WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.940 I want you to picture something with me. It's, 00:00:01.940 --> 00:00:05.360 I don't know, 2 .00 a .m. The house is totally 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:08.919 quiet. Everyone else is asleep. And the only 00:00:08.919 --> 00:00:11.859 light in the room is just the glow from your 00:00:11.859 --> 00:00:14.839 laptop screen. You started out maybe, what, three 00:00:14.839 --> 00:00:17.359 hours ago? Just looking up. Oh, let's say the 00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:18.940 history of the Federal Reserve. Or, you know, 00:00:18.940 --> 00:00:20.980 maybe just scrolling Twitter. But then you clicked 00:00:20.980 --> 00:00:23.530 a link. And then another one. Ah, the rabbit 00:00:23.530 --> 00:00:26.010 hole. We've all hovered at the edge of it. Exactly. 00:00:26.070 --> 00:00:29.030 And suddenly you're on some forum you've never 00:00:29.030 --> 00:00:31.629 even seen before, reading a PDF that looks like 00:00:31.629 --> 00:00:34.570 it was scanned in a basement back in 1994. And 00:00:34.570 --> 00:00:36.950 you get this feeling. It's not just curiosity. 00:00:37.049 --> 00:00:40.950 It's almost physical, a kind of rush, because 00:00:40.950 --> 00:00:42.329 you're looking at all these disparate things, 00:00:42.409 --> 00:00:44.729 a symbol on a dollar bill, a flight log from 00:00:44.729 --> 00:00:47.250 a private jet, some weird background detail in 00:00:47.250 --> 00:00:49.250 a press conference. And for the very first time, 00:00:49.270 --> 00:00:51.560 they don't look random at all. They look like 00:00:51.560 --> 00:00:55.159 a map. Yes, they look like a map. That moment, 00:00:55.240 --> 00:00:58.359 that aha moment where all the chaos of the world 00:00:58.359 --> 00:01:01.299 suddenly just resolves into a clear, simple picture 00:01:01.299 --> 00:01:04.400 that is one of the most seductive psychological 00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:07.219 experiences a human being can have. It really 00:01:07.219 --> 00:01:09.500 does feel like an epiphany. It feels like you're 00:01:09.500 --> 00:01:12.120 the detective in a noir movie. You know, you're 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:14.480 the only one who sees the strings. And today 00:01:14.480 --> 00:01:17.060 we are going deep on that feeling. We're talking 00:01:17.060 --> 00:01:20.430 about. conspiracy theories. But listen, before 00:01:20.430 --> 00:01:22.909 you roll your eyes or, you know, check to see 00:01:22.909 --> 00:01:25.450 if your tinfoil hat is on straight, we aren't 00:01:25.450 --> 00:01:27.469 here to just dunk on people who believe the Earth 00:01:27.469 --> 00:01:30.030 is flat. No, no, that would be way too easy and 00:01:30.030 --> 00:01:32.370 frankly not very useful. We want to do something 00:01:32.370 --> 00:01:34.069 a little different. We want to take apart the 00:01:34.069 --> 00:01:36.769 engine of belief itself. The engine of belief. 00:01:37.340 --> 00:01:39.180 I like that. We've got a whole stack of research 00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:41.900 here, psychology, sociology, some history, and 00:01:41.900 --> 00:01:44.120 even some really fascinating mathematics that 00:01:44.120 --> 00:01:46.480 helps explain why rational people can believe 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:49.319 really impossible things. And we're going to 00:01:49.319 --> 00:01:51.099 look at the how. You know, how do these theories 00:01:51.099 --> 00:01:53.719 actually work? How do they trap you? And I think 00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:56.700 most importantly, if you have an uncle or a friend 00:01:56.700 --> 00:02:00.239 who is... Right now, completely convinced that 00:02:00.239 --> 00:02:03.299 birds are government surveillance drones. A classic. 00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:06.120 A classic, yes. And by the way, real birds do 00:02:06.120 --> 00:02:08.900 exist. How do you actually talk to them without 00:02:08.900 --> 00:02:11.879 completely ruining Thanksgiving? It is a massive 00:02:11.879 --> 00:02:13.780 topic. I mean, it touches on everything from 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:16.120 how we process information to how we trust each 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:19.759 other to... to how we deal with the terrifying 00:02:19.759 --> 00:02:22.240 randomness of the world. So let's start at the 00:02:22.240 --> 00:02:23.759 very beginning. Let's start with definitions. 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:26.900 Because I feel like the term conspiracy theorist 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:30.340 has just become this slur we throw at anyone 00:02:30.340 --> 00:02:32.460 we disagree with. Oh, absolutely. Oh, you don't 00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:34.539 like my tax policy. You must be a conspiracy 00:02:34.539 --> 00:02:37.479 theorist. It is often used that way, yes. But 00:02:37.479 --> 00:02:40.819 we need to be precise here. You see, in the cold, 00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:43.240 hard light of the legal system, a conspiracy 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:46.719 is a very real thing. It's just a secret plan 00:02:46.719 --> 00:02:48.960 by two or more people to do something unlawful 00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:51.639 or harmful. Right. So two guys planning to rob 00:02:51.639 --> 00:02:54.699 a liquor store. That's a conspiracy. Precisely. 00:02:54.699 --> 00:02:58.039 Or, you know, corporate price fixing or Watergate. 00:02:58.319 --> 00:03:00.060 Watergate's the classic example, right? Yeah. 00:03:00.099 --> 00:03:02.900 You had men meeting in parking garages, hush 00:03:02.900 --> 00:03:05.680 money, a break in, a cover up involving the president 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:09.039 himself. That was a real conspiracy. But it wasn't 00:03:09.039 --> 00:03:11.539 a conspiracy theory. No, not in the way we use 00:03:11.539 --> 00:03:13.719 the term now because it was proven. We had the 00:03:13.719 --> 00:03:16.000 tapes. We had the court cases. The evidence was 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:18.039 there. So the difference is just the evidence? 00:03:18.159 --> 00:03:20.599 Is that it? It's more about the relationship 00:03:20.599 --> 00:03:24.389 to the consensus of experts. A conspiracy theory, 00:03:24.509 --> 00:03:27.090 in the academic sense, is what's called a lay 00:03:27.090 --> 00:03:29.550 theory. It's a hypothesis that's proposed by 00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:32.370 non -experts. And it directly contradicts the 00:03:32.370 --> 00:03:34.689 mainstream explanation provided by the relevant 00:03:34.689 --> 00:03:37.030 institutions. You know, the government, the scientific 00:03:37.030 --> 00:03:39.310 community, historians, and so on. Okay, so it's 00:03:39.310 --> 00:03:42.430 basically the experts all say X, but I, a guy 00:03:42.430 --> 00:03:44.389 with the blog, am telling you it's actually Y. 00:03:44.750 --> 00:03:47.189 Exactly. And there's a really crucial structural 00:03:47.189 --> 00:03:49.949 difference, too. A real investigation, a scientific 00:03:49.949 --> 00:03:53.219 inquiry, is open to... falsification meaning 00:03:53.219 --> 00:03:56.939 you can prove it wrong yes if the police think 00:03:56.939 --> 00:03:59.300 you robbed the bank but then they find clear 00:03:59.300 --> 00:04:02.340 video footage of you at a restaurant clear across 00:04:02.340 --> 00:04:05.780 town at the exact same time they have to drop 00:04:05.780 --> 00:04:08.259 the theory they have to well unless they're bad 00:04:08.259 --> 00:04:11.020 cops but generally yeah generally yes yeah but 00:04:11.020 --> 00:04:15.120 a conspiracy theory it's designed to be self 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:18.550 -sealing It is what philosophers call epistemically 00:04:18.550 --> 00:04:21.089 self -insulated. Okay, that sounds really fancy. 00:04:21.350 --> 00:04:23.730 Unpack that for me. What does that mean? It means 00:04:23.730 --> 00:04:26.430 the theory has a built -in immune system against 00:04:26.430 --> 00:04:29.410 facts. So let's say you believe in a massive 00:04:29.410 --> 00:04:31.889 cover -up about aliens. Okay. If I show you an 00:04:31.889 --> 00:04:33.970 official document from the Air Force that says, 00:04:34.029 --> 00:04:36.649 we have found no evidence of aliens, you don't 00:04:36.649 --> 00:04:39.170 say, oh, I guess I was wrong. No, I say, see, 00:04:39.410 --> 00:04:42.050 that proves the cover -up. They created a fake 00:04:42.050 --> 00:04:44.009 document to throw us off the trail. Exactly. 