

What are arguments against conspiracies about 5 men that run the US? - marcamillion

I know this might sound like a silly question, but I constantly find myself in heated debates/exchanges with people that honestly believe that there is a small cabal of (say 5 - 6) men that secretly 'pull all the strings' behind the scenes.&#60;p&#62;What are some arguments I can use to actually convince them that that is impossible or just not true?
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Umalu
The world is too complex for a small cabal to be controlling everything. This
complexity is difficult for our puny minds to comprehend, so we instinctively
latch onto simple models with a Wizard of Oz at the center, pulling all the
levers and pushing all the buttons to make everything work the way it does.
The ancient Greeks thought Zeus and the other gods on Mount Olympus controlled
everything. The modern mind turns to secretive cabals. Same idea.

~~~
hasenj
To play the devil's advocate, a secret cabal wouldn't be running every little
detail. It would decide things like "bring a black man to presidency", "next
year we're invading country X".

Not that I think such a cabal exists per se, but certain powerful groups _can_
make such decisions, and these groups do exist.

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newt
Define "run" ? They don't decide what you eat for lunch, so what do they
decide and what don't they? I ask since you can't argue against a statement
that isn't even coherent. All you can do is point out that it makes no sense.

Bear in mind Hanlon's Razor : _Never attribute to malice that which is
adequately explained by stupidity_
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor>

Also, as others said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

If it bothers you and is senseless, choose other people to hang around with.

~~~
marcamillion
Run meaning Obama is just their puppet.

I have always chosen to hang out with people that are more like-minded.
However, just over Christmas, I had the pleasure of interacting with family
which brought up this question.

Although I don't see them much, some of them are pretty educated. It's kinda
sad, actually, to see them truly believe this stuff. So it's more out of me
genuinely wanting to help them, not prove them wrong.

~~~
newt
Whether the president makes the decisions or if it's someone behind him, what
I was asking was about the level of the decisions made.

For instance, it's plausible that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was made
well in advance by a small group. Is that what is meant by "run the US"? The
outcome and consequences of the Iraq war don't seem to have gone to anyone's
plan. What part of the US is being "run" and what part isn't?

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RVK
I've long believed that a civilization's natural, or sensible power structure
reflects two things: the communications technology available, and the size of
the economic/political structure. Greek city states could have a (slave-
owning) democracy, because they were small enough that politically relevant
information could travel to most of the citizens fast enough for them to act
on a relevant opinion. But as states became empires, the communications became
stretched across wide distances, and a more autocratic system had to come into
play - ordinary citizens could not get relevant information fast enough to
make political choices.

But as we got modern postal services, the telegraph and so on, economic events
on one side of a continent became pertinent to people on the other, and they
would hear of them in short order. The technology made people feel invested in
a nation's politics, so they could, and felt they had a right to, participate.

So I would have said that in today's information society, in the age of TV and
Wikileaks, a 5-man dictatorship can't effectively function. Too many people
feel too invested in national and world events to permit it without a Soviet-
style iron control of channels of information. But the effect of corporate
money on what kind of information gets mainstream attention is a whole other
question.

------
zck
There's no evidence for it. It's wrong to believe a claim without supporting
evidence.

------
timrobinson
Occam's razor?

~~~
david_shaw
_> Occam's razor?_

Yup, came here to post just that.

Additionally, you can take some cards from Skeptics in general, and assert
that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Burden of proof lies
not on the skeptic, but on the one with the ludicrous claim.

~~~
marcamillion
Can you explain in simply terms what Occam's razor is? I Wikipedia'd it, but
the definition was too dense.

It could be as a result of me being tired...but I couldn't quite understand
it.

Thanks.

~~~
david_shaw
Sure. Occam's razor just means that the most simple explaination is the most
likely.

For example, a car accident could be caused by a driver attempting to SMS
while driving, or an extraterrestrial life form stealing the drivers' thoughts
and consciousness temporarily.

Occam's razor would suggest that the simplest explaination (in this case,
texting) is more likely to be the correct explaination, rather than a more
complicated (though technically still _possible_ ) explaination.

Occam's razor has its place in science (where it consistently holds true), but
also applies to things like conspiracy theories.

~~~
hasenj
I'm not sure that's a good example.

"Simple" is a subjective term.

The way I understand it, the simplest explanation is not the one that "makes
sense to me", but the one with less unneeded baggage.

And it's not a principle of logic, but a general guideline. So take it with a
grain of salt.

Consider a pen falling down, and consider these explanations:

1\. Things always fall down

2\. There exists gravitational force between bodies

3\. Relativity's explanation about how bodies bend spacetime (which frankly I
don't really understand).

#1 is the simplest, but the least accurate. #3 is more complex but more
accurate. And when I say it's more complex, I mean relative to #1 of course.

Relativity (from what I understand) is actually simple (once you have the
right mental model), but to the uninitiated, it appears to be rather complex,
and #1 would appear to be much simpler. But, it would be wrong to dismiss
Relativity based on "Occam's razor".

~~~
newt
_"Simple" is a subjective term._

Which is why it's sometimes stated as "Entities should not be multiplied
unnecessarily" - i.e pick the explanation with the fewest moving parts. That's
less subjective, assuming you can agree on how to count the entities.

 _1\. Things always fall down_

This is not actually an explanation at all, it just restates the observation.

 _2\. There exists gravitational force between bodies_

Newton's inverse square law of gravitation is simpler than relativity, and
it's good enough for a lot of uses. But it is not a viable explanation either,
since it does not fit exactly with observed reality - it does not handle the
edge cases of very fast or very heavy stuff.

~~~
hasenj
> This is not actually an explanation at all, it just restates the observation

It's an explanation for "why the pen fell down". It states a law whereby
"things always fall down".

~~~
newt
To go further, What is and what isn't an "explanation" ?

"Things always fall down" doesn't add much. It says that the observation can
be repeated.

Newton's law says more than "There exists gravitational force between bodies"
which isn't much of an improvement over "things always fall down".

Newton provided a mathematical formula to measure it, which, as best as could
be seen in Newton's time, fit exactly with reality, applying from apples up to
planets.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation)

This makes testable, measurable predictions about "why things fall down", i.e.
"things fall down because all things obey the law of universal gravitation as
given in the formula...". But it doesn't even begin to explain why there is
gravity all rather than no gravity. Science is largely silent about this
category of question of meaning not measurement - it observes reality and
predicts based on extrapolating from existing observations. Other explanations
of "why" are hardly much better - "gravity exists because God said so" aren't
very satisfying since you can't test it or infer anything from it.

