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PaperclipPerfector  6hr ago (text post)   969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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Time to check up on our Lusotropicalism enjoyers.

The Brazilian Presidential election ended yesterday, featuring a run-off between Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had won the previous round. Prediction markets placed his odds of winning at roughly 80%.

But Lula ended up winning, and not without controversy.

Apparently, a Supreme Court justice, and a former personal attorney of Lula's, added two extra hours to the voting period in a last second decision. There have been claims that voting in Bolsonaro-friendly areas had already been finalized and could not been restarted. One person on X claimed "it's as if voting restarted, but only in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore". I am not sure how accurate this claim is.

Bolsonaro is not accepting the results of the election. There are calls for the election results to be annulled, especially if it turns out the extra voting period was decisive. The situation is perhaps mitigated by the fact that conservatives now control a large majority of the legislature and may be able to immediately impeach Lula and, more importantly, his judges.

Perhaps someone who understands the situation can weigh in. From my outsider's view it seems that, in Brazil, individual Supreme Court justices wield nearly unchecked power and can make last second Banana Republic type decisions like opening the polls for an extra two hours. Brazilian politics feel like American ones, just more so.

The Brazilian stock market is down by 25% overnight.

What can Flavio Bolsonaro actually do about it though? Like ‘not accepting the election’ won’t do nothing.

Maybe he can try encouraging a few thousand of his most ardent supporters to go, completely unarmed, to the capital and just mill around a bit. That seems to be the current meta.

Nobody in S America could ever convince me that Democracy is better than Fascism. You see huge swaths of Brazil vote on ethnic lines. Brazil at this point probably at a minimum needs to be broken into different countries. I don’t see why White Europeans should be governed by a corrupt commie because a bunch of negros voted for it.

In trading sometimes you are better lucky than good. I bought some Brazilian stuff after prediction markets were good for Bolsonaro but before the first round and I’m quite happy today that I dumped them on the big rip after the first round. Now everything I bought is 10% lower than my first buy and I’m wandering if Brazil is cheap enough to buy even with Lulu.

In trading sometimes you are better lucky than good. I bought some Brazilian stuff after prediction markets were good for Bolsonaro and I’m quite happy today that I dumped them on the big rip after the first round

I bought $PAGS which I was also up bigly on, but am now down. I wasn't gambling on the election, I just like the stock.

It's very, very tempting to day trade this. We have to bounce, right? 25% is unreal.

Edit: F it. I put $150k$230k into EWZ. Undervalued index anyway.

A 25% decline is not unreal for a surprise election win by the socialist party in a third-world country. Currency devaluation, property expropriation, excessive taxation, and bans on foreign distributions are all realistic possibilities. The US equity market is not a good reference benchmark for equity markets in other countries.

A 25% decline is not unreal for a surprise election win by the socialist party in a third-world country. Currency devaluation, property expropriation, excessive taxation, and bans on foreign distributions are all realistic possibilities.

Yeah, I think that the default assumption is that the market is reasonably efficient and is pricing in bona fide risks.

I think it does happen now and then that real inefficiencies develop; including inefficiencies that can be spotted and exploited by amateur investors and other laymen. But I think that's pretty unusual.

My instinct is that if you buy into the Brazilian markets today, it's like the proverbial sprint in front of a steam roller to grab a nickel off the pavement.

But then again, I'm one of those cautious long-term Boglehead type investors.

Agree that the US market is not a good reference, but out of curiosity, can you share any examples? I can't think of a single time when a country stock index collapsed 25% in a day off the top of my head. Which times did you remember in your investing career? I'm sure it's happened.

One thing to keep in mind is that the socialist President is already in charge.

Edit: I also just checked with ChatGPT. It's a little confusing because there are so many parties, but it does appear that that Bolsonaro aligned parties control about 70% of the lower chamber and 75% of the Senate. So it's quite possible Lula is impeached and removed. His corrupt judges can be removed more easily since it only takes the 2/3rds of the Senate, without lower house involvement.

So, at a minimum, Lula is extremely boxed in, his judges even more so.

Some reason INTR became my brazillian crack. In around 5 pre-first election out at like 6.7 and keeps going to 7.5.

Now it’s 4.5? Is the difference between Lula and Bolsonaro that Brazillian stocks are either all zeroes or infinity? If I am trading a company with its own fundamentals then falling 7.5 to 4.5 seems like a lot. The stock price moves imply a difference of like Mao and Reagan.

One thing on buying (or selling) after events is it’s almost always better to wait 3 days unless you need to do huge institutional size. I sold my Brazilian shit first day after the first round election because it was up 30% but if I waited 3 days would have gotten 50%. Usually today is not the day to buy.

Personally (as a non-Brazillian): I believe Lula is corrupt, he's been pressuring online companies with shoddy evidence to censor his opposition. But I don't believe Bolsonaro would be any better, and (unlike Venezuela) I haven't yet seen solid evidence of election fraud (despite prediction markets being wrong, exit polls were accurate, and extending deadlines usually hinders vote suppression). Maybe a divided government is the best outcome, which is a shame, because it's more pragmatically the least worst outcome.

The claim I'm seeing is that the judge and Lula coordinated to extend the votes in areas they control but only AFTER the voting machines had been closed and locked in the Bolsonaro areas, thus allowing them to guarantee victory because they knew exactly how many votes they needed. I don't claim to know if this is true or not.

But I don't believe Bolsonaro would be any better,

The financial markets think he would be. For perspective, a 25% drop in the stock market would be the single worst day in history in the U.S. markets. Although probably only half of this is the result of the outcome, with the other half being the chaotic way in which it happened.

A couple questions I have:

  1. I wonder if there will be an independence movement from the wealthier southern parts of the country?

  2. I wonder if Flavio will flee the country. Feels like he could be imprisoned if he stays. (50% odds).

Context: Reuters reports that Brazil's Federal Highway Police conducted widespread roadblocks specifically targeting public busses in the (left leaning ) north-east of the country. After being explicitly ordered not to stop busses on voting day. The highway police is apparently obviously pro-Bolsonaro.

Several sources (as of yet only in Portuguese) also report irregularities with public transportation (~50% of busses being ordered to stay in their depots on voting day in - left leaning - Salvador and São Paulo), with the secretary of transportation in Salvador now having an order of arrest on him for his role in this instruction.. Public transport officials claim the busses were stickered with pro-Lula messages, and they just wanted to prevent being accused of illegally running political ads through the city...

But it seems like the the extended voting time was specifically ordered to compensate for perceived voter suppression. The courts also ordered all busses to be released from their depots, stickered or not.

I’ll caveat the complexities of the Brazilian Federal police being pro-Bolo given that Lulu has been in office since 2023, but yeah, this is a clusterfuck. There’s also supposedly some messiness about which court the delay came from. I don’t know enough about Brazil’s legal or executive branch to say more deeply.

