The term conspiracy theory is wielded as a pejorative, alluding to on-its-face absurdity. But the vocabulary we use has a serious ambiguity problem because conspiracies are not figments of the imagination. There is a tangible and qualitative distinction between plain-vanilla conspiracies (COINTELPRO, Operation Snow White, or the Gunpowder Plot) and their more theatrical cousins (flat earth theory, the moon landing hoax, or the farcical notion that coffee tastes good), yet a clear delineation has been elusive and it's unsatisfying to just assert "this one is crazy, and this one isn't." Both camps involve subterfuge, malevolent intent, covert operations, misinformation, orchestrated deceit, hidden agendas, clandestine networks, and yes, conspiracy, and yet the attempts to differentiate between the two have veered into unsatisfactory or plainly misleading territories.
What I'll argue is the solution boils down to a simple reconfiguration of the definition that captures the essence of the absurdity: conspiracy theories are theories that assume circumstances that render the titular "conspiracy" unnecessary. This is what I'll refer to as the Overkill Conspiracy Hypothesis (OCH). Before we dive into this refinement, it's helpful to explore why traditional distinctions have fallen short.
The section on differences in The People's Pedia showcases some of these misguided attempts. For example, conspiracy theories tend to be in opposition to mainstream consensus but that's a naked appeal to authority — logic that would have tarred the early challengers to the supposed health benignity of smoking as loons. Or that theories portray conspirators acting with extreme malice, but humans can indeed harbor evil intentions (see generally, human history). Another relies on the implausibility of maintaining near-perfect operational security. This is getting better, but while maintaining secrecy is hard, it's definitely not impossible. We have actual, real-life examples of covert military operations, or drug cartels that manage to operate clandestine billion-dollar logistical enterprises.
There's still some useful guidance to draw from the pile of chaff, and that's conspiracy theories' lack of, and resistance to, falsifiability. Despite its unfortunate name, falsifiability is one of my nearest and dearest concepts for navigating the world. Put simply, falsifiability is the ability for a theory to be proven wrong at least hypothetically. The classic example is "I believe all swans are white, but I would change my mind if I saw a black swan". The classic counterexample could be General John DeWitt citing the absence of sabotage by Japanese-Americans during WWII as evidence of future sabotage plans. There is indeed a trend of conspiracy theorists digging into their belief in belief, and dismissing contrary evidence as either fabricated, or (worse) evidence of the conspiracy itself.
I won't talk shit about the falsifiability test; it's really good stuff. But it has limitations. For one, the lack of falsifiability is only a good indication a theory is deficient, not a conclusive determination. There are also practical considerations, like how historical events can be difficult to apply falsifiability because the evidence is incomplete or hopelessly lost, or how insufficient technology in an emerging scientific field can place some falsifiable claims (temporarily, hopefully) beyond scrutiny. So the inability to falsify a theory does not necessarily mean that the theory is bunk.
Beyond those practical limitations, there's also the unfortunate bad actor factor. Theorists with sufficient dishonesty or self-awareness can respond to the existential threat of falsifiability by resorting to vague innuendo to avoid tripping over shoelaces of their own making. Since you can't falsify what isn't firmly posited, they dance around direct assertions, keeping their claims shrouded in a mist of maybe. The only recourse then is going one level higher, and deducing vagueness as a telltale sign of a falsifiability fugitive wherever concrete answers to the who / how / why remain elusive. Applying the vagueness test to the flat earth theory showcases the evasion. It's near-impossible to get any clear answers from proponents: who exactly is behind Big Globe, how did they manage to hoodwink everyone, and why why why why why would anyone devote any effort to this scheme? In contrast, True Conspiracies™ like the atomic spies lack the nebulousness: Soviet Union / covert transmission of nuclear secrets / geopolitical advantage.
Yet the vagueness accusation doesn't apply to all conspiracy theories. The moon landing hoax is surprisingly lucid on this point: NASA / soundstage / geopolitical advantage. And this unveils another defense mechanism against falsification, which is the setting of ridiculously high standards of evidence. Speaking of veils, there's a precedent for this in Islamic law of all places, where convictions for fornication require four eyewitnesses to the same act of intercourse, and only adult male Muslims are deemed competent witnesses. The impossibly stringent standards appear to be in response to the fact that the offense carries the death penalty, and shows it's possible to raise the bar so high that falsifiability is intentionally rendered out of reach.
The moon landing hoax might be subjected to these impossible standards, given that the Apollo 11 landing was meticulously documented over 143 minutes of uninterrupted video footage — a duration too lengthy to fit on a film reel with the technology available at the time. Although only slightly higher than the Lizardman Constant, a surprising 6% of Americans still hold the view that the moon landing was staged. At some point you have to ask how much evidence is enough, but ultimately there's no universally accepted threshold for answering this question.
