In the CS thread on the death of Art Bell I’ve been hammering on my utter contempt for the man (and for others who host conspiracy theory shows.) So I’ll ask here:
Is someone who provides a forum to advertize conspiracy theories who doesn’t believe the theories themselves morally culpable for the harm done to the lives of those who do believe those conspiracy theories, or to the people those believers then harass, threaten, or harm? Or are they merely providing harmless entertainment and bear no fault in people believing them?
First, and most important to the discussion, the uncomfortable and inconvenient point: conspiracy theory believers are stupid people. Not “most of the time”, not “in general”, but specifically and thoroughly each and every one of them.
I think the question becomes “How far is it necessary to go to protect stupid people from themselves, and how far to protect everyone else from stupid people”.
I’d say they are culpable whether they actually believe in them or not because they’re actively spreading around stupidity. It’s probably a degree worse if they’re doing so cynically and knowingly, but I can’t excuse the true believers either. They have a responsibility to themselves and the world to achieve the bare minimum level of not-stupid.
I assume from the context of the question that you’re not including those who present conspiracy theories with an overt attitude of “this is all just for fun and of course none of this is true and only wackos actually believe this,” or who examine them critically and discuss the actual evidence or lack thereof?
I’m not familiar with Art Bell, or AFAIK others of his ilk. I lean towards “anything that spreads or reinforces actual belief in unfounded conspiracy theories is harmful.”
I think there’s a distinction between talk show hosts who talked about mostly about paranormal encounters in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping, and trying to sell conspiracy theories that attempt to blend false facts with actual facts during prime time. Also, as another poster may have already said, Bell knew when to take his foot off the gas pedal so to speak. He did occasionally make references to controversial conspiracy theories but again, he didn’t really seem to push them too hard. His show was mostly entertainment.
I have very little patience with conspiracy theories, and I do not believe they are “harmless fun”.
My reasons basically boil down to:
conspiracy theories encourage people to shun valuable health interventions and other evidence-based science (vaccination and climate change are examples).
conspiratorial thinking encourages distrust and fear of government and academic institutions made up of skilled and dedicated individuals that do important work (for instance the CDC and many research-oriented med schools).
Conspiracy theory promotion is heavily tied to bigotry. Dedicated conspiracy theorists frequently buy into anti-Semitic and racist claptrap.
Conspiracy theories are offensive because they are so effing stupid and a waste of time and energy, both for the people believing in them, and the rest of us who feel obligated to refute their garbage.
Encouraging magical thinking about a “harmless” subject such as extraterrestrials validates magical thinking about science, politics and other important subjects.
Art Bell enabled an awful lot of crap in his career and bears responsibility for the mushrooming of conspiracy theories in general.
I’ve known many people who have espoused particlar conspiracy theories without any evidential basis who were otherwise very intelligent people by any objective standard. Being intelligent does not make one immune from the sort of willful blindness and unconscious bias that can lead to uncritical acceptance of a supposed conspiracy. I once knew the graduate of one of the best technical universities in the world who was convinced that HIV was manufactured by a Soviet bioweapons program and then stolen and disseminated by conspirators within the CIA,all based on the statement of one former Soviet bioweapons ‘expert’ with a dubious knowledge of virology.
As for Art Bell, although his particular brand of conspiranoia may have been mostly harmless, it exists due to and feeds upon an irrational distrust of authority which it posits to cover up “the truth about _____”. There are often rational reasons to question or doubt authorities but when you start from the default position that a claim is wrong just because it came from the government or other authority figure without any evidence to the contrary, you are inculcating the kind of mentality that leads to Holocaust denial, Russian Army garrisons under Lake Michigan, birtherism, et cetera, to the point that even verifable factual evidence is dismissed out of hand. There is less distance between Art Bell and David Icke than a fan of the former might be willing to accept, but they are clearly on the same continuum even if Bell is not malicious in his beliefs.