My understanding from the Elon Musk dustup last year is that a single Supreme Court justice can take unilateral action, acting as essentially an absolute monarch for the entire country. Their decisions can be reviewed later, but at the time of the decision it's absolute. And that appears to be what happened here.

There's also apparently the ability (in certain cases) for a Supreme Court justice to initiate criminal action and then try it.

I would bet there is large gulf between the powers granted a justice via a narrow reading of the law and what can be accomplished with the correct political motivations. Essentially, the same problems we have in the U.S. with rogue judges, but on steroids.

I could definitely see that. Brazil seems like the natural evolution of what's happening in America where both parties are more focused on managing who votes rather than trying to convince people to change their minds. Sadly, this is probably a dominant strategy in a diverse, socialist country given what we know about patronage systems.

Ridiculous from either end.

Brazil didn’t get here from a stereotypical American democracy. Its current government only dates back to the early 90s, and I’m not sure it’s had an uncontroversial election since 2006. Police putting a thumb on the scale is more like a throwback to its junta days.

Nor does American partisanship drag us in that direction. The current squabbles over voter protections have more to do with putting a particular sort of strongman in office, and the ones over nativism and immigration are what happens when a big chunk of the population feels economically insecure. No patronage required.

The current squabbles over voter suppression have to do with the role of ethnic machine politics. They date back to before Trump, after all.

Of course America is headed this direction. Non-European immigrants vote D by supermajority numbers which is why Democrats want to open the borders and give them amnesty. This does not require some outrageous leap. Biden let in something like 15 million illegals. It isn't some prediction for the future. It already happened. And it's already the stated position of most leading Democrats to give illegal immigrants amnesty and a path to citizenship. Please don't pretend this is some crazy conspiracy theory.

Whenever I reflect on that it always rings in my mind as a throwback to Caesar giving Gauls citizenship in Rome (one of the things he was actually unpopular for), and the ensuing impact this liberalization had on native Roman’s negative attitudes towards them. Over a long enough timespan, we see where it leads. Odoacer (though he was German, not Gallic) served and was integrated into the Roman army himself. That still wasn’t enough for him to see himself as Roman.

Yeah, the patronage model was important in ancient Rome just like it is becoming today in America. Although back then, the patron-client relationship was personal and today it is based on ethnic groups, unions, and political parties.

Controlling citizenship was a BIG deal back then too.

For example, way back in 91 BC, Drusus tried to get Rome's Italian allies admitted as citizens. The Senate hated this because it would mean that these new citizens would view Drusus, already one of the richest men in Rome, as their personal patron. He would have so many clients that he would be unquestionably the most powerful man in Rome. And so naturally he was assassinated.

Today's Democratic Party is also seeking new clients, while the Republican party tries to block it.

Not all sectors of society in the US vote in equal proportion. This has been a thing forever. It’s why both parties struggle mightily with voter turnout. Fucking with public bussing and the transport system is kind of funny, but even that kind of thing has happened here.

Better scenario for dangers of adopting public transport, and abandoning cars, can hardly be imagined. In fact, were one claim it as possible con, he would be considered to have succumb to conspiratiorial thinking.

Blocking roads as a form of political ratfucking works just as well in the world of mass private car use - with Chris Christie being the most famous recent culprit in the USA.

Messing with traffic light timings to cause gridlock in the suburb whose votes you want to suppress would be just as easy as stopping the busses, and harder to detect.

In any case, something is wrong if significant numbers of people who don't actually live on a farm are not within walking distance of their local polling station.

Optimizing for traffic congestion is a hilarious thought. Like digital price tags in the supermarket, changing thousands of times per day, right when the direct deposit hits, to fuck over shoppers, I can just imagine a hidden, city-wide algorithm that causes all the traffic lights to flicker or maximize highway and 4-way delays to reduce turnout in red districts.

That was just pointless pettiness. You could do the same thing with better deniability just by playing games with permits or construction timing. Even worse, it backfired a millionfold. It's been too long to remember the specifics, but there were stats being thrown around like "Network news spent more time talking about BridgeGate in a single day than they did Obama's IRS targeting scandal ever."

Very much agreed. The point I was making is that, once the population density is high enough that heavy rush hour traffic is the default, private cars are not immune to ratfucking. Chris Christie got caught because he chose a particularly obvious and stupid form of ratfucking, probably because this was mafia politics where you need to make sure the victim and any onlookers need to know who kneecapped him if you want them to respect and fear you going forward.

In any case, something is wrong if significant numbers of people who don't actually live on a farm are not within walking distance of their local polling station.

Possibly a good reason to distrust the claim in the first place. Did this even happen or what it simply a pretext to execute the pre-arranged plan? How many busses were stopped? Where?

This is just corruption. Using cars would have protected you from this specific problem, but they would have tried to find another way to profile and delay voters instead.

they would have tried to find another way

Would it have been successful?

Cars are the most freedom-promoting mode of transportation we have (though not the most possible).

Police roadblocks are capable of stopping cars, too.

“Sorry man, the main highway all the people in this Bolsonaro neighborhood use is down for emergency maintenance.”

Okay, Chris Christie.

I can’t read this without grinning. But seriously, should there be a national announcement on Election Day that runs the opposite?: “Attention! All barriers and roadblocks have been removed to get to your voting stations. Hope all goes well and you make it there alive! Godspeed, fellow countrymen.”

So there's no point in doing anything if you can't be perfect?

It seems straightforward and obvious that people who have private transportation are harder to control than people who don't.

My point is that "maybe the government will use this against me" is not a particularly good argument against public transport considering the many upsides. Especially considering that the corrupt measures taken were ultimately ineffectual.

You could just as easily turn it around: If everyone used public transport, there would have been no reason to delay it, as it would no longer be an effective way to profile people. So actually, you should enforce a ban on cars.

Also consider that private transportation only works as long as the roads are maintained and there is access to fuel. Similarly, private companies can be in charge of bus routes and trains. So I don't think your conclusion follows as naturally as you think.

From what it sounds like, the charge was that they selectively interfered with public transport in cities supporting one particular side, so unless the population is also perfectly geographically shuffled, everyone using public transport would not be sufficient protection.

That being said, I agree that if you already have the sort of corruption that allows selective interference with public transport, private vehicles are hardly safe. If anything, under Brazilian conditions, some tactical road closures that just so happen to result in the city being choked up in jams would be more deniable and even easier to get away with.

Brazil has mandatory voting, though, so manipulating turnout seems like an unoptimal strategy.

My point is that "maybe the government will use this against me" is not a particularly good argument against public transport considering the many upsides. Especially considering that the corrupt measures taken were ultimately ineffectual.

You could just as easily turn it around: If everyone used public transport, there would have been no reason to delay it, as it would no longer be an effective way to profile people. So actually, you should enforce a ban on cars.

Also consider that private transportation only works as long as the roads are maintained and there is access to fuel. Similarly, private companies can be in charge of bus routes and trains. So I don't think your conclusion follows as naturally as you think.

For better or for worse "maybe the government will use this against me" permeates just about all aspects of modern life. That being said, I do think that private cars, as compared to public transport, give a considerable boost to a person's practical freedom.

