deperplex

Which is worse, censorship or propaganda? Hugo Mercier observes in Not Born Yesterday, a wonderful and important book, that Hitler and Goebbels were disappointed that their propaganda had no effect on non Nazis. The propaganda was useful for rallying the choir and goading Nazi enthusiasts to act decisively and violently, but didn't persuade non Nazis.

This should not be surprising. We are all inundated with propaganda from many different sides, but given all the options, we choose the propaganda that we want to believe. The NYTimes propagates anti-Trump views, but it has no effect on Trump supporters, and Fox has no effect on NYTimes readers.

Here's the challenge for those who believe that propaganda is dangerous:

on what basis do some citizens read the NYTimes and others watch Fox? If they are choosing one and not the other, then they must already know the poison they desire; they already know what to expect; they already know the outlines of the content.

The reason propaganda seems so effective with its audience is because the audience already believes it. Persuasion is superfluous. It has no role in propaganda.

Why, then are they reading or listening to their preferred resource?

To confirm their bias. To get more bullet points to defend their bias. To get aroused and enraged by what they already are angry about. To feel triumphant in how right they are. To revel in the flood of evidence that arouses and excites and justifies their views and strokes them as right and good and better than their opponents and more insightful and in all ways superior. It's an orgasm of self-righteousness.

That's the purpose of news media, folks. That's why it sells. It's all spin and propaganda, and it's effect is not to inform and change minds, but to justify and arouse the already formed, closed mind.

And what happens when propaganda is presented to the opposed mind? Resistance, rejection, dispute, disgust, dismissal, outrage and anger -- a leveling up of one's bias to 11, an increase in emotional commitment to that bias stirred into a wild frenzy of anger, and a joyous sharpening of critical thinking against the propaganda.

Propaganda not only fails to persuade, it enrages its opponents. In social interactions, for every antagonistic push there is a greater and opposite pushback.

What about censorship, the absence of information, whether propaganda or fact? Where there is no information, where there is no push, there is no resistance. Where there is no resistance there is no incentive to find contrary evidence. Nothing comes of nothing.

The virtue of censorship is complacency. Ignorance is bliss. The virtue of propaganda is the relentless seeking for evidence in favor or against. The danger of propaganda is not fooling the public, but polarizing the public, arousing it, and the mutual demonization of the polar teams.

So which is worse? Falsehoods and fights, or silent, ignorant distrust? Which would you regret most?

The Great Reset deception and fake

Maybe the most remarkable instance of conspiracy theory hype is The Great Reset and Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum. For years I heard about this Great Reset program to control the world -- the super-rich meeting in secret deciding on how to parcel out the future of surveillance and control.

It didn't seem to matter to this conspiracy theory that the Davos WEF meetings weren't actually secret, that they were often broadcast. I even received videos from the WEF in my email box every couple of weeks. Far from conducting closed meetings to concoct nefarious plots, the WEF and Davos crowd seem to be proud of what they are doing. They want everyone to know as much as possible about it. They seem to want people to engage with their debates and concerns.

What shocked me the most, though, was reading Schwab's own book COVID-19: The Great Reset. To my utter surprise I learned that the Great Reset was not a program or plot at all or even a set of proposals. There isn't a single proposal in it. And that's because The Great Reset refers to the current economy rebounding from the pandemic. That's it. That's all it refers to. Not a plan. Not a proposal. Not a program. It's the economy rebounding however it happens. That's The Great Reset.

Naming the post-Covid economy a great reset was Schwab's prediction or expectation that the post-Covid economy would rebound from the pandemic with novel technologies of unprecedented power growing and spreading with unprecedented speed. His view of this rebound is that society and gov'ts and ordinary people are not prepared. Given the history of economic growth, he expects that unless we all prepare, the rich will get much richer and more powerful, and the little guy is going to be left on the wayside. The Great Reset, far from a program or a set of proposals, it's the expectation that the economy will rebound out of control -- without any plan. And, without any prep, it'll be business as usual, with ordinary people left with the short end of the stick. He thinks we can do better to protect the little guy, prevent further environmental degradation, and rebalance inequalities in favor of the 99%.

