"I Know More Than You Do..."

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. — Confucius

Why is simple sometimes so difficult?

The Internet has been an absolute boon for conspiracists, contrarians, gotcha-trolls, and all sorts of people with too much free time and a lack of introspective self-control. It provides a potential audience of millions for every hare-brained, crackpot, and connect-imaginary-dots idea that fertile imaginations unfettered by the instant feedback of an in-person eye-roll or "just... stop" admonition. Without that counterweight, there's little down side to effluviating an endless stream of predictions, theories, and assertions that often come down to:

The masses have been fooled, but I know the real truth.

An Internet acquaintance proffered this tangled-web conglomeration of global events that asserts a deep Machiavellian/Star-Chamber scheme to take over the world. The author, an Archbishop in the Catholic Church, figures the nefarious intents of a number of big money players are coordinated toward a common, nasty goal.

Taken individually, bad motives can be assigned to countless actors of consequence on the world stage. It is beyond doubt, for example, that George Soros and Bill gates spend some of their money in furtherance of political outcomes he desires. So does everyone else who plays in the sandbox. Heck, I do as well - The Roots of Liberty website costs me some bucks to maintain. That's how the world works, and there's nothing secret or cabalistic about it. Sure, you or I can object to another's political views or goals, and be irked that he's spending big bucks to advance an agenda we dislike. Mike Bloomberg has spent tens of millions on pushing his gun control agenda, an agenda I vehemently reject, but his money his right.

Enter the Motte and Bailey gambit, the Furtive Fallacy, and the cognitive bias that results in illusory superiority.

First, Motte and Bailey. The gag here is to start with basic, verifiable facts or realities. Yes, there are globalists, people who'd like to see one world government superseding nations and having authority over them. Then, escalate things by playing connect-the-dots. Just as our ancestors looked at the night sky and saw a bear, a scorpion, an archer, a hunter, a crab, a lion, a bull, and all sorts of other images in a sky with a random but not uniform distribution of dots, assigned magical properties to the connected dots, people today map out elaborate conspiracies (always of nefarious intent - hold that thought) to overrule the simple and obvious explanations.

Next, the Furtive Fallacy, an "informal fallacy of emphasis in which outcomes are asserted to have been caused by the hidden misconduct or wrongdoing by decision makers." Bad things mean there are malignant puppet masters at work. COVID was biological warfare against the west. Or, COVID is being used to establish a new domestic order. Ukraine's invasion is the result of decades of manipulation by a clandestine financial oligarchy, with Putin simply fighting back against the New World Order.

Humans are wired with both a complexity bias and a bias toward explanation over "I don't know." It's why the ancients concocted a tale of Apollo riding a chariot across the sky to explain the Sun, and why the Celestial Spheres model was crafted to keep the Earth at the center of the universe.

Humans are also wired to emphasize danger and doom. It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism, and it’s why the tales of the Boy Who Cried Wolf and Chicken Little emerged.

Finally, there's the "I'm special" bit. 80% of drivers consider themselves above average. People feel safer driving a car than flying, because they are in control of the car. Re the matter at hand, we want to feel like we have greater insight than the masses who believe the popular explanation of or for something.

All these human tendencies combine into a witch's brew of conspiratorial craftsmanship.

Especially for those in comfortable settings, with little at risk. Rebecca Sugar, a columnist at the newly reconstituted New York Sun, offers the phrase “Cocktail Party Contrarian.” The specific context of her coinage aside, it’s an apt turn of phrase, suggesting as it does the conversational reflex of gainsaying the consensus. There are bonus points for standing out in the crowd, no matter how unstable the house of cards one stands on may be.

And, when one of the many houses of cards actually proves out, there is a trumpeting to the heavens about the prognosticator's insight. Just as a degenerate horse gambler will cling to that trifecta he hit last decade and ignore his broad historic losses, a conspiracist will fixate on the one correct claim over the hundred that didn't pan out.

All this is why I am eternally skeptical of claims of Machiavellian brilliance guiding everyone via intricate maneuvers. Not only can such plots never remain secret (three can keep a secret if two are dead), politics on any scale is like herding cats, and the bigger the scale, the more and wilder the cats are.

Start with the simplest explanation that covers all the known facts.

Apply the Razors of Scrutiny.

Remain open to the possibility that the popular conclusion is wrong, but demand compelling evidence that backs the alternate assertion.

Finally, accept that simply being "that guy with the secret knowledge" only gets you brownie points if you're consistently correct. Being a contrarian for its own sake is mere narcissism, and annoys everyone around you. Now, if you're the archbishop whose grand expose of the NWO prompted this thousand-word eye-roll, you probably don't give the slightest hoot about skeptics. Get a big enough audience (a LOT of people love this sort of stuff, as its prevalence shows), and you achieve your notoriety, even if you're flat-out wrong.

Therein lies the problem. The feedback loop is a bad one. There is little cost to peddling elaborate theories, other than perhaps a reputational hit over time. There's plenty of reward, however, both internal and external. All the human wiring that prompts this behavior works by generating favorable chemical reactions, and all those who eat up "secret knowledge" and Reptilian conspiracies validate and reinforce the authors' conjurings.

High-stress world events like Putin's invasion of Ukraine are fertile ground for this behavior. My social media feed is littered with "I know more than you do" posts. Not of analysis or conclusions, but of complex alternate theories that explicitly reject the analytic conclusions in favor of green-curtain puppet masters and lever-pullers.

Not all conspiracy theories are false, of course.

Just the vast majority.

As for the Archbishop? I cannot fathom a more backward way of ushering in the globalist New World Order than by militant nationalism. His “I know more than you” screed makes no sense at all.

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An addendum.

Take a look at the comments in this screenshot of a Facebook post regarding the first recipient of a pig heart transplant.

See the two who posit misery and suffering, with no basis to do so? The linked article made no mention of suffering or permanent intubation, yet rather than celebrate either the man’s extended life or the prospect of medical advances that will save many other lives, they cough up some bile. The recipient of the first human heart transplant took place 55 years ago, and the patient lived 18 days. Today, the average life expectancy of a human heart transplant recipient is a bit over 9 years.

This event is a big deal, and both the patient and modern medicine should be celebrated. But, sure as the sun rises, a couple obnoxious commenters, offering no basis for their assertions, affirm the old adage that people suck.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.