(I originally posted this in the Small-Scale Questions thread, but @Primaprimaprima thought it might be a better fit here.)

Last week I finished reading Gerald Posner's Case Closed, his attempt to set the record straight on the JFK assassination and prove that Oswald acted alone. Posner reserves plenty of ire for the assorted conspiracy theories that mushroomed around the assassination over the last six decades.

I dislike the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", as they're generally used as terms of dismissal or abuse: characterising a particular hypothesis as a "conspiracy theory" is tantamount to saying that it's untrue, and characterising the person who espouses it as a "conspiracy theorist" is tantamount to calling them paranoid and unserious. But this shouldn't be the case, because conspiracies do happen! Some important historical events really were the product of conspiracies. Imagine if a public figure was killed, you thought he might have been murdered, and I rolled my eyes and said "oh, you're one of those 'murder theorists'." Murders really happen! There's nothing intrinsically ridiculous about the hypothesis that a given dead person might have been intentionally and unlawfully killed by another person; nor is there anything intrinsically ridiculous about the hypothesis that a given event might have been the result of multiple clandestine actors working together to bring it about. As many have noted before me, theories about history or current affairs are rubbished and dismissed as "conspiracy theories" – right up until the very moment they're proven true, at which point they simply become historical fact.

However. We're all familiar with the type of person described by the term "conspiracy theorist". The people in tinfoil hats, the people who never believe the official story, the people who attribute every setback (no matter how trivial) to the dark hand of da Joos/the CIA/the Illuminati. These people may not be paranoid in a clinical sense, but they reflexively jump to the conclusion that there is more to every news story than meets the eye, and the conclusion seems effectively predetermined. They arrive at the conclusion first, then go looking for evidence to support it.

I wish we had better terms for "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", respectively. When we use the former, what we're really getting at is that a historical event is being attributed to a vast nefarious conspiracy on the basis of little to no evidence. "Conspiracy theory" should be a neutral term which expresses no judgement on whether the theory is true or not, but I think it would be genuinely helpful to have a separate term for how the term is used nowadays i.e. as a particularly far-fetched and implausible example of same. "Truther" is starting to catch on ("9/11 truther", "Lucy Letby truther"), but it would be nice to have a noun for the theory itself, as opposed to the person espousing it.

And when we characterise someone as a "conspiracy theorist", we don't usually mean that they espouse one conspiracy theory and no others. We usually mean that they advance conspiracy theories habitually and reflexively, that there are vast swathes of human history they attribute to the machinations of nefarious organisations operating in secret. People to whom the term "conspiracy theorist" don't, as a rule, endorse the mainstream historical narrative except for one little wrinkle: it's an entirely different worldview, a paranoid style. I think "tinfoil hat wearer" is a much more apt term for people with this worldview or mindset than "conspiracy theorist", except that I'm not sure if anyone actually wore a tinfoil hat in complete sincerity.

What do ye think? Any ideas? What would your preferred terms for these concepts be?

It's far too broad a term to be useful. Even if you try to split it up into reasonable vs schizo ideas, the schizo ideas don't actually have much in common with each other (in terms of psychological motivations); you might also try to separate it into abstract ones (the cause of the world's issues is "capitalism," the Jews, patriarchy, wokedom) vs concrete ones (a bunch of narrow claims about specific people and institutions), but even that doesn't help too much in figuring out which theories are helpful or predictive of reality. Each proposed conspiracy needs to be individually analyzed, and the difference between which are high status vs low status depends mostly on how successfully the conspiracy has captured existing institutions.

My favorite conspiracy theory: there's a small group of people currently deploying trillions of dollars of resources toward the goal of creating a pet God to allow them to dominate all of reality, at the risk of ending human existence. They're secretive; don't (fully) describe their motivations or risks as they see them; engage in subterfuge and punishment of people who defect from the conspiracy; and use rhetoric about evil foreigners to justify why they have to do what they do. And most observers are sheeple who either take them at face value or critique them .

Am I a conspiracy theorist? I mean, yes, but the conspiracy theorist label doesn't help in evaluating my claims one way or another.

"Conspiracy theory" is a thing because claiming that something is a conspiracy is a convenient way to excuse poor evidence, lack of evidence or contrary evidence, or to claim that anything at all is evidence. Yes, people murder. Yes, people engage in conspiracies. And... yes, sometimes people do things without leaving any evidence, but if there's no evidence, you still should demand it before believing in something.

There’s two movies that always come to mind that I thought left an important remark about the nature of evidence.

There’s a fairly unremarkable scene in Enter the Dragon (the Bruce Lee movie), where he and some British guy are sitting in a room, watching an overhead projector roll tape on Han’s island as he’s getting the briefing on things. By the time he finishes explaining everything to Lee, Lee turns around and says something to the effect of, “If you’re sitting here and showing me all this, why don’t you just bust in on Han’s island and take him away?” And the guy says back, “We know everything. We can prove nothing.” The other movie is Shawshank Redemption, and the first few scenes in the beginning where Andy’s being tried in the courtroom and is being accused of murdering his wife. The prosecuting attorney is questioning him about the gun and he says, “Isn’t it remarkably convenient that you say you threw your gun into the river and yet there’s no evidence that was recovered? Isn’t that just all too convenient?” And Andy replies back by saying, “I actually find it awfully inconvenient that the gun was never found.”

I have been in both those kinds of situations where the same logic at work applies. I’ve sat across from people in discussions where I 100% knew they were lying, because I was standing right next to them when something that became questioned happened. And they knew they were lying. You could read it by the smirk on their face. But, I had no evidence to present? Why would I be so concerned with evidence? It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong. This is the mentality honest people operate with and it’s how they get screwed over by dishonest people. I’ve become so burned and so cynical from certain people I grew up with, I meticulously document what it is I do, such that I always have something that amounts to evidence and proof of no wrongdoing by me. Even when there’s nothing even remotely suggesting something questionable, in the most innocent circumstances. It’s why I never delete text messages and haven’t got over a decade, I archive emails before deleting them, I put text notification alerts on every financial transaction I make, etc.

People in power lie. The truth for them is what is convenient and what they can get away with.

I think irrational conspiracy theorists notice this habitual lying and just extend it everywhere. Even to the point of absurdity.

Rational conspiracy theorists can notice the lying when it is ultra convenient for those in power, and when it is easy to get away with it.

This will produce some false positives. Sometimes the truth is convenient for those in power. Some crazy jihadists carrying out 9/11 is certainly convenient if you want more excuses to mess around in the middle east.

I don't like blaming the victim in these cases. The problem is not that people are prone to conspiracy theorizing. It's that they correctly notice those in power are happy and willing to lie about the truth all the time, and it kinda breaks their brains trying to figure it out. The problem remains the liars, and their willingness to torch the public's trust, not those who are confused by it.

