Become a sustaining member of the
Commonwealth Club for just $10 a month. Join today. Hello and welcome
to the Commonwealth Club of California. And this evening's meeting. I'm Eric Siegal, the chair of the club's
Personal Growth Forum, and your host. We invite everyone to visit us online
at Commonwealth Club Dawg for a complete listing of all our events
and to register for any of our events. This evening we continue our series of talks about false narratives
and their cousins conspiracy theories which can damage the shared fact base
on which democracy depends whether through distorted context,
misleading editing, oversimplification, incorrect
extrapolation from a few examples, or just outright lying,
the result is the same phone rings aggravation of the entire society. In this case, it says it's a telemarketer loss of trust
in institutions like the phone company tribalism and a search
for an authoritarian leader in confusing times, increased stress levels
and anger in society and resulting legitimization of violence. It's therefore important that we look
at the causes of false narratives and some possible actions
we can take to decrease their power. Our first talk in the series
on September 1st by Joe Pierre, was a tutorial
on the psychology of false narratives and the social and technological factors
that make them so powerful today. Then on September 6th, Lee McIntyre discussed how to talk with a friend or
a family member who's fall into the trap of a conspiracy theory
such as science denial. And the third talk
by Sam Woolley on September 29th was about actions
we can take as a society and as individuals to reduce the power
of false narratives in our world. You can find these for free on the club
website. Just look for Commonwealth Club dot dot org and the watch and listen tab and search for false or denier
and they'll pop right up. This talk by Michael Shermer, author of the new book Conspiracy Wave. The book around. Oh. Yeah. And founding publisher of Skeptic
magazine. Is. Available at fine bookstores
everywhere and in Skeptic Tucker. He continues this series by presenting an overarching review
and summary of conspiracy theories. Who believes them and why? Which ones are real
and what we can do about them? Dr. Shermer received a B.A. in psychology and M.A., an
experimental psychology along with a Ph.D. in the history of Science. He wrote over 200 monthly columns
for Scientific American. 20 best selling books
and created two TEDTalks that have been seen by millions
and were voted in the top 100. Dr. Shermer has been a college professor
since 1979 and is currently a presidential fellow
at Chapman University, where he teaches a course on critical
thinking called skepticism. 101 How to Think Like a Scientist. So I know he's not just eager to hear and discuss our questions
about conspiracy theories. He has the background
to help us understand what is going on. So let's get started. Okay. In your book,
you discuss three major topics why people believe these conspiracy
theories, how to figure out which ones are real, because sometimes
conspiracy theories are factual and talking to conspiracies. How to rebuild trust in truth. We only have about 40 minutes
and then we'll get to questions. So we're going to have to step right
along, touch the main points. But again, if you want the detailed discussions
by the book. Right. Anyway, so let's start with
why do people believe in these things? I mean, I'm
I know I'm trained as an engineer. And so even I find that I actually make
a lot of decisions emotional. And then I very quickly retrofit
some sort of logical argument so I can pretend it was logical. And if I'm doing this, you know,
and I suppose scientists and lawyers and others
trained in logic are doing this. I can only imagine
what everyone else is doing. So why are we doing this psychologically? I mean, where do we start? Maybe we should start by talking about
what is a conspiracy theory. But then, you know,
how is this happening psychologically? Well, so your own personal observation
that's got motivated reasoning that is were motivated to be correct,
be right rather than find truth. Our brains are more like lawyers
than scientists to win the argument. I mean, this is the
this is the thesis of the book on the kind of evolutionary
origins of reason. Hugo Murcia and Dan Sperber, his book. And they argued that we evolved to win
arguments more than find truth, which is difficult to find. And so the motivated reasoning confirmation bias
we look for and find confirming evidence for what you already believe
and you ignore the dis confirming evidence or spin doctor it away or whatever to
the point where cognitive dissonance kicks in, where you hold one set of beliefs
and the evidence contradicts it. Something's got to go that produces
dissonance and passengers famous theory. Mostly what happens
is, is the contradictory evidence gets spin
doctor it away. The belief remains stable. So he discovered this with a UFO cult. And on December 21st, 1954,
when he went to the top of the mountain with a local group
that thought the mothership was coming that night to rescue them before the world
came to an end the next day. So he thought, Well, that'll be
interesting to see what happens. Assuming the world doesn't end here,
what will they do? Like tomorrow? Will they go back and go? That was the dumbest thing I've ever done. Can I get out of my car, back in my job
or whatever? And no. In fact, they went back and doubled down
and tried to recruit people into the group
to kind of reinforce that they really are. Right. And then, well, what about that uncomfortable fact
that the world didn't end? Oh, well, we miscalculated. You know, if we got to carry the one, it's tomorrow
night, it's next year, you know, and they always do that.
Or it was a test of our faith and the and God spared us or whatever. So that's what happens. We know from extensive studies in cognitive psychology that people do not naturally try
to falsify their hypotheses. So a psychologist named Peter Watson
developed a series of little tests of this. If I gave you a series of numbers
and said, What do you think is the rule? Here's the numbers. Two, four, six. All right. What's the rule? Even numbers. Okay, here's another set. Ten, 12, 14, 13. Thank you. Okay, so you think the rule is increasing
numbers by two? Yeah. Okay. Any other. Anybody want to test the hypothesis? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Give me another series of three numbers. One, three, five. That also matches the rule. Oh, so it's not just not even numbers. Okay, how about another one? Just a series of seven. That's it. All right, so. But almost nobody comes up with that. You see how long it took?
Even a series. Of ascending numbers? Yeah. They said, yeah, this. Is a super smart group like this. It took a little while to get to the well. Let's try something different
so that doesn't come naturally the moment you form a hypothesis
in your head about anything, right? Yeah. You start reinforcing it, right? You don't want to hear that
it might be wrong. Right. So that's the core of the problem
with all conspiracy theories is the moment you have one, you know, pick
one off the headlines of Kanye West. You know, the Jews are doing this. Okay. Well, if you just look around,
you can find evidence, you know, oh, look, here's a Jewish guy
running this media company. Here's a Jewish guy running this Wall Street trading house or whatever. It's like, oh, ha. Yeah. Okay. Well, how many media companies
are not run by Jews? You know, what's the what are they?
