
The maths of the paper disproving conspiracy theories don't add up - r0muald
http://littleatoms.com/david-grimes-conspiracy-theory-maths
======
kossTKR
A personal theory i have is that the "Sceptics"community is somewhat comprised
of slightly socially naive stem educated people (sorry). They simply do not
fathom the ruthlessness of the political or business world. Hackers are a
notable exception, they usually have they usually are pretty adept at seeing
propaganda and cover ups.

The notion that "i can prove that conspiracies are false with my math" makes
me cringe the same way it makes me cringe when the sceptics community "Proves
religion wrong", completely disregarding any psychological or anthropological
explanations for such a phenomenon.

A good chunk of the highly educated people from the economic fields, Law,
Public Relations and business world are much more manipulative and
opportunistic than most "science people" understands.

Go to any of the hippest (and most expensive) night clubs in a european city
and you will meet these kinds of people everywhere, earning huge amounts of
money doing dubious business deals or polishing the images of morally
questionable partners.

You won't meet many tech people there, but the ones you will meet will be in
ad-tech, data-reselling, or affiliate marketing.

You won't se any nerds these places, as you won't se any nerds at PR or upper
class "fund raising" events, where the small scale conspiracies are pretty
obvious.

~~~
snowwrestler
Having spent time in both the tech world and the politics world, in my
experience it is the conspiracy theorists who are naive.

Generally the common denominator in conspiracy theories is that there is a
group of people who are secretly in control and are purposefully causing
things to happen to further their own particular agendas.

As you point out, it is true that a lot of powerful people really _are_ trying
desperately to further their own agendas. But the false part is that there is
a small group who is really in control. The truth is, no one is in control.

Sounds scary, right? Which explains the attractiveness of conspiracy theories.

~~~
logicrook
It depends a lot on your definition of 'conspiracy theory'. If you only
consider crazy babblings about martians, sure, but...

Do you remember that before Snowden, the whole NSA thing was a tinfoil-hat
worthy idea? And what the NSA does goes beyond what moderately tinfoily people
thought.

"Conspiracy theory" is often a good way to get rid of the pursuit of truth.

~~~
krapp
A conspiracy theory is merely a theory without corroborating evidence. The
reason conspiracy theorists tend to be disbelieved is that, more often than
not, their assertions are a matter of faith, and when they're right, they're
right in the way a stopped analog clock is right twice a day. If someone's
paranoid fantasies happen to correspond to reality, that doesn't make them
more trustworthy.

So while conspiracies shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, they also shouldn't
be given special credence, either, and skeptics should be assumed to be part
of an attempt to suppress the pursuit of truth.

That said, A lot of skepticism is as much an attempt to reinforce confirmation
bias as is conspiracy theory - and one could say that conspiracy theory is a
form of skepticism about the apparent natural order of things. So both sides
tend to suffer from a tendency to not actually care about the truth when that
truth could contradict their prejudice.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
> A conspiracy theory is merely a theory without corroborating evidence.

It is interesting that the only term that we had to refer to a "theory about
an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their
legal rights or to gain an unfair advantage" became a synonym for lunacy,
while leaving us with no short way to express the former concept.

A conspiracy theorist might suggest that we can be controlled with language.

~~~
krapp
To be fair, the more lunatic type of conspiracy theories are the ones most
people hear about. The X-Files might be more to blame for that perception than
the government.

Assuming of course, the X-Files wasn't secretly a propaganda campaign intended
to discredit conspiracy theorists by subconsciously associating certain
theories with fiction. But then again, the government has used urban legends
and conspiracy theory as a cover for its own operations before, i'm personally
certain they planted the Roswell story (and retraction) in order to cover up a
more mundane secret project and retrieval, but just never expected it to go as
viral as it did.

But even so, conspiracy theorists are half to blame for their own reputation
at least.

------
schoen
It seems that the original paper didn't consider participants' incentives to
keep the secret.

> All three are based in the United States, two in law enforcement or security
> services where secrecy is part of the job description and the cost of
> breaking it is extreme.