00:04:44.439 --> 00:04:46.420 The evidence against the theory becomes evidence 00:04:46.420 --> 00:04:48.839 for the conspiracy. And the absence of evidence 00:04:48.839 --> 00:04:50.879 does the same thing, right? If you can't find 00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:53.399 the secret alien base, it just proves how good 00:04:53.399 --> 00:04:55.379 they are at hiding it. You got it. It's a completely 00:04:55.379 --> 00:04:58.160 circular trap. You can't get out. You can't win 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:00.639 an argument with logic because the logic of the 00:05:00.639 --> 00:05:03.220 theory just, it eats all the counter arguments. 00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:06.000 It does. And this leads to something called cascade 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:08.779 logic. Cascade logic. Is that where the conspiracy 00:05:08.779 --> 00:05:10.899 has to keep getting bigger and bigger to survive? 00:05:11.779 --> 00:05:15.500 Yes, precisely. Imagine you believe a local politician 00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:20.540 was framed for a crime. Then the forensic lab 00:05:20.540 --> 00:05:23.860 produces DNA evidence that matches the politician. 00:05:24.779 --> 00:05:27.660 Okay. Now, for your theory to survive, you can't 00:05:27.660 --> 00:05:29.600 just believe the politician is innocent. You 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:30.959 have to believe the forensic lab is corrupt, 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:33.620 too. Right. They're in on it. Then the judge 00:05:33.620 --> 00:05:36.379 accepts the DNA evidence. Now the judge is in 00:05:36.379 --> 00:05:38.899 on it. Then the local paper reports on the verdict. 00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:41.300 Now the media is in on it. So it starts with 00:05:41.300 --> 00:05:43.319 just like three guys in a room and ends up with 00:05:43.319 --> 00:05:46.199 3 ,000 people involved. It cascades. Yeah. It 00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:49.100 has to until it encompasses basically everyone 00:05:49.100 --> 00:05:51.329 in a position of authority. Except for the believer, 00:05:51.389 --> 00:05:53.410 of course. Now, speaking of things people believe, 00:05:53.490 --> 00:05:55.470 I have to bring this up because I am guilty of 00:05:55.470 --> 00:05:57.209 this. I've said this at parties. I've definitely 00:05:57.209 --> 00:06:00.129 repeated this fact. The idea that the term conspiracy 00:06:00.129 --> 00:06:03.750 theory was actually invented by the CIA in 1964 00:06:03.750 --> 00:06:07.269 specifically to discredit people who were asking 00:06:07.269 --> 00:06:09.649 legitimate questions about the JFK assassination. 00:06:09.829 --> 00:06:12.370 It is one of the most popular meta conspiracy 00:06:12.370 --> 00:06:15.779 theories out there. The idea that the very language 00:06:15.779 --> 00:06:18.699 we use is a PSYOP. But it makes so much sense, 00:06:18.740 --> 00:06:20.660 right? It's such a convenient way to dismiss 00:06:20.660 --> 00:06:23.459 someone. Oh, stop it with your conspiracy theories. 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:25.740 It just shuts down the conversation. So come 00:06:25.740 --> 00:06:28.779 on, did the CIA cook this up? I hate to be the 00:06:28.779 --> 00:06:31.399 bearer of bad news for a good story, but no. 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:34.500 They absolutely did not. We have the receipts 00:06:34.500 --> 00:06:37.259 on this and they go back way, way further than 00:06:37.259 --> 00:06:39.019 the Kennedy administration. How far back are 00:06:39.019 --> 00:06:40.699 we talking? We can trace the phrase conspiracy 00:06:40.699 --> 00:06:44.120 theory in print all the way back to 1863. 1863. 00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:46.800 That's that's the middle of the Civil War. It 00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:49.100 is. There was a letter to the editor in The New 00:06:49.100 --> 00:06:52.420 York Times this January 11th, 1863, and it was 00:06:52.420 --> 00:06:54.439 written by an author named Charles Astor Bristed. 00:06:54.680 --> 00:06:57.180 He was discussing British politics and their. 00:06:57.480 --> 00:06:59.339 potential involvement in the American Civil War. 00:06:59.759 --> 00:07:02.319 And he explicitly uses the phrase conspiracy 00:07:02.319 --> 00:07:05.939 theory to describe a specific political interpretation 00:07:05.939 --> 00:07:09.420 of events. So unless the CIA has a time machine. 00:07:09.620 --> 00:07:11.899 Unless the CIA was active during the Battle of 00:07:11.899 --> 00:07:14.720 Gettysburg. No, they didn't invent it. And it 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:16.699 pops up again and again in academic circles. 00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:19.740 In 1909, the American Historical Review used 00:07:19.740 --> 00:07:22.279 it. It was just a neutral descriptive term. So 00:07:22.279 --> 00:07:24.500 it didn't have the baggage it has now. Not at 00:07:24.500 --> 00:07:27.550 all. It just meant. a theory that posits a conspiracy. 00:07:27.949 --> 00:07:31.009 It didn't carry that tinfoil hat lunatic connotation 00:07:31.009 --> 00:07:32.970 that it does today. But the phrase was definitely 00:07:32.970 --> 00:07:35.170 in the lexicon. That's actually really important 00:07:35.170 --> 00:07:37.509 context, because if the term has been around 00:07:37.509 --> 00:07:40.550 for 160 years, it means this isn't just a product 00:07:40.550 --> 00:07:43.009 of the Internet age or the CIA. It's a human 00:07:43.009 --> 00:07:45.629 thing. It is. Which, of course, leads us to the 00:07:45.629 --> 00:07:49.129 big question. Why? Why are our brains so wired 00:07:49.129 --> 00:07:52.149 to buy into this stuff? For that. We have to 00:07:52.149 --> 00:07:54.389 go way back. We have to go back to the savannah. 00:07:54.449 --> 00:07:56.910 We have to go back to when we were hunter -gatherers. 00:07:57.009 --> 00:07:58.870 Okay, I'm putting on my loincloth. I'm holding 00:07:58.870 --> 00:08:01.370 a spear. What am I looking for? You are looking 00:08:01.370 --> 00:08:04.449 for patterns. Survival is all about pattern recognition. 00:08:05.209 --> 00:08:07.850 You see clouds gathering on the horizon. You 00:08:07.850 --> 00:08:10.430 predict rain. You see certain footprints in the 00:08:10.430 --> 00:08:13.649 dirt. You predict a gazelle is nearby. But here's 00:08:13.649 --> 00:08:18.189 the problem. Our brains are tuned to be hypersensitive. 00:08:18.649 --> 00:08:20.730 So it's better to see a pattern that isn't really 00:08:20.730 --> 00:08:24.009 there than to miss one that is. Exactly. This 00:08:24.009 --> 00:08:26.089 is a concept called illusory pattern perception. 00:08:26.610 --> 00:08:28.290 Imagine you're walking through some high grass. 00:08:28.490 --> 00:08:30.610 You hear a rustle. Now, it could just be the 00:08:30.610 --> 00:08:33.370 wind or it could be a tiger. Right. If I think 00:08:33.370 --> 00:08:34.990 it's a tiger and I run away, but it was just 00:08:34.990 --> 00:08:37.389 the wind, I feel a little silly, but I'm still 00:08:37.389 --> 00:08:39.230 alive. Correct. That is what's known as a type 00:08:39.230 --> 00:08:42.269 I error, a false positive. The cost is really 00:08:42.269 --> 00:08:44.870 low. You wasted some calories running. But if 00:08:44.870 --> 00:08:47.700 you make a type two error. You assume it's the 00:08:47.700 --> 00:08:50.100 wind, but it's actually a tiger. I'm a lunch. 00:08:50.299 --> 00:08:52.720 You are lunch. You are out of the gene pool. 00:08:52.919 --> 00:08:55.519 So evolution basically selected for the paranoid. 00:08:55.879 --> 00:08:58.080 Evolution selected for the ancestors who saw 00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:00.639 faces in the rocks, who heard voices in the wind, 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:02.899 and who assumed every rustle in the grass was 00:09:02.899 --> 00:09:05.679 a tiger. We are quite literally the descendants 00:09:05.679 --> 00:09:08.600 of the paranoid. We have a biological imperative 00:09:08.600 --> 00:09:11.519 to connect the dots, even when there are no dots 00:09:11.519 --> 00:09:13.659 to connect. And that bleeds into how we view 00:09:13.659 --> 00:09:15.980 the news, right? There's a term for it. Agency 00:09:15.980 --> 00:09:20.240 detection. Yes. We hate randomness. As a species, 00:09:20.460 --> 00:09:23.600 we have a profound psychological aversion to 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:26.620 the idea that things just happen. Especially 00:09:26.620 --> 00:09:29.419 big, terrible, world -changing things. This is 00:09:29.419 --> 00:09:31.519 the crisis and control theory. Think about 9 00:09:31.519 --> 00:09:34.960 -11 or the assassination of JFK or a global pandemic. 