Michael Shermer - Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational

CONSPIRACY

Why the Rational Believe the Irrational

Michael Shermer

Johns Hopkins University Press | BALTIMOR

2022 Michael Shermer

All rights reserved. Published 2022

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shermer, Michael, author.

Title: Conspiracy : why the rational believe the irrational / Michael Shermer.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021053808 | ISBN 9781421444451 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781421444468 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Conspiracy theoriesPsychological aspects. | ConspiraciesPsychological aspects. | Belief and doubt.

Classification: LCC HV6275 .S54 2022 | DDC 001.9/8dc23/eng/20220621

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021053808

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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To Pat Linse

Cofounder of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, colleague, confidant, and friend, who embodied the maxim and mission of the Skeptics Society, adopted from the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza:

I have made a ceaseless effort

not to ridicule,

not to bewail,

not to scorn human actions,

but to understand them.

To understand is not to forgive. We can see why humans steer their reasoning toward conclusions that work to the advantage of themselves or their sects, and why they distinguish a reality in which ideas are true or false from a mythology in which ideas are entertaining or inspirational, without conceding that these are good things. They are not good things. Reality is that which, when you apply motivated or myside or mythological reasoning to it, does not go away. False beliefs about vaccines, public health measures, and climate change threaten the well-being of billions. Conspiracy theories incite terrorism, pogroms, wars, and genocide. A corrosion of standards of truth undermines democracy and clears the ground for tyranny. But for all the vulnerabilities of human reason, our picture of the future need not be a bot tweeting fake news forever. The arc of knowledge is a long one, and it bends toward rationality.

S TEVEN P INKER, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, 2021

My primary approach in this book is integrative in naturethat is, amalgamating research from multiple lines of inquiry into a readable, coherent narrative for both professional researchers and general readers, with the aim of solving a single problemnamely, why people believe conspiracy theories, which ones are real, and what to do about them. My model for this approach is what has come to be known as Third Culture books,

Other type specimensdeterminers of the characteristics of a groupin the Third Culture genre include Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs, and Steel, a Pulitzer Prizewinning work that is a highly original assimilation of research from multiple fields, with the aim of solving one problem: why civilizations developed at different rates around the world over the past 13,000 years. Pinker detailed six historical trends, five historical forces, five inner demons, and four better angels as causal and interacting vectors to account for the decline of violence. Like Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species, the above books are not popular versions of scholarly works. Instead, they are the only editions available, which can be read by everyone from professional scientists and scholars to airline passengers who pick up copies at an airport bookstall.

In trying to understand conspiracy theories and why people believe them, many different cognitive, social, political, economic, cultural, and historical factors are involved, so any explanation is necessarily going to be complex and possibly overdetermined. The prologue that follows outlines this volume in more detail, but allow me to briefly sketch my theoretical model of three overarching factors at work. They demonstrate why people believe conspiracy theories, with an aim toward illuminating what I am calling the conspiracy effect: why smart people believe blatantly wrong things for apparently rational reasons:

1. 1. Proxy conspiracism. Many conspiracy theories are proxies for a different type of conspiracist trutha deeper mythic, psychological, or lived-experience truth. As such, the details and verisimilitude of particular conspiracy theories are less important than the richer truths represented therein, which often contain self-identifying, existential, and moral meanings, frequently involving powerboth for the conspiracist and for the perceived conspirators.
2. 2. Tribal conspiracism. Many conspiracy theories harbor elements of other beliefs, dogmas, and adjacent or preceding conspiracy theories long believed and held as core elements of political, religious, social, or tribal identity. As such, current conspiracy theories, like proxy truths, may serve as stand-ins for earlier ones having deep roots in history. This accounts for the cross-pollination of conspiracy theories and the propensity for people who believe in one to believe in many. An endorsement of these theories serves as a social signal of loyalty to the tribe that embraces them as part of that groups identity.
3. 3. Constructive conspiracism. The assumption by most researchers of and commentators on conspiracy theories is that they represent false beliefs, which is why the term has become a pejorative descriptor. This is a mistake, because, historically speaking, enough of these theories represent actual conspiracies. Therefore, it pays to err on the side of belief, rather than disbelief, just in case. With a lot at stake, especially ones identity, livelihood, or even lifewhich was the case during the Paleolithic environment in which we evolved our conspiratorial cognitionit is often better to assume that a conspiracy theory is real when it is not (a false positive), instead of believing it is not real when it is (a false negative). The former just makes you paranoid, whereas the latter can make you dead.

Thus there is a mismatch between the rational conspiracism of our evolutionary ancestry and the modern world, filled as the latter is with a myriad of conspiracy theories so widespread and diverse that discerning truth from falsehood can be exceedingly difficult. To this end, I make a distinction between paranoid conspiracy theories, involving ultra-secret and ber-powerful entities, for which there is little to no evidence and which are largely driven by paranoia, and realistic conspiracy theories, pertaining to normal political institutions and corporate entities that are conspiring to manipulate the system to gain an unfair, immoral, and sometimes illegal advantage over others. Because both history and current events are brimming with real conspiracies, I contend that conspiracism is a rational response to a dangerous world. Thus, in the common computer analog, it is a feature ofnot a bug inhuman cognition. The apparently rational reasons in my definition of the conspiracy effect are doing a lot of work. We will explore those reasons in depth in this book.