So falsifiability remains a fantastic tool, but it has legitimate practical limitations, and isn't a conclusive inquiry anyways. Someone's refusal to engage in falsifiability remains excellent evidence they're aware and concerned of subjecting their theory to scrutiny, but their efforts (vagueness or impossible standards) will nevertheless still frustrate a straightforward application of falsifiability. So what's left?
We're finally back again to the Overkill Conspiracy Hypothesis, where the circumstances conspiracy theories must assume also, ironically, render the conspiracy moot. The best way to explain this is by example. Deconstructing a conspiracy theory replicates the thrill of planning a bank heist, so put yourself in the shoes of the unfortunate anonymous bureaucrat tasked with overseeing the moon landing hoax. Remember that the why of the moon landing hoax was to establish geopolitical prestige by having the United States beat the Soviet Union to the lunar chase. So whatever scheme you concoct has to withstand scrutiny from what was, at the time, the most advanced space program employing the greatest space engineers from that half of the world.
The most straightforward countermeasure would be to task already existing NASA engineers to draft up totally fake but absolutely plausible equipment designs. Every single aspect of the entire launch — each rocket, lunar module, ladder, panel, bolt, glove, wrench — would need to be painstakingly fabricated to deceive not just the global audience, but the eagle-eyed experts watching with bated breath from the other side of the Cold War divide. Extend that to all communications, video transmissions, photographs, astronaut testimonies, and 'returned' moon rocks. Each and all of it has to be exhaustively and meticulously examined by dedicated and highly specialized consultants.
But it doesn't stop there, because you also need absolute and perpetual secrecy, as any singular leak would threaten the entire endeavor. The U.S. was well aware Soviet Union spies had successfully snagged closely-guarded nuclear secrets, so whatever countermeasures needed here had to surpass fucking nukes. Like I said before, secrecy is not impossible, just very difficult. I suppose NASA could take a page from the cartels and just institute brutally violent reprisals against any snitches (plus their whole families), but this genre of deterrence can only work if...people know about it. More likely, though, NASA would use the traditional intelligence agency methods of extensive vetting, selective recruitment, and lavish compensation, but now all measures would need to be further amplified to surpass the protective measures around nuclear secrets.
We're talking screening hundreds or thousands of individuals more rigorously than for nuclear secrets, alongside an expanding surveillance apparatus to keep everyone in line. How much do you need to increase NASA's budget (10x? 100x?) to devote toward a risky gambit that, if exposed, would be history's forever laughingstock? If such vast treasuries are already at disposal, it starts to seem easier to just...go to the moon for real.
OCH® has several benefits. It starts by not challenging any conspiracy theorist's premises. It accepts it as given that there is indeed a sufficiently motivated shadowy cabal, and just runs with it. This sidesteps any of the aforementioned concerns about falsifiability fugitives, and still provides a useful rubric for distinguishing plain-vanilla conspiracies from their black sheep brethren.
If we apply OCH to the atomic spies, we can see the theory behind that conspiracy requires no overkill assumptions. The Soviet Union did not have nukes, they wanted nukes, and stealing someone else's blueprints is definitely much easier than developing your own in-house. The necessary assumption (the Soviet Union has an effective espionage program) does not negate the need for the conspiracy.
Contrast that with something like the Sandy Hook hoax, which posits the school shooting as a false flag operation orchestrated by the government to pass restrictive gun laws (or something; see the vagueness section above). Setting aside the fact that no significant firearm legislation actually resulted, the hoax and the hundreds of crisis actors it would have required would have necessitated thousands of auditions, along with all the secrecy hurdles previously discussed. And again, if the government already has access to this mountain of resources, it seems like there are far more efficient methods of spending it (like maybe giving every congressman some gold bars) rather than orchestrating an attack and then hoping the right laws get passed afterward.
It's also beguiling to wonder exactly why the shadowy cabal would even need to orchestrate a fake mass shooting, given the fact that they already regularly happen! Even if the cabal wanted to instigate a slaughter (for whatever reason), the far, far, far simpler method is to just identify the loner incel kid and prod them into committing an actual mass shooting. We've already stipulated the cabal does not care about dead kids. Similarly, if the U.S. wanted to orchestrate the 9/11 attacks as a prelude to global war, it seems far easier to load up an actual plane full of actual explosives and just actually launch it at the actual buildings, rather than to spend the weeks or months to surreptitiously sneak in however many tons of thermite into the World Trade Center (while also coordinating the schedule with the plane impact, for some reason).