00:09:35.500 --> 00:09:37.720 These are events that shatter our sense of normalcy. 00:09:37.720 --> 00:09:39.659 They change the course of history. And the idea 00:09:39.659 --> 00:09:42.580 that, say, 9 -11 was caused by just 19 guys getting 00:09:42.580 --> 00:09:45.240 lucky with box cutters, or that one lone sad 00:09:45.240 --> 00:09:47.259 gunman like Lee Harvey Oswald could just take 00:09:47.259 --> 00:09:49.000 out the most powerful man in the world, it feels 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:52.600 wrong. It feels disproportionate. A huge effect 00:09:52.600 --> 00:09:55.879 demands a huge cause. Our brains really struggle 00:09:55.879 --> 00:09:58.259 to accept that a loser with a cheap mail -order 00:09:58.259 --> 00:10:00.820 rifle can change history. It creates immense 00:10:00.820 --> 00:10:03.100 anxiety because it implies the world is chaotic 00:10:03.100 --> 00:10:06.259 and fragile and unsafe. So the conspiracy theory 00:10:06.259 --> 00:10:09.039 is actually comforting. That seems backwards. 00:10:09.179 --> 00:10:12.500 In a dark way, yes. It is far more comforting 00:10:12.500 --> 00:10:15.919 to believe that a powerful, evil cabal, the Illuminati, 00:10:15.940 --> 00:10:17.940 the Deep State, the Elders of Zion, whatever, 00:10:18.100 --> 00:10:22.889 orchestrated these events. If they are in charge, 00:10:23.210 --> 00:10:25.629 at least someone is in charge. It means there's 00:10:25.629 --> 00:10:27.929 a plan. It's an evil plan for sure, but it's 00:10:27.929 --> 00:10:30.830 a plan. It's not just chaos. Exactly. It restores 00:10:30.830 --> 00:10:32.669 a sense of order and control. You can fight an 00:10:32.669 --> 00:10:34.990 evil enemy. You can't fight random, meaningless 00:10:34.990 --> 00:10:37.389 chaos. That makes a lot of sense. But there's 00:10:37.389 --> 00:10:38.929 another angle here I want to ask you about, the 00:10:38.929 --> 00:10:41.009 ego part of it. Because when I've talked to people 00:10:41.009 --> 00:10:43.549 who are really deep down the rabbit hole, there's 00:10:43.549 --> 00:10:46.490 this sense of, well, superiority. This feeling 00:10:46.490 --> 00:10:49.250 of, you sheeple are all asleep, but I am awake. 00:10:49.350 --> 00:10:51.899 I see the truth. That is the need for uniqueness. 00:10:52.500 --> 00:10:55.600 And it's a huge, huge driver. We all want to 00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:57.100 feel special. We all want to feel like we're 00:10:57.100 --> 00:10:59.659 smart and capable and perceptive. And if I just 00:10:59.659 --> 00:11:02.340 believe what the New York Times and CNN and the 00:11:02.340 --> 00:11:03.779 president are telling me, then I'm just like 00:11:03.779 --> 00:11:06.100 everybody else. I'm just one of 300 million people 00:11:06.100 --> 00:11:08.679 who believe the official story. Right. But if 00:11:08.679 --> 00:11:11.139 I possess what researchers call stigmatized knowledge, 00:11:11.399 --> 00:11:14.519 if I know the real truth about the moon landing 00:11:14.519 --> 00:11:17.559 that's been hidden from everyone else, then suddenly 00:11:17.559 --> 00:11:22.389 I am elite. I am part of this tiny, special group 00:11:22.389 --> 00:11:25.269 of truth seekers. It gives you an instant self 00:11:25.269 --> 00:11:27.769 -esteem boost. It's the imposter paradox turned 00:11:27.769 --> 00:11:30.409 inside out. You actually want to be the outsider 00:11:30.409 --> 00:11:33.090 because in this story, the outsider is the hero. 00:11:33.250 --> 00:11:35.529 And this links directly to specific personality 00:11:35.529 --> 00:11:38.360 traits. Psychologists have found really strong 00:11:38.360 --> 00:11:41.639 correlations between a belief in conspiracy theories 00:11:41.639 --> 00:11:44.200 and something called the dark triad. The dark 00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:46.419 triad sounds like a supervillain team from a 00:11:46.419 --> 00:11:48.659 comic book. It might as well be. It's a cluster 00:11:48.659 --> 00:11:52.500 of three personality traits. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, 00:11:52.559 --> 00:11:55.080 and psychopathy. Oof. That's not a flattering 00:11:55.080 --> 00:11:59.320 list. No. Specifically, narcissism is a big predictor. 00:11:59.960 --> 00:12:02.100 Narcissists are more likely to believe conspiracy 00:12:02.100 --> 00:12:05.379 theories because of that intense need for uniqueness. 00:12:06.120 --> 00:12:09.940 The logic is, I am special, therefore I must 00:12:09.940 --> 00:12:13.000 know the special truth. They also just tend to 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:15.399 be more paranoid in general. What about the projection 00:12:15.399 --> 00:12:17.580 aspect? I remember reading about Richard Hofstadter's 00:12:17.580 --> 00:12:19.850 work on this, his famous essay. Hoffschatter 00:12:19.850 --> 00:12:22.190 wrote the seminal essay, The Paranoid Style in 00:12:22.190 --> 00:12:25.710 American Politics, back in 1964. And he argued 00:12:25.710 --> 00:12:27.750 that conspiracy theorists often project their 00:12:27.750 --> 00:12:30.129 own unacceptable impulses onto their enemies. 00:12:30.590 --> 00:12:33.110 So if you're a person who craves power, who would 00:12:33.110 --> 00:12:35.029 manipulate other people to get what you want, 00:12:35.169 --> 00:12:37.669 you just naturally assume that everyone else 00:12:37.669 --> 00:12:39.649 in power is doing the same thing. Yes, exactly. 00:12:39.870 --> 00:12:42.549 We see this mirroring all the time. The person 00:12:42.549 --> 00:12:44.429 screaming that the government is a secret cult 00:12:44.429 --> 00:12:46.710 trying to control everyone as often. Well... 00:12:46.919 --> 00:12:48.580 They're busy trying to organize a secret group 00:12:48.580 --> 00:12:51.019 to control everyone. Wow. But the most fascinating 00:12:51.019 --> 00:12:54.080 psychological finding, for me, is the concept 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:56.419 of the monological belief system. Okay, is this 00:12:56.419 --> 00:12:58.519 the idea that if you believe one, you believe 00:12:58.519 --> 00:13:00.860 them all? It's that, but it's even weirder than 00:13:00.860 --> 00:13:03.139 that. It's not just that you believe many different 00:13:03.139 --> 00:13:05.720 theories. It's that you're more likely to believe 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:08.320 theories that directly contradict each other. 00:13:08.399 --> 00:13:10.159 Wait, what? Okay, give me an example of that. 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:12.200 There was a famous study done at the University 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:14.759 of Kent. They asked people about the death of 00:13:14.759 --> 00:13:17.929 Princess Diana. And they found that the people 00:13:17.929 --> 00:13:20.929 who believe Diana was murdered by MI6. Right. 00:13:20.990 --> 00:13:24.269 A common theory. Were. We're also more likely 00:13:24.269 --> 00:13:26.850 to believe that Diana faked her own death and 00:13:26.850 --> 00:13:29.029 is still alive living on a private island somewhere. 00:13:29.230 --> 00:13:31.429 Hold on. She was murdered by the Secret Service 00:13:31.429 --> 00:13:35.009 and she faked her own death to escape the press. 00:13:35.250 --> 00:13:37.830 She can't be both dead and alive. Logically, 00:13:37.830 --> 00:13:40.519 no. Of course not. But psychologically, yes, 00:13:40.659 --> 00:13:43.320 because the core underlying belief isn't Diana 00:13:43.320 --> 00:13:46.620 is alive or Diana was murdered. The core belief 00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:50.340 is simply the official story is a lie. Ah, I 00:13:50.340 --> 00:13:52.620 see. So as long as you were rejecting the official 00:13:52.620 --> 00:13:54.759 claim that she died in a tragic car accident, 00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:57.019 it doesn't matter what you replace it with, even 00:13:57.019 --> 00:14:00.129 if the replacements totally clash. Exactly. It's 00:14:00.129 --> 00:14:02.730 not about building a coherent alternative history. 00:14:02.970 --> 00:14:05.730 It's about maintaining a coherent feeling of 00:14:05.730 --> 00:14:08.970 distrust. The content of the theory is almost 00:14:08.970 --> 00:14:11.090 secondary to the act of rejecting authority. 