We would need a sea change in culture for that to change. A teller of harsh truths is not lauded, they are hated. Confessing to crimes is not a path to redemption it's just a speedy path to punishment. An honest politician is an out of work politician.

A teller of harsh truths is not lauded, they are hated.

S'war immer so:

12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” 13 Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” 14 Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by the material world, I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid, for it is not I alone who judge but I and he who sent me. 17 In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. 18 I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.” 19 Then they said to him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

21 Again he said to them, “I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” 22 Then the Jews said, “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” 23 He said to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are from this world, I am not from this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am.” 25 They said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Why do I speak to you at all? 26 I have much to say about you and much to condemn, but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” 27 They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father. 28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. 29 And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.” 30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him.

31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

34 Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are the seed of Abraham, yet you look for an opportunity to kill me because there is no place in you for my word. 38 I declare what I have seen beside my Father; as for you, you do what you have heard from your father.”

39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you are Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did, 40 but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are indeed doing what your father does.” They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one Father, God himself.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came forth from God, and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you are not able to hear my word. 44 You are from the father of the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. The devil was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and so is his father. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.”

48 The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49 Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50 Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks and judges. 51 Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” 52 The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and so did the prophets, yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be?” 54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, ‘He is our God,’ 55 though you do not apprehend him. But I recognize him; if I would say that I do not, I would be a liar like you. But I have met him, and I keep his word. 56 Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.” 57 Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham came into being, I am.” 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Two things can be true at the same time. You don’t have to be one of those people who goes the other extreme and says, “I don’t believe in conspiracies. You’re right. I believe everything the government tells me.” Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not being followed; and just because JFK wasn’t a conspiracy doesn’t mean people think conspiracies don’t happen. “Conspiracy” in the popular sense of the word carries a lot of baggage and has become something of a tarnish word; in the same way “skeptic” has to those outside of the scientific community (which is akin to calling someone a “naysayer”).

Part of the problem your average person has is coming to grips with the fact that absurd and impossible seeming things, happen literally every single day. In a country of approximately 300 million people, if you have an event that’s a million to one, you’re statistically guaranteed to have 300 of those events at any given moment. High profile people get shot every single day. So what if one of them happens to be the US president? There’s been documentaries that claim the government killed 2Pac. (It was just Compton related gang activity.) And as far as secrecy goes, there are a lot of secrets in the world. There are secrets in my own life that I’ll keep and go to the grave with. Just remember the US couldn’t even keep the nuclear bomb a secret; and it got leaked to the Soviet Union anyway. I believe in “conspiracies” much the same way anyone else does. Conspiracy to commit murder. Two rich people conspiring to fuck over their workers. Conspiracies that a lizard king secretly rules in the White House? Call me skeptical. Very skeptical.

The problem is that one of the objectives of the conspiracies is to stay secret, at minimum until they achieve their primary goals. Many preferably would stay hidden afterwards to avoid the bad PR. (The conspiracy that planned the assassination of Frans Ferdinand succeeded in the assassination, but links to Serbian intelligence soon surfaced, which was a failure in staying hidden.) Some objectives preclude staying hidden. (Case study: all the coups, ever).

As a consequence, evidence of successful hidden conspiracies is rare because they stay hidden, but evidence from half-assed or partially successful conspiracies and conspiracies that intended to become public is relatively more plentiful. Thus naive reading of the easily accessible evidence directs towards a probably false conclusion that conspiracies usually become public. Yet because absence of successfully hidden evidence is superficially similar to absence of evidence that never existed, it's equally stupid to reverse the stupidity and conclude from lack of evidence that your favorite hypothesized conspiracy is true and extremely good at hiding evidence. Targeted, rigorous, high-effort investigations (such as mafia trials) are able to pierce conspiracies and produce credible evidence, but it is probable that not all conspiracies are investigated in such manner. Yet it is easier and cheaper to make claims of thorough investigations that support your political convenient conspiracy claims (see the case study of Stalin's show trials and most Twitter rumors) than truly investigate.

I don't really know if there is a good way out of this conundrum.

I dislike the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist", as they're generally used as terms of dismissal or abuse: characterizing a particular hypothesis as a "conspiracy theory" is tantamount to saying that it's untrue, and characterizing the person who espouses it as a "conspiracy theorist" is tantamount to calling them paranoid and unserious. But this shouldn't be the case, because conspiracies do happen!

Of course they do, there is a criminal conspiracy term under many jurisdictions and these conspiracies are prosecuted all the time ranging from Drug or weapon trafficking, white collar fraud, RICO conspiracies, various government corruption schemes and many more.

However. We're all familiar with the type of person described by the term "conspiracy theorist". The people in tinfoil hats, the people who never believe the official story, the people who attribute every setback (no matter how trivial) to the dark hand of da Joos/the CIA/the Illuminati.

Actually we are in fact not familiar with "the type". Or to be more precise, there is more than just one type. The tinfoil hat chemtrail wacko is one type. But there are many other types, in general all leftisim is just one huge conspiracy theory. You know the type: everything is because of capitalism and billionaires. Or alternatively everything is because of white supremacy or patriarchy or whatnot. These are all the same level of "theories" than your regular schizoid who sees aliens everywhere, but for some reason being a commie leftist who thinks everything is because of capitalism is somehow considered as a normal thing.

So I agree with @Primaprimaprima that "conspiracy theory" label is primarily a propaganda term that is used just as an ad hominem attack on opponents epistemological credentials. It is often used in battery of ad hominems where one attacks all three faculties:

  • Attack on you epistemological legitimacy: "Only conspiracy theorists believe that, no serious academic can believe what you believe, you are outside of scientific consensus"
  • Attack on your mental legitimacy: "Who hurt you? Something must have happened to you, only people with unresolved trauma say these hurtful things. Did you try therapy?"
  • Attack on your moral legitimacy: "Only racists and fascists say what you say. You should be ashamed of what you say"

I've made the same argument in person as well, and it's an irksome topic to be sure. Conspiracies are part of a suite of perfectly normal human behaviour, so normal that we frequently engage in it without being entirely aware, for which I've taken a liking to the term "prospiracy", when people collectively behave in a way that look from the outside like a conspiracy, but without any signs for the conspicuous, conscious communication that is necessary for a "proper" conspiracy. But even for those, once you dig deeper, you'll notice that at least a few people seem to be aware of what they're doing and communicate with each other about it, so the lines get blurry regardless.

For the decidedly implausible kind, I think that "schizo (theory)" is apt. Short and clear distinction from painting all conspiracies alike. But I think it has fallen from favour as a term ever since the left has embraced anti-ism: It sounds mean and ableist, even when employed correctly.

IMO the main problem with conspiracy theory is the "conspiracy": large groups of people are generally bad at closely cooperating without leaking information. Although it does happen, the other main problem with most conspiracy theories is requiring a long-term plan with broad predictions (like public perception) to mostly succeed, which (granted, in the public eye) seems to never happen. And to top it off, most conspiracy theorists don't provide an obvious motive and their evidence seems like obvious mistakes. So you expect me to believe this massive group orchestrated a years-long plan without any leaks or slip-ups, predicted what no-one else could (and relied on those predictions for their years-long plan, so they must have been either very confident or very reckless), except for these glaring flaw only a group of crackpots discovered; and why so much effort and risk, what couldn't be accomplished through simpler means? Well, it hasn't been disproven...

