Speeches about Conspiracies: How Can We Tell Whether a Conspiracy Is Real?

Recently, quite a few political speeches have touted various conspiracy theories. The system is rigged; the vote is rigged; Satan is influencing our politics; the government plans to implement martial law, and so forth.

A conspiracy occurs when people work in secret for evil purposes. There's a real intellectual problem here. Evil people do conduct conspiracies, and the public does need to uncover them. At the same time, a perfect conspiracy would be, well, secret, so how do we know about it? Unlike other things that people talk about in speeches, that no evidence supports a conspiracy theory seems like no refutation. After all, a really good conspiracy is unknown, right? Cue the X-Files theme.

Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time. Most of them turn out to be false:

How do we tell which conspiracies are real? There is no need for us to dwell in existential despair. Argumentation and debate theory gives us ways to evaluate conspiracy theories.

1. You can never expect any proof to be perfect. Human knowledge and wisdom are never perfect. This means, first of all, that you don't need perfect evidence to prove a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists don't need to prove a conspiracy beyond a doubt. They only need to prove it with probability.

2. Conspiracy speakers do, however, need to give proof. Richard Whately showed centuries ago that the burden of proof lies with the side that speaks against accepted belief. Most conspiracy theories arise from unanswered questions and minor inconsistencies. It is not legitimate for conspiracy theorists to ignore their burden of proof. Minor inconsistencies and unanswered questions prove nothing, and mean little. Conspiracy theorists need affirmative evidence to prove their points. Without proof, they don't have an argument.

3. Since proof can't ever be perfect, however, the government and mainstream media can't be held to perfection, either. Conspiracy theories arise when media or government reports contain errors or inconsistencies, or give rise to questions. Unfortunately, all of our communication contains errors and inconsistencies. That proves only that people are human. In particular, minor errors don't mean much. When the authorities quickly correct their errors, the errors mean nothing.

4. Questions aren't proof. The Kennedy assassination, for example, gave rise to questions. Big deal. Every big event gives rise to questions. If the questions are important, then the answer is to investigate further. But the questions by themselves don't prove a thing. If the investigation leads only to more questions, that is not the same as proof. Now, the Watergate affair led to questions, which led to investigations, which ultimately led to proof.

5. If the conspiracy speaker's questions are answered, the conspiracy theories should go away. If, instead, conspiracy speakers ignore answers they don't like, they are guilty of bad faith.

6. Sometimes, faced with unanswered questions, we can just say that we don't know. That's better than jumping to conclusions.

7. Finally, really big, really secret conspiracies are pretty rare. Massive conspiracies are impossible. Someone will talk. People want to tell their stories, and big conspiracies just don't stay secret very long.

People who listen to conspiracy speeches need to engage in critical thinking and apply the tests above.

PS: see my follow-up.