What are the counterfactuals? And it's hard to think of it
because we don't naturally do that. So that's so conspiracy is two
or more people plotting in secret to gain an illegal or immoral advantage
over somebody else or some other group. And a conspiracy
theory is just a theory about that, whether it's true or not. And so the problem we have here
is that there are conspiracies. There really are lots of them. And and so,
you know, it's a signal detection problem. How do you know? Right. So so just picture a two by two grid. So we have four cells. So up here
you have conspiracy theories that are true and you say, yes, I think that's true. Okay, that's a hit. And over here
you have conspiracy theories that are true and you say, no, I don't think it's a true
conspiracy theory. So that's a miss. And here you have conspiracy theories
that are false and you think they're true. So that's a type one error
or you've made a false positive. You thought the conspiracy theory was true
and it's not. And then you have the fourth
one where you miss it. And so wait, did I get that or confuse myself in this diagram
multiple ways? But you get the idea. Yeah. So you make two kinds of there's
two kinds of errors. Type one, false positive. You thought the conspiracy theory was real
when it's not or you miss a real conspiracy theory. So my evolutionary argument
is that we would error on the side of making more type one errors and type
two errors assume the worst just in case it's a low cost error to make. If it turns out it's not true like the Russell in the grass is it
a dangerous predator is just the wind. It doesn't cost a lot to assume the rustle
in the grass is a dangerous predator. And it turns out it's just the wind. You're just become a little skittish
and be careful. But if you think it's the wind
and it's a dangerous predator, you're. Tiger. Right? Your lunch, right? You get the Darwin Award for taking
yourself out of the gene pool early. So we're the descendants
of making this kind of. My more global argument
for superstition and magical thinking is that, you know, we make more type
one than type two errors and conspiracy theories are in that same category
because we evolved as a social primate species
in which other members of our group often plot against us
and other groups plot against our group. And so just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you,
because sometimes they are right. And so it's reasonable to assume more true
than actually our yeah. The negativity bias. It's, it's always safer to pretend
that the tiger is sneaking around than that
and that Russ always oh, it's the breeze. You know, life is good. You know, it doesn't it's not a formula for having a happy life,
but it's a formula for being here. You know, survival, really. Survival. And that way your genes can reproduce. And that's. Right. So we're the descendants of those
that made more type one errors. And type to her.
That's my argument. Right? So I call that constructive conspiracism. Yeah, that is there's a kind of logic
to it, a kind of construct, a paranoia, a little paranoia is actually
okay about everything because there it really comes down to the second law
of thermodynamics and entropy. There's just far more ways
for things to go wrong than to go. To go better, right? How many ways can your life get better? Well,
a little bit here. A little bit there. But you could walk out
and get hit by a one of those electric trolley things here you have
in San Francisco or, you know, whatever. There's just lots of ways
to for things to go south fast. So it's it's it's good to actually be
a little cautious about dangers. Yeah. So this is one of the factors that are
that are forcing people into it. Then a little bit of an exaggeration
or a little bit stressed. And it's not just negativity bias. It's also I'm stressed
now I'm really going to worry about stuff. The slightest noise, the slightest,
you know, so that kind of you don't want to be in control. You want to be too far
down the spectrum there because then you can't even leave the house. So at some point, if it's like that,
you end up with like an OCD kind of thing or it's you're not functional. So obviously that's not good, right? So there's a balance there. And as you said, there's there's a history
of things that are that really are true. There were there people were plotting and
governments were plotting and whatever. And you had a term for that
or proxy conspiracy. Yeah. So I mean, you know, my type specimen examples, Volkswagen
cheating the emission standards in Europe. You know that's a conspiracy. Yeah. And it really happened
and it's obvious why they did it. You know, it's no big secret. They're not trying to take over the world. They just want to make more money. Right. So, I mean, those kind of small, more
targeted, narrowly focused conspiracies are theories are more likely to be true
because we know that's what people do, corporations do,
government agents agencies do, and so on. So one of my signal detection criteria is
the more people that have to be involved, the more elements
that have to come together and and the more grandiose
the conspiracy theory, the less likely it is to be true, more narrowly focused,
you know, insider trading or some government agency
that's spying on its own citizens. This happens a lot. You know, just to review,
as we may remember, you know, without Edward Snowden
in the WikiLeaks, we wouldn't have known to what extent the NSA was spying on US citizens without a warrant from a court. You know, warrantless wiretapping,
warrantless surveillance was quite common and we didn't know that
until he leaked that. Right. So when the Pentagon Papers
to what extent was the US government lying about the Vietnam War? Quite a bit. Right. So whistleblowers are important
to find out what's really going on. But they're you know, this kind of makes
there's kind of a logic to it. Again,
not trying to take over the world or whatever, just, you know, line about
because we want to do this, we want to do that
very specific, narrowly focused one. So yeah. Yeah. And it'll come up a bit later
when we talk about talking to individuals. But one of the nice things
about even remembering that there really are conspiracy theories
is that when you're talking to somebody who has fallen into one, that is false, having some feeling of respect,
you know, and not just saying, hey, you're an idiot, you know,
that usually doesn't work real well. But thinking in the back of your head,
you know, maybe is right. And that puts him in you
into a more receptive mode. You know, you're you're
you're going to ask him questions. You know, why this kind of thing? Well, we can
we can come back to some of that stuff, because at the beginning, again,
it's like, why? Why are we getting into these conspiracy
theories? I mean, what is it also about
the technology today that amplifies this? I mean, people have the right to be heard, but they don't have a right
to be amplified. It's been said it used to be
you could stand on the street corner and convince ten people. Now, boom, that's everywhere. Right. And I think part of
that may be that this idea that if you how do you decide something is true, we had one of our earlier
speakers talk about that. It's just it's repetition. So with the web,
you can suddenly and, you know, am radio or whatever, you can get repetition
from a million areas. And and that seems to build the conspiracy
theories nowadays. Not just by itself, though. If, if,
if it tags something in your tribe. So I call this tribal conspiracy. It's something that your tribe
is likely to believe and supports your central tenets of your beliefs. You don't need a lot of evidence
to say anything, you know, just I mean, it could be one word rigged. Everybody knows what this means, right? Yeah. Rigged. It's rigged.
You know, this is good. We call this the new conspiracism.
The conspiracy theory. Without the theory,
maybe the flat earthers have arguments. Believe me, I've heard them. Hey, I want to get in my.
My classic joke. How we know that the world isn't flat. Because if it were, all the cats
would have pushed everything off by now. All right, back to stick with it. Yeah. So, I mean, so I have this kind of three part
theory of conspiracism, right? So there's we talked about
constructive conspiracism. A lot of them are true space to type one
and type 2 hours and then tribal conspiracism like, you know,
rigged elections or whatever, you know. Does anybody really believe this? Well,
I think the rank and file probably does. According to surveys,
it looks like no one in the top of the GOP in 2020 believed it. Once, Attorney General Barr said,
We looked into it and I'm a Republican, lifelong Republican Trump supporter,
couldn't find any evidence. 60 Minutes on Sunday
had the guy in Arizona, who was a lifelong Republican,
voted for Trump twice, and Giuliani called him and said,
you know, you've got to do something here. You got to stop this. You know that because Biden on the election
electorate votes there in Arizona. You got to stop. And he goes, well, do you have evidence
that there was fraud all year? So Giuliani
flies in there and meets with this guy, Baker, Dusty Baker, Rusty Baker. And the guy goes, okay, chummy, do we have that? Giuliani says to his assistant that, Well,
I think we left it at the hotel. Okay. You so so why do people continue to believe? Well, because that's where Republicans
that's this is our tribe. We got to win it, you know,
sacrificing the truth for your tribe. That happens a lot. And proxy
conspiracism. My third one is whether the specific conspiracy
theory is true or false is less important than what it stands
for. It's a proxy for something else. So if you think about Pizzagate,
which has to be the dumbest conspiracy theory
I've ever heard, you know that Hillary and the other Democrats
and throw in Beyonce and Tom Hanks, I guess we're running a secret satanic pedophile ring
and of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.. I mean, does anybody really believe that? But one guy did. And Welch, he went there with his air
15 rifle to break it up. He drove three and a half hours
from his house and made a video driving along with his cell phone and explained,
this is I'm going in. No one's doing anything about
there's a crime being committed. A horrible, horrible crime. And I'm going to do something.