Emergent theories are easier to believe: rather than a group coordinating to do something, members all have similar motivation, and rather than planning ahead, their actions just happen to lead to or benefit from the outcome. In fact, there may be lots of coordination and omission, because people can identify their "ingroup" and "outgroup" mostly reliably and even subconsciously; but no center or plan, just natural human behavior, and it's not actually secret, the signs are obvious just not to you. The other thing about emergent theories is the leaders actually aren't human (there are none), and the plan actually isn't human-made (there is none), which explains no good motive and obvious flaws.

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Consequently, never attribute a masterminded evil plan to typical human behavior on a large scale inadvertently causing big problems.

So you expect me to believe this massive group orchestrated a years-long plan without any leaks or slip-ups, predicted what no-one else could (and relied on those predictions for their years-long plan, so they must have been either very confident or very reckless), except for these glaring flaw only a group of crackpots discovered; and why so much effort and risk, what couldn't be accomplished through simpler means?

This is naturally just how people think but it isn’t how historical development and processes work. History isn’t the result of an overarching plan that only happens with some global elite at the press of a single button up in some nefarious high tower somewhere. When I was growing up, there were a lot of kids in my neighborhood that I saw and interacted with a lot due to their unavoidable proximity to my friend group, and I mentored a lot of younger peers and taught them quite a bit. There were a couple of them I can recall having to explain the concept path dependencies to. Things in the world don’t happen because of some “grand master plan.” They happen because overtime there’s a thousand little events taking place in the world that collectively add up in the direction of particular, emergent outcomes.

When people ask questions like, “Who rules the world?”, they think you can’t answer questions like that meaningfully without appealing to some ultimate, single factor explanation that unfolds like a conspiracy and explains why everything happens the way it does. It’s the US and multinational corporations that run the world, by and large. They just don’t run it like a cartoon conspiracy, because historical events are messy, incomplete, with countervailing forces against present day trends, along with everything else. It’s part of the natural historical lifecycle of things.

This basically misunderstands the dynamics at play in real life wholesale:

  1. Large groups of people can in fact be fairly good at closely cooperating without leaking information.
  2. Generally speaking, leaking information often does not "matter." Many leaks happen without impacting the broader consciousness. Furthermore, becoming "fully" public does nothing to stop the conspiracy, at least not in a timely manner. Look at Harvey Weinstein. Look at the roughly 70 years of leaks from the U.S. government that UFOs are real, have crashed, and that alien bodies have recovered. Look at the recent revelations that your Samsung television is spying on you. Look at my prior comment on conspiracy as a coordination problem. Jurassic Park understood this.
  3. Leaks are not necessarily true (see #2), and dedicated actors see to it that false leaks are common enough to shield real ones.
  4. Public perception largely does not matter; good conspirators typically target the relevant "policymakers" and not the public. But to the extend that public perception does, it's quite possible to change it. There are entire industries dedicated to doing both of these things openly.
  5. Finally, unless you define "conspiracy theory" to only refer to criminal conspiracies (which would mean that, for instance, UFO conspiracy theories aren't) plenty of conspiracies are perfectly legal. In fact, they are so legal that you hardly need to hide what you are doing. Sometimes it's in fact mandatory and required by law. "Covering up a crime" is illegal, but "providing a rigorous defense to the accused" is in fact not just permitted but required, and even though they both can tend towards the same end. A team of people working together to get a criminal off the hook on a technicality only doesn't register as a conspiracy to us because they don't need to do it covertly.

This last point is very important to understand because the popular version of conspiracy theory, indulged in by the worst conspiracy theorists and the favorite strawman of debunkers, does often postulate large degrees of covert coordination, which allows real conspiracies to operate more-or-less openly without even being viewed as sinister. Obviously there are in fact covert actions that take place, but real life conspiracies (much like real life espionage) operates on a spectrum from covert to overt, and overt actions can be chained together with less overt actions to achieve desired goals.

It's true that the straw-man conspiracy theory, with 300 bloodsuckers sitting on thrones in Lichtenstein somewhere deciding the fate of the world isn't true (at least, I don't think it is; I haven't had direct personal experience of it) but the popular version of a conspiracy theory, where hidden forces work behind the scenes to sway the fate of the nation, is basically true. It's just that general shape that it takes is so familiar that it doesn't strike us as a conspiracy, because we're all conspirators. We've (almost) all signed an NDA, or spilled a rumor at just the right time, or "gundecked" a report to keep somebody from looking bad. And the "big" conspiracies often aren't really different from this in mechanism, only in ambition.

However these basically mundane ways can be very effective. They're just not very satisfying to people who are excited to learn about Hyperborea, lizard shape-shifters, or at least something out of a James Bond movie. Things like "the military spying on the President and leaking classified information to the press undermine his policies" not only happen, but can be successfully covered up for decades, and the details are so mundane that when they are released, conspiracy theorists and the public alike are barely aware of it, even though it's a textbook case study of supposedly-mythical "Deep State" at work.

Harvey Weinstein

Wasn't he (and Epstein) prosecuted? Not everyone was arrested, but especially with the amount implicated, Epstein is evidence against the elite successfully keeping conspiracies (although it did seem to involve everyone, so was particularly hard to keep). He was also publicly prosecuted once before his final arrest, the only reason it never made headlines is because the mainstream didn't care; look at how it suddenly cared years after his final arrest, more than ever before, (although this could be a conspiracy of its own) I suspect because some people realized Trump was involved and Biden (and other Dems that would be government staff) were no longer relevant.

UFOs are real, have crashed, and that alien bodies have recovered

I'm still very skeptical of this: so far all the "evidence" I've seen has been unconvincing and not very plausible. How come UFO reports have gone down so much since the proliferation of cameras and other technology that would verify them?

Recent revelations that your Samsung television is spying on you

Samsung and "Smart TVs" in general have been known for years to spy on users. And the recent revelations are also evidence against a successful conspiracy. Samsung employees never had strong incentive to leak these features, because the reaction would be "duh", and consumers who pay attention and care have long abandoned Samsung's TVs.

This last point is very important to understand because the popular version of conspiracy theory, indulged in by the worst conspiracy theorists and the favorite strawman of debunkers, does often postulate large degrees of covert coordination, which allows real conspiracies to operate more-or-less openly without even being viewed as sinister.

A "conspiracy" by definition must be secret. You're right that large groups operate in the open, with basic obfuscation or a low profile so most people don't realize what they're doing. But that's not necessarily intentional (they probably present themselves as ordinary and ethical...because they genuinely think they are); and when it is, it's trivial to bypass if one looks closely, which only roughly fits the idea of "secret".