00:14:11.429 --> 00:14:14.570 That is. Man, that explains so much about the 00:14:14.570 --> 00:14:17.049 internet comments section. Okay, so we know why 00:14:17.049 --> 00:14:19.610 we fall for it. Let's talk about what we're falling 00:14:19.610 --> 00:14:22.250 for, because not all conspiracies are created 00:14:22.250 --> 00:14:24.450 equal, right? No, not at all. They come in different 00:14:24.450 --> 00:14:26.850 flavors. Jesse Walker, who's an editor at Reason 00:14:26.850 --> 00:14:29.429 Magazine, came up with a really great taxonomy. 00:14:29.730 --> 00:14:33.090 He calls them the five kinds of conspiracy theories. 00:14:33.330 --> 00:14:35.070 I love a good list. Let's break them down. What's 00:14:35.070 --> 00:14:36.830 the first one? First, you have the enemy outside. 00:14:36.990 --> 00:14:39.490 This is the absolute classic, the barbarians 00:14:39.490 --> 00:14:41.779 at the gate. So this is the James Bond villain 00:14:41.779 --> 00:14:45.220 or, you know, foreign invaders. Right. It's figures 00:14:45.220 --> 00:14:47.379 scheming from outside your community to destroy 00:14:47.379 --> 00:14:50.120 it. During the Cold War, it was the Soviets. 00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:53.320 Today, you hear it in rhetoric about foreign 00:14:53.320 --> 00:14:56.460 influences or globalists coming to destroy national 00:14:56.460 --> 00:14:59.059 sovereignty. Okay. So what's number two? The 00:14:59.059 --> 00:15:01.340 enemy within. Now, this one is much scarier. 00:15:01.480 --> 00:15:03.899 Yeah. This is the idea that your neighbor who 00:15:03.899 --> 00:15:06.179 looks like you and talks like you is secretly 00:15:06.179 --> 00:15:09.340 one of them. The McCarthy era. The Red Scare. 00:15:10.159 --> 00:15:12.860 Are you now or have you ever been a member of 00:15:12.860 --> 00:15:15.480 the Communist Party? Precisely. Or you can go 00:15:15.480 --> 00:15:18.039 back to the Salem Witch Trials. The idea that 00:15:18.039 --> 00:15:20.360 the threat is indistinguishable from the average 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:24.139 citizen. It breeds this intense, corrosive suspicion 00:15:24.139 --> 00:15:27.379 of your own peers. Okay. Then there's the enemy 00:15:27.379 --> 00:15:29.700 above. And this is really the dominant mode of 00:15:29.700 --> 00:15:32.679 the modern era. Powerful elites, the government, 00:15:32.879 --> 00:15:35.299 the billionaires, the corporations, manipulating 00:15:35.299 --> 00:15:38.370 events from on high for their own gain. The man, 00:15:38.549 --> 00:15:40.409 basically. The idea that the strings are all 00:15:40.409 --> 00:15:42.389 being pulled from the penthouse suite. Exactly. 00:15:42.570 --> 00:15:44.710 Then you have the opposite, the enemy below. 00:15:45.070 --> 00:15:47.870 This is the fear that the lower classes or marginalized 00:15:47.870 --> 00:15:51.190 groups are secretly organizing to violently overturn 00:15:51.190 --> 00:15:53.769 the social order. You see this all through history 00:15:53.769 --> 00:15:56.090 with fears of slave rebellions in the American 00:15:56.090 --> 00:15:59.149 South or the upper class fear of a Bolshevik 00:15:59.149 --> 00:16:01.149 style uprising. Yes, it's the fear of the mob. 00:16:01.309 --> 00:16:03.190 And then finally, the fifth kind, which is kind 00:16:03.190 --> 00:16:05.830 of the outlier, benevolent conspiracies. Wait, 00:16:05.889 --> 00:16:08.769 benevolent? These are the good guys. Yes. It's 00:16:08.769 --> 00:16:12.389 the belief in angels or friendly aliens or secret 00:16:12.389 --> 00:16:14.850 brotherhoods working behind the scenes to help 00:16:14.850 --> 00:16:17.570 humanity. So this would be like the QAnon idea 00:16:17.570 --> 00:16:19.889 of white hats in the government who are secretly 00:16:19.889 --> 00:16:22.230 taking down the bad guys. Exactly. It's still 00:16:22.230 --> 00:16:26.110 a conspiracy, a secret plan by a group. But the 00:16:26.110 --> 00:16:29.330 intent is salvation, not destruction. It's a 00:16:29.330 --> 00:16:31.679 hopeful paranoia, if you will. That's Walker's 00:16:31.679 --> 00:16:33.879 list. But we also have to talk about the scope 00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:36.240 of these things, because there's a huge difference 00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:40.000 between, say, the CIA killed JFK and the lizard 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.419 people run the entire galaxy. Right. And that's 00:16:42.419 --> 00:16:45.009 where the work of Michael Barkun comes in. He 00:16:45.009 --> 00:16:47.909 distinguishes between, first, event conspiracies, 00:16:47.909 --> 00:16:50.269 which are limited to one specific time and place, 00:16:50.389 --> 00:16:52.789 like the JFK assassination. Okay, that's simple 00:16:52.789 --> 00:16:54.549 enough. Then you have systemic conspiracies. 00:16:54.549 --> 00:16:56.830 These are much broader. A group with a big goal, 00:16:56.929 --> 00:16:59.029 like taking over a country or establishing a 00:16:59.029 --> 00:17:01.870 new world order. Think about fears of the Freemasons 00:17:01.870 --> 00:17:04.349 or global communist plot. And then there's the 00:17:04.349 --> 00:17:07.130 big one, the super conspiracy. That sounds like 00:17:07.130 --> 00:17:10.269 a Taco Bell menu item. It's the unified field 00:17:10.269 --> 00:17:13.579 theory of paranoia. This is where you link everything. 00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:16.700 You take the JFK assassination, the 9 -11 attacks, 00:17:17.059 --> 00:17:19.559 the creation of the Federal Reserve, UFOs at 00:17:19.559 --> 00:17:22.539 Roswell and the Freemasons, and you say, these 00:17:22.539 --> 00:17:25.500 aren't separate things. They're all just tentacles 00:17:25.500 --> 00:17:28.039 of the same giant octopus. This is David Icke 00:17:28.039 --> 00:17:30.480 territory, right? The shape -shifting reptilians. 00:17:30.759 --> 00:17:33.480 It is. It's hierarchical. The theory argues that 00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:35.940 the local bank manager reports to the politician 00:17:35.940 --> 00:17:38.920 who reports to the Freemason who reports to the 00:17:38.920 --> 00:17:41.670 lizard king on the mothership. It simplifies 00:17:41.670 --> 00:17:44.670 the entire world. There's only one enemy, and 00:17:44.670 --> 00:17:46.809 that enemy is the cause of all suffering. It's 00:17:46.809 --> 00:17:48.710 almost religious in its structure. It provides 00:17:48.710 --> 00:17:51.170 a devil for every problem. It is absolutely a 00:17:51.170 --> 00:17:53.450 kind of secular religion. It replaces God with 00:17:53.450 --> 00:17:55.289 the conspirator. Okay, so we have the definitions, 00:17:55.369 --> 00:17:57.049 we have the psychology, we have the types. Now 00:17:57.049 --> 00:17:58.769 we get to the part that I think is the most, 00:17:58.829 --> 00:18:02.990 well, the most damning. The reality check. Yeah. 00:18:03.029 --> 00:18:05.420 The math. Because whenever I hear these huge 00:18:05.420 --> 00:18:08.599 theories, like the moon landing was faked, I 00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:10.519 always just think about the logistics. I mean, 00:18:10.559 --> 00:18:13.519 I tried to plan a surprise party for my wife 00:18:13.519 --> 00:18:15.960 with five friends and one of them texted her 00:18:15.960 --> 00:18:18.359 the details by mistake two days before it happened. 00:18:18.559 --> 00:18:21.089 Secrets are incredibly hard to keep. But conspiracy 00:18:21.089 --> 00:18:23.650 theories rely on this idea that the government 00:18:23.650 --> 00:18:26.589 is somehow both incredibly incompetent. I mean, 00:18:26.609 --> 00:18:28.890 have you ever been to the DMV? And at the same 00:18:28.890 --> 00:18:31.569 time, hyper -competent, able to fool the entire 00:18:31.569 --> 00:18:35.049 world for 50 years without a single leak. The 00:18:35.049 --> 00:18:37.569 competence contradiction. It's a central paradox. 