No one's do anything about it. I'm going to do something about it, which in a way is
kind of what you would do if something was really horrible
happening. It's like the police aren't
doing anything. I'm going to do something right. So he went in there
and there's no basement. He's like, Oh, and, and that was the end of that. A jail for a couple of years. But most people, I think if I if took him
to the basement, think of the pizzeria. Go look, there's no basement.
There's nothing here. There's some, you know, people
eating pizza, there's a kid's party. But, you know,
that's not exactly a pedophile ring. It's not like
these people are going to go, oh, in that case, I'll vote for Hillary. They were never going to vote for Hillary,
you know. So it's a proxy for, you know, along the
lines of that, okay, this one's not true. But the kind of thing
those Democrats would do, you know, they're conniving
and they want to ruin America. They would take away our freedoms
and our guns and blah. And wasn't there something in the nineties
about the Clinton body count with that guy, Vince Foster,
and that that that real estate thing that went bad and and wasn't
there is something about Bill Clinton on the plane with Jeffrey Epstein
to that island where there was a there was a pedophile ring, right? Well, not exactly. But, you know,
you know, Epstein's preferences appear to be girls
14 to 17 or so, not five year olds. But, you know, you just sort of conflate all those into a theory
and then had the pizza thing. Well, cheese pizza P is child pornography. Oh, boy. And it just goes on and on and on. And before, you know, two years later,
you get down the rabbit hole and you have this crazy idea
such that even if you debunk it, you know, somebody's holding that. So they don't believe it in the kind of traditional sense
I believe in gravity or whatever they believe
in, in some other kind of proxy sense. It stands for something else. That's why it's so tough to to talk someone out of it,
because this is part of their identity. It's part of their they're as you said,
their tribe kind of believes this. And they're searching around for stories
that get reinforced in their tribe. And and if you debunk one,
you're kind of challenging who they are and their tribe is going to throw them out and then they're going to be, you know,
lonely on the outside, which is kind of why they got involved
with this tribe in the first place. I do think if enough Republicans
speak out against the rigged election conspiracy theory and. Trump we're not
we haven't hit the tipping point yet. Maybe after the midterms,
some. Are beginning. To get a few people will emerge
that are probably going to be more supported in the GOP
and then and that everyone will say, I never really believe that the rigged election,
I just kind of went along with it and then but I don't think we're there yet,
but hopefully we'll get there. So it's a concern how I mean, you see that people act on January
six, people act on their beliefs. You know,
the guy who went to Pelosi's House. Okay, some mental illness, too,
doesn't help. Right? So but
but but it's not just mental illness. He had a conspiracy theory in his head. You know, the election was rigged. Nancy Pelosi is evil. I'm going to go in there and,
you know, break her kneecaps and then. Yeah, so what his family say
that he was, like, isolated and he was, you know,
well covered with the last few years. People are isolated.
They're they're on the Web. They're they kind of go
down the rabbit hole. They find a new community. They they get in with the community. And now they're all kind of reinforced
and it goes it's gets nuttier and nuttier. There was a we had a comment
that had come up earlier, which was, you know, the the technology companies aren't necessarily,
you know, evil doing this. They're just trying to make money. And one of the ways, for example,
that Facebook would keep you on its site
is by giving you stuff to look at. So you join a group, as we talked
about before, about for new mothers. And they see you're
a member of that group. And well, that group overlaps
another group that talks about vaccines. They don't know. They don't know
it's new mothers in vaccines. It just group and group B to them,
but they see the overlap. So they feed you a couple
from the vaccine group to see if you bite. Are you interested? And if you are now you get more
and more of that stuff because it keeps you on the site
so they can show you more ads. Well,
now that you're also in the vaccine group that feeds you some from another group,
maybe a little crazier, you know, now it's,
you know, you know, Q and on or something. And if you bite, okay,
great, we'll show you more. And so now you get that repetition
and you're in a new group and you get reinforcement. But it's not that they're out there to
make you an on look, you know, push that. It's just group A in group B and group
C to them with certain overlaps. And so off we go.
And we that didn't exist. You know. 25 years, right. So the JFK conspiracy theories,
for example, you know,
they used to meet in hotel rooms, in conference rooms and have their little mimeographed newsletters
that go out to 100 people or something. That's it. They just didn't
have your self-published books. They just didn't have the horsepower
to reach a lot of people. And but now, you know, like Loose Change,
that homemade film about 911 was made like in 2000, late 22, 23,
and like 10 million views in a few weeks. I mean, the kind of numbers that Hollywood producers
would kill for, for their films. And so the penetration is much deeper and the spread is much quicker overnight. You can get these things going
and get the viral videos. And that's that's what's new conspiracies. It's not new goes all the way back
to probably the origin of civilization. You know, when Rome burned, you know, there was there was different
theories about what Nero was up to. Right. Did he did he let it happen on purpose lie
up or did he make it happen on purpose? My OB Right. These are the kind of terms from 911
truth serum. Did Bush know what was going to happen
and he let it happen as a way excuse to invade Iraq? Or did was he actually in on it where he ordered people to plant explosive
devices at the World Trade Center? Buildings lie up and my up. Same thing with President Roosevelt. After Pearl Harbor, there was
investigations into how did this happen? You know, a lot of racism. There's no way
the Japanese could have pulled this off. I mean, they can't even see look,
they squint. I mean, really, seriously,
they're too dumb and they can't see. How did they manage to
so successfully attack Pearl Harbor? Somebody must have been in on it,
Roosevelt or, you know, so on and so forth. So I hop in my head,
but I introduce Cao up, capitalized on
what happened on purpose, right. So Roosevelt wanted to get in on the war. You want to support Churchill in that
and the British against the Nazis couldn't do
it, couldn't get congressional support. The American first was led by Charles
Lindbergh, you know, had quite a strength to block the no more Europe
American entanglements in European wars. We're not going to do this anymore
after the disastrous First World War. And so but after Pearl Harbor, okay,
everybody's like, okay, now we're in. Right? So and same thing with Bush.
