I was on a podcast yesterday and I was asked what I think about conspiracy theories. I planned on writing a bit on this topic but that was probably a sign that I should. So, What does Hitman think about conspiracy theories?
Mega Millions
On that podcast I compared conspiracy theories to the lottery. Every now and then you hear about someone winning the lottery, that entices people to want to play it more. “If some guy in California can hit for 1 Billion dollars so can I”. This can also the case with conspiracies, every now an then one of them turns out to be true so there’s a chance “this one” is also true.
You have to be careful with things that have that effect, seeing someone else win the lotto can make the idea of winning more real and appealing. It’s a sort of Availability Bias that can lead you to believe that winning is more common than it actually is. The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are approximately 1 in 302.58 million or 0.00003305%. Yet people still play, why is that? The answer is the human brain is not naturally equipped to handle stuff like this. We tend fall into a bunch of mental traps like availability bias or gambler’s fallacy where you believe that your chances of winning increase the more you play.
The Anatomy
A conspiracy theory is usually but not always a dark spinoff of an official story/narrative. For example, a conspiracy theorist will take a seemingly inconsequential fact about an event and try to connect it to another fact and continue to weave that web. Sometimes they keep weaving until they can connect it back to an ideology or belief they already hold. If you’re antisemitic everything links back to jews. If you believe in the illuminati, everything links back to the illuminati!
A less complex one to look into is the conspiracy that alleges that Jewish record label owners are specifically oppressing black Americans with bad deals to “keep them down”. But with further investigations you’ll realize that record labels give unfavorable deals to all upcoming artists no matter the skin color due to how low your chances of success are. Also in general, if your negotiation skills are not good, every industry will eventually take advantage of you.
When you’re investigating something it’s good practice to clear your mind of pre conceived notions and biases and let the evidence guide you to a conclusion. Conspiracy theorists do the opposite of that, they usually have a conclusion in mind and they’re weaving the facts in a disingenuous way to reach that conclusion. After they reach their conclusion they’ll then try to leverage it to recruit people into their belief system. How it works is catching people who are not familiar with the event off-guard with a seemingly innocent question. They’ll as you something like: “Why did Tower 7 fall like that?”. It’s not really a genuine question they know you don’t know the answer, they’re using it to reel you in. As soon as you say I don’t know they’ll tell you “it’s a controlled demolition” and show you videos of controlled demolitions that look similar. You’re not an expert at flying 767s into NYC buildings so you can’t dispute what they’re telling you. Eventually they’ll explain to you how it was an inside job and the government did it. Unfortunately life is very difficult and it’s very hard to plan something and have it go right. We humans can barely plan tomorrow, no one is playing some “4D chess” because it’s a waste of time, your success rate would be so low. Life is mostly boring and humans are pretty stupid, the most boring answer is usually correct. Joe Blo didn’t get into a drunk driving accident because the CIA spiked his drink, Jo Blo is just an idiot. Conspiracy theorists are usually looking for the most thriller novel esque explanations. Be ok with unsatisfying answers, life is more boring WWI than exiting WW2.
Another major issue conspiracy theorists have is an inability to cope with the fact that not everything in life makes sense. You can shoot somebody in the face and the bullet comes out of their ear. People act irrationally and weird and do strange things, not everything has a motive. You don’t need some grand story to explain why Tower 7 fell the way it did. It could just be that strange things happen when you fly a 767 into buildings in NYC. Different engineers can have different theories on what would happen but none of them actually done it before. As a human you have to find a way to be comfortable with the fact that not everything makes sense.
Anyway…
I can go forever on this topic but I have to end it somewhere. Not everything needs a story, be comfortable with having limited information and just saying you don’t know. Conspiracies theories are mostly useless knowledge that doesn’t really serve you. You can’t put anyone in Jail with a conspiracy, you can’t feed you kids with a conspiracy. You wouldn’t even dare open a business based on a conspiracy, you would ask for solid data.
Thank you for reading.
I love this artcile Hitman.
Just remember don't try bend the spoon.
Only realize it is yourself.
And that there is no spoon! :)