Babies and their bath water

Conspiracy theorists aren't necessarily wrong about the fact that there are conspiracies, but a trend I've noticed of late is that a lot of folks don't understand maintenance and system interdependence. I am certain that, if these folks really thought about things, this would be a "no duh" realization, but many of the knee-jerk reactions do not reflect a genuine understanding of how little scheming it takes to cause significant problems.

For example, cars are more complicated than they've ever been. There is a lot of effort placed in reducing or eliminating maintenance on cars with superior technology, and there are things we don't have to do today that car owners did 50 years ago, but this comes with a reliance on technological developments and those things are complicated.

Instead of a carburetor, we have fuel injection with electronic pumps that can vary the amount of fuel delivered to the cylinders to get the best air-to-duel ratio given the temperature of incoming air, the position reported by the throttle sensor, the current RPM, and so on. All of this work didn't get invented, it got automated, as prior to the computer controlled systems, these jobs all were still required to run the engine, but they were often mechanical, and mechanical control systems simply wear out faster than electrical ones.

Maintenance of the mechanical control systems required user understanding of the systems, womb to tomb, because failures could happen at any time, and help wasn't easily available in the many decades before cell phones. Electrical systems, because they automate, hide these activities away from the user. They are still happening, but "out of sight, out of mind." Small corrections are made on the fly, diagnostics can be run, and until the "check engine" light, or some other error reporting prompts the user to seek service, drivers are largely ignorant as to what the state of their car is.

Gone are the days of being able to "feel" when a system is not operating as well as it should, because between the user and the device are layers of electronics that can only simulate feedback, they do not transmit it the way that a mechanical system does.

So, how does this apply to conspiracy theories?

It takes a lot less effort to sabotage than people think, and because people don't understand how things are made or operate, fault is assigned to the devices as a whole, instead of properly understanding what the role of the device was in the nefarious scheme.

To continue with cars as an example, let's say there is a conspiracy to murder, and in order to do this, you sabotage someone else's car. They then operate their vehicle as if all is fine, presuming there is nothing wrong with the vehicle, and then expect it to do something it no longer can because of the sabotage, and find out only too late that their car is not functioning correctly, and get in an accident or something like that.

If our hypothetical murderer cut the break lines, then it'd likely be an accident due to the vehicle not slowing down fast enough, and the driver losing control.

In that scenario, what's really at "fault" for the accident? Is it the design of the car? Is it the purpose of a car? Or was it how the car was used?

If you aren't sure how this is confusing, look at the evidence of the connection between vaccines and autism. How frequently is "well they weren't autistic before, and now they are, and the only thing that changed was they got a vaccine" the jist of the data provided? So what actually caused the autism? Is it the design of the vaccine? Is it the purpose of the vaccine? Was it how the vaccine was used, how it was made?

Most folks aren't trying to figure out, because if such a tangible connection existed, it would not be so ethereally difficult to find. We know that 100% of vaccinations don't result in autism, but we can also know that it's not 0% either, because for some reason, after having a vaccine, there are children who develop autism. Ignore how many there are, because it's likely statistically insignificant if you compared to all vaccinations, but what's important is that there are side effects of vaccines, and how they interact with people does vary.

If we sorted out what that connection really was, then before we gave anyone a vaccine, we could ensure that the vaccine would do only what it was designed to do. Or, to return to the car example, if we know that leaking fluid under a car is a sign of trouble, then we'd know to dig further and determine the true state of the car before we drove it. A smaller example of this might be checking the air pressure in the tires, seeing if any "check engine" lights come on, etc.

GMOs are another example of a technological creation that has ominous connotations, and the "evil" is often prescribed holistically, ignoring the details of what is really happening, and throwing out the entire technology because of how it was used by someone to do something "evil". What folks are doing, perhaps unintentionally, is assigning inherent "good" or "bad" vales, ignoring that "good" or " bad" requires context to remain coherent.

If someone was murdered via their car being sabotaged, does that mean we should ban cars? That nobody should ride or drive in a car?

Are cars inherently "evil" because someone can use them to manifest "bad" consequences?

It's the same thing with guns and gun control. Is it the gun, or how guns are used, that people really have a problem with?

It's easy to be blinded by cognitive bias on topics which are emotionally charged, but if we can't remain intellectually consistent, then we can be manipulated and controlled by folks who simply figure out our buttons faster than we can figure out theirs.

Modern technologies rely on, as I have said in other posts, layers of automation, and users are not aware of all these layers, let alone how they interact. These complications increase the opportunities for problems to arise, because each layer is dependent on each one below it, and so the whole system must be working well.

Now, not only are there opportunities to interfere at each level, but if components that serve each level are manufactured to the same "depends on everything else working" mentality, then product quality could be terrible and you wouldn't know until you started to run into systemic failures, and that presumes people even report them.

How reliable are modern electronic devices? To what degree do we expect them to work all the time?

If we live in a society where things break or malfunction regularly, where quality is a memory, and folks rarely grasp the way these systems all really interact, then to manifest a plot, you'd only need to know a single weak link in the whole system, and then apply a very small amount of pressure to it, and then rely on the automated systems getting people beyond what they can deal with to do the rest.

Where once you may have had to hide your trails, fate can be blamed when low quality goods produced lazily by the lowest bidder result in disaster. Don't need fancy secretive technology to make that happen, though it wouldn't hurt. Even better, nobody would immediately suspect malevolence because everything can be explained simply and rationally from the data at hand.