We know he wanted to invade Iraq. He didn't have an excuse. Now
he has an excuse. He didn't make it happen. He did let it happen, but it happened. And now, okay,
so we're going to do what we want to do. All politicians do that. And that brings us to the second part,
which is like, how do we differentiate
between a conspiracy theory that's fake and a conspiracy theory
that they really are out to get? Yeah, right. Well, so again,
they just kind of hit some of those. The more people that have to be involved, the more elements that have to
come together just right for it to happen, the bigger and grander the scope of the
theory, less likely it is to be true. And so I just think 911 is an inside
job as a type specimen that we all saw the planes hit. Although I should note parenthetically, there are conspiracy theories
that say there were no planes. They're called the no planners,
and they're debunked by the other. The truth, there's I would say, of course, there were planes,
but there were also bombs. And they you know, those people that say
there were no planes there, idiots. So it's kind of amusing to see them
debunk each other. It's like what I used to in the nineties. I did the debate with young earth
creationists and old Earth creationism. They kind of went after each other,
which is kind of funny, but so but just to think
how how could it possibly have happened? You'd have to know ahead of time
which floors the planes were getting hit on the World
Trade Center buildings. I mean, the the hijackers
are instructed to tilt the plane. So you hit more floors and you do more
damage this way rather than straight on. And they did that. Right. So somehow
the guys in there that were planting explosive devices would have had to know
it's going to be floors 96 through 107. And so that's where you plant
the explosive devices. Impossible not to mention, you know, to try to blow up the World
Trade Center Building 93. So these were the most heavily
secured buildings in the country. Somehow they got in there
and broke through you and you got to break through the drywall
to get to the beams and no one noticed. Oh, well, they did it
under the pretense of elevator repair. Elevator repair, you know,
because you're not near the elevators when they're planning, you know, anyway,
it's just it's just crazy. And somehow all this got pulled off
and not one person has come forward to say,
you know, oh, I was dating this guy. And he told me all about it, you know,
or somebody that wants to write a tell all book on 60 Minutes
or back to WikiLeaks. Right. Millions of classified documents, not one related to 911 is an inside job,
not one memo, nothing impossible. This is how we find out about things like
let me just rattle off a few of the ones in the context
of constructive Conspiracism Operation COINTELPRO,
the counterintelligence program conducted by the FBI to plant agents in social justice
movement groups in America. You know, the American Indian Movement,
several feminist groups, the Black Panthers,
dozens of groups, civil rights groups in which
in some of the apparently meetings like this, you know, half the people
there were FBI spies. And you well, one of the activists said he could tell
because he always had wigged wingtips on like tie dye shirts. But wingtips like come on, dude,
he ran the wrong shoes anyway, all the way up to blackmailing Martin
Luther King Jr, you know, but the famous letter that was sent to him
saying, you know, we have the tape is he wasn't the most faithful
husband, let's just put it that way. And so he had trysts in hotel rooms
and they taped him having sex and said, we're going to release the tapes, sort of
like revenge porn, which is illegal. We're going to release the tapes
unless you kill yourself. Basically in the letter. It turns out it came from the FBI. Hoover, jr. Hoover orchestrated
what our government did this. Yeah. Okay, that's just one project mkultra in which
the cia was worried about the gap. We were worried about the missile gap
with the Russians. Well, worried about the brainwashing. Get those Russians and Chinese. North Koreans are ahead of us
on brainwashing. Manchurian Candidate. You know, we're going to program
this guy to go assassinate somebody. And so we got to get in on this. So they dosed US citizens
without their knowledge, without their consent, with LSD
and other mind altering drugs. One guy, Frank Olson,
who was a chemist who worked for the CIA on this program,
they dosed him without telling him. They just had a like a dinner,
something that they put in his drink. And then he kind of lost his mind. Ten days later, he jumped out of a New York
high rise to his death or he was pushed. You know, and the CIA hasn't admitted anything, but they did $750,000 payout to the family decades later
because his son kept the story alive. Eric Olson Anyway,
you can see all of this on Netflix. There's a Earl Morris film called Wormwood
Wormwood, and it's all about this. And this is our government
is doing this illegally, right? There's
no congressional approval for this. No one even knows about it. And, you know, Operation Paperclip,
in which we're nabbing Nazi scientists,
that we're working on biological weapons, chemical weapons and of course, nuclear weapons and rockets, the most famous
of which the paper clip goes on the file that we're going to take this guy
and move him to America and set him up and give him a job
so he'll work for us instead of the Russians
because they're trying to get him to or if we doubt that he's going to put him
on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes, you know what? What you know, Verna von
Braun is the most famous example of this. He worked on the Apollo program,
but there were hundreds of them like that. And these are guys like the guy. I forget, Otto. I forget his last name that he worked. He invented sarin gas for the Nazis. All right. Now, Hitler didn't use gas as a weapon. Clearly had no qualms about it,
using it against the Jewish populations. But, uh, but the gas as a weapon
was there invented by the Nazis. So we got. We got to get this guy now
who works for us. Our government did this right,
and this was not approved by Congress or anything like that. And I could just go on and on. You know, all the attempts to assassinate
Castro, dozens of attempts to kill, including working with the FBI,
working with the Mafia, because, you know, if you're going to have somebody assassinate somebody, hire
somebody that knows what they're doing. Right. Competent
they're competent assassins. Let's get those guys. They do it all the time. Right. So and 62 people
high up in the Kennedy administration brought to Kennedy and Robert McNamara a document called let's say it's called Not Wormwood. It's a anyway, come to me for a second,
but we have the document in which they constructed a plans for false flag
operations. You've heard this term from Alex Jones,
Sandy Hook is a false flag operate. What does that mean? You know that the pirate ship raises a false flag
so the other ship thinks they're okay and then they attack it, right? So it's a pretense
to doing something nasty. And we were already doing this
right after the failed Bay of Pigs operations. Like, okay, we got to do something else. And to get rid of this guy, you can't have
communists 90 miles from Miami. So they tried to kill him and so on. And then so they finally brought
to Kennedy and McNamara. Okay, how about we we shoot down a commercial airliner
filled with American students on their way to Cancun or whatever,
and we'll blame it on the Cubans and then we'll invade. And there was like two dozen suggestions
like this all outlined. Now, to their credit, Kennedy and McNamara said,
we're not to kill American citizens. That's crazy. You know, we'll do something else
to try to get rid of Castro. Right. And but but that that that that's happened
a lot. All the attempted manipulation
of elections in South American countries to favor fascist dictators over
communist dictators because they were they're a son of a bitch,
but he's our son of a bitch. He's more favorable
to American business interests. That's gone on a lot. So when somebody says, you know,
I think the government's to no good, they have good reason. And yet how do we differentiate? I mean, one of the things that we can do
is we can say that in many cases, we look at the engineering
or the, you know, the science of it or,
you know, some external proof to figure out
whether it's happened or not. So in conspiracy theories or
a lot of scientific conspiracy theories, we're not depending on do we believe this guy
or that guy. We can say, well, wait a moment, here's
the here are the checks and balances, and they're proven. And these people have seen it