Examining other examples of Verified Conspiracies demonstrate how none of them harbor overkill assumptions that render the conspiratorial endeavors moot. In the Watergate scandal, the motive was to gain political advantage by spying on adversaries, and the conspirators did so through simple breaking and entering. No assumptions are required about the capabilities of President Nixon's security entourage that would have rendered the trespass unnecessary. Even something with the scope of Operation Snow White — which remains one of the largest infiltrations of the U.S. government, involving up to 5,000 agents — fits. The fact that they had access to thousands of covert agents isn't overkill, because the agents still needed to infiltrate government agencies to gain access to the documents they wanted destroyed. The assumptions do not belie the need for the conspiracy.
I hold no delusions that I can convince people wedded to their conspiracy theory of their missteps. I don't claim to have any idea how people fall prey to this kind of unfalsifiable absurdist thinking. But at least for the rest of us, it will remain useful to be able to draw a stark distinction between the real and the kooky. Maybe after that we can unearth some answers.
—sent from my lunar module
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Notes -
I'd translate "Conspiracy Theory" as "Low Status Secret History."
Notably, the secret history doesn't need to involve an actual conspiracy. The idea that Ancient Aliens built the pyramids is low-status and offers a secret-history account of the pyramids. So, "Ancient Aliens Built the Pyramids" is a conspiracy theory, even though no one is accusing the Aliens of meeting in secret.
Similarly, there are actual conspiracies. The 9/11 hijackers met in secret, planned to commit a criminal act, and then took steps to commit that act. That's a criminal conspiracy. But, "Hijackers Did 9/11!" isn't a conspiracy theory because it's not a low-status belief, nor a secret-history explanation.
Finally, "Conspiracy Theory" is a bit of a sneer. The Russel conjugation is that I'm a skeptic. You believe in an alternate history. He's a conspiracy theorist. So, calling something a conspiracy theory is me implying that it's status-lowering to believe.
This is how some beliefs ("Epstein Didn't Kill Himself" / "COVID-19 very likely came from an animal in a Wuhan Lab") can count as conspiracy theories, or not, depending on the social circle and the time frame. There was a while where it was low-status to think that COVID-19 came from a lab, so that was a conspiracy theory. Now, we haven't gotten much new evidence, but the tribal politics changed, so it no longer counts.
You nailed it. @ymeskhout and many others in this thread are searching for the rationalist equivalent of the philosopher's stone — a meta-criterion for determining whether a position is reasonable without reference to the facts. I too have been beguiled by such a formula. That I could tell whether someone's claims are worth evaluating, just by their posture and disposition in the debate. That I coud tell the difference between a "framework" and an "epicycle" without learning the theory. That I could separate "motivated delusions" from "suppressed truth-speaking" without knowing the facts. I can't.
The reason I don't bother investigating whether interdimensional aliens built the pyramids is purely because my social sense tells me that people who make those claims are not worth entertaining. Progressives do the same to people like me when we talk about HBD or cultural marxism.
This was my concern over this "low status" standard. It's another Russell conjugation that doesn't help cleave the issue.
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I agree that the label "conspiracy theory" carries a connotation of "only an idiot would believe that".
Apart from the label, there is still the epistemic issue of assigning probabilities to various claims about the world.
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To apply this to a couple items from @JarJarJedi's list:
This is a great example of the "Low Status" prong.
Can I find groups of academics who support Marxism, coordinate to advance Marxist interests and object to many traditional Western Values? Sure. These groups exist. Many of have websites.
If this were an in-person conversation, I'd wryly notice that the alternative to the "Conspiracy Theory" sounds even more conspiratorial and crazy:
(NB: The above passage describes a secret-history and would be low-status to believe. It feels right to call it a "conspiracy theory" even though it's a claim that there's NOT a conspiracy.)
During an in-person conversation, I'd expect my conversation partner to roll their eyes at this and explain that, sure, obviously there've been hundreds (or thousands) of pro-Marx groups on University Campuses. And, obviously, there'd have been ten-thousands or millions or informal discussions by colleagues who supported Marx and talked about how to vote on various faculty issues. And, obviously, these people would be supporting Marxist values.
But, OBVIOUSLY, that's not what the conspiracy theory is saying.
Except, if we spell it out like that, what exactly is the conspiracy theory?
We could say that the difference between the mundane belief (hundreds or thousands of pro-Marx groups existed, promoted Marxism for decades and have been more-or-less successful at winning policy objectives) and the "conspiracy theory" is one of scale. The conspiracy theorists is implying that the Marxists are responsible for a LARGE fraction of the change in universities, while the non-conspiracy-theorist is only attributing a small fraction of the cultural change in universities to Marxists.
Except, I don't think that magnitude-of-change is really important. For one thing, neither the Conspiracy Theorist nor the other faction have offered any specific percentage, and the conspiracy theorist would still feel like a conspiracy theorist if they lowballed the number and said, "actually, those marxists sucked at getting stuff done; they've been trying for a long time to minimal effect."
