The problems with conspiracy theories

1. Vanity: They operate on the false assumption that a cabal of wicked people are oppressing the rest of us, and only the “heroic” conspiracy theorists can see through the illusion. It is self-congratulatory and makes the conspiracy theorist the hero in his own narrative. Although there is absolute good and absolute evil, people are rarely absolutely good or evil. It’s generally not helpful to think in terms of the completely good guys (us) vs. the completely bad guys (them, e.g., the conspirators).

2. Collusion: they require thousands (perhaps millions) of people to cooperate in a lie, without any of them ever leaking their participation in this lie. Real conspiracies unravel quickly as people come clean (e.g., John Dean in Watergate).

3. Facts: Senator Moynihan once pointed out that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. The biggest problem of conspiracy theories is that they deny facts. While it is common for millions of people to come up with a mistaken narrative that ignores or misinterprets facts (e.g., that the New Deal ended the Great Depression), it is extremely unlikely that millions of people would cooperate to lie about facts. Every conspiracy theorist must also rely on “new facts” to debunk the “old facts,” but wouldn’t the new (marginal) facts be at least as problematic as the old (mainstream) facts they are trying to debunk? It’s self-defeating (like trying to put out fire with a flamethrower). So we can disagree about how we interpret the rise and fall of GDP (Tax cuts? Public investment? Charismatic leadership? Expanded trade?), but it’s unwise to disagree with the GDP numbers themselves. Once we do that, we have jumped from the realm of legitimate debate (disagreement of interpretation/narrative) and into the realm of illegitimate conspiracy theorizing.