspiracy will make mistakes. Ask any general. The bigger the operation, the more problems multiply.

Rule Three: No one has a crystal ball.

The conspiracy theory can't assume that the bad guys can read the future. If the bad guy's motive depends upon a complicated chain of events – "See, first they did X, then Y happened, and then Z, and then N, then after that there was W and then, voila! They got what they wanted" – the theory is a house of cards. Vast numbers of conspiracy theories fail because they project what we know in the present ("this is what happened") onto the past ("so they must have known this would happen"). A good conspiracy theory assumes a measurable and predictable result which could have been known at the time.

This is not to say that all conspiracy theories are wrong. Sometimes, they are out to get you. ;) But let's shoot down the stupid conspiracy theories, shall we?

Comments

[ness-va.livejournal.com]

For me, it just gets to the point sometimes with politicians that conspiracy theories are more logical.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It depends upon the conspiracy theory, I think. And the politician.

[mad_maudlin]

Actually, it was a conspiracy theory that got us into Iraq--Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al are/were all very convinced by a sort of Unified Field Theory of Terrorism, which claimed that every bad thing that ever happened to American that couldn't be blamed on Communists was the fault of Saddam Hussein. Including, somehow, the Oklahoma City bombings. After the anthrax attacks post-9/11, when they realized just how grotesquely unprepared the US is to handle a large-scale biological attack, they decided the best thing to do was not prepare for a biological or chemical attack, but to go on the offensive against the presumed source, Dr. Evil Hussein.

I am actually surprised LJ let me keep this icon when I reverted to basic.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The conspiracy theory that WG's coworker is referring to is that the Bush adminstration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Those are pretty darn good rules. I'm going to forward them to a couple of people if you don't mind.

L and I have discussed JFK many times, rather vehemently. He was sure there was a shooter on the grassy knoll, and I was sure there wasn't. We finally came to an agreement on that after doing a bunch of research, but then he came up with something that made me sit back and shut up. He said there could have been two shooters in the library. Since I don't know the ballistics on the bullets, I can't really argue with that. I also can't argue that it wasn't a sponsored assassination. It could have been. There is evidence out there for several different sponsors/prodders, and some of it is very reasonable.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

There was definitely more than one shooter, based on the different trajectories of the wounds in JFK's body (or, alternatively, you could buy the bouncing bullet theory). The forensics the FBI used to determine that there could only be one shooter was disproved in 2003 so thoroughly that the FBI no longer uses it (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051601967_pf.html).

[gabilady.livejournal.com]

I love a good conspiracy theory and I love your 3 rules. Sometimes crackpot theories are just comedy.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Conspiracy theories can be very entertaining. But sometimes you just want to point out the tin hats and laugh.

[jya-bd-cp-ttgb.livejournal.com]

I'm going to apply your trio of rules to Loose Change and see if their theories still hold up. By my personal rules, too much of what happened on 911 is coincedence. I'm not going to start an arguement, but I believe Bushie and his buddies had something to do with it. I didn't before, and I don't want to now, but too much is weird about the whole thing.

As for Kennedy, his family sure did piss off a lot of people for no real good reason. Lee Harvey and the dude that killed Robert? I mean wow. Secret Service sure had their heads up their cabooses in reguards to the American Princes didn't they? Must not have gotten enough coffee and donuts to stay awake those days.

[moojja.livejournal.com]

The Secret Service was not protecting Robert Kennedy. Since he was just a candidate at the time. After his death, the policy changed so that the candidates are protected by the Secret Service.

[jya-bd-cp-ttgb.livejournal.com]

My memory for dates sucks = all my life, everyone in the President's family down to the dog and cat have a Service detail. Thanks for the correction.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Rule One. Additional evidence: Recent forensic evidence examining a reporter's tape of the assassination with equipment we didn't have back then has found there were 13 shots fired. Several of those shots came too close together to be from the same gun. Also, the auditory footprint was not that of the gun Lee Harvey used, but that of a rifle revolver of a different type. The only way Lee Harvey could have made those gunshot sounds is if he were firing using two rifles at the same time. You can't sight accurately down two different rifles.

There is the additional problem of the bouncing bullet explanation. JFK had wounds coming from different trajectories. The official explanation for the wounds JFK had was that one bullet, fired into his body, bounced and ricocheted five times.

That's one, very unlikely, explanation. To have a bullet ricochet multiple times would be a singular event in medical history.

Applying Occam's Razor, the other more likely explanation is that he was hit with bullets from more than one trajectory.

Add that to the 13 shots, and the shots fired too close together to be from the same gun, and the gun shots being a different weapon that Lee Harvey's: there was more than one shooter.

Why not admit that? I don't know. But the physical evidence is clear.

I'm not cherry-picking. I do not say that Lee Harvey wasn't a shooter. I'm not disregarding the government. There is just more evidence now, and there is a simpler explanation for the evidence we have.

Rule Two. No Super-Geniuses: There were many trained sharpshooters in the US at the time, and, JFK had a lot of enemies. He was standing up in his car, waving, not even running away like a military target would. For more than one shooter this did not require remarkable skill. What would be remarkable is if Lee Harvey was able to use two rifles at the same time.

Rule Three. No Crystal Balls: The predictable result of killing JFK is that you get a different president--specifically, vice president Lyndon Johnson. It's right there in the constitution. If you hate all of JFK's decisions and Johnson is radically different (which he was) on JFK's least popular choices, this is a simple solution.

What was the biggest difference between Johnson, Eisenhower, and JFK? JFK was abandoning Ike's cold war policies--even in small scale wars we don't know much about, like Tibet. Ike had supplied the Tibetan rebels to fight "Red China" and JFK cut them off, resulting in the deaths of 30,000 Tibetan fighters. Was the cold war and "fighting communism" and the "domino theory" important to many people, civilian and military, in the early 60s? Oh, hell yeah.