Instead, the difference seems to be purely about vibes. The conspiracy theorist is adding a vibe that these meetings are shadowy and secret and bad. The other side of the conversation is likely using the "That didn't happen. But, if it did, it would be normal and good." approach.
So, to me, the difference between the "Conspiracy Theory" version of this belief and the mundane version is mostly about the status someone wants to attribute to Marx-sympathetic professors.
Yeah, this reminded me that while there's a lot of conspiracies going on, a lot of them will:
simply fail to achieve what they were conspiring to do (an example: I recently read a book about Sweden's royal struggles during the late 1500s, which are obviously a huge part of Finland's history as well, and the related culture war between the newcomer Lutheranism and recently disestablished Catholicism, and one of the points the book made was that there was a Jesuit conspiracy to bring Catholicism back in Sweden which actually came pretty close to succeeding; however, as we know, it didn't eventually do so, and one of the specific reasons were that they were so damn conspiratorial and secretive about trying to do this by bringing in Jesuits to secretly serve as mentors for young Swedish nobility, when they could have actually achieved more by simply being open about their goals)
achieve what they were conspiring to do, only for it to lead to unexpected consequences (an example: German general staff in WW1 decides to facilitate the entry of an obscure radical to Russia so that he can foment a bit of chaos to aid Germany... expect this obscure radical happens to be Lenin, a generational political talent who actually manages to achieve a socialist revolution with such force and fervor the effects end up boomeranging all the way back to Germany with a variety of results the German general staff probably would really have preferred not to happen)
achieve what they were conspiring to do with such success that only a few people even realize that there was a conspiracy in the first place, since they now think that what the conspiracy set out to do was an unmitigated good and conspiracies are bad (an example: the Germans in WW1 ALSO facilitated the entry of numerous Finnish young men, or the "Jägers", to the German army to form an unit to fight against Russia in preparation for potential Finnish independence struggle, with these guys and the movement facilitating their entry being an obvious conspiracy to commit rank treason against the Czar, from Russian point of view... expect Finland then became independent and the Jägers now such a huge part of Finnish patriotic myth that their name still serves as the basic rank of Finnish Army and the memory of Germany training reverbates to this day as a part of the reason why Finns feel a certain amount of kinship to Germans)
I think more accurate statement would be "manages to take over the socialist revolution and ensure it is not suppressed by either domestic opponents or outside intervention". Lenin had surprisingly little role at all in overthrow of Tzarism (we do know there actually was two revolutions in Russia in 1917, not one, do we?) and even his role in the October coup was not as towering as it has been later presented. There were many other people and movements that took part. He was a tactical genius though and he managed to take over the whole enterprise and simultaneously push out and destroy all the competition and not let his power fall apart (being both very smart and complete psycho probably helped some). The Germans actually didn't get so bad a deal from it as such - the conditions of the peace treaty of 1918 have been an utter humiliation for Russia. Quoting Wikipedia:
(as a side note, here you see the source of the claim Ukraine was "invented by Germans" and such)
Too bad for Germans they had only a few months to enjoy the fruits of their labor, after which they lost the war themselves and it was their turn to be humiliated.
Yes, well, I wasn't counting the February Revolution as a socialist revolution in the same sense, obviously, and achieving a revolution also means the part where they successfully defended it against the Whites. However, the point was that the reverbations of October also affected the events in Germany and contributed to the processes leading to the establishment of the republic there etc.
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Really, if Lenin was as influential and powerful of a figure as he was claimed to be, then Russia would've gotten off much lighter at Brest-Litovsk; he was the one pushing for peace, and Trotsky ended up convincing the rest of the Bolsheviks to follow his harebrained "neither war nor peace" strategy instead.
There were multiple other cases where Lenin basically managed to almost single-handedly wrangle skeptical Bolsheviks to back his position, which ended up being the correct one for the takeover to proceed.
Really, the Bolshevik Revolution is something where I've done a fair amount of reading and my conclusions have ended up being that it was an incredibly unlikely thing considering how small and radical even by Russian socialist standards they were before the process started rolling and what made that unlikely thing happen was Lenin's tactical genius, and the some degree the fact that Trotsky, who was an unlikable bumbler most of the times, turned out to have a momentary flash of hidden genius for military affairs during the war and the formation of the Red Army.
Lenin and Trotsky BTFOing Marxism through the very act of a communist revolution, how ironic.
Yeah, it's ironic that Lenin ended up serving as a proof-of-concept case for the Great Man Theory of History.
I don't think he was the proof of concept? I was under the impression that that was the prevailing theory before Marx was even born, with examples going way back to ancient history.
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