Leaks are not necessarily true (see #2), and dedicated actors see to it that false leaks are common enough to shield real ones.

One of my favorite episodes of the X-Files was one where Mulder got mind-swapped with a guy whose entire job was creating fake conspiracies, selectively leaking to the press, etc. all to distract from the real secret stuff that the feds were doing.

One of my favorite episodes of the X-Files was one where Mulder got mind-swapped with a guy whose entire job was creating fake conspiracies, selectively leaking to the press, etc. all to distract from the real secret stuff that the feds were doing.

People eat this up because they know the « feds » are a criminal (natural law, inb4 But The Badge) conspiracy, but the issue is this overemphasizes their competence. They are also not that smart. In fact you know how on TV you consume propaganda about how they have genius analysts working for them? They don't in real life. They contract out technical stuff like cracking locked phones to criminal (natural law) corporations. It's actually kind of pathetic. The state is clearly this unintelligent appendage sucking out intelligence from the broader civil society; it is not self-generating.

The actual quality of "the feds" depends on the fed. Some of their personnel (NSA geeks, Navy nuclear technicians) are extremely intelligent (at least as far as test-taking goes).

The areas of the federal bureaucracy that select for politicking in particular are quite capable of pulling off conspiracies.

Emergent theories are easier to believe

The Futility of Emergence:

The failures of phlogiston and vitalism are historical hindsight. Dare I step out on a limb, and name some current theory which I deem analogously flawed?

I name emergence or emergent phenomena—usually defined as the study of systems whose high-level behaviors arise or “emerge” from the interaction of many low-level elements. (Wikipedia: “The way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.”) Taken literally, that description fits every phenomenon in our universe above the level of individual quarks, which is part of the problem. Imagine pointing to a market crash and saying “It’s not a quark!” Does that feel like an explanation? No? Then neither should saying “It’s an emergent phenomenon!”

I have lost track of how many times I have heard people say, “Intelligence is an emergent phenomenon!” as if that explained intelligence. This usage fits all the checklist items for a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. What do you know, after you have said that intelligence is “emergent”? You can make no new predictions. You do not know anything about the behavior of real-world minds that you did not know before. It feels like you believe a new fact, but you don’t anticipate any different outcomes. Your curiosity feels sated, but it has not been fed. The hypothesis has no moving parts—there’s no detailed internal model to manipulate. Those who proffer the hypothesis of “emergence” confess their ignorance of the internals, and take pride in it; they contrast the science of “emergence” to other sciences merely mundane.

A fun exercise is to eliminate the adjective “emergent” from any sentence in which it appears, and see if the sentence says anything different:

Before: Human intelligence is an emergent product of neurons firing.

After: Human intelligence is a product of neurons firing.

Another fun exercise is to replace the word “emergent” with the old word, the explanation that people had to use before emergence was invented:

Before: Life is an emergent phenomenon.

After: Life is a magical phenomenon.

Now as for what you wrote specifically, I would call this individualistic theory, and not emergent. That's clearer. But you said:

members all have similar motivation, and rather than planning ahead, their actions just happen to lead to or benefit from the outcome.

Let's use red tribe as an example. Clearly, some of their members plan ahead. Are you modeling mice here, or men?

  • In fact, there may be lots of coordination and omission, because people can identify their "ingroup" and "outgroup" mostly reliably and even subconsciously; but no center or plan, just natural human behavior, and it's not actually secret, the signs are obvious just not to you.

Partially true. Conspiracy = coordination + secret. Sometimes, there's not-secret coordination. However, there is no requirement that there be no center or plan at all. Very often in human groups there is, in fact, a center and a plan. Like Donald Trump and Project 2025. What is more interesting is thinking about the ultimate power of this center. Usually it is there, but it only partially explains phenomena.

The other thing about emergent theories is the leaders actually aren't human (there are none),

No, usually human groups have leaders.

the plan actually isn't human-made

Typically there are some plans and the plans are in fact made with the big brain in the skull which evolved for a reason to be able to make plans.

Members do plan ahead and sometimes coordinate, they may have leadership, may even believe they are forming a conspiracy. The difference from a real conspiracy theory is that the actual plans and coordination are a small part of the overall process, and the leaders have little control over it; more like, the process started and they happened to notice and ride it, but they didn't cause it to happen and it would've happened without them (maybe with others instead).

The difference from a real conspiracy theory is that the actual plans and coordination are a small part of the overall process, and the leaders have little control over it;

Or it could be a big but not complete part of the process, and the leaders have a lot but not complete control over it. Or big could be moderate. How do you know whether it's big, moderate, or little/small? What are you basing this off of?

more like, the process started and they happened to notice and ride it, rather than they caused it to happen.

It depends what you mean. In general leaders ride their followers, because they do not have the power of mind control. But their plans are the product of agency.

What are you basing this off of?

The typical conspiracy theory heavily implies if not outright states near-complete centralization: a group (spontaneously or after an event) meets, plans something, and carefully orchestrates it. The reality, that what they were planning started without them and would continue without them (via some other group), or that their plan was a small part of what the conspiracy theory accuses them of, makes the theory misleading: it gives the impression these people have more competence and foresight than reality.

The secret ingredient is moralism and ideology. You have to establish beforehand what a good person believes, and what only a bad person would support. This way, a leak can be dismissed as a traitor, a heretic, an inhuman monster. This can and often is substantially emergent (where IMO the term "prospiracy" is nice), but plenty of people actually know perfectly well what they're doing. Another valuable trick in the book is establishing that not only is it immoral to reveal the conspiracy, it is already immoral to even investigate. That way, a conspiracy can simultaneously recruit large numbers of people, with only very few being in on the details in practice.

I've personally seen this in action on HBD, where many geneticists think it's true, yet actively spread slander about anyone who publicly talks because they genuinely believe that revealing it would have terrible outcomes. But the basic principle is always the same, whether it's companies, cults or large-scale activism.

they genuinely believe that revealing it would have terrible outcomes

Do they believe that? The motivation has always struck me as more like "I have to make public statements about HBD being evil in order to progress in my career," not that it'll result in a Fourth Reich.

Of course, that's speculative about interior mental states we don't have access to, but so is the Fourth Reich hypothesis.

For some yes, but one of my PhD supervisors who is otherwise not shy to get into fights has, after a pint in private at the pub, all but explicitly said that he thinks the public is simply not ready. To him, the average person is really bad at parsing statistical average differences as anything but "is better than", the worst racists will feel vindicated, it's just going to result in a lot of unfair discrimination, and it's not even clear if that discrimination will be strictly speaking irrational. I may not entirely agree with him, but I 100% believe that he believes this.

And one part where I've not quite changed, but let's say expanded, my mind on is how bad zealots can be depending on ideologies. I'm convinced the same kind of person who used to mindlessly support the Nazis in the 30s (or the communists in the USSR), has been mindlessly supporting the left in western countries since ca the 70s. It's a person that thinks in black and white extremes and can't handle anything but simple moralistic tales, who is always looking for scapegoats.