00:18:37.990 --> 00:18:40.250 But we can go beyond just our intuition here. 00:18:40.309 --> 00:18:42.769 We can actually use math. There was a physicist 00:18:42.769 --> 00:18:46.309 at Oxford named David Robert Grimes who published 00:18:46.309 --> 00:18:48.990 a fantastic paper on this. He wanted to know... 00:18:49.210 --> 00:18:51.650 Mathematically, how long can a secret of a certain 00:18:51.650 --> 00:18:53.990 size actually survive? Love this study. Grimes 00:18:53.990 --> 00:18:55.829 equation. Okay, break it down for us. How does 00:18:55.829 --> 00:18:58.269 it work? So Grimes started with a basic statistical 00:18:58.269 --> 00:19:01.150 model, a Poisson distribution. He needed to find 00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:03.250 a variable for the intrinsic probability of a 00:19:03.250 --> 00:19:06.630 leak. To do that, he looked at three real confirmed 00:19:06.630 --> 00:19:09.049 conspiracies that were eventually exposed to 00:19:09.049 --> 00:19:12.109 the public. Okay, what were they? The NSA's PRISM 00:19:12.109 --> 00:19:14.670 surveillance program, which was exposed by Edward 00:19:14.670 --> 00:19:17.970 Snowden. The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment. 00:19:18.849 --> 00:19:22.170 And a major FBI forensic scandal. Right. So these 00:19:22.170 --> 00:19:24.450 were real secrets involving a lot of people that 00:19:24.450 --> 00:19:27.190 eventually did blow up. Exactly. He analyzed 00:19:27.190 --> 00:19:29.170 how many people were involved in each and how 00:19:29.170 --> 00:19:31.069 long it took for the whistle to finally be blown. 00:19:31.549 --> 00:19:34.130 From that, he calculated the base probability 00:19:34.130 --> 00:19:37.089 that any single conspirator would spill the beans 00:19:37.089 --> 00:19:39.609 in a given year. And it turned out to be very, 00:19:39.650 --> 00:19:42.109 very low, about four in a million. Four in a 00:19:42.109 --> 00:19:43.930 million. That sounds super secure. It sounds 00:19:43.930 --> 00:19:46.589 secure if it's just one person. But math is cruel 00:19:46.589 --> 00:19:48.809 when you start adding people. The equation is 00:19:48.809 --> 00:19:51.089 exponential. As the number of people, which he 00:19:51.089 --> 00:19:55.349 called $9, increases, the time, $2, until failure 00:19:55.349 --> 00:19:57.269 drops like a stone. Okay, so let's apply this. 00:19:57.349 --> 00:20:00.009 The moon landing, the big one. Okay. To fake 00:20:00.009 --> 00:20:02.529 the moon landing in 1969, you couldn't just have 00:20:02.529 --> 00:20:05.119 three guys in a TV studio in the desert. You 00:20:05.119 --> 00:20:07.140 needed the thousands of rocket builders at NASA, 00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:09.440 the tracking station operators all over the world, 00:20:09.539 --> 00:20:12.180 the recovery crews in the Pacific, every single 00:20:12.180 --> 00:20:15.180 person at mission control. Grimes estimated that 00:20:15.180 --> 00:20:17.359 even with a very conservative count, you'd need 00:20:17.359 --> 00:20:20.400 about 411 ,000 people to be in on it to some 00:20:20.400 --> 00:20:24.519 degree. 411 ,000 people. If you plug that N411 00:20:24.519 --> 00:20:26.940 ,000 dollars into his equation, the estimated 00:20:26.940 --> 00:20:30.420 time until the secret is exposed is... 3 .68 00:20:30.420 --> 00:20:33.539 years. Three and a half years. So by 1973, someone 00:20:33.539 --> 00:20:35.359 would have talked. Statistically, it's almost 00:20:35.359 --> 00:20:38.240 a certainty. A deathbed confession, a drunk brag 00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:41.819 at a bar, a disgruntled employee, a Snowden -style 00:20:41.819 --> 00:20:44.740 leak. The idea that over 400 ,000 people could 00:20:44.740 --> 00:20:47.700 stay completely silent for over 50 years is mathematically 00:20:47.700 --> 00:20:50.369 approaching zero probability. What about the 00:20:50.369 --> 00:20:53.190 cure for cancer conspiracy? The idea that big 00:20:53.190 --> 00:20:55.609 pharma has a cure but is hiding it to keep selling 00:20:55.609 --> 00:20:57.769 chemo drugs. Well, that would have to involve 00:20:57.769 --> 00:21:00.349 research scientists at every major pharmaceutical 00:21:00.349 --> 00:21:03.450 company, plus thousands of academic researchers 00:21:03.450 --> 00:21:06.470 at universities worldwide. Crimes estimated about 00:21:06.470 --> 00:21:09.569 714 ,000 people would need to be in on that secret. 00:21:09.769 --> 00:21:12.990 And the time to exposure? About 3 .17 years. 00:21:13.269 --> 00:21:16.049 Wow. And the theory that climate change is a 00:21:16.049 --> 00:21:18.130 hoax, that all the climate scientists are lying 00:21:18.130 --> 00:21:20.859 to get grant money. Even if you just count the 00:21:20.859 --> 00:21:23.900 core publishing climate scientists, about 29 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:26.539 ,000 people, the hoax would be exposed in under 00:21:26.539 --> 00:21:29.579 27 years. But of course, to orchestrate a global 00:21:29.579 --> 00:21:32.279 hoax, you'd need the scientific bodies, the support 00:21:32.279 --> 00:21:35.059 staff. You're back up to over 400 ,000 people. 00:21:35.220 --> 00:21:36.960 Again, you're looking at under four years. The 00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:39.339 math just doesn't work. It falls apart. It completely 00:21:39.339 --> 00:21:41.900 falls apart. Conspiracies fail because people 00:21:41.900 --> 00:21:44.430 are people. We are social animals. We gossip. 00:21:44.609 --> 00:21:46.990 We have consciences. We get disgruntled. We make 00:21:46.990 --> 00:21:49.849 mistakes. The idea of a perfect silent wall of 00:21:49.849 --> 00:21:52.670 silence is a complete myth. You know, I find 00:21:52.670 --> 00:21:54.630 that incredibly reassuring. It basically says 00:21:54.630 --> 00:21:57.089 the world isn't rigged. It's just messy. That's 00:21:57.089 --> 00:21:59.329 a great way to put it. But, and this is the big 00:21:59.329 --> 00:22:01.250 turn, just because a theory is mathematically 00:22:01.250 --> 00:22:04.049 impossible doesn't mean it's harmless. We treat 00:22:04.049 --> 00:22:06.049 these things like entertainment sometimes. Oh, 00:22:06.089 --> 00:22:08.960 look at the flat earth, guys. How funny. There 00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:11.200 is a body count attached to this stuff. There 00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:14.059 is a very real and in some cases a very high 00:22:14.059 --> 00:22:16.339 body count. We absolutely have to talk about 00:22:16.339 --> 00:22:19.200 the consequences. Let's start with HIV AIDS because 00:22:19.200 --> 00:22:21.480 this is the example that just stopped me in my 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:23.220 tracks when I was prepping for this deep dive. 00:22:23.359 --> 00:22:25.859 This is perhaps the most tragic example of a 00:22:25.859 --> 00:22:27.859 conspiracy theory entering government policy. 00:22:28.339 --> 00:22:32.039 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, South Africa 00:22:32.039 --> 00:22:34.880 was facing an absolutely exploding AIDS epidemic. 00:22:35.299 --> 00:22:38.500 But the president at the time. Thabo Mbeki became 00:22:38.500 --> 00:22:40.900 convinced by a small group of fringe scientists, 00:22:41.259 --> 00:22:43.519 conspiracy theorists really, who claimed that 00:22:43.519 --> 00:22:46.400 HIV did not cause AIDS. So what did they think 00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:49.319 caused it then? Poverty, malnutrition, or, and 00:22:49.319 --> 00:22:51.299 this is that enemy outside trope we talked about, 00:22:51.480 --> 00:22:54.000 that the antiretroviral drugs themselves were 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:56.220 poison sent by Western pharmaceutical companies 00:22:56.220 --> 00:22:58.500 to harm Africans. I can see the psychological 00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:01.720 hook there. Mbeki is a post -colonial leader. 00:23:01.900 --> 00:23:05.279 He has every historical reason to distrust Western 00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:08.349 powers. Exactly. The theory fit his political 00:23:08.349 --> 00:23:11.299 worldview perfectly. It was a lay theory that 00:23:11.299 --> 00:23:14.039 flattered his deep suspicion of the West. So 00:23:14.039 --> 00:23:16.579 he rejected the global scientific consensus. 00:23:16.980 --> 00:23:19.660 His government delayed the rollout of life -saving 00:23:19.660 --> 00:23:22.380 antiretroviral drugs. They promoted garlic and 00:23:22.380 --> 00:23:24.960 beetroot as treatments instead of actual medicine. 00:23:25.160 --> 00:23:27.099 And the cost. What was the human cost of that 00:23:27.099 --> 00:23:29.220 decision? Researchers at Harvard did a comprehensive 00:23:29.220 --> 00:23:32.359 study. They estimated that this delay and this 00:23:32.359 --> 00:23:36.440 denialism led directly to approximately 330 ,000 00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:40.180 preventable deaths. 330 ,000. That's not just 00:23:40.180 --> 00:23:42.259 the statistic. That's a genocide by ignorance. 00:23:42.539 --> 00:23:44.980 And on top of that, an estimated 35 ,000 babies 00:23:44.980 --> 00:23:47.460 were born with HIV who could have been protected 00:23:47.460 --> 00:23:49.420 if their mothers had received the proper medication. 