His book doesn't contain a single proposal. It's all conditionals to consider: if people are afraid of future pandemics, they will very likely want to work remotely. More remote work will change the character of cities, of real estate and the fabric of social relations. A lot more zoom. But if people are tired of zoom and want to risk the dangers of socializing in person, they'll want to return to dense cities and offices. Is there a proposal here? No, it's just thinking about what the future may hold and how we might want to prepare for it so we don't find ourselves with our pants down while Elon Musk steals those pants and sell them back to us at a monopoly price from Mars.

Notice that the conspiracy theory has got the entire thing all upside down. There is no such program called "The Great Reset". The belief that there is such a program is a fiction invented entirely by the conspiracy theorist. The Great Reset itself is a very real, nonfictional thing: it's the economy that we're currently in, the rebound from the pandemic. But it's not a program. It's the absence of any program!

Were Schwab's expectations borne out? Well, Musk is wealthier than ever and LLMs have been widely embraced. But they haven't made all that much of a difference so far. Overall, no, The Great Reset wasn't very great. President Mump is probably more of a game-changer than the economic rebound from the pandemic, which meant inflation for a while and interest rate disruption and that's about it.

So, yes, Schwab hyped the dangers of the Great Reset. I imagine he was hoping the public would take a greater interest in thinking about how to create a better society for the future. Maybe he got some attention for that program of thinking about prep. His efforts to publicize the debate certainly did fuel a lot of conspiracy theories. Every good deed shall be punished.

It's worth asking who is deceiving whom, what is fake here and what is real. The conspiracy theory is a fiction. It takes a description of what's really happening in society and renames it as a plan, a nefarious plan devised by a cabal. The fakery, the deception and the nefarious conspiracy is the conspiracy theory. The Great Reset itself isn't even a plan and there aren't even any proposals in it.

It's very much a piece with the Gates-Musk paradox, which you may read about here.

In public affairs and in mainstream news media, the focus is on danger. Danger sells, and each news medium peddles its fears to its particular market share of political bias. The Republicans are dangerous to the NYTimes' readers, the Democrats are a national danger to the Fox watchers. Philanthropy, on the other hand, isn't a big seller although it purports to fix a danger. Conspiracy theory does a run around all of it.

Engagement with politics in the news assumes some kind of investment in political affairs -- that voting, for example, for one party or person and not another will actually matter. Suppose you are convinced that it doesn't matter, that the world is not only beyond your control but also in the control of a remote elite. On such a view, philanthropy can only be a deception, and solutions are impossible. You cannot have an investment in political affairs since you can make no difference. That's the conspiracy theory mindset. And there's a lot of truth to it. Does the NYTimes reader's vote actually make a difference? Who is the fool here?

Well, both. The conspiracy theorists are wise to their own political impotence, but have fabricated theories to confirm their own distrust and powerlessness.

The conspiracy theory is the perfect convergence of distrust and fictionalization, Tom Gilovich’s source of bias – must I believe the benign story I’ve been told, can I believe a fiction of fear? Can I make up a story that at once confirms my fear and distrust of information? A conspiracy theory will not only confirm my fear, but because it is contrary to the mainstream story, the fiction will also confirm my distrust of mainstream information. Foolproof. It’s the perfect story.

Monday, March 24, 2025

how the Big Pharma conspiracy theory doesn't get the medical establishment's flaws

Go to any hospital or medical advice website and you'll find this prominent advice on health (the order may differ): exercise; eat lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes, olive oil -- the "Mediterranean diet" -- and fish; don't smoke; avoid drinking alcohol; restrict red meat; don't eat processed meats. Nowhere will you find pharmaceuticals on their list of health recommendations.

I've written elsewhere about the role of the oblivious obvious -- the tendency to ignore the normal, the frequent, the common and the benign in favor of attending only to the harmful and dangerous, to the unusual that is also unusually scary. The Big Pharma-Medical Establishment conspiracy is a case in point.

The conspiracy has a rational principle: "Follow the money". Big Pharma is making big bucks, it colludes with a gov't agency, the FDA, doctors prescribe these pharmaceuticals every day, and the insurance companies and the retail pharmacies are all taking their share. So there's a lot of evidence in support confirming the conspiracy theory.