This may seem like a terrible indictment of them as people, and it mostly is, but it also means that we've successfully "defused" them, since the left of that time simply wasn't that bad in comparison. Getting them into campaigns for LGBT rights, environmental protections or animal right of some stupid spotty owl or whatever other issue impacting 0.1% of people was actually kind of a good deal. What we really need to avoid is that these people switch again to a murderous ideology, whether far right or far left. The problem is they've been steadily moving towards the murderous far left, and there seems to be no way to hold them in check which doesn't also involve empowering the far right. But they'll never go away, only ever get into different ideologies.

large groups of people are generally bad at closely cooperating without leaking information.

But wouldn’t business be impossible if this were true? Wouldn’t the notion of a trade secret or an agreement with confidential terms just not exist?

Some software projects (e.g. highly anticipated new video games) are in development for years before their existence is made public, and the interested parties do manage to keep it a secret before the public announcement. Presumably, there were some such projects that got canceled before the announcement, and they were doomed to permanent obscurity.

Or think about source code. Surely there are some highly valuable commercial software packages whose source code has never been leaked, yes? (Ignoring recent advances in AI reverse engineering.)

ADDENDUM: Although I’m certainly not unbiased here, I imagine that there’s an equally strong reciprocal bias among some individuals of a more Rationalist bent towards believing that conspiracies are impossible; if it is possible for groups of people to successfully hide valuable information, then this would mean that social and political factors can stymie the free flow of information, which runs counter to the dream of completing a fully rational and scientific analysis of reality that is unencumbered by social limitations.

I think there's a general principle that exists that the more impactful (I searched for a better term and could not come up with it) the thing that is being planned is, the greater risk of the conspiracy falling apart: what keeps a conspiracy together is a unity of purpose and goals. The greater the material impact upon the world, both (in general) the larger number of people you need to recruit, and the more difficult it is to align the preferences of all those involved.

I think it is probably much easier to keep a group of people silent about making a new video game or car than it is to say, conduct a terrorist attack or false flag.

I think this is also due to the nature of a conspiracy to do a legal act versus an illegal act. For one, a conspiracy to do something that is legal means that the conspirators will face no repercussions for not revealing the conspiracy: as far as they're concerned, the value proposition is all in keeping silent and there's no gain in it for them (and often quite a bit of punishment) for yapping. Furthermore, the nature of the enterprise being legal means that to maintain secrecy the conspirators are able to establish an effective bureaucracy to deter leaks: scrupulously collecting evidence of who has access to what materials at what time. Obviously an illegal conspiracy would not be seeking to create a parallel paper trail where it exhaustively collects data on the discrete nature of criminality of the various participants.

I think this is also due to the nature of a conspiracy to do a legal act versus an illegal act.

I'm not sure I really buy this distinction in common use; this would move hypothesizing about e.g. UFO cover ups mostly out of the realm of a conspiracy theory, since presumably it's not actually illegal for the government to e.g. conduct crash retrievals and reverse-engineering and classify all of their findings.

I think there's a general principle that exists that the more impactful (I searched for a better term and could not come up with it) the thing that is being planned is, the greater risk of the conspiracy falling apart

Sure, that’s a reasonable thing to believe. But now we’ve moved from “people can’t keep secrets” to “well they couldn’t keep a secret that big”. Now we’ve entered the domain of qualitative judgements.

Yeah, that is more accurate. Game developers can keep projects secret because there's no point in leaking and a big point in not doing that (you've been working on this project for years, why spoil it?) Companies can keep trade secrets because it would be apparent if a competitor stole them, then the financial gain would be undone by lawsuits, and what other motive is there?

But ethics violations are frequently leaked, although we don't know if they're a small fraction of those committed. And the more severe the violation, especially when it starts falling apart (e.g. because it relies on a conspiracy-theory-sized plan), the more likely someone bails to cover themselves, or accidentally does something suspicious.

I recognize within myself a psychological disposition to be drawn to topics and thought patterns that would often be classified as "conspiratorial" (I don't know if anyone here still remembers my UFO posts from a few years back), so I have a personal interest in this.

Some people believe in something akin to the Generalized Anti-Conspiracy Principle: "It's impossible for conspiracies to exist, because large groups of people can't keep secrets; the information will always become public". But, I don't see much of a reason to believe that the GACP is true. You and your bank and the government have kept your social security number secret enough that your bank account is still intact. (Your SSN might be floating around on the deep web somewhere if it was part of a large breach, but, that seems to me to be different than it being widely available public knowledge.)

Much like the term "pseudoscience", the term "conspiracy theory" is primarily a social/political category, rather than a value-neutral epistemological one. People make all sorts of false claims all the time, and the plain and simple word "false" is sufficient to describe most of them. Calling something "pseudoscience" or a "conspiracy theory" rarely adds additional semantic content beyond calling it "false", except to bring attention to it as a dangerous type of wrongthink that must be suppressed. (For most people here who hold any type of anti-woke belief, it wouldn't be too hard to find someone in The Cathedral who would indict them of conspiratorial or pseudoscientific thinking. Perhaps moldbug's notion of "The Cathedral" is a conspiracy itself? Who knows.)

As for the "personality type" you identified, I'm not in too much of a rush to find a term to label it. Perhaps some of these people are on the "schizophrenia spectrum", perhaps some are not. (Hilariously, I was watching a youtube video of a woman describing her experience with schizophrenia. She said "I often have trouble taking my anti-psychotic medication on schedule, because one of my frequent delusions is that my doctors are using the medication for mind control", and I thought to myself "...I mean, I don't want to scare you or encourage you or anything, but I can see how that's an exaggerated version of something that has a kernel of truth to it. I mean, have you seen the side effects of the shit they're feeding people these days??") People are going to come up with terms for it anyway, because it's a salient social pattern that people are going to notice. But I don't want to contribute to the medicalization and over-pathologization of what I see as normal psychological variance.

I recognize within myself a psychological disposition to be drawn to topics and thought patterns that would often be classified as "conspiratorial" (I don't know if anyone here still remembers my UFO posts from a few years back), so I have a personal interest in this.

What conspiracy theories do you believe, specifically?

Jews run the world! (Well, they do run the American foreign policy establishment.)

That’s always the most enduring conspiracy that comes to my mind. Yes. Jews run the world. Even to the point of them being exterminated and sent to gas chambers without the ability to do anything about it. A strange syncretism of believing that Jews are somehow both superhuman and subhuman. If it’s the fact that as a group, they’ve tended to become successful and do very well for themselves in the places they inhabit such that their occupy important positions and seats of power, that’s undoubtedly true. But that isn’t quite the same thing.

"Believe" is a strong word.

I would like aliens to be real, but I recognize that the probability that we've actually had contact with them is ultimately very slim.

I believe in a battery of familiar "right wing conspiracy theories" about racial replacement in western nations, but, similar to what Brainwavez described in his post, I believe that these are more "emergent phenomena" rather than people literally conspiring in a dark room.