00:23:49.980 --> 00:23:52.720 This is what happens when epistemic self -insulation 00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:55.339 meets real political power. We see a similar 00:23:55.339 --> 00:23:57.640 thing, maybe on a smaller scale, but still just 00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:01.180 as tragic, with the famine in Zambia. Yes. Back 00:24:01.180 --> 00:24:05.759 in 2002, Zambia was facing a severe famine. The 00:24:05.759 --> 00:24:08.079 United States offered thousands of tons of corn 00:24:08.079 --> 00:24:10.920 as food aid. But the Zambian government, which 00:24:10.920 --> 00:24:13.319 was heavily influenced by European anti -GMO 00:24:13.319 --> 00:24:15.759 activists spreading theories that genetically 00:24:15.759 --> 00:24:19.160 modified organisms were poisoned or a plot to 00:24:19.160 --> 00:24:21.980 sterilize the African population, rejected the 00:24:21.980 --> 00:24:24.359 food aid. Just imagine that. Imagine being a 00:24:24.359 --> 00:24:27.240 starving parent in Zambia. There is food in a 00:24:27.240 --> 00:24:29.539 warehouse right down the road. But the government 00:24:29.539 --> 00:24:31.640 has locked the doors because of a rumor they 00:24:31.640 --> 00:24:33.819 heard from the Internet. People were literally 00:24:33.819 --> 00:24:36.740 eating leaves and roots while warehouses full 00:24:36.740 --> 00:24:39.759 of life -saving corn sat there locked up. It 00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:41.440 shows that these theories aren't just mental 00:24:41.440 --> 00:24:44.099 glitches. They are actual barriers to human survival. 00:24:44.359 --> 00:24:46.180 And then there's the direct violence. It's not 00:24:46.180 --> 00:24:48.180 just passive harm like rejecting medicine. It 00:24:48.180 --> 00:24:51.579 can be very, very active. Timothy McVeigh, the 00:24:51.579 --> 00:24:53.299 man who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma 00:24:53.299 --> 00:24:57.259 City in 1995, killing 168 people, including children. 00:24:57.599 --> 00:25:00.299 He was completely obsessed with the Turner Diaries 00:25:00.299 --> 00:25:02.900 and New World Order theories. In his mind, he 00:25:02.900 --> 00:25:04.799 believed he was striking a righteous blow against 00:25:04.799 --> 00:25:07.119 tyrannical secret government. And more recently, 00:25:07.240 --> 00:25:09.539 January 6th. The attack on the U .S. Capitol 00:25:09.539 --> 00:25:12.220 was driven almost entirely by the stolen election 00:25:12.220 --> 00:25:15.420 conspiracy theory. The people who stormed that 00:25:15.420 --> 00:25:17.660 building truly believed they were saving the 00:25:17.660 --> 00:25:20.460 country from a silent coup. If you genuinely 00:25:20.460 --> 00:25:23.660 believe a satanic cabal is stealing your democracy, 00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.000 then violence starts to feel like a rational 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:29.289 response. It feels like self -defense. Christopher 00:25:29.289 --> 00:25:31.869 Hitchens had that famous quote, something about 00:25:31.869 --> 00:25:34.470 exhaust fumes. He called conspiracy theories 00:25:34.470 --> 00:25:37.430 the exhaust fumes of democracy. What did he mean 00:25:37.430 --> 00:25:39.589 by that exactly? I think he meant that in a free 00:25:39.589 --> 00:25:42.210 society where information is allowed to circulate 00:25:42.210 --> 00:25:44.509 without censorship, you are inevitably going 00:25:44.509 --> 00:25:48.930 to generate this waste product. People will misuse 00:25:48.930 --> 00:25:51.910 their freedom to spread lies and paranoia. It's 00:25:51.910 --> 00:25:53.789 the unfortunate price of living in a free society. 00:25:54.049 --> 00:25:55.829 But just because it's exhaust doesn't mean we 00:25:55.829 --> 00:25:57.970 should just breathe it in. It's toxic. It poisons 00:25:57.970 --> 00:26:00.509 the whole room. Now, we've been very U .S.-centric 00:26:00.509 --> 00:26:02.789 so far, you know, JFK, the moon landing, Jan 00:26:02.789 --> 00:26:05.430 6. But I want to zoom out. Is this just an American 00:26:05.430 --> 00:26:07.470 glitch? Are we the only ones obsessed with the 00:26:07.470 --> 00:26:10.089 deep state? Oh, absolutely not. This is a human 00:26:10.089 --> 00:26:13.289 universal. The specific flavor changes from culture 00:26:13.289 --> 00:26:15.569 to culture, but the underlying psychological 00:26:15.569 --> 00:26:18.750 mechanism is the same everywhere. Let's look 00:26:18.750 --> 00:26:20.740 at Turkey. You mentioned something in the notes 00:26:20.740 --> 00:26:22.759 that I'd never heard of called the Severus Syndrome. 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:25.039 This is fascinating. So you have to go back to 00:26:25.039 --> 00:26:28.259 1920. The Ottoman Empire has just collapsed after 00:26:28.259 --> 00:26:31.039 World War I. The Allied powers, Britain, France, 00:26:31.240 --> 00:26:33.799 Italy, they signed the Treaty of Sevres. This 00:26:33.799 --> 00:26:36.440 treaty basically carves up what we now know as 00:26:36.440 --> 00:26:38.680 Turkey. It leaves the Turks with just a tiny 00:26:38.680 --> 00:26:41.240 rump state in Anatolia and gives the rest to 00:26:41.240 --> 00:26:44.369 Greece, Armenia, the Kurds. And the European 00:26:44.369 --> 00:26:47.269 powers. OK, so a real deep historical trauma. 00:26:47.390 --> 00:26:50.089 A massive foundational trauma. Now, the Turks 00:26:50.089 --> 00:26:52.250 fought a war of independence under Ataturk and 00:26:52.250 --> 00:26:54.349 they overturned that treaty. They established 00:26:54.349 --> 00:26:56.690 the modern Republic of Turkey. But the fear of 00:26:56.690 --> 00:26:59.490 that treaty remained. The Severus Syndrome is 00:26:59.490 --> 00:27:02.450 this deep -seated paranoid belief in Turkey that 00:27:02.450 --> 00:27:04.690 the West is always plotting to carve up their 00:27:04.690 --> 00:27:07.329 country again. So if a foreign diplomat visits 00:27:07.329 --> 00:27:10.130 or if the currency drops, a Turkish citizen might 00:27:10.130 --> 00:27:12.970 immediately think, here we go, it's Severs 2 00:27:12.970 --> 00:27:15.769 .0. Exactly. It dictates their foreign policy. 00:27:15.890 --> 00:27:18.309 It shapes how they view the Kurdish minority, 00:27:18.589 --> 00:27:20.630 the European Union, the United States. It's a 00:27:20.630 --> 00:27:23.130 kind of national conspiracy theory that holds 00:27:23.130 --> 00:27:25.569 the country together in a state of constant defensive 00:27:25.569 --> 00:27:28.119 anxiety. What about in the Arab world? What does 00:27:28.119 --> 00:27:30.799 it look like there? There, conspiracy theories 00:27:30.799 --> 00:27:33.160 often function as what the journalist Roger Cohen 00:27:33.160 --> 00:27:36.700 once called a refuge of the powerless. If you 00:27:36.700 --> 00:27:39.099 live in a country with a dictator, no free press, 00:27:39.240 --> 00:27:43.119 and a long, painful history of colonialism, you 00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:45.720 feel like you have no agency over your own life. 00:27:46.220 --> 00:27:49.019 or your nation's destiny. So blaming the CLA 00:27:49.019 --> 00:27:51.799 or Mossad for everything that goes wrong. It 00:27:51.799 --> 00:27:53.920 explains your powerlessness without blaming yourself 00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:56.859 or your own leaders. The logic is we aren't failing 00:27:56.859 --> 00:27:59.519 because of our own internal issues. We are failing 00:27:59.519 --> 00:28:01.759 because the most powerful forces on earth are 00:28:01.759 --> 00:28:04.500 actively conspiring against us. It preserves 00:28:04.500 --> 00:28:06.980 a sense of dignity, but it also paralyzes any 00:28:06.980 --> 00:28:10.430 real progress. And in China. In China. You see 00:28:10.430 --> 00:28:13.309 a mix. You see state -sanctioned theories blaming 00:28:13.309 --> 00:28:16.569 hostile foreign forces, usually the U .S., for 00:28:16.569 --> 00:28:19.289 things like the protests in Hong Kong. But you 00:28:19.289 --> 00:28:22.609 also see these wild grassroots theories, like 00:28:22.609 --> 00:28:24.789 the persistent belief that the Rothschild family 00:28:24.789 --> 00:28:27.990 secretly controls the global currency and is 00:28:27.990 --> 00:28:30.670 trying to destroy China's economic rise. The 00:28:30.670 --> 00:28:33.390 Rothschilds, they really are the greatest hits 00:28:33.390 --> 00:28:35.990 of conspiracy targets, aren't they? The classics 00:28:35.990 --> 00:28:38.269 never go out of style, it seems. Which brings 00:28:38.269 --> 00:28:40.549 us to the tool that spreads these hits faster 00:28:40.549 --> 00:28:43.910 than anything in history. The internet. I feel 00:28:43.910 --> 00:28:45.250 like we can't have this conversation without 00:28:45.250 --> 00:28:47.930 asking, is social media just destroying our brains? 