Belief in consiracy theories does undermine education and decisions based upon fact and accepted knowledge and trains people to apply false equivalence between competing theories, even if one is nearly universally accepted and others are without any real evidential merit. It leads to reflexive anti-vaxxism, quack medicine, racial prejudice, irrational investments, and a host of other ills that have harms beyond just the conspiranoists who believe them, and undermines attempts to fund and justify real science and medical research.
We can see the Russian/Trump conspiracy theory has created real problems for the country. It has been the most damaging CT in U.S. history. Even the most insane JFK and 9/11 theories don’t divide people like the Trump/Russia theory does.
CT’s are the result of incomplete information. Theorists try to fill in the gaps where their information can’t. A CT is only valid until a fact comes out to disprove it.
All ‘authority’ should ALWAYS be challenged from every angle, but only as far as you can within the law. I do think libel/slander punishments should be much more harsh, as well as 4th amendment violations.
Conspiracy theorists prevented Hillary from being elected. Without their digging the Hillary server would still be running strong, providing all sorts of information to bad people (Benghazi attack happened because terrorists knew security was low, not the conspiracy that a YouTube video with less than 10k views mocking Muhammad that Hillary and Obama knew was wrong but still pushed).
I blame an often intentional lack of information for conspiracy theories. Until then we are all doing what we should, fighting ignorance with an open mind…
When buddies were talking over beers and could not reach a large audience, maybe some of them were fun.
The problem is not that anyone can be a Sasquatch expert. It is that children don’t get vaccinated, political institutions lose credibility, people waste their money and lives, people do get hurt.
If someone claims that bigfoot is real, then that’s no big deal. I think that they are wrong, and deep down, they probably believe that they are wrong too. Either way, it is, for the most part, a harmless diversion from the boring day to day of reality. Personally, I believe in big foot, I saw him in a beef jerky commercial.
If someone claims that bigfoot illegally voted in an election, that starts to blur the lines between harmless fantasy and actionable reality in ways that cannot be healthy.
You mean the contacts between people closely associated with the Trump campaign and known Russian intelligence and business interests that has resulted in indictments of nineteen people and three companies to date including plea agreements by four prominent Trump campaign associates? That “conspiracy theory”?
I’m not sure even this is true. The fundamental principle of science is that a hypothesis should be tested by the weight of credible evidence, and “believing” in an idea despite the lack thereof versus tentative acceptance of an idea with an increasing collection of supporting evidence feeds into a false equivalence between those hypothesis still being refined by evidence and those without basis whatsoever. To be fair, we all (even the most rational of scientists) ‘believe’ certain things to be true without evidence because they fit into our view of the world and ourselves; it can be religion, or a belief in cosmic karma, or that if we think hard enough we can make a cold go away. But even within this framework we need to apply sufficient skepticism to separate our belief biases from factual theories objectively demonstrated by evidence and critical analysis.
For instance, one of the popular arguments against the global climate change hypothesis is how it could be ‘proven’ as a certainty when Bigfoot (or alien visitation, or whatever) hasn’t been ‘disproven’, as if the same body of evidence exists for and applies to both. It is an ignorant point of view but one shared by many people who only understand science as something people do with chemicals and flashy computer graphics rather than the collection and compilation of data to attempt to formulate and falsify hypotheses, and the difficult process of looking at complex and often seemingly contradictory data until an underlying principle emerges.
In the case of the Sasquatch, people latch onto a few scraps of supposed “evidence” including video and photographs which are admitted to be faked by the people who did them, and not the justified skepticism of how such a large bipedal mammal could survive without detection by zoologists in a country that has been exhaustively explored by professional scientists, educated amateur explorers and photographers, and backpackers without coming up with a single skeletal fragment or evidence of habitation and feeding. It is so implausible that any hypothesis in support of the existence of the Sasquatch now has to be incredibly convoluted to explain why we haven’t found any evidence to a point of absurdity. By letting ignorant (if not ill-intentioned) people and ‘educational’ programs continue to uncritically promulgate this basisless theory undermines the discipline of critical thinking that any functioning democracy requires to avoid exactly the kind of demagoguery and prejudice we are currently experiencing.