and you can ordered it yourself and etc., etc., because otherwise it becomes
just do I believe the government's out to get me as a base belief versus
some other kind of belief? I mean, we have to have some way
of differentiating into the 911 things you bring,
you bring up. I mean,
we know that exactly how it happened from an engineering point of view, it's
not particularly difficult to figure out that, you know, steel
at a certain temperature sags. It doesn't melt
to a much higher temperature, but it loses it loses its strength
at a relatively low temperature. That's why all the steel in buildings
is coated with asbestos. Those after the the the the
collapse of a building in the 1800s that was built out of steel,
there was a fire in it. It softens and the whole thing
kind of falls down. That's why it's all coated with asbestos. So that gives you time to get out
of the building before the steel melts. And in 911, it it loses a little strength
and it kind of sagged in the middle. And it came off the edge. Supports, you know, when the plane hit the thing,
it knocked the asbestos off of the steel. And then, of course,
once they start pancaking down, it's like, wham, straight down, you know,
so that you can appeal to the engineers, the engineers,
to see what actually happened here. You could in the voting cases,
you can start saying, well, wait a moment, how is this ordered it? Who is there? Because otherwise yeah, there's it's tough
to kind of tease these things out. You know what's. So well yeah
so we have to have kind of trust in the institutions that would know
these I would what do I know about why buildings form and I remember
when these conspiracy theories started coming out and there's no way a building
can fall straight down into its footprint. It's like, why not? I mean, I don't
I don't know why buildings fall. Do you you know, just like on Twitter,
everybody's expert on Ukraine. And then next week,
they're an expert on viruses. Right. Say, what do you guys if it comes. In, guys? Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. So, you know, so so you have to
think, well, what would be the motivation? So in the case of the World
Trade Center buildings, they were insured. And an insurance company has to pay out, you know, billions of dollars
for those buildings. So they would be very interested to know
if somebody actually planted explosive devices, they'd be
highly motivated to find out, oh, the president of the United States
ordered this to in that case,
we don't have to pay. Hey. Yeah, right. Of course, they would be more
so when they go. You know, we looked into it and this is
why it fell and we have to pay out. And they did. Okay. And the story. Right. So, again, Attorney General Bill Barr
motivated to find fraud if there was, says there wasn't,
and the story. Was motivated to find a problem, he was. So what you know, how would I know
who to call in Arizona to find out if. Yeah. Becomes who. Yeah. So I have to trust that the,
you know, the people that are running the thing
and you know, there's 50 states, you know,
most of us are just regular citizens. You know,
we can't check these things, you know. And so the whole thing is kind of held
aloft by the kind of social glue
of trusting that the institutions most work. Right. I mean, so in Arizona, they, you know,
they really looked into it and they found 12 votes
that were fraudulent. 12. And Biden won by 10,000. Right. And anyway, so yeah. And, you know, extraordinary, you know,
statements require extraordinary proof, just kind of remembering who my trusting
and what do I mean that that brings us to, you know, what do I do
if I'm I pretty much believe that, you know, the Earth is not flat. And I have a friend who believes that
it's flat, that the cats are not involved. And and, you know, how do I approach this? I mean, I have personally tried the
you are an idiot approach did not work very well. No, it doesn't, you know. Yeah. So Thanksgiving dinner is coming up
and oh boy, you know, somebody sitting there is going to go,
you know, you on it. Yeah. So that doesn't work. I worked with Netflix on a series
on brainwashing and we found this, the episode on cue
and on. We found a woman in Texas
who is a highly educated college degree, you know, married with kids,
very successful, run their own PR firm, good looking
woman and just had the perfect life. And then COVID happens. Their business shut down. She's bored
out of her skull. Kids are off school, whatever. And she goes the rabbit hole online. And like six months later, the husband,
she played the tape for his recorded message
or it's me or Q and on I'm taking the kids and leaving
if you don't give this up. And she gave up her family she she came back eventually
and like came to say, wow, but and she said, well, why this was I told them this is the most
important thing I'll ever do. I am working against this global pedophile ring, the deep state and I'm part of this. We're going to stop this. Horrible,
horrible. This may be the worst thing. That's ever happened to our country. And this is my 70, 17, 76 moment. You know, I'm like Jefferson, the. Purpose and purpose.
And yeah, it's it's it gives. So that's one of the motives. So if you try to take that away,
that's going to be hard, right? So you ask questions. It really all you could do is listen,
be respectful, ask a lot of. Well, that's really interesting. You know,
where did you hear that? You know what? What's the what's the source? What's the quality of the source? Yeah. The more questions
and as we mentioned before, I think the the respectfulness, the feeling that,
well, you know, might actually be correct. Yeah. You can throw in some things like,
you know, MKULTRA and some of these other examples of what
the CIA's done. Yes, it could be, you know,
but is it actually true? That's
what we want to know. Is it actually true? And then you can always ask
the counterfactuals, you know, the well, what would it take
to change your mind. Mm. And often it's. A great. Question
you ask that often people go, huh. You, I never thought of that,
I don't know. Or they go nothing. It's like, okay, okay. Now we're dealing. Yeah, I mean, we're. Really at that.
Let's have dessert. Whatever. That's the cranberry. It's us. I mean, there you're like
in the realm of religion, you know, if somebody says, Well, I'm a Christian,
I believe the resurrection of Jesus. Well,
what would it take to change your mind? Nothing. I'm a Christian.
This is what we believe. And the story right. And anyway, so I. Yeah, I like the idea that the questions
because really the person has to change his or her own mind. You can't. I've discovered,
forced them to change their mind. And so you start asking, you know, well,
what would it take to change your mind? Why, what what are the details, you know? Well, you know this is awful. You know, Obamacare is horrible. Well, what is Obamacare and what is what? Most people have no idea. I mean, you know. Our currency, our. Other example is Napster. This was I think it was Hugo Mercy's
research on that, you know, asking people that said they're against NAFTA
or they're for. And after a what is it? Uh, it's that north, but it's America. I don't know. But it's bad because Clinton liked it. That was during the Clinton
administration. You know, they don't really know. You know, it's just I don't know
what is bad because it's the other team. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you said. Oh it's symbolic of their under
their beliefs underneath. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah. Just kind of poking at it
and it doesn't happen immediately. But they, everything that was,
has been brought up in a previous talk was
that a lot of people got into this because they're lonely
or especially the last few years. And so they're they're emotional pressures
to to break this loneliness. And this is the group they found. And if you convince them
that that group is nuts, then they're back in their original problem of being lonely
or bored or bored or whatever. So you were at the same time building a
support system for them, you know, family. And so they they're not being dropped
into the middle of the ocean. That kind of there's. Some recent research
on the entertainment value of conspiracy. Theories. Oh, boy. They're pretty
they're pretty funny. They are. They are. They're kind of interesting, you know? I mean, most of daily
life is pretty boring. You just get up, go off to work,
take the kids. School, whatever. And it gives you a sense of
of understanding. I mean, there are people I've heard
some would say that people would rather the devil be running the world than that
nobody's running. Well, that's right. Yes, that's right.