But there's this disconfirmatory evidence and it's in your face -- the oblivious obvious. No medical website promotes pharmaceuticals for overall health. It's all almost exactly what you'd find among New Agey, down home, no-money-to-follow advice: eat well, exercise, avoid unhealthy addictions.

[I've written elsewhere on how misleading and cheap confirmatory evidence is, and how much more information disconfirmatory evidence provides, so I'm not going into it here.]

It's also true that doctors only prescribe pharmaceuticals and not herbal remedies or life-style prevention. That's very much consistent with the conspiracy theory.

So what's going on? Is there a conspiracy or not?

Consider why people go to the doctor -- the doctor-visit market. Is it to get life-style prevention advice? While some small percent of people go to get regular check-ups, almost everyone who is in a health crisis and needs immediate intervention goes to a doctor, close to 100% of them. The doctor-visit market is filled with exigent cases. And those who go for a regular check-up, if there's no exigency, they are not prescribed anything except possibly the healthy advice listed above.

A friend goes for a check-up, gets an EKG which finds that his arteries are 95% occluded. Without immediate intervention, he's likely to die any moment, in fact, it's a wonder that he's alive. Should the doctor advise him to exercise and eat lots of fruits and veggies and send him on his way?

Why not? Well, for one reason, he'd be sued for malpractice. The patient needs intervention. The preventative advice is too late. The Mediterranean diet might be prescribed after recovery from the intervention -- in this case minor surgery to insert stents -- but there is an obvious ethical and legal requirement to intervene, not just provide nice health tips.

The doctor-visit market is determined by these two phenomena: patients visit doctors for intervention, and the intervention must cover the doctor's legal liability. This is also why the doctor can't prescribe herbs rather than pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals are tested and approved by the FDA, so if they fail, it's not the doctor's fault and the doctor cannot be successfully sued for prescribing the pharmaceutical appropriate to the symptoms presented.

And why are the herbs not tested and FDA approved? Because the pharmaceutical -- as the conspiracy theorists accurately explain -- makes money for the pharmaceutical industry, the herb doesn't. So there's little funding for herb testing. Of course that's not a conspiracy, it's just what economists euphemistically call a market failure. It's a big failure.

But it's not the only failure of the medical vocation. As a vocation, doctors have to follow the limits or restrictions of these two phenomena of their market -- patients are there for either testing or intervention and the intervention is either surgery or pharmaceutical. That's all they can offer you. Don't be asking why they don't prescribe herbs or life-style advice or why they don't know about nutrition. It's not their job because they're not in that market. They are in the health exigency market regulated by the FDA and law suits and research funded by Big Pharma.

It's not a conspiracy, and viewing it as a conspiracy doesn't help understanding it. What helps is to understand that when you go to a doctor, don't expect instant, immediate natural cures. Expect either a pharmaceutical that is legally covered, or surgery that, done by someone with experience, is likely to help, provided that the doctor in question isn't just banking on unnecessary interventions.

And there are quacks too. As the joke goes, what do you call a C student in med school? "Doctor."

A friend points out that doctors don't know much about their patients. They don't know the life circumstances that might be causing anxiety or stress. But this is equally true of your acupuncturist who will prescribe based on pulse and a quick look at the tongue. So this criticism of western medicine seems to me to be evidence of an anti-mainstream distrust bias.

What's the source of the bias? Is it that western medicine refuses to acknowledge traditional methods? This might be an overreaction to the constraints on the doctor-visit market. Doctors can't be recommending methods that aren't legally covered. Now some doctors may be unwarrantedly skeptical of traditional medicine, but without the necessary research, that skepticism can't be faulted even if it can be ignorantly biased: the outcome of skepticism and legal cover are the same. So patients have to learn to fend for themselves, research for themselves, assess the risks and take their chances.

the two types of conspiracy theories

We're all familiar with conspiracy theories, but not so familiar with their history and development. Their changes over time should tell us something about either society, politics, or social psychology or all of these.

In 1964, shortly after JFK was assassinated, the historian Richard Hofstadter published a piece called "The paranoid style in American politics" about the history of conspiracy theories running through U.S. politics from the inception of the republic to the 1950's McCarthy era. He finds a continuity and development from the 19th century fears that Catholics are coming to take over our gov't and society, and calls for action before it's too late, to the 20th century fear that the communists are not just coming to take over our gov't and society, but are already infiltrating gov't, and calls to root them out before it's too late.