It's fun to think that there is fancy cutting-edge stuff, to imagine the James Bond style workings behind the scenes, but the reality is probably a lot simpler, a lot more boring, and a lot more simplistic in nature, and we'll miss it if we're expecting something more. We'll not actually root out the real problems because we're convinced it has to be something more complex, more convoluted, more arranged. Don't be tempted to go down that path.

Conspiracy theory

I love that video, because it encapsulates the reason the "for or against" dynamic is so infuriating, especially when there is a false dichotomy and both "sides" only exist to distract people from what's really going on.

An example of this is "neo-conservative" media.

A controlled opposition of sorts, they're fond of playing to a false dichotomy to try and corral people into one of two positions on a topic that creates a win-win scenario for the manipulators, while often destroying the very people that think they're just aligning with "their side".

Free Trade is one topic where, for the longest time, many believed that it was a necessary component for international trade, for the economic health of a nation in dealing with other nations. The logic was at least superficially sound, but more and more voices are starting to question the "acceptable narrative" that was supposed to exist on "the right", and not for the same reasons or with the same reactions as those on "the left".

Another example of this phenomenon is with conspiracy theorists.

So certain are they of the particular arrangement of actual events according to what they understand, that when folks express doubt or criticism as to the foundational claims for their theory, the usual response is defensive, to presume that such overtly hostile agents are clearly working for the "other side", and that only ideological lockstep with their position is necessary to show that you aren't. The terms are polarizing and force a binary, a false dichotomy, and just like with "Free Trade", the truth and reality of the circumstances doesn't tend to fall into one of the formerly defined "sides".

Such "for me or against me" arguments work, at least for a time, while the conversation can be kept going. In the heat of emotion, it can be easy to sustain the most ridiculous positions on a topic, because we're being driven by emotion and ego, instead of rationality and logic.

While it can happen to anyone, how do we reduce the probability that we'll slip up like this?

Public school systems do not teach critical thinking. Critical thinking strives for objective analysis in order to make a judgment. Objectivity is a concept which has been under assault for more than a century by postmodern philosophy. This has led to an intellectual stagnation, if not degradation, where criticism and questioning is not interpreted as being part of the process to discover truth, but is treated as if it is a distraction from truth.

That is not objective analysis.

When folks are convinced that they have all the truth necessary to draw the line in the sand, and that folks who are detracting from the position they've taken are "the enemy", when it may very well be that the criticism and input from such parties can actually strengthen the existing position by them contributing truth that they had discovered into the process, they're denying that there is any further objective analysis required.

On that thought process, all truth has been discovered, period, end of discussion.

This process, of putting forth a hypothesis, gathering data, and then seeing where the data affirms or denies the claims of the hypothesis, is how Western Civilization grew to the place of prominence that it did, because the objectivity required prevented personal pride from getting in the way of truth.

We always find that, once we understand something, more questions arise, every single time. We have never gotten to "the end" of knowledge.

When we adhere to truth, when we genuinely understand and know what we're talking about, we then don't have to be afraid of new data. We don't need to be afraid of "new" truth being discovered, because what is found that we didn't know about won't contradict what we've already discovered to be true.

By the nature of reality, we can't have simultaneous and yet mutually exclusive truths.

There can't be a married bachelor. We can't count the corners of a circle.

So if a claim comes along which seems to undermine a formerly understood truth, this shouldn't scare us, unless the "truth" we discovered before was not the totality of the phenomenon that we were analyzing. In that case, the truth that comes along will still be able to account for our previous position and understandings, to explain how they really functioned, in addition to expanding that understanding to account for what had previously been missed or not seen.

It's a process that's occurred time and time again, why do we think it would stop now?

This type of information should be welcomed, because it would enhance our ability to really understand what is going on, instead of getting defensive and trying to argue that an incomplete view of truth is really "all we need". Claims should withstand scrutiny, and when people are averse to any sort of feedback, it speaks to an inherent weakness in understanding how understanding is built.

Sure, there are folks who will seek to exploit this to their favor, to poison the well or to mislead or misdirect or to try and derail the entire process. But these people are easy to spot, if you're being objective, because their aim is not to grow an existing body of knowledge, but to tear it down, or to try and place themselves in the center of truth, as a mouthpiece for truth.

We need to be able to determine what type of response is appropriate and then act, instead of just relying on instinct. This is referred to as an "OODA" loop, Observe Orient Decide Act. We need to be better about making the right choice, not just making one at all, if we want victory. We can't just be predictable puppets, led astray by our predictability, we need to be able to determine the right course of action and then act quickly and decisively, whatever that ends up being, not falling into the intellectual traps that have been set for us.

Don't get caught up reacting to what someone else says you need to react to. Don't let them define the terms for action, or inaction. You need to understand the scope of options available to you and why you'd pick one over another, and when you pick one, know that as soon as you've acted on a choice that the circumstances have changed and the OODA loop process starts all over again.

It's tempting to fall into a pattern of "for me or against", not because it's wrong, but because it is easy, and pursuing the easy path is what got us to where we are in the first place.

We can't break a cycle by repeating it. We can't move on if we're just doing the same thing we did before with new labels, a new lexicon, but the same delusions and ignorance as before.