Yeah, exactly right. There's nobody in charge. What? You know, how come there's inflation? Well,
we can ask this economist that it kind of. Oh, it's the Illuminati or it's the Jews. Oh, that makes much more sense
than what this guy's talking about over here in the Federal Reserve. Uh, you know, it's. It's all so. I mean, the world is also
the world is pretty chaotic. A lot of it is just randomness,
you know, just fluctuation. Things go up, things go down. And,
you know, we attribute causes to the ups and the downs,
but there's no cause. It's just random fluctuations, right? So like,
if you if the stars in the sky are random, they're randomly distributed,
but they look like fish and scorpions and horses and dipper's
big and little and so on. Is my favorite story on
that is when Steve Jobs released the iPod, then they added the shuffle feature,
which was randomly played your song songs from your song list,
and they got complaints from customers, Hey, it's not random. Certain songs come up more than others. It's like, that is randomness, right? So they had to reprogram it
to make it feel random when it actually wasn't random, you know? So if you ask subjects research on this,
you know, just flip a coin in your head, you know, like 100 times and people
go, I know heads, tails heads, tails, heads, heads,
tails, tails, heads, heads. And actually it's like six or seven
in a row for each of them comes up a lot. You get these long streaks that feel nonrandom,
but that actually is randomness. Throw a handful of pennies up in the air and they land on the ground. They're not going to be
evenly distributed. If they were perfectly evenly distributed, there'd be something weird, like there's
a magnet under the floor, something, you know. So cancer clusters that epidemiologist
figure out there's they're not randomly distributed
in the way we think of it. But the cluster, that is the randomness. So you have to know. So immediately
there's a theory conspiracy, you know, oh, there's industrial company was down,
you know, up the river and it's the air or the water
that's contaminated by the chemical, you know, Erin Brockovich and all that
stuff with her activism, maybe, but maybe not. May just be random. Statistics is tough. I mean, I sweated through that class
in college and and so that's one of the areas where
you have to trust an expert who says, you know, we've got and number of people
and this is what happens. And because a lot of it
it's really it's it's, you know, a little spooky but people who know what you mean,
you use statistics when you don't actually know
exactly what's going on. And so you have to start
trusting in expertize. I do want to get to questions.
Oh, yeah. Okay. And I tell people at home to remember
to write things in the YouTube chat. We already have some, but I'm going to start off with one
that was sent to me a little while ago when dealing with people
who are deep into the big lie, is it possible to use a truthful conspiracy
theory to counteract a false one? What if an extremist believer
was told the truth that certain information sources
for lying to them day after day to manipulate them
and their friends to them. This accurate information would sound
outrageous, like a conspiracy theory. And so with some of them then flip
and follow this new conspiracy theory. Yeah, I tried that. After the January 6th insurrection,
the initial response in the Fox News Trump stand was those were Antifa
people dressed up like Trump STRs. So then I responded,
Well, all those BLM movement protests, those are actually Republicans dressed up as a rifle, proud boys dress. It's like cross-dressing, you know. It's like I mean, the moment you say that
is not testable, it's just an assertion. I don't know. Sometimes I invoke what I call Hitchens
dictum that which can be from Christopher Hitchens, that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed
without evidence. You know, do you have any evidence now? Okay, then, end of conversation. Right. And we so we have questions out here we are we continue to a runner ups. Well, I'm hoping. We can just repeat the mic. Okay. We can we can repeat questions. All right. Here's a mike.
He's got to mike. Yeah, I can I can go run the mike. Whatever. So we go to the I'll do it that way.
You can. Say you're an engineer. On this. Well, I'm going to ask I'm
going to ask one from that came in YouTube. Do you think Trump actually believes
the 2020 election was stolen? I don't know. You know, it's hard to say. We can't get into the problem
of other minds. We can't get in other people's heads. You we think it's possible. I mean, you know,
Jim Jones really believe his, you know, nonsense to call leaders
believe it is psychics. Astrologers really believe it. Maybe because if enough of their followers
reinforce it, they may come to believe it. There's a theory, Bob Trivers theory
about deception and self-deception that if you if you're lying, it's
a heavier cognitive load because
you got to keep track of the truth. And then the lie you told
and then you forgot. And so you tell the second lie, whatever. So it takes more cognition. But if you believe the lie,
it is only one thing to remember. So you're less likely to give off tells in
facial expressions and things like that. If you actually believe the lie.
So it's possible. You know, Trump is the classic case
of the dark triad, psychopathy. Machiavellianism And and narcissism. Narcissistic personality. And you know it's possible
he just believes it because you know he's been bullshitting his whole life
about everything. I mean he's just nothing is. Yeah. Yeah. My,
my guess is that he's not actually lying. That he really believes that. Yeah. The people around him know better. They're the evil ones. But Trump himself,
I think by me being an engineer, not a psychologist, but my guess is that that he can't allow himself
to believe that he lost. Right. Right. So he will go through
whatever intellectual, you know, jumping around as necessary, which will look weirder and weirder
for those of us on the outside. And then there are people who discover
they can make money off it. They can get elected off of it. They can
they're they're the the bad ones yourself. Right. Right. Let's have a question in here where I've got the mic for saw this first. So I love the thing you said about human. Human nature is really very biased towards
finding patterns because as soon as you can find patterns,
you can predict what might happen next. And when you think about the opposite
of that, it's really pretty terrible
saying the idea of randomness. And so the idea that we all come up
with theories to make our world a little bit safer
makes makes a great deal of sense. And I guess what I'm kind of arguing is
that there's firstly that we all do this. And so for us to react with sneers towards
other people's so-called conspiracy theories is one of the things that I think
really makes part of this divide so serious, because people hate
being patronized and held in contempt. And then I guess the next piece of how do we tilt things so that randomness becomes beautiful, surprising and fascinating because that's
really what natural selection is. Right? And so I'm a science teacher
and that's my job is to try to do that. And kids are much more amenable to it
than adults are. And I wonder what you have to say about
how do we cross that from it being threatening
to being fascinating and beautiful. By what you just said, by
just saying what you said? That was beautifully said. I bet your students don't fall for that
as much. So education reform, more of that, right? I mean, I've often thought
I teach this class at Chapman University. So these are first year
college students. Skepticism one on one. How to think like a scientist, right? Just basic stuff
like we've been talking about tonight, Bayesian reasoning, signal detection
theory, you know, the kind of rationality community stuff,
but it's not rocket science. I mean, any anybody could understand this
if the middle school should be taught in middle school. So, I mean, instead of taking
I don't know, maybe what did I have? Geometry, pre-algebra, algebra,
pre calculus, calculus. You know,
what do I need all that stuff for? I never used it
because I didn't go into a STEM field, so maybe just take out one of those courses
and add to how to think this is a basically had a reason you know
and you know here's the top ten biases of motivated
reasoning the confirmation bias, the hindsight bias on my side
bias boom, boom, boom with examples. And there are people to do this
there programs and books and stuff, but it's usually in college,
I think earlier the better. You do. Was to teach kids how to do this. Yes. Yeah. Tricking you
how to how to make clickbait, for example, because apparently that inoculates them
a little bit against that. I also like the examples
we use from from Skeptic magazine, you know, the paranormal,
supernatural, astrology, UFOs Bigfoot. These are fun topics that I find students
like to talk about, right? Rather
than some kind of philosophical logic. Course, you know, if P than Q,
if not P the night Q and then your eyes are just kind of
glazing away. You know how. We are in the September 29th talk by Sam Wylie
on the landing page for that. If you go to to look at our past talks,
we have a whole list of references. And one of them actually is about, you know, civic and media education
at Stanford University Civic Online Reasoning curriculum
at at c0r dot, Stanford dot edu. And there are a bunch of others,
the young skeptics and news literacy projects there. So that's that's back on
some of these earlier talks. Let's have another one and get you next. And then going. So what's the deal with political polling? Oh, boy. I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, it's a little bit
out of my wheelhouse. Do you mean is it accurate? Oh, no, it's we know it's not accurate. Well, what do you mean it's not accurate? Appearances here with these polls. You know, all of a sudden the Republicans
are going to win everything. I don't know that that particular if you're talking about the midterms,
that's flip flop back and forth. You know, I don't know, a month and a half ago,
two months ago, they were definitely going to win
and they weren't. And now they are. And
and they're not I don't know. I think the polls are as good as self-report data,
which is not that great. You know, you're just asking people,
what are you thinking now? Yeah, what about it? They want to say, right? It's always a shortcoming of social
science research, of polling survey to. Someone else. And also people
also back to the random statistic thing, again, just this basic reasoning stuff
like what does it mean when the meteorologist on the news says there's a 30% chance of rain tomorrow
and you ask people what it means, you get like, well, it's
going to rain 30% of the time or it'll rain 30% of the city. You know, that isn't what it means. You know, these are computer models that if you ran it 100 times, it
it rained 30 of them. Right. All right. Just use it. You know, Hillary
had a 70% chance of winning and she lost. So those pollsters, what do they know? No. If you ran that election 100 times,
Hillary wins 70 of them. Trump wins 30 of them.
