Paranoids Have Enemies Too

Tis the season for get-togethers with friends and family, and this year I’ve been to a few such including in my own house. In today’s hyper partisan world the old rule to avoid religion and politics is more advisable than ever – especially regarding the latter as ever more people make politics their religion and suffer no heretics. The temptation to be righteously offended is high. By and large, the rule was followed everywhere I was present. I say by and large because absolutely everything has become politicized including the food on the table and the wrappings of gifts, so complete avoidance is impossible... and then there are the conspiracy theories. These I rather enjoy when they come up in conversation, and fortunately a few did. I don’t mean I enjoy ones about contemporary politicians, which are wearyingly predictable in how they are advanced and received. (Fortunately, these were avoided.) I mean the ones less influenced by the emotions of the moment, such as those about JFK, MLK, RFK, Marilyn Monroe, faked moon landings, Pearl Harbor, the Illuminati, and so on. On a somewhat different level, let us not forget alien abductions, Bigfoot, live-Elvis-in-hiding, and Nessie. (In NJ, Nessie supposedly has a cousin named Hoppie in Lake Hopatcong.)

Many of these are not fringe beliefs, if by fringe we mean limited to a small percentage of the population. More than half of Americans believe the JFK assassination was the work of a conspiracy, for example. A 2016 Chapman University survey found more than half disbelieve the official account of 9/11. 33% of respondents said they believe the government is covering up the truth about the “North Dakota crash,” which was an unreal event entirely invented by the researchers for the survey. Underlying most of these is a tinge of paranoia: the notion that there are string-pullers behind the scenes who do not have the best interests of the rest of us at heart.

All of us have some opinions that will strike most others as odd, but what distinguishes someone who entertains a poorly supported hypothesis from someone who is a full-blown conspiracy theorist? It’s the habit of the latter of turning the burden of proof on its head: they demand that naysayers prove their theory wrong. Of course, proving a negative fact is seldom possible. Prove Marilyn wasn’t murdered. I can’t, but that doesn’t make it true. Can you prove you didn’t rob a convenience store in Allentown PA in 2002? Assuming you were old enough to do the deed in 2002, odds are you can’t. I can’t prove I didn’t (though I didn’t). Put another way, it is the difference between bias and prejudice. Someone with the former has an inclination to believe something but is persuadable by contrary evidence; someone with the latter has made up his mind (pre-judged) and will dismiss any contrary evidence as tainted. Everyone – absolutely everyone – has cognitive bias (See Blindspot by Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony G. Greenwald) but we still can choose not be governed by it – not to act blindly on the basis of it.

Intelligence is no barrier to odd beliefs and unlikely conspiracy theories. Quite the opposite. Michael Shermer (founding publisher of the magazine Skeptic, contributing columnist to Scientific American, and author of The Believing Brain) explains that intelligent folk are better able than duller folk to convolute, reinterpret, and interconnect data in creative ways. Moreover, they are every bit as motivated to do so: “our most deeply held beliefs are immune to attack by direct educational tools, especially for those who are not ready to hear contradictory evidence.”

Partly for this reason, I’m inclined to allow the odd bee in a person’s bonnet without it diminishing my opinion of him or her in a general way – provided the particular conspiracy theory isn’t actually vicious. Another reason is that there really are conspiracies in the world on large scales and small. On occasion the bee can be right. Edward Snowden, whatever one thinks of him, revealed rumors about the NSA were true. On a personal level, if you feel you are being followed, you might just be right: stalkers do exist out there. Even if a theory is wrong overall, it may yet contain a nugget of truth. I doubt the Illuminati are running anything from under the Denver Airport, for example, but there really are elites who interact with each other in the Bilderberg Group and elsewhere and who surely would like to run things if they could. Said Gore Vidal, “Anyone who isn’t paranoid isn’t in full possession of the facts.”

So, I’m happy (and entertained) to hear what people have to say about Roswell or Area 51 or HAARP or what-have-you. Despite my cognitive biases, I’ll even endeavor to remain open to persuasion. If persuasion fails, perhaps when I awake in an alien spaceship the joke will be on me.

Garbage - I Think I'm Paranoid