The Conspiracy Rules

Awhile back I got started watching Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s TV series on conspiracies. As noted in the list of my eight favorite conspiracy movies, I’m fond of this kind of stuff. However, Ventura and his crew go more than a little overboard.

In their defense, it’s hard to make an entire series out of a subject like this without delving at least a little into the realm of pure bullshit. Further, they do raise some questions about things that deserve to be questioned. And of course it’s wrong to expect high-quality intellectual analysis from a former professional wrestler.

However, Ventura’s show does serve admirably as a petri dish full of specimens of the logic errors that form the basis of the Conspiracy Rules. Just to make them easier to remember (in case you need to apply them during a cocktail party conversation or when accosted by a pamphlet-wielding true believer on the street), I’ve narrowed it down to five rather than the usual eight.

Conspiracy Rule One: Anyone who has a motive to lie is lying
Along with means and opportunity, motive is an important part of establishing an emotional (if not a legal) presumption of guilt. However, it’s nowhere near as self-sufficient as conspiracy nuts seem to think. The government fails to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about a crime? That must mean the government committed it.

Now, obviously anyone who lies about something does tend to create a presumption of complicity. However, even that presumption is subject to rebuttal. For example, Jim Garrison managed to do a fairly convincing job of proving that Clay Shaw was sometimes less than honest. However, he failed to make a distinction between lying about being involved in an assassination conspiracy and lying to cover up his homosexuality. In any event, a presumption of bad action by a liar is not the same as a presumption of lying by anyone who might have any reason to lie. Listen for statements such as “Naturally he’d say that; he stands to turn a big profit” or “That’s just what you’d expect a conspirator to say.”

Conspiracy Rule Two: Anyone who has no apparent motive to lie is telling the truth
This one’s the natural flip side of Rule One. If someone stands to gain nothing by lying, then what he says must be accurate. This can be used to validate all sorts of “expert” opinions. After all, why would anyone devote his entire life to the useless pursuit of some minute detail unless there was something to it?

Two problems. First, people are motivated by all kinds of things. Covering up complicity in a crime is a solid motive (though again, see Rule One). So is turning a solid profit. But people are also motivated by simple obsession, a need for attention, and sometimes even mental illness. You don’t have to spend much time in the company of true believers before you develop an appreciation for the true nature of belief.

The other problem of course is that if anyone with no motive to lie is telling the truth, that allows for all kinds of different (and mutually incompatible) truths. Do a search on “Dealey Plaza” and discover the meaning of “plethora.”

Conspiracy Rule Three: Lack of evidence is evidence
Anything that can’t be clearly documented is automatically evidence of a cover-up. For example, many 9/11 conspiracy “experts” dwell endlessly on the absence of video images of the plane striking the Pentagon. It’s an argument with some emotional appeal. After all, there are literally thousands of photos and videos of the attacks (at least the second one) on the World Trade Center. Yet even the Pentagon’s own security cameras didn’t capture the airplane right at the moment of impact.

This legitimately raises a “why not” question. However, it doesn’t prove that the damage was actually caused by a cruise missile. Nor does it answer a ton of other questions raised by the conspiracy theory, such as “if the plane didn’t hit the Pentagon, what did happen to it?”

And speaking of questions …

Conspiracy Rule Four: Questions are evidence
We’ve already met one form of this: “why would she say that if it wasn’t true?” But using questions as proof goes far beyond Rule Two.

Again let’s turn to JFK, specifically the death of David Ferrie. Why would Ferrie leave two suicide notes, Stone’s Garrison wonders, and then kill himself with a poison that leaves no trace? That must be evidence that he was killed by a conspiracy. The coroner’s response reveals one of the big problems with this rule: “If it’s a suicide, Jim, I’ve seen stranger.” Sometimes the answers to these supposedly unanswered questions are more than a little obvious.

More directly to the point, they aren’t proof of conspiracy because they’re simultaneously proof of a lack of conspiracy. Ferrie’s death is a perfect case in point. If you were going to murder somebody and make it look like a suicide, why do it in a way that raises questions at all? Why not leave one note and simply hang the guy from the nearest convenient chandelier? None of that proves anything.

Conspiracy Rule Five: False dichotomies are gospel
All the rest of the rules ultimately stem from this one, so if you can just remember Rule Five you’ll be in business. Conspiracy nuts absolutely love absolutes. Everything is black or white, right or wrong, truth or lies. Either nothing at all is going on at Area 51, or the government is hiding a flying saucer there. Either Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or he was a patsy set up by a conspiracy that went all the way to the highest levels of American government. And so on.

In most cases, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with at least one explanation simpler than the conspiracy-oriented extremes. For example, maybe Area 51 is being used for secret aircraft prototype testing. That simultaneously solves many of the problems with the “nothing going on at all” and “dead space aliens” theories.

Mind you, if Jesse Ventura is on your front porch demanding that you tell him “the truth,” logic may not be your best defense. Whatever ethical advantage you might obtain isn’t likely to impress the target audience.