There must be differences between conspiracies where the conspirators agree
that the secrecy is proper or beneficial, and conspiracies where people are
forced into it or simply become aware of the secret by chance or as part of a
job. For that matter, there must be differences between conspiracies where
people are trying to unmask them (for example, national security reporters who
have heard a rumor about the existence of a secret program and are
investigating to follow up on it) and conspiracies whose existence hasn't been
hypothesized by outsiders.

Just today the Washington Post reported on internal CIA use of deception
against its own staff:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/eyewa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/eyewash-how-the-cia-deceives-its-own-workforce-about-
operations/2016/01/31/c00f5a78-c53d-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html)

> Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the
> agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false
> information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and
> former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.”

In this case, there could be hundreds of people who think they know the truth
about something, but really only a handful do. (The Post explicitly says
this.) So even if one of those hundreds of people reveals what they know, the
conspiracy won't really be revealed.

------
nickpsecurity
For any interested, I wrote an entire essay and some arguments in favor of
conspiracy theory on Schneier's blog here:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_psycholog...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_psychology_7.html#c1503021)

I argue that conspiracy, or key elements of it, is a natural part of human
behavior. You can see it in all kinds of legitimate things. You can also see
it in many criminal activities. A subset of it would be what we traditionally
call a criminal conspiracy good enough to leave only breadcrumbs. The
conspiracy theories... one's using good investigation rather than cherry-
picking... have to find and tie together these breadcrumbs to derive the
hidden activity.

Academics almost exclusively tend to analyze why people must be wrong-headed
if they investigate conspiracies, err, criminal activity. Instead, they should
look at those that were proven right and wrong to identify data points for
criteria or heuristics to help investigators get it right more often. What
constitutes good evidence of a probable conspiracy vs what is just bias of
researcher? A valid question and form of research.

However, it's nonsense and defies common sense to have their assumption that
conspiracies don't happen and investigating one is equivalent to mental
illness unless you have a confession in hand from perps.

~~~
FreedomToCreate
I agree that there are probably some conspiracies, even statistically its
bound to happen. People always have something to hide. Whats ridiculous though
are the infowars type of sites that literally state everything is a conspiracy
and that every action a government or cooperate official makes is to enslave
people and make more profits.

~~~
astrodust
These sites utterly fail to understand the difference between an active
conspiracy and merely _coincident interests_ for certain things to happen.

For example, if an industry is predicated on certain things happening or not
happening (e.g. military contractors being biased towards war) or denying
certain facts (e.g. oil companies playing down global warming) it may seem
like a widespread conspiracy but it's actually a bunch of independent actors
with the same motivations or bias.

There's also the fact that a large conspiracy needs a large motivating factor.
A group of criminals conspiring to steal something has a very clear reward.
The government spraying massive amounts of chemicals from airplanes to
do...stuff...is hardly a compelling reason.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"These sites utterly fail to understand the difference between an active
conspiracy and merely coincident interests for certain things to happen."

That's a good point. This happens a lot with oligopolies, too. Yet, there has
been evidence that some of them collude in secret often through intermediaries
to expedite this process. You usually see this with lobbyists but sometimes
outright scandals like RAM price-fixing. So, coincident interests doesn't
auto-eliminate possibility of a conspiratorial explanation but certainly
should be the _default_ belief for scheming, self-interested behavior.

"The government spraying massive amounts of chemicals from airplanes to
do...stuff...is hardly a compelling reason."

I smirked at the wording. The amount of mythology around chemtrails mostly
makes it a good example. Yet, you're off the mark on this one just as they
are.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-
Spray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray)

So, you can replace "stuff" with testing of bio-weapon systems and studies of
disease impact on unwitting subjects with legal immunity. Not sure if any of
the chemtrail claims or evidence overlapped with that as I didn't research it
much. Yet, it's a fact that the U.S. military secretly (for a while) flew
planes over U.S. cities that doused them with both chemicals and biological
agents to support our biological and chemical weapons capabilities. There were
many groups involved in that. They even blocked further investigation of all
the incidents and those effected. So, we know what's revealed is a fraction of
what went on but I'm not going to speculate size of that fraction. I just know
there's more.