The common trait of these conspiracy theories are the paranoid "they're coming for us" and "we must act now before it's too late". The conspiracy theories are a call to arms.

In 2014, thirteen years after 9/11, Lance deHaven-Smith published a short book titled Conspiracy Theory in America, in which he identifies the conspiracies that have become familiar in our political discourse, what he calls state crimes against democracy (SCADs), focusing on events perpetrated by gov't itself, not by some group infiltrating the gov't or society. Those conspiracy theories are not about "they are coming to infiltrate our gov't". That alarm is already too late. The agent perpetrating these SCADs is the gov't itself. They control our gov't; they are our gov't.

Setting aside whether any of these conspiracies are true or not, SCAD theory is a radical departure from the older conspiracy style. For one thing, you can't really do much about SCADs, so the alarmism isn't a call to action so much as a call to understanding, drawing aside the veil of truth. It's a confirming of distrust of the gov't but also of any media that endorse gov't propaganda. It's not just a distrust of a particular immigrant population or political ideology or a particular interest. It's a world of paranoia, with distrust of information at its heart. AI arrives at the worst moment in this trajectory towards distrust of information. The prognosis is dark.

In 2023, Naomi Klein published Doppleganger, shortly after the Covid pandemic mania subsided. Although she doesn't mention deHaven-Smith, she finds the deHaven-Smith style of conspiracy thinking rampant in the AltRight in its response to Covid: the AltRight sees a gov't lying to us about masks, about vaccines, about the origin of the virus. (Klein assumes and accepts the Democratic-NYTimes/Atlantic/NPR-blue Covid policies, recommendations and propaganda without question and without any scientific support or citation or any support or citation. Almost all of her citations are of fictional accounts -- novels -- about doppelgangers. Lots of those.) Her criticism of these AltRight SCAD theories is that they are missing the real danger which is not Bill Gates plotting to control the world, but capitalism; not a nefarious cabal that run us, but a profiteering system that is out of control. The immediate fear portrayed in the book is the fear of the AltRight appropriating all activism and criticism of gov't and its capitalist system. The AltRight is replacing the Left's Marxist criticism with fringe deHaven-Smith style conspiracy theories. IOW, the purpose of the book is to call the alarm that the AltRight, full of false fringe SCAD conspiracy theories, is coming for us, is infiltrating our politics and social discourse and we must wake up to their threat before it is too late!!

Full circle. Need I mention that the vaccines, though they seem to have prevented many, many deaths, did not prevent infection or contagion, the virus posed little threat to the younger generation, mask mandates did not work, and the lab leak theory is more probable than the wet market theory. And all of these facts were well-known from the beginning. When the vaccine was first rolled out, those who first got it knew that it would not prevent infection or contagion but would ameliorate symptoms, lowering the likelihood of death by Covid, not saving others from Covid. (I asked the old guys who were the first to be vacccinated, and they were quite clear and candid about it.) Anyone looking at people's masking behaviors, restaurant allowances, flight dinners in crowded plane cabins, use of cloth masks and wearing masks under the nose etc. -- any rational being knew that mask mandates could not possibly work even if masks themselves worked. Contact tracing and forcible quarantining might have worked, but this was not asked of us.

These facts do not, of course validate the AltRight SCAD theories. It doesn't validate any anti-capitalist theory either. The system to blame is not capitalism, but two-party democracy and a body politic divided between rural and urban, progressive and traditional, professional-prestige-class and disparaged-disrespected class, the educated elite privileged NYTimes readers, who reap the many benefits of the society and its gov't, and the non elites who know they are not respected by those elites; a two party system divided between red team and blue team, Us vs Them, distrust of in-group for the out-group. The structure to blame is the polarization within our society, and the politicization of pandemic response very much aligned with MAGA on one side and Trump Derangement Syndrome on the other.

To be fair, the facts do validate the AltRight's distrust of mainstream information, and that's the essence of the deHaven-Smith style conspiracy cultivated on the Right. And the facts do something else as well. They show that Klein's unquestioning acceptance of the Democratic-NYTimes/Atlantic/NPR-blue propaganda was wrong. What she gets right is her Hofstadter paranoid conspiracy "they are taking over". Distrust of information is spreading widely. COVID killed trust for many.