00:28:48.509 --> 00:28:50.430 You know, the research is actually mixed on whether 00:28:50.430 --> 00:28:52.630 people believe more theories now than they did 00:28:52.630 --> 00:28:54.829 in the past. I mean, remember, people genuinely 00:28:54.829 --> 00:28:57.269 believed in witches in the 1600s and it led to 00:28:57.269 --> 00:28:59.789 executions. But what is new is the speed and 00:28:59.789 --> 00:29:02.029 the networking. Right. There's a concept I read 00:29:02.029 --> 00:29:04.549 about called data voids that really scares me. 00:29:04.650 --> 00:29:07.430 This is a crucial concept for understanding how 00:29:07.430 --> 00:29:10.609 search engines can go wrong. Let's say a conspiracy 00:29:10.609 --> 00:29:14.769 theorist on a forum invents a brand new scary 00:29:14.769 --> 00:29:18.579 sounding term. Let's call it. I don't know. Toxic 00:29:18.579 --> 00:29:21.859 sludge vacs. Okay, toxic sludge vacs. Got it. 00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:24.119 If you go to Google and you search for toxic 00:29:24.119 --> 00:29:26.839 sludge vacs, well, the New York Times hasn't 00:29:26.839 --> 00:29:29.359 written an article about it. The CDC hasn't put 00:29:29.359 --> 00:29:31.960 up a fat check page. So the only results that 00:29:31.960 --> 00:29:34.160 come up are the conspiracy sites that invented 00:29:34.160 --> 00:29:36.220 the term in the first place. So the search engine 00:29:36.220 --> 00:29:38.259 results make it look like the theory is confirmed. 00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:41.420 Look, all the top results say it's deadly. Exactly. 00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:43.859 Because the reputable sources haven't had time 00:29:43.859 --> 00:29:46.440 to fill that informational void yet. It creates 00:29:46.440 --> 00:29:49.019 a dangerous trap for the casually curious person. 00:29:49.220 --> 00:29:51.279 And then you have this thing called fusion paranoia. 00:29:51.380 --> 00:29:53.660 This is what we see happening on platforms like 00:29:53.660 --> 00:29:56.420 Twitter X. You have the far left who have a deep 00:29:56.420 --> 00:29:59.180 distrust of corporate globalization and intelligence 00:29:59.180 --> 00:30:02.380 agencies. You have the far right who have a deep 00:30:02.380 --> 00:30:04.619 distrust of the deep state and global institutions. 00:30:05.180 --> 00:30:07.500 And they end up meeting in the middle. The horseshoe 00:30:07.500 --> 00:30:10.000 theory. The two ends of the political horseshoe 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:12.019 are actually closer to each other than they are 00:30:12.019 --> 00:30:14.299 to the center. They might disagree on why they 00:30:14.299 --> 00:30:16.839 hate the system, but they are united in their 00:30:16.839 --> 00:30:19.160 belief that the system is fundamentally rigged. 00:30:19.180 --> 00:30:21.880 Yeah. So you see these bizarre online alliances 00:30:21.880 --> 00:30:25.390 where, you know. New age hippies and heavily 00:30:25.390 --> 00:30:28.289 armed militia members are sharing the exact same 00:30:28.289 --> 00:30:31.529 anti -government memes. OK, so we have covered 00:30:31.529 --> 00:30:33.970 the what, the why, the who and the where. Now 00:30:33.970 --> 00:30:36.829 comes the hardest part of all. The how. How do 00:30:36.829 --> 00:30:38.769 we fix this? What do we do? This is the million 00:30:38.769 --> 00:30:40.450 dollar question, isn't it? Let's try to role 00:30:40.450 --> 00:30:42.109 play this because I think people need to hear 00:30:42.109 --> 00:30:44.690 what this actually sounds like in practice. Let's 00:30:44.690 --> 00:30:46.609 say we're at a family barbecue. I'm your cousin 00:30:46.609 --> 00:30:49.150 and I start telling you with total conviction 00:30:49.150 --> 00:30:52.309 about the flat earth. OK, I'm ready. Set the 00:30:52.309 --> 00:30:54.400 scene for me. Adopting a slightly defensive, 00:30:54.680 --> 00:30:57.380 earnest tone. Look, I know you're a smart guy, 00:30:57.619 --> 00:31:00.259 but you're just too trusting. Have you ever actually 00:31:00.259 --> 00:31:02.640 seen the curve yourself? I was watching this 00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:05.319 video, and if you zoom in on the horizon with 00:31:05.319 --> 00:31:09.000 a Nikon P1000 camera, ships don't disappear over 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:11.660 the curve, they just get smaller. Yeah. The water 00:31:11.660 --> 00:31:14.799 is provably flat. NASA uses fisheye lenses on 00:31:14.799 --> 00:31:17.359 all their cameras to fake the curvature. Why 00:31:17.359 --> 00:31:19.180 do you think they won't let anyone go to Antarctica? 00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:23.750 Because that's where the ice wall is. Calm, nonjudgmental 00:31:23.750 --> 00:31:26.869 tone. Wow. That's really interesting. I haven't 00:31:26.869 --> 00:31:29.029 seen those specific videos with the Nikon camera. 00:31:29.130 --> 00:31:30.529 It sounds like you've done a lot of digging into 00:31:30.529 --> 00:31:32.529 this. I have. I've spent months on this. And, 00:31:32.589 --> 00:31:34.230 you know, the pilots, they admit it when they're 00:31:34.230 --> 00:31:35.990 off the record. So what I'm hearing from you 00:31:35.990 --> 00:31:38.490 is that you feel like we're being lied to on 00:31:38.490 --> 00:31:41.369 this massive fundamental scale. That the images 00:31:41.369 --> 00:31:43.609 we see all the time, the blue marble from space, 00:31:43.809 --> 00:31:46.210 the satellite photos, that they're all manufactured. 00:31:46.470 --> 00:31:48.410 Exactly. They're controlling the entire narrative. 00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:52.220 You know, I get that feeling sometimes. It really 00:31:52.220 --> 00:31:55.079 is hard to trust big institutions when we know 00:31:55.079 --> 00:31:57.700 for a fact they've lied about other things. I 00:31:57.700 --> 00:32:00.559 mean, look at WMDs in Iraq. Governments do lie. 00:32:00.779 --> 00:32:02.599 Right. See, you get it. That's what I'm talking 00:32:02.599 --> 00:32:05.380 about. I do get the suspicion. I really do. But 00:32:05.380 --> 00:32:06.759 here's the one thing I always struggle with, 00:32:06.819 --> 00:32:08.319 and maybe you can help me with it. It's just 00:32:08.319 --> 00:32:11.779 the sheer number of people. If there really is 00:32:11.779 --> 00:32:14.440 a giant ice wall around the Earth, that means 00:32:14.440 --> 00:32:17.140 every commercial pilot in the Southern Hemisphere, 00:32:17.319 --> 00:32:19.660 every shipping captain from Chile to Australia, 00:32:19.960 --> 00:32:24.099 every surveyor, every military sailor, they all 00:32:24.099 --> 00:32:26.140 have to be in on it. How did they keep thousands 00:32:26.140 --> 00:32:28.359 and thousands of commercial airline pilots from 00:32:28.359 --> 00:32:31.059 just snapping a photo with their iPhone and blowing 00:32:31.059 --> 00:32:33.980 the whole thing open? Well, maybe they pay them 00:32:33.980 --> 00:32:36.220 off. Or, you know, they threaten them. Maybe. 00:32:36.829 --> 00:32:39.250 But my cousin is actually a pilot for Contis. 00:32:39.490 --> 00:32:42.309 He flies that long route from Sydney to Santiago. 00:32:42.690 --> 00:32:45.250 And he's down. Well, he's terrible at keeping 00:32:45.250 --> 00:32:47.210 secrets. The man can't even keep a surprise birthday 00:32:47.210 --> 00:32:49.509 party under wraps. Do you honestly think he could 00:32:49.509 --> 00:32:51.490 hide the fundamental shape of the Earth for his 00:32:51.490 --> 00:32:53.990 entire 20 -year career? Breaking character. Okay, 00:32:54.089 --> 00:32:56.630 pause. I see exactly what you did there. That 00:32:56.630 --> 00:33:00.150 was really good. What did you notice? First, 00:33:00.309 --> 00:33:03.990 and most obviously, you didn't call me an idiot. 