At the recommendation of a friend, I watched the short German series Schlaf Schafe (best rendered as “Sleepy Sheep”). Its premise is that a family implodes as the mother descends into Covid-related conspiracy theories. It’s a dark comedy, and it takes a clear position against those theories. But the mother is portrayed sympathetically: Her motives are intelligible, even relatable. You can recoil from her actions and reasoning, but her heart is in the right place: the same place as yours.
Schlaf Schafe resurfaced one of the running themes of the Ruminathans: the right and wrong of how we communicate with each other. Specifically, how we choose to receive messages. The question the series raised for me is whether there are messages that we ought to disqualify from being entertained even before we consider their factual accuracy. Is there something about the structure of certain narratives – conspiracy theories for example – that requires us to disregard them without considering the arguments in their favor?
My question rests on (at least) three assumptions:
- We are so bombarded with information and narratives that we cannot possibly entertain them all and have to triage them quickly into “ignore” and “consider” piles.
- There is a “right” or “wrong” about how we choose to receive messages.
- Ethical criteria can take precedence over logical and empirical criteria for deciding which messages to ignore.
The first assumption probably isn’t controversial, but the second and third probably are. They are worth several dissertations each, not counting all the debates about the basis of ethics. About the second assumption let me say only this: I think we have left the question of our responsibilities as receivers unexamined, and overemphasized the ethics of sending signals. When I say we have responsibilities as receivers, I mean that we ought to practice information hygiene not only to protect ourselves from harmful narratives but also to protect those around us.
Regarding the third assumption: There are obviously many criteria we can use when triaging information and narratives, but clearly they have to be criteria that aren’t fact-based, at least for sufficiently complex narratives: We have to decide in advance whether we should devote time and energy to a narrative, before weighing its merits, which is precisely what would take up time and effort. If someone tells me “two plus two equals five” I can still rule that out immediately. But if someone tells me that “Euler’s number taken to the power of the imaginary unit times pi equals negative one,” I can rule that out of consideration because it is irrelevant to me at that moment. (It happens to be true.) I do not need to spend the time to prove or disprove it myself, or check the credentials and trustworthiness of whoever is sending me that piece of information. So “relevance” or “interest” are criteria that we apply routinely under the bombardment of information. I see no reason to exclude ethical criteria when we triage narratives, as long as we have criteria that lead us to a quick decision and don’t suck us into giving the narrative serious consideration.
Are there ethical criteria that urge us to disregard narratives before we even consider their factual merits? Consider the specific case of conspiracy theories: A conspiracy theory explains world events by positing that a select group – the conspirators – operate society’s levers of power entirely clandestinely, in parallel and often in opposition to whatever power structures are considered legitimate. If the US Congress gets together and passes a law that the President signs – I know, it sounds outrageous, but bear with me – then a select group is operating society’s levers of power, but they are not doing so clandestinely or illegitimately. Not a conspiracy! Additionally, a conspiracy theory attributes improper motives to the conspirators. Secret societies with beneficent motives are a feature of wish-fulfillment superhero stories. But a real conspiracy is not only secret, powerful, and illegitimate, it is also malevolent. Billionaires who hatch a plan to reduce world population with the one-two-punch of a virus and a Trojan Horse vaccine against it – now that’s a conspiracy!
An earlier post argued that we should, in everyday interactions, attribute to others the motives we hope they attribute to us. That maxim alone could insulate the mind against conspiracy theories. But I don’t think its enough, because it doesn’t address their allure.
What is it that makes conspiracy theories so attractive?
I confess: I am so attracted. I find myself all too willing to believe that the world’s ways can best be explained by the desires of the few, whose power is greater in proportion to how deeply it’s hidden. One reason I initially learned to resist the attraction is that I feel it equally from mutually contradictory conspiracy theories. That’s how I know that it isn’t their arguments that make them persuasive.
Life’s trials and errors have suggested to me another maxim of receiving messages: a maxim I try – and often fail – to live by.
Ignore narratives that flatter your in-group.
For example, I can’t get around the fact that I am a white male. So I try to ignore narratives that flatter white males. Of which there are more than a few. At the same time, I could also legitimately identify with some historically disadvantaged groups, and there are also narratives that flatter them. I try to ignore them, too.