This brings me to another facet of the problem: supporting irrational stuff
with rational stuff. The fact that certain conspiracies and lies happened
before seem to increase the likelihood people will believe a similar claim.
"Of course they're doing chemtrails on us: remember Sea-Spray!? Why wouldn't
they still be doing it?" That doesn't logically follow but does in many
people's minds. Hell, it often does in reality so much we have the meme that
"History Repeats." I think allowing recurring and similar rogue behavior in
industry and governments plants many seeds for other, false beliefs to show
up. Another reason to put an end to any schemes we identify. Affects signal-
to-noise ratio of our ability to detect sneakier schemes.

Good news is the biggest bullshiters in conspiracy claims are usually _really_
full of shit. Obviously. They practically out themselves. Helpful to
researchers like myself as we just filter them away.

------
creezy
Conspiracy's clearly don't exist, except when the US government is found
guilty of them in court of law:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/09/us/memphis-jury-sees-
consp...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/09/us/memphis-jury-sees-conspiracy-
in-martin-luther-king-s-killing.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_Assassinations)

~~~
c3534l
The argument in the paper (and I admit I find the analysis unconvincing) was
the a successful conspiracy requires a relatively small number of people
involved to successfully carry out and to go a long time undetected, not that
they don't exist.

------
Zigurd
If you throw everything together it's uninformative.

1\. Obviously, some things are successful "conspiracies" to continue nefarious
activities despite what would be public aversion: An obvious example is the
clergy sex abuse case.

2\. Obviously, other supposed conspiracies are bullshit: Chupacabra, Moth-man,
LGMs at Area 51.

3\. Other things are a kind of readily identifiable, if you are historically
literate, forms of opportunism: The rise of the security state and the neocon
wars after 9/11, for example. 9/11 wasn't an "inside job" but it was cynically
exploited about as far as possible. From Winston Churchill to Rahm Emanuel,
politicians have known not to waste a good crisis. "Cui bono?" Yeah, the
people who jumped on it and exploited.

------
wrsh07
Good point, worth skimming [if you've heard of the original article].

Maybe a better direction to go would be "how long until leaks occur" given the
number of people on a project. This isn't that different [although it's less
click-bait-y than mentioning conspiracies], and you'd have lots of examples
from industrial products.

How often do Apple product releases leak? How long does it usually take for
them to leak?

There should at least be enough data to do something interesting.

~~~
wnevets
>How often do Apple product releases leak? How long does it usually take for
them to leak?

how many of those are actually leaks and not "guerilla" marketing like movie
trailer leaks.

~~~
ikeboy
Wouldn't they leak every time if intentional? The fact that pics only rarely
get released in advance implies the leaks aren't authorised.

~~~
IanCal
Not necessarily, a constant reliable stream of information isn't as
'interesting' as more random results.

I think the right terms for this are "variable reward" and "variable interval"
here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement)

------
ender89
"Paper disproving the concept of conspiracy theories found to be erroneous;
spawns multiple conspiracy theories and adds credence to innumerable more"

------
quasarj
So, he never actually said it was a cumulative failure curve. I'll admit a
graph of the probability of failure per year (non-cumulative) may be less
expected, but doesn't necessarily indicate an error on the authors part.

And the bit about his estimates of the number of conspirators in the NSA.. he
says the exact same thing: "In the PRISM case, the figure of 30,000 comes from
total NSA staff. In reality, the proportion of those employed would would have
knowledge of this program would likely be a lot less but we take the upper
bound figure to minimize the estimate of p."

------
marcus_holmes
It always annoys me when reading about this paper, that the Climategate (parts
1 & 2) incident is ignored.

It doesn't prove that there's a climate-change conspiracy, but it was a bona-
fide attempt by someone who had access to internal documents to whistleblow.