00:33:04.309 --> 00:33:07.059 You didn't just show... That's stupid. Read a 00:33:07.059 --> 00:33:10.160 science book. Rule number one. Ridicule is the 00:33:10.160 --> 00:33:12.599 end of the conversation. The second I mock you, 00:33:12.660 --> 00:33:14.700 you retreat into your fortress and you will never 00:33:14.700 --> 00:33:17.200 listen to another word I say. Right. And then 00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:19.279 you validated my feeling. You didn't validate 00:33:19.279 --> 00:33:22.000 my facts, but you validated my distrust. You 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:25.140 said, governments lie. You sort of joined me 00:33:25.140 --> 00:33:27.539 on the enemy's side for just a second. That's 00:33:27.539 --> 00:33:29.819 empathy. I have to acknowledge the emotional 00:33:29.819 --> 00:33:31.819 truth of what you're saying, which is I feel 00:33:31.819 --> 00:33:34.380 lied to and powerless before I can even begin 00:33:34.380 --> 00:33:36.779 to address the factual error. And then you ask 00:33:36.779 --> 00:33:38.900 questions. You didn't lecture me about gravity 00:33:38.900 --> 00:33:41.220 or Foucault's pendulum. You asked me to explain 00:33:41.220 --> 00:33:43.099 the logistics of keeping all the pilots quiet. 00:33:43.220 --> 00:33:46.039 I put the burden of proof back on you, but gently. 00:33:46.759 --> 00:33:48.980 I'm not attacking you. I'm inviting you to solve 00:33:48.980 --> 00:33:51.660 the puzzle with me. How do they keep my bumbling 00:33:51.660 --> 00:33:54.940 cousin silent? It forces you to think about the 00:33:54.940 --> 00:33:57.690 mechanism, not just the abstract theory. And 00:33:57.690 --> 00:34:00.410 you offered me an off -ramp. This is absolutely 00:34:00.410 --> 00:34:03.690 crucial. If I just bludgeon you with facts and 00:34:03.690 --> 00:34:06.809 prove you wrong, you feel stupid. And nobody 00:34:06.809 --> 00:34:09.190 wants to feel stupid. So I have to give you a 00:34:09.190 --> 00:34:11.570 way to change your mind without losing face. 00:34:11.909 --> 00:34:13.809 How do you do that? What does that sound like? 00:34:13.989 --> 00:34:15.530 You might say something like, you know, it makes 00:34:15.530 --> 00:34:17.449 sense that a lot of people are asking these questions, 00:34:17.570 --> 00:34:20.289 especially because organizations like NASA have 00:34:20.289 --> 00:34:23.010 been so secretive in the past. It's natural and 00:34:23.010 --> 00:34:25.530 healthy to be skeptical. But I just think in 00:34:25.530 --> 00:34:28.289 this specific case, the logistics of a cover 00:34:28.289 --> 00:34:31.050 -up of that size just don't add up for me. It 00:34:31.050 --> 00:34:33.690 reframes it completely. I'm no longer wrong and 00:34:33.690 --> 00:34:36.269 dumb. I'm a healthy skeptic who is correctly 00:34:36.269 --> 00:34:38.929 following the evidence. Exactly. You allow them 00:34:38.929 --> 00:34:40.949 to keep their identity as a critical thinker 00:34:40.949 --> 00:34:43.570 while gently guiding them to a different conclusion. 00:34:43.909 --> 00:34:46.030 That is so much harder and takes so much more 00:34:46.030 --> 00:34:48.130 patience than just dunking on them on Twitter. 00:34:48.369 --> 00:34:51.190 It is hard work. It takes real emotional labor. 00:34:51.960 --> 00:34:53.440 But it's the only thing that has a chance of 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:56.239 actually working. What about preventing it in 00:34:56.239 --> 00:34:58.679 the first place? I've heard this term pre -bunking. 00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:01.199 Inoculation theory. This is some of the most 00:35:01.199 --> 00:35:03.940 exciting research in the field right now. The 00:35:03.940 --> 00:35:07.219 idea is to warn people about the tactics of misinformation 00:35:07.219 --> 00:35:10.380 before they are ever exposed to the specific 00:35:10.380 --> 00:35:13.179 lie. OK, give me an example of that. So if I 00:35:13.179 --> 00:35:16.030 teach you today. about the logical fallacy of 00:35:16.030 --> 00:35:18.550 false balance, the media trick where they put 00:35:18.550 --> 00:35:20.789 one credentialed scientist and one total crank 00:35:20.789 --> 00:35:23.550 on stage and treat their opinions as equally 00:35:23.550 --> 00:35:26.460 valid. If I explain that trick to you today, 00:35:26.679 --> 00:35:29.440 then tomorrow when you see a TV debate about 00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:31.860 climate change with one scientist representing 00:35:31.860 --> 00:35:35.340 the 99 % consensus versus one guy funded by an 00:35:35.340 --> 00:35:38.199 oil company, you'll recognize the trick instantly. 00:35:38.619 --> 00:35:41.179 Ah, I know this move. They are trying to manufacture 00:35:41.179 --> 00:35:43.619 a controversy where there isn't one. Exactly. 00:35:43.639 --> 00:35:45.900 You inoculate the brain against the manipulation 00:35:45.900 --> 00:35:48.519 technique itself. It's like a vaccine for fake 00:35:48.519 --> 00:35:50.949 news. Wow. We've covered a lot of ground today, 00:35:51.030 --> 00:35:53.869 from the 1863 New York Times to the cold, hard 00:35:53.869 --> 00:35:56.809 math of the moon landing to the absolute tragedy 00:35:56.809 --> 00:35:58.769 of what happened in South Africa. It's a heavy 00:35:58.769 --> 00:36:01.090 journey to take. So if the listener takes away 00:36:01.090 --> 00:36:03.349 just three things from this entire deep dive, 00:36:03.550 --> 00:36:06.510 what should they be? First, I'd say recognize 00:36:06.510 --> 00:36:09.570 that a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories 00:36:09.570 --> 00:36:13.530 is a feature, not a bug, of human psychology. 00:36:14.210 --> 00:36:16.750 We are pattern -seeking machines trying to find 00:36:16.750 --> 00:36:20.460 order in a chaotic world. It's not about stupidity. 00:36:20.460 --> 00:36:22.619 It's usually about anxiety and a need for control. 00:36:22.920 --> 00:36:27.480 Okay. Number two. Trust the math. Large -scale 00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:29.719 secrets crumble under their own weight. The sheer 00:36:29.719 --> 00:36:32.500 friction of humanity, our incompetence, our gossip, 00:36:32.559 --> 00:36:35.400 our conscience, our mortality, makes these grand 00:36:35.400 --> 00:36:37.599 super conspiracies mathematically impossible 00:36:37.599 --> 00:36:40.719 to sustain. And third. Empathy over ridicule 00:36:40.719 --> 00:36:42.639 every single time. If you want to pull someone 00:36:42.639 --> 00:36:44.380 you care about out of the rabbit hole, you don't 00:36:44.380 --> 00:36:45.880 throw rocks down at them. You throw them a rope. 00:36:46.039 --> 00:36:48.099 Uh -huh. You have to try and understand the fear 00:36:48.099 --> 00:36:50.400 or the feeling of powerlessness that drove them 00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:52.139 down there in the first place. I want to end 00:36:52.139 --> 00:36:54.159 with a final thought on that why. We talked about 00:36:54.159 --> 00:36:55.960 how these theories often come from a feeling 00:36:55.960 --> 00:37:00.199 of a lack of control, a lack of trust. Yes. There 00:37:00.199 --> 00:37:02.920 was a concept proposed a while back by Cass Sunstein 00:37:02.920 --> 00:37:06.719 called cognitive infiltration, the idea that 00:37:06.719 --> 00:37:09.920 government agents should enter chat rooms to 00:37:09.920 --> 00:37:12.480 debunk theories. Yeah. I think that's exactly 00:37:12.480 --> 00:37:14.780 the wrong approach. It just confirms the paranoia. 00:37:14.780 --> 00:37:17.480 See? The feds are in here. So what's the right 00:37:17.480 --> 00:37:19.880 approach? What's the real antidote? The real 00:37:19.880 --> 00:37:21.980 antidote to conspiracy theories isn't just more 00:37:21.980 --> 00:37:25.860 facts. It's empowerment. It's building a society 00:37:25.860 --> 00:37:28.559 that's more trustworthy. If people feel they 00:37:28.559 --> 00:37:30.780 have a real voice, if they feel the system is 00:37:30.780 --> 00:37:32.519 actually listening to them, is working for them, 00:37:32.539 --> 00:37:34.699 if they have a seat at the table, they don't 00:37:34.699 --> 00:37:37.360 need to invent a shadow government to explain 00:37:37.360 --> 00:37:39.699 why they are suffering. We have to fix the reality 00:37:39.699 --> 00:37:41.860 so people don't have to retreat into a fantasy. 00:37:42.079 --> 00:37:44.840 Exactly. Fix the trust and the theories will 00:37:44.840 --> 00:37:46.920 start to fade on their own. That is a really 00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:49.179 powerful place to leave it. It's not just about 00:37:49.179 --> 00:37:51.760 debunking. It's about rebuilding. Well said. 00:37:51.900 --> 00:37:54.440 Thank you for going down this very deep rabbit 00:37:54.440 --> 00:37:56.920 hole with us and, more importantly, for helping 00:37:56.920 --> 00:37:58.860 us find the way back out. It was a pleasure, 00:37:58.880 --> 00:38:01.860 as always. Keep your eyes open. Keep asking questions. 00:38:01.980 --> 00:38:04.559 But maybe, just maybe, check the math before 00:38:04.559 --> 00:38:07.219 you believe the birds are spies. We'll see you 00:38:07.219 --> 00:38:08.059 on the next deep dive.