By “ignoring a narrative” I mean something like this: I regard it as something whose truth is presently unknown and possibly intrinsically unknowable, like the amount of rainfall at my current geo-coordinates a million years hence. It’s completely irrelevant to any present thoughts and choices. You could go with a stronger option, namely to deny any narratives that flatter your in-group. But denying a narrative already grants it more mental space than it’s worth. It starts you on a slippery slope of marshaling arguments pro and contra… Instead, just let it be.
Conspiracy theories are particularly flattering narratives. You assume that there is an extremely powerful, extremely intelligent, and extremely select group. Your awareness of them makes you at least as intelligent and gives you a kind of power over them. You piggyback off of the intelligence you ascribe to them. But what distinguishes you from the conspirators is that you are pure of heart. You are both in on the joke and above it. You can have your cake and eat it, too. That’s why it’s such an attractive narrative.
Schlaf Schafe, the series title, explicitly plays on that self-flattery. Those who haven’t seen through the conspiracy are just sleepy sheep. You, who have seen through the intrigue, run with the wolves.
I suppose I could spend time and energy working out a more precise formulation of the maxim. Surely there are ideas or narratives that happen to flatter some dimension of your identity but that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand for that reason alone. You could encumber the maxim with all sorts of softening qualifications, replacing “ignore” with “demand an extraordinarily high burden of proof from” or some such thing. A more interesting avenue of refinement might be to make “flattery” more precise. For example, maybe the truly problematic thing about a conspiracy theory is that it commits you to the premise that you are in some kind of privileged position, intellectually or in terms of access to information. Any argument that begins that way is just unsporting, if nothing else.
But a simple guideline is probably more useful than a complicated principle: Ignore narratives that flatter your in-group.
Conspiracy theories try to explain why the world is the way it is. A conspiracy theorist could say that rejecting her favored theory leaves an explanatory gap. I firmly believe that we can explain the world – warts and all – resorting only to the behavior of people with essentially similar motivations and multiple, overlapping, and at times conflicting loyalties. No conspiracy necessary.
The Ruminathans 
I also have seen the “Schlaf Schafe”. We now seem to be in agreement on what a conspiracy theory is and what not. In hindsight this is easy to identify anyhow. But when you are in the middle of a major development there is a lot of uncertainty about the scale and scope of the problem, about the root causes, political and economical implications. During that kind of phase many narratives are being developed by various “experts” and “insiders”. Most of them turn out to be false, some turn out to be intentional conspiracy theories and very few describe the reality and inner dynamics well. But that is always something that we fully understand and acknowledge afterwards. Some of the stories will always persist, because we won’t be able to clarify. For example, I doubt that we will ever know for sure, whether the Corona virus had its origin in nature or in a laboratory.
If somebody during the 1920s would have written a book about the newly founded NSDAP in Germany and would have projected that more than 6 million Jews would be killed in concentration camps at the end, even most people in North America would have considered this a conspiracy theory. Some of the most horrible conspiracies in human history were true ones.
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By “conspiracy theory” I mean any narrative that claims world events are caused by a secret and select group of people, outside of the legitimate power structure, with motivations that we, the consumers and propagators of the narrative, deem improper. A book about the NSDAP written in the 1920s would qualify as a conspiracy theory in these terms only if it claimed that the members of the NSDAP were, secretly, already controlling Germany’s politics at the time. A similar book that claimed that the NSDAP would, if it came to power, engineer mass deportations, forced labor, and extermination of ethnic minorities would have been speculative, and probably dismissed as implausible. But it would not have been a conspiracy theory in those terms. Arguably such a book was written, or very nearly so, by the leader of the NSDAP himself, underscoring that it was not much of a conspiracy. Things were fairly above-board. Later, when the NSDAP committed its atrocities, it also did so as a state actor, deploying the accepted channels of power.
I’m having a hard time identifying major historical atrocities that would have been, at the time, explained as the intended policy of a select group of secret string-pullers, and where that explanation turned out to be the correct one in hindsight. There are conspiracies that have an impact on world events, but usually not through secret use of the levers of power, but through assassination followed by very publicly taking the reins.
Here’s an interesting edge case: “Russia is interfering with elections in Western democracies.” Is this a conspiracy theory? Should I disqualify it from consideration because it flatters one of my in-groups and attributes nefarious motives, even before considering the evidence? A lot hinges on what we mean by “Russia,” but let’s assume we mean “the Russian government led by V. Putin.” To start with, other criteria might already disqualify it from consideration? Again, not to rule on on whether its true or not, but to decide whether it should take up mental space at all. What, exactly, can I change about my behavior if it were true? I can support moves for greater election security (better voting machines with paper trails, etc.). But that’s table-stakes for democracy, and should be done regardless of whether the Russian interference story is true. So relevance could already disqualify it. And in any case, we are talking about a state actor, pursuing its interests by whatever means it feels it needs to given its vulnerabilities and the strengths of its competitors and adversaries. So I would not count this as a conspiracy theory. That still leaves open the question of whether it is true or not.