A popular forum encouraging critical, independent thought and rigorous application of scientific and forensic methods would be harmless because conspiracy theories and other specious
arguments that came up would be debunked; no a priori reason to subject any topic to damnatio memoriae (though feeding the trolls is a constant peril, and even on a show like “Mythbusters” many of the “myths” were more plainly something some idiot made up one day, so the editor/organiser would have a real job to do). Even intelligent people constantly need to work through mental gymnastics no less than those of the body.
It could even be educational. Maybe it wouldn’t be popular, though.
Yes, that is the one. Those charges are tangents to the publicized intent of the investigation, which was Trump/Russia collaboration. Manafort lied to an FBI agent during, what was to him, a passing conversation. Maybe he wouldnt have lied had he been in a formal interview. I find that method suspect, to charge somebody for lieing to the FBI when they didn’t know the person was FBI.
If there aren’t any other deeper indictments coming then this whole thing has been a theory with real damage. The crimes committed by Manafort and Gates were formalities and should have been uncovered without the special council. We don’t have any jurisdiction over Russian troll farms. I wonder how long it will take Russia to extradite these guys…
Strzok, Fusion, Steele all knew there was no real ‘there’ there, yet now here we are focused on a 10 year old sex night with a consenting woman leading to a lawyer office searched, all born because of the Russia/Trump Hacked the Election theory.
The entire country is/was divided on the Russia conspiracy that doesnt have any merit. Bill met Putin personally, yet that kind of stuff isn’t part of any investigation. If Ivanka had met with Putin and was paid to give speeches in Russia the country would have a meltdown.
Russia/Trump is the only conspiracy theory that has hurt the country. All of the others are either proven wrong/right or are staged against the people as a whole and not divisive. No other conspiracy theory has focused on feeding emotions rather than fact.
The fact that Trump made many dubious allegations against opponents during the election does not endear me to the man.
Insulting the disabled and war heroes is just crass behaviour. The Russia thing likely has some basis in fact — the main person who sees conspiracy is Trump. When a prominent person knowingly and publicly slanders people, is it “conspiracy”? (Linking Ted Cruz to Lee Harvey Oswald, etc.)
It kind of makes you miss “urban legends”.
Having a leader who allegedly believes this rubbish popularizes (and in the eyes of proponents, justifies) all sorts of bad behaviour.
People who dismiss facts or are unaccepting of new information are liars and potentially guilty of libel/slander, a crime. Since that charge is rarely brought up they are just marginalized.
Sorry, you cannot compare a matter where there is at least one ongoing investigation by a police authority to the nonsense that is Conspiracy Theories.
In all true CT cases you have amateurs declaring that they know more than the experts (every 9/11 CTer thinks they know better than Structural Engineers and Building Demolitionists, every anti-vaxxer thinks their Google U research is better than multiple medical studies). With the Russian Collusion you have a Special Prosecutor doing things, well, the way a Federal Prosecutor does.
With CTs you have politically or emotionally invested proponents manufacturing a story wherein their foe is a massive, all powerful force of pure evil, competent beyond all rational measure and able to hide events by forcing massive numbers of experts and witnesses to do their bidding by effective threads or huge payoffs (The Bush administration managing to manipulate the events of 9/11 with just 10 months in office and forcing trained engineers to go against their core principles. Doctors being forced by ‘Big Pharma’ to recommend vaccines by bribery for what is essentially a marginally profitable field of pharmacology). With the Russian thing you have…Putin screwing around and not even bothering to hide his tracks.
Russian Collusion divides this country you say? I say otherwise: Trump divides this country. He won with 3 million votes fewer than his opponent, he hasn’t even cracked 50% approval even in polls slanted in his favor, and his entire administration is rampant with arrogance and incompetence.
Bottle line, it’s this in a nut shell (so to speak). The real issue is that it undermines peoples reason, ability to judge facts and in the facts themselves. It’s definitely not ‘harmless fun’, it instead has a corrosive effect on society beyond that of some nut cases weird theories. I think the best example of this is the various 9/11 CTs that we are all still dealing with.