That was one of the 30. That's it. Right. But people don't really understand that.
I think. That kind of. Awesome. Before I get into my question,
my teacher wanted me to touch on this issue of polling. Oh no. He says, quote, If you have been following
FiveThirtyEight aggregated polls, a caution. It looks like GOP friendly
polling outlets have been flooding the zone with their polls to depress Dem turnout, particularly
as it relates to close Senate races. So we will see if that is true
anyway in a week anyway in question. Yeah, so I have kind of a fun question. I'm sure you've gotten it a lot. Are there any particular conspiracy
theories that have yet to be verified
that you think have a semblance of truth? Oh. Well, a lot of the ones I mentioned
already that turned, we discovered because of whistleblowers and and leaks and so on, that, you know, was like
our government was doing that, you know, like surveilling the German chancellor,
Angela merkel, you know, her cell phone. What? Okay. So there's enough of that
that I am mildly suspicious. I'm not a big anti-government guy. But, you know,
it's like we should be cautious about there's something happens
when you get into power to everybody, Democrats and Republicans,
even, you know, President Obama. So here's my theory. You get elected president,
they take you in the back room and go, okay, here's
what's actually going on. And it's like, well,
but I said I was going to close Gitmo. Yeah, yeah. You can't close Gitmo
because if you do that, then this happens. All right. But I said I would. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about that. Lives up to it. Okay. I hope you will indulge me
because I had a bizarre experience yesterday
evening and I didn't sleep well. I went to the CVS, longs to make sure I had enough candy
and a woman was we were parked parallel. She had her window down
and she and she had a beautiful car. I said, What is it? She said, It's a Jaguar convertible 2001. Okay. And it was gorgeous. The question it well,
I need a comment on this anyway, but she said people are jealous of me
and every time I park it, they hit it. There was nothing. It was perfect. Okay. Anyway, she said, you know, Nancy Pelosi has taken
$700,000 of Social Security money and has driven illegal migrants
to the DMV, also registered them to vote. And then she said, you know, Obama, he's from Indonesia. His father is the king of Tunisia, right? Oh, boy. And and his real name is Berry. And I said,
where are you getting your information? And I expected Fox News. And, you know, she said, I'm a journalist. And then she said she went,
the real Barack Obama is in Kenya. And we flew there to interview him and we waited and he didn't show up
and we was told he's dead. And then, wow, well, there's more,
but I'll just close on this. Yeah,
she said, you know about Michelle Obama. I said, oh, I'm all you know, she's a man. She's a mayor. Of course. She said, Well, everybody knows that. I'm using the muscles in her arms. Yeah. I, you know, she has a male
that she doesn't have children. Those are just
they just got them to look like a. Family crisis actors. And then she said, I have to go back to okay, okay, I'm going to finish,
but I have a comment and she had come out of CVS
and they just 20 minutes are up. She's I chased everybody out
and they're all Asian. I'm white and they're Asian. And I told them, don't get it,
don't get it. You're going to die from it. And she said, My 20 minutes are up. I have to go in and get my second
booster shot on the other arm. Oh yeah. I don't know what to make of that. Yeah, some people are. But the thing is, you know, I'm a professor and I'm
very well educated, Phi Beta Kappa summa cum laude. So this woman's vote counts
the same as mine. That's right. That's right. That's right. Right. Yeah. And I would say that that's
there are people like that. I mean, them all
the time is part of my day job. They write me long letters. All right. Thank you for the discussion.
So great question. So I'm curious. So a lot of what was said is that it might be evolutionary
or like biological in nature. And what I was wondering is if,
you know, to what extent you might think, it's
it might be a function of our values. So, for example, a lot of times when I'm trying
to, you know, talk to somebody and maybe try to get them to change their perspective, it's
almost like I'm attacking them personally and that this model forms
part of their identity. And it made me want to
I studied philosophy and engineering, but it made me wonder if, you know,
you know, maybe it's like something to do with like we're taught to be, right? Like we're celebrating one of right. But, you know,
perhaps maybe it was let's figure it out. Or, you know, the goal is and, you know,
to be right, it's to figure it out or anyway, to what extent might it be
a function of the values? And that's a construct of how people think
as opposed to it's biologically ingrained and rules
programed to be this way. Well, we know that you can change norms just from the bottom up by everybody changing their language
or how they respond to other people. I mean, people
don't use the N-word anymore. How did that happen? There was no law passed. We all just decided, you know what,
this is just really offensive. We're just not going to do this
anymore. Right. Or telling, you know, gay jokes or jokes about women and a wife. Wife jokes,
you know, these used to be pretty popular. Now you just it's not cool, you know? And so enough of us
kind of speak out or refuse to laugh at somebody's idiotic joke that's offensive,
then the norms do shift slowly. You know, just thinking about this,
I had a podcast yesterday. We were talking about, you know,
what's the fastest know civil rights revolution. You know, it was, you know, the same sex marriage thing happened pretty fast,
you know, from 2011 when it was about 5050 in polls
of whether it was acceptable or not. And then by 2015, Supreme Court, you know, voted to make it
the law of the land. You know, same sex marriage is now legal. And then pretty quickly,
everyone just quit talking about it and it just became just common place. Right. And same thing with interracial marriages. There weren't many
you know, it was illegal until 1967. And even in places like the 1990s,
there was only like 1% of interracial marriages,
mostly black men, white women. And but now it's it's much higher. It's like ten times higher than whatever. It's it's it's and somehow that kind of
just slowly changes slow enough. You don't really notice it. And then all of a sudden, like, here
we are, wow, things are much better. And I think if those of us in the kind of skeptical rational rationality
community, you know,
we just just talk about like it's okay to change your mind, you know, really,
it's not only is it okay, it's a virtue. Yeah, it's a scientific way. If given more evidence, I'll change my. Mind. That's right. And get away from the black
and white is true or false. Just think about it in a more Bayesian way. It's likely true. It's likely false. Maybe could be 5050 like these UAP
is everybody is it really aliens or not? Well, okay, you know, it's the
you means unidentified. That's all we know. I don't know what it is. Let's just wait.