I don't understand why NSA - Snowden is an example of a conspiracy being
exposed but UEA - Climategate is not.

Unless of course, it's career suicide for an academic to come within a mile of
being seen to portray climate change as a conspiracy. Which could be taken as
more evidence that there is a conspiracy.

~~~
magicalist
> _I don 't understand why NSA - Snowden is an example of a conspiracy being
> exposed but UEA - Climategate is not._

Because when Snowden's documents were analyzed the evidence matched reality,
while when the "Climategate" emails were analyzed all that was found was
normal researcher chatter?

Seriously, the critics of the emails quoted a few phrases out of context that
sounded bad but weren't and couldn't point to any change made to data or
methods that wasn't already publicly documented. Then a bunch of independent
bodies went through the emails and data and agreed all was good.

Mainstream rejection of a story is _not_ evidence that that story describes an
ongoing conspiracy.

You might as well ask why Obama - Birthers is not considered an example of a
conspiracy being exposed. Unless of course, it's career suicide for a
politician or journalist to come within a mile of being seen to portray his
citizenship as a conspiracy. Which could be taken as more evidence that there
is a conspiracy.

~~~
marcus_holmes
my point has nothing to do with whether you believe climate change to be a
hoax or not, or whether it is a hoax or not.

The point is that someone exposed a bunch of internal documents in an attempt
to whistleblow what they considered to be a conspiracy.

The reason there's no parallel with the Birther thing is that no-one in the
Obama camp attempted to whistleblow.

The reason there is a comparison with Snowden-NSA is because Snowden was a
whistleblower.

The paper in the article holds up the climate change conspiracy theory as "it
can't be a conspiracy because no-one attempted to whistleblow it" while
completely ignoring that someone DID try to whistleblow it.

Again, whether or not there was actually any conspiracy doesn't matter.
Someone "on the inside" thought there was and attempted to whistleblow. It
needs to be included in the list of failed conspiracies regardless of whether
it actually was a conspiracy or not.

~~~
marcus_holmes
thanks for the knee-jerk downvoting too.

At no point have I criticised anything about climate change, or even suggested
that it might not be the most urgent pressing thing that human society faces.

But the automatic downvoting/criticising happens to any post that dares to
mention anything like Climategate. I had to think twice before mentioning it
because I knew I'd lose some of my precious internet points.

If this happens here, where there are no consequences, what happens in
academia, where the penalties of being sceptical are so much more serious,
even career-threatening?

~~~
magicalist
> _If this happens here, where there are no consequences, what happens in
> academia, where the penalties of being sceptical are so much more serious,
> even career-threatening?_

Looks like some of your points were restored, but I'll note I downvoted you
for the above. It's ridiculous to assert some relationship between this
message board and academia, or that downvotes are responding specifically to a
single cherrypicked idea from that post.

It ends up being complaining about downvotes with a not so subtle insinuation
that the subject wasn't given a fair shot (when it was actually _widely_ and
very publicly investigated) and you're begging the question by asserting that
any dismissal of the question is evidence of dismissal of the question for a
specific reason, when it could just be that some questions have already been
addressed and so are no longer worth more time than it takes to give a
downvote.

------
headgasket
it's was a coverup attempt!!! :-)

------
_monster_
Are there massive conspiracies? Just look at the set of religions in the world
to control people-- and you will already have your answer.

~~~
fsloth
Conspiracy is usually something that is non-obvious. The sociodynamics of
religion are quite obvious, and closer to a mass hysteria.

The parish provides a sufficient population that enables social proof to
convince people automatically of the correctness of believing and belonging.
It's not that the priesthood makes people believe things - it's the people,
and the social proof and the social pressure that does this. The priesthood
gains political power (which all men yearn, consciously or not), and when co-
operate with the state provide a channel of mass control and communication.
Thus the people perpetuate the belief, and the state has no incentive to
intercede.

------
idiotclock
The title isn't grammatical. Math and Do must agree.