[jya-bd-cp-ttgb.livejournal.com]

You can't sight accurately down two different rifles.

Oh sure you can...if you've got four arms and four eyes to work with. Two brains might be helpful too.

I gotta stay out of the Kennedy debate, but everything I ever read on the subject was magazines/newspapers that my aunt kept, and that was fifteen years or more ago. I do know that the 911 video I was talking about earlier makes an interesting mention of Kennedy's administration. One of his Joint Cheifs, Leiminzer? I can't spell for ducks today - was going to stage a terror campaign in Miami and DC and say it was the Cubans doing. Blow up a ship, pretend to hold funerals, blow up a drone aircraft. It would give the US a reason to invade Castro's Cuba. McNamara told him forget it, and Kennedy fired Lemonhead a little while later. If someone was going to do something like that against a country, killing one troublesome President probably ain't no thing at all.

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

i love your brain.

imho, the hardest hardest part of this to get real with yourself about is not cherry picking the facts.

because, basically, it's nearly impossible not to.

medium is the message, history is written by the winners, we're all prisoners of our personal point of view, etc. etc.

happy thursday.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Any kind of research chooses what facts you want to address, but you have to be in conversation with the main arguments. Otherwise the other researchers will just point and laugh. You're more likely to convince oh, me, if you're thorough.

This goes for everyone. When I heard that "bouncing bullet" theory about JFK, where all those injuries were caused by one bullet ricocheting around inside his body five time, I just rolled my eyes, "You've got to be kidding me." And that was the official line.

So even the history written by the winners can fail the test of logic.

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

Being in conversation with the main arguments is so important....and some people don't care that the other researchers are pointing and laughing....

Yeah, the official line can be waaay scary.

[bramble-rose.livejournal.com]

Ouch! You are SO correct!

And the thing about conspiracy theorists (like my former neighbor who is probably living in a bunker somewhere) there is NO WAY they will listen to anything that negates their world view. Hey, that sounds familiar!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, that does sound familiar, doesn't it?

[magic-8ball.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course you'd say that. :)

Seriously, though, I think a lot of conspiracy theories are inevitable due to the human brain's tendency to search for patterns in chaos, finding them even when they aren't there. And as for 9/11, there's actually a bit of a comfort in convincing yourself that the administration had something to do with it. I mean, here are the two choices:

1. A bunch of corrupt guys got together and decided that they could maneuver the country into an extremely profitable war simply by killing a few thousand Americans and clearing several acres of prime real estate that would only come out improved in the long run.

2. A small group of foreigners were inspired to hate us so much that they were willing to hijack planes and kill everyone aboard -- including themselves -- just to have a chance at blowing up a few high-profile buildings and killing a few thousand Americans.

Okay -- greedy politicians, or guys who hate us so much (and aren't alone in doing so) that they're willing to blow themselves us in the hopes of taking some of us with them. If you want to make yourself feel as safe as possible, Option #1 is certainly the way to go.

But I digress. Your rules? Pretty much spot-on.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Plus there's something we can do about Bush. He will be gone in 251 days. The hatred of those in the middle east? We're helpless to fix that--and we know it's got to be worse by now.

[auburnnothenna.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Bush won't be gone in 251 days. Not really. All the damage will still be there.

Your rules rule. Especially number one.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the Bush/Cheney types (I almost called them the Consortium, but I really don't want to go down the X-Files path) took full advantage of 9/11, though.

Wish I had my cynic's icon on LJ.

[caseylane.livejournal.com]

I like your rules.

My ex's cousin seriously believes the government has little camera's in every television screen so it can spy on people. Guess he heard the theory on some wingnut late night radio program.

I boggled so hard my head almost exploded. I didn't even argue with him because I didn't even know where to begin.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That fails a rule that I didn't put in the list, although I considered it. It's an elaboration on the Super Genius rule: the cast of thousands rule. The more people you have involved in a conspiracy, the more likely the secret will get out, and the more likely the conspiracy will make mistakes. Ask any general. The bigger your operation, the more problems multiply.

His camera theory would involve people in multiple countries (Sony doesn't work for the US) involved. It fails the cast of thousands rule rather spectacularly.

[ariadne83]

My husband and I had to team up to convince his parents that that particular conspiracy theory was a bunch of bullshit. They'd seen a *documentary*, so it must be true!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Loose Change might be okay on rule one, I'd have to look at it again, but it fails rule two and three badly.

Rule two, no super-geniuses: As military operations go, much as I hate to say it, the 9/11 attack was competent and well-planned. Bush and his neo-cons have never demonstrated the capacity for a well-planned and executed campaign. We have five years of incompetence in Iraq and six years of incompetence in Afghanistan to show that Bush doesn't utilize the planning skills or advice of his military. He couldn't pull it off.

Rule three, no crystal balls: The proposed motive for the 9/11 attack--that Bush and his neo-cons wanted to use it as an excuse to go into Iraq and get the oil--relies on knowing that the Iraq invasion would be the future result. Did he eventually use it as an excuse? Oh, hell yeah. But in fact Bush wasn't able to go into Iraq. He had to go into Afghanistan instead (where's all that Afghan oil? What have they got besides poppy fields?). He couldn't even prove a connection between Iraq and 9/11. So he had to whip up a complicated lie about Iraq having WMDs a year later.

So... can we really say that Bush plotted the 9/11 attack so that he could...

a) go fight a country he had no interest in, then
b) spend a year flailing for an excuse to attack Iraq, then
c) invent a flimsy theory of WMDs that was refuted by a state department official the moment it hit the air, and then
d) finally attack Iraq a year and a half later?

Clever.