You don't have to say anything. We don't have to decide. Just wait and make that a. Virtue without another question.
Okay. Yeah. I was wondering if you think there's
a danger in sort of satirical conspiracy theories
like the birds aren't real stuff? Oh, I like that. Actually, I found that very amusing. If you're not familiar with this,
this is a young man. I forget his name.
Do you remember his name? The birds are not real. Yeah. Anyway, so he started this thing
that all birds that you see are actually drones, and people
were taking them pretty seriously. He was driving around with a van. And,
you know, birds are not real. And he had a bullhorn.
He's like Alex Jones on the road. And, you know, then he finally says
The 60 Minutes actually did a piece on it. It was great. I think it's all right because it it shows the absurdity of, you know,
really far out conspiracy theories. But then let me make a comment
about Alex Jones in that verdict
against him, the judgment against him. You know,
I'm kind of conflicted about this. It's like, you know, free speech,
you know, but you can't harm people. And his words
pretty much directly led to people going to these homes and harassing these people. But I can't help but wonder. I only know of one woman who was arrested
and jailed for going harassing somebody at their home. But why are all the other people
that we're hear about that took Alex Jones's stories
and then went to these homes? You know,
why aren't they also culpable in that? So it's like or,
you know, Trump's speech on on January 6th that morning, is he responsible
it's an interesting problem. I'm told by most First Amendment attorneys
that it's a high bar to reach, to go from a speech to violence
by somebody else. And that is they probably can't get them
for being responsible for January 6th. We'll see. But okay. Well,
we have time for maybe one more question. It's more like. So most of the conspiracy theories we've talked about
are from the conservative side of the political spectrum,
IQ and on and the big lie. What are the most common false narratives
or beliefs you see among liberals? MM Yeah. So as a predictor of conspiracy beliefs, Republicans
and Democrats are approximately equal, but they is the specific kind of conspiracy
that you're interested in or race. You know, black Americans are more likely
to think that the CIA plant and crack cocaine or invented AIDS
to decimate black populations. White Americans are more likely to think
the government's taking away our guns. They're plotting to put gun owners
in FEMA camps in Texas and so on. You know, the Obama birther one
was endorsed more by Republicans, the 911 truther,
one is endorsed by more liberals. So, you know,
those kind of demographic features are more proxies
for specific conspiracy theories rather than just general conspiracism
or kind of paranoia or whatever, anyway. Yeah. And there's plenty on the left. I mean, most elections, the losing side so this is the little
tagline is conspiracies are for losers, that whoever loses
the thinks the other side did something. And Democrats do this every election. They always dislike the Republicans do. What's different now is that usually they drop it
a couple of weeks after the election. They all get
let's just focus on the next one. And so that's what's different now
because, you know, people. Didn't lie mount. Trump
still thinks the 2016 election was rigged. It's like, dude,
you won. You're supposed to. Be. Talking to the social science research. You're supposed to shut up now. Okay, I've got maybe one more. I just saw this. So you had mentioned that the rise of social media and technology
has increased the replicability of many of these beliefs,
and therefore we're seeing a rise and conspiracy theories. I wonder what solutions
you either recommend that we take on a societal level or ones
that you've seen that actually exist. Kind of an act though
I'm conflicted about this. You know, these are private companies. I'm disinclined for the government to go in and regulate them
and break them up and that sort of thing and in general, I think it's just counter
bad speech with better speech is kind of the general principle,
with obvious exceptions of libel, slandering somebody that harms them
physically or financially or whatever. You can't post the nuclear codes
on Twitter, you know, things like that. You know, those are low hanging fruit. But in general, I think it's just better
to counter it, you know, and just social media is still fairly new, right? 27 really is when it kind of launched. So that's not that long ago. It could be in ten years.
No, it'll be using Twitter. It'll be something else, just like,
you know, mice. But what happened to MySpace? And now Facebook is like an old thing
for people like me to use. And the kids these days,
they don't use Facebook, they use whatever Instagram tik tok in ten years,
it may be something we can't even think of and none of these
will be all that influential. So before we panic and think, well,
this is an existential crisis, you know,
I mean there's some evidence that a lot of evidence that there's
been a spike in teenage depression, anxiety, cutting, suicidal ideation,
about twice as much in girls and boys. Why is that?
Is it social media in general? I mean, is it screen time in general? Is it social media in particular? Is it that site, you know, Facebook,
fear of missing out. They're being left out anyway. The research is is not clear yet on that. We don't know. There are there are some things
that are being suggested in the that the talk on September 29th. We talked about some of them,
but for example, you could add what's called friction to things like Twitter, etc., that you
can't just forward something immediately. You have to show that you've read it
first. You're only allowed to forward it
five times. You're only increased
the friction of things being blasted out. Everybody interesting their theories
about how, you know, does it really help to add something at the bottom
saying this has been debunked? Does that help? Does it make it worse? One of the things that's happening
is that a lot of corporations
are now encrypting everything. Oh, we're going to do it for your privacy. Well,
they're really doing it to some degree. So they don't have they can't monitor
if it's encrypted, they can't be held responsible
for the content. And yet we can tell
there's been some research in Twitter that we can guess whether something's true
or false by watching the pattern, if it starts simultaneously at the top
from like ten locations and blast downwards with the IQ, those peo if it comes up from the bottom from people don't have a lot of connections
and it slowly grows outwards. Maybe
even if you can't see the actual content. So a lot of people are working on it,
but I don't think they've got an answer. And that's something that we have to do in
of course, there's legislation. How do you how do you hold
someone responsible for this? And that's a whole legal tangle. There have been a lot of discussions
about that. Yeah, well, good point. We should wrap this up. So our gratitude to Dr. Michael Shermer for being with us today. We're all set. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for. And we are also grateful to our audience
here as well as to those listening to the recording. And now this meeting of the Commonwealth
Club of California commemorating its 119th year of enlightened
discussion is adjourned. Oh.