The point of rejecting conspiracy theories, as defined above, using the filters I propose is actually not because they are untrue — most of the time they will be, of course — but because believing them leads to immediate harm whether they are true or not. The mother in Schlaf Schafe keeps her son out of school and surreptitiously poisons him with laxatives as a cover story. This is real and certain harm she is willing to inflict on her own child out of fear of the machinations of an evil cabal of billionaires trying to reduce global population. The reason to reject conspiracy theories out of hand is that they motivate and justify all sorts of actual harm to self and the immediate communities we are responsible for maintaining: ruptured families and friendships, vigilantism, etc. I suppose another filter to consider would be “If I believed theory T, would that morally require me to perform actions X that I would otherwise consider heinous? If so, best to disqualify the theory.” But I actually think that filter is largely redundant with the motive attribution and flattery-avoidance filters.
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This is asking for an interesting analysis for historians: Have there ever been major developments that had significant negative impact on the lives of millions that were invented, prepared and carried out in secrecy by actors that had no official mandate for it?
With regard to the Russian interference in the US elections I agree with you. For me that is just a new way of damaging the institutions of an opponent with secret means, just like bribing members of the Bundestag at the election of a new chancellor, as it happened in the 1970s (proven by now).
I fully agree with the damages that false theories (conspiracy or not) can cause.
Another example of a secret development that is just coming out as we speak is the CumEx scandal in Germany. Based on recent findings it seems the case, that there has been a broader criminal collaboration of bankers, lawyers, members of the German finance administration and politicians to explore a grand scheme tax fraud. Is this in hindsight a conspiracy or just a crime?
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Conspiratorial crimes in the area of high finance are interesting test cases. Since this comment (thanks, Detlef!), I have been thinking about the LIBOR scandal in particular, because I don’t know enough about CumEx. The questions I have been asking myself are a) if prior to the LIBOR scandal coming out in 2012 I WOULD have dismissed a report suggesting that banks were manipulating LIBOR as a conspiracy theory and b) SHOULD I have done so on the terms I outlined in this blog post.
The London Inter-bank Offer Rate is an interest rate that bank’s report that they are either are paying other banks or would pay if they borrowed money that day. Because many other interest rates are set in its terms – including those on credit card debt – 100s of millions of people are affected by it. Manipulating the rate definitely involves a rare, privileged few playing with levers that affect us all. Suppose that in 2011 someone had told me “Banks are manipulating LIBOR to their advantage.” As it happens to be an issue that both interests me and could have concerned me, at least hypothetically, would I (and ought I to) have dismissed that narrative out of hand?
As it happens, it’s not an entirely hypothetical question. I first learned about LIBOR in 2007 when my professional career took me deeper into the world of finance than I would have previously imagined, let alone desired. I was working with a subject matter expert from the world of finance, and I remember my reaction being “So wait: You’re telling me that the banks self-report on the interest rates they pay, which rate then gets used to determine what interest rates they actually pay? How is this supposed to work exactly? Wouldn’t there be all sorts of conflicts of interest?”
When the scandal came out, I was not exactly shocked, in other words. The lever-pullers were not a secret society, and they were exercising the power that had been theirs by convention. On balance, I would have believed a 2011 narrative that “banks are manipulating LIBOR” but I would not have qualified it as a conspiracy theory. Known players using known loopholes to their advantage? Not a conspiracy theory. Which means that you need not dismiss the narrative and can either believe or disbelieve it, and search for the evidence. Although here the important conclusion to draw would be that the LIBOR system should be designed better, regardless of whether or not an actual manipulation is occurring at the moment.
In any case, I do want to draw attention to the fact that I am using the term “conspiracy theory” in the aluminum foil hat sense: unknown people illegitimately wielding power over the unwitting majority for their own malicious purposes. There is also a broader sense of “conspiracy” (tout court) and a narrower legal definition thereof, by which a conspiracy to commit a crime is also a crime. I certainly am not saying there is no such thing as a conspiracy.
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