We're living now in a society of conspiracy theories on every side. Social capital -- the trust of one another and of gov't and of gov't for its people -- is waning. Polarization feeds distrust, and liberal democracy -- the engagement of voters in governance and the engagement of government officers in its voter base -- feeds polarization. The erosion of social trust and trust in information may be the great weakness of liberal democracy, its danger and downfall.

PS after the Trump inauguration: the autocratic means of administration may in the long run be healthy for our divided public.

fungible and non fungible fictions: money vs religion in war

Whom do you trust, and why? Would you trust someone who believes in a fiction that you know is a fantasy?

On the neoliberal understanding of international relations, trade fosters international peace since war is an obstacle to trade and wealth creation. Money is transpersonal and transnational -- like math and music, it is a universal language, math a measure, music an emotional manipulation, money a price of value.

Like religion, money is also a kind of fiction based on a faith. In the case of religion, the faith depends a bit more on the individual's investment in the religion than on the coreligionists or their investment. If one's coreligionists all turn atheist, one may maintain one's religion without loss of belief. The faith in money depends entirely on the collective investment. Without that collective faith, no value.

Unlike religion, money is most valuable to those who have the least of it, yet those with a lot of it stand to lose the most if the currency collapses. These paradoxical asymmetries are not only ironic but socially dysfunctional.

(Compare, for example: I have no religion, so I have no use for religion at all, aside from an intellectual curiosity about those who believe and the history of believers. And those who are most invested in their religion are impervious to any attack on it. The contrast with money is stark.)

The classical economic idea is that all people have needs, creating a vast demand for certain kinds of goods. On that view, trade and comparative advantage are the most efficient means of wealth creation for everyone. Religions, however, are not universal needs and don't respond universally to any basic needs they might serve. Some of us believe in multiple gods, others none but ghosts of ancestors, others have only one, some none at all. Religions are like local currencies, except that there's no currency exchange rate, in fact there's no exchange market at all. When you convert someone to another religion, you expect the convert to give up the old religious doctrines and values, and you're frustrated if they don't. On the contrary, currency is not essentialist at all. One of its main purposes is to serve as a medium of exchange. It's anti-essentialist. It serves some other purpose than itself, and it's a universal purpose.

One might conclude that religions, lacking an exchange market, wouldn't interact with money, a medium of exchange. But they do in national contests, especially in war, and despite the universal recognition of trade trust. It's because religion is a non fungible fiction. Both properties -- non fungiblility and fictionality -- are essential to its interactive character.

Suppose I have a carrot and I want to sell it. It's not a fiction, but a local resource -- I have it with me, you don't. It has a value on the market, so anyone can see and understand its price, and so anyone can buy it either to use or to resell. It requires only a little trust between buyer and seller to achieve an exchange.

Suppose I have a religious belief. It has a value to my coreligionists, but it's really a fiction, so not only does it have limited value to the non believers but I know that others don't see its value. Can I trust those others? How can I, when the belief I hold is a fiction that no one else would buy unless sharing that fiction.

The assumption that others will not share the fiction, should incline the believers to justify the fiction to strengthen it. No one is more entrenched in their views than when challenged by criticism. The fact that the religion is an unbelievable fiction doesn't make it any the less believed. On the contrary, its fictionality inspires more steadfastness of belief. The unbelievabilities flourish and multiply in religions -- djinns, angels, devils, ghosts. It's a Pandora's box, an open door to common-fare imaginings (very unlike the extraordinary revelations of science, which are far beyond common imagination, see the post on the mediocrity of art and the unbounded imagination of science).

Religion, like property, leads to conflict. In the case of property, the threat of violence is essential and definitional: "it's mine" means no more nor less than "If you try to take it, imma hurt you" or I'll get someone or some authority to hurt you. But trade, the exchange of resources through money, overcomes this obstacle on the property side. It's the difference between trade and sharing.

Religion has a dual relation to property. If you adopt my religion, I'm none the poorer for it. That's one reason why many are surprised by woke objections to cultural appropriation. You adopt my religion or religious ideas or values, I don't lose; if anything, I win! But if you try to take my religious beliefs from me, then my beliefs are like property, my loss.

