More writings that need links and tidying up. But I also want to preserve them here and have them readable nonetheless. These tend to be short essays that people have found interesting, convincing me that I should make them available. When I edit these pieces, and add links and such, I shall describe the changes in the comments in case anyone has commented in such a way that the biases the reading of that comment.
When we say, “conspiracy theory,” we do not mean we suspect something of being a conspiracy in general. It has a specific meaning.
When cops investigated Tiger Brands for sociopathically ripping off the poorest South Africans with price fixing on basic foods, they didn’t have a ‘conspiracy theory’ in the sense that we mean the term. They had reason to believe a conspiracy was taking place.
(The cover image for this essay is of the Tiger Brands mascot depicted by Eyewitness News)
A conspiracy theory is a theory about a conspiracy which is wildly implausible – usually because it involves more people than are ever observed to cooperate perfectly together and especially when they would be differently invested in maintaining the conspiracy.
So Tiger Brands only needed to involve a small number of executives, maybe a few board members, all of whom stand to make titanic sums of money.
But the conspiracy to hide the ‘flat Earth,’ requires hundreds of thousands of pilots, astronauts, engineers, media people – all with different amounts to supposedly gain from maintaining the conspiracy. No group that large and diverse cooperates that efficiently. It’s a conspiracy theory.
What this means is that some wild accusations about conspiracies – that may even be very unlikely to be true – are not actually ‘conspiracy theories’ in the sense that we mean it.
For example, multiple lines of evidence strongly contradict the argument that COVID-19 was developed on purpose by humans in a lab in Wuhan China. The reasons why people stick to the theory despite the evidence to the contrary and the lack of evidence for their suspicion can clearly be seen as a mix of racism, defending incompetent leaders, seeking a human villain, etc.. BUT
It’s not a ‘conspiracy theory.’ It *could* have been secretly cooked up in a lab and released with few people having to be in on it and all of them materially invested in the outcomes. Likewise Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma could easily be working with cigarette smugglers to profit from the cigarette ban. We know she stood up for the Zupta looters in the ANC elections – therefore she’s clearly able to condone the worst corruption imaginable. And it would require only a few profiting people in the know.
I doubt that’s got anything to do with it. There’s a good rule-of-thumb: “Don’t presume malice where incompetence would suffice.”
Conspiracy theorists point to real conspiracies that came to light as evidence that their claims are not absurd – ignoring that those conspiracies required a tiny fraction of the people in-the-know compared to what their absurd theories need.
But conversely, certain suspicions get accused of being conspiracy theories even when they’d be quite viable for a real conspiracy to accomplish. It *doesn’t mean they’re right!* It just means that they’re not in the absurd category of chemtrails, cell-phone tower cancers, lizard-person leaders, hiding easily available cancer-cures, etc..
The Singemonkey 