I have a "religious predisposition" and feel the gravitational pull of various religious/spiritual beliefs despite consciously assenting to atheism and materialism, which has nothing to do with conspiracy theories per se, but is probably a related phenomenon with a similar underlying neurological basis.

I would like to discuss the recent road rage incident which took place on the Manhattan ramp to the outbound George Washington Bridge.

Evidently what happened was (1) there were two totally unrelated men both driving home at the end of the day; (2) The alleged shooter was a 62 year old retired NYPD detective named Victor Romero; (3) the victim was an off duty Con Ed worker named Koran Irvine; (4) the two had some sort of dispute over a lane change which didn't work out; and (5) Romero (allegedly) opened fire against Irving, killing him with a shot to the neck.

(I should mention that traffic in that area is almost always rather intense, drivers tend to be aggressive, and it's pretty common for people to end up in situations where they are honking their horns, yelling at each other, etc.)

In any event, based on photographs it appears that Koran Irvine was black. I haven't seen his picture, but I would guess with high probability that the (alleged) shooter is white based on his name. (The NYC area has lots of white guys with Italian-American sounding names.)

Anyway, what's interesting to me is that New York County has a Soros-style DA, Alvin Bragg. So it seems like this is a mouthwatering opportunity for him to throw the book at a white guy for shooting and killing a black guy. Especially since the black guy seems like a sympathetic victim (he apparently has a full time job and is married with children). And yet I read that the charges against Romero have already been reduced from murder to manslaughter and that he's out on bail.

What's going on here? Is my theory of mind about Alvin Bragg off the mark?

ETA: By the way, I am not familiar with the New York law of homicide, but I am aware that in general there is a principle called the "depraved heart" doctrine. The idea is that some acts are so reckless that they will imply the necessary intent for murder even in the absence of premeditation or deliberation. The classic example of this is discharging a firearm into a building which is known by the shooter to be occupied. So it seems like there is a basis here to charge the (alleged) shooter with murder even if it was just a spontaneous road rage incident.

What's going on here? Is my theory of mind about Alvin Bragg off the mark?

I wonder if a lot of this is the aftermath of the Daniel Penny acquittal: intentionally aim low to get a conviction rather than shooting for the moon and getting egg on your face.

I mean as far as I can tell from the available news about the case manslaughter is the appropriate charge, the shooter fired one shot in a moment of emotion and it can be credibly claimed to be a freak accident it hit the guy at all.

They should probably throw the book at him because supposedly the road rage was triggered by basically nothing, but inappropriate charges will just let him walk.

"Freak accident" is a bit much, but road rage killings do seem to meet the definition for manslaughter - strong emotion, little malice aforethought.

I really don't understand road rage. I have thoughtful, patient friends who get behind the wheel and suddenly become raging monsters at the slightest provocation. Seems to me that if you are prone to crashing out on the road you shouldn't carry your revolver with you, but whatever.

Also, seems Romeo retired in his 30s after being shot in the shoulder.

I once read a theory about road rage. If you're walking on the footpath and someone walking the other way bumps into you, they will usually acknowledge their error in some way. They may not actually say "sorry" or "excuse me", but they will at least raise their hand, make an apologetic facial expression, or make some kind of gesture to indicate they know they're at fault. Whereas if someone knocks into your shoulder without even acknowledging their error, we tend to interpret it (understandably) as a personal insult, and react accordingly.

When driving a car, you often can't see the faces of the drivers in the other vehicles (and vice versa). The person who cut you off in traffic may not have intended to do so and may feel very embarrassed about their error, but there's often little they can do to signal their remorse other than maybe sticking on their hazard lights for a second, which you may not even notice. What this means in practice is that drivers are far more likely to interpret mishaps on the road as deliberate personal slights about which the perpetrator feels no remorse, rather than unfortunate errors made in a split-second by flustered drivers who feel embarrassed by their own carelessness.

I find driving tremendously stressful, because I am acutely aware that unless I pay perfect attention to all the things going on in the road and respond accordingly, I risk death for me and my passengers. So from that perspective I could see road rage, your life is at stake constantly and the object of your ire presumably threatened it.

But I recognize this view is abnormal: driving is statistically one of the most dangerous things you do, but I don't think most people know that, much less internalize it. I probably don't internalize it properly either, I'm sure I'm doing things that are statistically risky while driving.

I wonder if this is an early precursor to the Internet's anonymity and echo-chamber issues? When someone's in a car they don't interact face to face with the other drivers (you can sometimes see a face if you strain, but it will just be a second or two snapshot before your attention has to go elsewhere, the equivalent of a profile picture), they're just faceless others that only come to the driver's attention when they do something stupid. Everyone in the car with you is somewhat on your side, or at least will rarely take another random driver's side or argue with you about the situation. And when you finally come face to face with the other guy, you've had ages to convince yourself he's evil and you're past the point of humanizing him.

In general the psychology seems to be the people you'd expect and people who are stressed, often because of work, close proximity, frustration at their commute and so on.

If you are a normie and don't live in a congested area it won't make visceral sense, but if you live in a congested area with shitty driving and crazy people making getting home hard, you should be able to get a whiff of the thing.

the shooter fired one shot in a moment of emotion and it can be credibly claimed to be a freak accident it hit the guy at all.

A person trained to use firearm, draw the weapon, pointed it at another person at short range, pulled the trigger and by some "freak accident" the other person died. Can you point at the freaky part, because that is the expected outcome?

Freak accident is if he was shooting at him with airsoft gun and a stray bullet from a gang shooting 3 blocks away fired at ballistic trajectory somehow hit him in the neck at the same time.

A person trained to use firearm, draw the weapon, pointed it at another person at short range, pulled the trigger and by some "freak accident" the other person died.

I'd be interested to know (1) how fast the two cars were moving; (2) whether the windows were opened; and (3) whether reports are correct that the bullet ricocheted off the headrest. Quite possibly the fatality was a freak event in some sense.

I'm not an expert, but I think it would be pretty difficult to deliver a fatal shot from one moving car to another; through a closed window; with your blood pumping and while also driving a car. I don't have either the specific facts or even much in the way of background knowledge. I do know that shooting accurately usually requires focus and it's difficult to focus when you are driving a car, especially if you are in an extreme emotional state.

I'm pretty sure that if I were in that situation, I would have a hard time pulling out my cell phone and dialing 911, let alone drawing a handgun and delivering an accurate shot.

I mean its not truly a "freak accident" but one shot, it being fatal, while driving on a bridge is pretty unlucky for the victim. Just firing one shot also adds to the claim, should he make it.

"Retired NYPD detective" is probably doing a lot of work here. I assume there's also no video of the altercation for it to go vital?

Makes sense. NYC is a one-party state, and DA Alvin Bragg and badly-behaved cops are both part of the one party.

IIRC the only viral BLM case in NYC was Eric Garner resting arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes, where the grand jury no-billed the charges against the cops - presumably because the DA wanted them to.

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