It's often observed that money is a fiction. This is misleading. Money is a fungible fiction, so it facilitates exchange. Not so with non fungible fictions like religion.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

The Gates-Musk paradox and the surprising source of distrust

Ever notice that fringe conspiracy theories surround liberal philanthropists but not brazenly selfish libertarians?

Bill Gates, who wants to end malaria, not for himself -- he lives in Washington State for god's sake -- but to help the helpless in the tropics (and yes, selfishly to cleanse his conscience and legacy and yes, he invests in the cures, but he could invest those funds in real estate and earn even more). Gates is the regular target of some of the most nefarious conspiracy theories, among them some of the most absurd ones like promoting vaccines with the intent of inserting a chip in every body to surveil or control us all.

Meanwhile Elon Musk, who shows no interest in protecting the little guy or helping the helpless, whose philanthropic trust gives money to his own enterprises -- iow, it's just a selfish money-laundering scheme -- Elon Musk who believes in libertarian selfishness and promotes selfishness, even taking gov't subsidies to float his business and fatten his wallet, who plainly and publicly buys political influence, who really does seem to be intent on actually controlling the world, and who owns the public square itself under the pretense of ridding it of censorship (although his first act was to restrict criticism of himself), this Elon Musk who actually, physically and literally inserts chips in human brains at Neurolink -- that Elon Musk has not a single fringe tinfoil hat conspiracy attached to him. Ever notice that? Isn't that odd?

I want to call this the Gates-Musk paradox.

I want to be clear at the outset, that I'm not complaining that the conspiracy theorist is treating Gates unfairly and I'm not defending Gates' philanthropy. Gates could be a misguided, arrogant, meddling fool and Musk a brilliant hero of our time (though I doubt that, given other proposals I've written about here). I'm interested only in understanding the paradox to see it if tells us anything about theorizing and theorists, that is, about human thinking.

This paradox, btw, is not just true of Gates and Musk. It is a general character of conspiracy theory, maybe even a law.

Consider Soros, another classic philanthropist spending his money on helping the helpless whether they be despised immigrants or victims of racism or of autocracy. Whatever you think of his goals or his means, they are not selfish. Yes, he wants to influence gov'ts, but to encourage liberal democracy so that all its members have equal access to rule. You can't call that enslaving the world -- forcing people to choose for themselves what they want of their gov't -- but world enslavement is what he's accused of attempting. Meanwhile, Peter Thiel promotes monopoly as the best business strategy -- not to benefit society or the little guy, but to make most money fastest for the monopolist alone. There are no elaborate fictionalized conspiracy theories or wacky conspiracy theorist calls to alarm surrounding Thiel. But Soros? He's second after the Federal Reserve among conspiracy theory targets.

So what's going on with this Gates-Musk paradox? It seems as if the conspiracy theory crowd have purposely chosen the wrong targets, welcoming the dangerous Musks and Thiels and Kochs, while shining light on shadows that they themselves have cast for the purpose of shining a light on the unsuspecting. Crazy, no?

It takes more effort to invent a danger than to acknowledge a public one in plain sight. So why all the attention to the benign philanthropists, embracing all the while the bullying, controlling and even transparently lying self-promoters?

The obvious response is that a conspiracy theory has to have an element of secrecy and deception so they can't attach to Musk and Thiel or Charles Koch or the late Sheldon Adelson. And of course that's true about a conspiracy. But consider what that means about conspiracy theories and the theorists' concerns. Are the theorists concerned about nefarious actions and their dangers or are they concerned about secrecy and deception? Is conspiracy theory about danger or about distrust? The Musks and Thiels also do not inspire trust. The conspiracy theorist is not distrustful of the targets, they're distrustful of reality, of information. The essence of a fringe conspiracy is not just distrust, it's the fictionalization of distrust, the irreality that confirms their distrust.

There's a lot more to be said about this paradox, but I want to stop here with this consequence of it: the paradox means that distrust of reality and information (not of danger nor of conspirators) is the focus of conspiracy theory. It may have been obvious that distrust was the driving emotion or cognitive principle among conspiracy theories. My goal in this post is to provide the evidence that this is so. The paradox is that evidence.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

best posts

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

propaganda vs censorship: asymmetrical effects in escalation bias and polarization