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Speaker 1: Why are conspiracy theories a natural output of the brain?

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Speaker 1: And what does this have to do with Roswell New

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Speaker 1: Mexico or John F. Kennedy or the Great Fire of Rome.

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Speaker 1: What do conspiracy theories have to do with brains and

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Speaker 1: puzzle solving and cognitive dissonance and in groups and outgroups

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Speaker 1: and storytelling? If you hear an unlikely explanation for something,

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Speaker 1: what are good and bad ways to assess it? Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist

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Speaker 1: and an author at Stanford and in these episodes we

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Speaker 1: sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand why

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Speaker 1: and how our lives look the way they do. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode is about conspiracy theories. Now, the point of today's

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Speaker 1: podcast is not to assess the truth value of any

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Speaker 1: particular theory, but instead, my interest is in why they

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Speaker 1: happen in the brain and why they are so sticky

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Speaker 1: in society. Okay, So, for definition, the idea of a

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theory is this, although all the available facts seem

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Speaker 1: to indicate X, there is an alternative story that reveals

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Speaker 1: a different truth. There are a million examples of this,

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Speaker 1: but let's just take a couple of examples to get

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Speaker 1: the ball rolling. So in nineteen forty seven, in Roswell,

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Speaker 1: New Mexico, an object falls from the sky. The examiners

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Speaker 1: conclude that it is a weather balloon, but that confirmation

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Speaker 1: did nothing to stem the tide of a conspiracy theory

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Speaker 1: that space aliens had crashed in Roswell. The alternative explanation

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Speaker 1: suggested it was a spaceship and no one wanted to

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Speaker 1: admit it. Now, this is an example of a conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theory because it requires that some people know the truth,

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Speaker 1: in this case, that there's evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization

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Speaker 1: and in fact one that has vehicle troubles like we do.

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Speaker 1: But the conspiracy is to conceal that from the rest

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Speaker 1: of the population. Or take the nineteen sixty nine Moon landing,

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Speaker 1: a moment of great pride for the scientists and engineers

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Speaker 1: who made it happen, but many thousands of people at

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Speaker 1: that time and I think even some now, asserted that

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Speaker 1: the landing was a fake filmed professionally in a movie studio.

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Speaker 1: Or take the assassination of the President of the United States,

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Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty three. Although one man

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Speaker 1: Oswald was captured for the crime. The conspiracy theory is

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Speaker 1: that many powerful shadowy figures and perhaps even another shooter

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Speaker 1: was involved with all of these examples. Decades after the event,

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Speaker 1: there are still assertions that there are alternative and better

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Speaker 1: explanations to the mainstream stories that the general public has

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Speaker 1: taken on. Now, most people that I talk with imagine

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Speaker 1: that conspiracy theories are something new. They are not. As

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Speaker 1: best I can tell, there is no country in the

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Speaker 1: world and no time in history that was not rife

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Speaker 1: with conspiracy theories. And this, as we shall see, is

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Speaker 1: because conspiracy theories don't require any particular technology or country

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Speaker 1: or politics. All they require are human brains. For example,

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Speaker 1: in sixty four CE, there was a huge fire that

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Speaker 1: destroyed much of the city of Rome. Now, historical accounts

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Speaker 1: suggest that the Emperor Nero had no responsibility for the fire,

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Speaker 1: and in fact he helped people in the fires aftermath.

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Speaker 1: But he had previously announced plans to build his new

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Speaker 1: palace the Domis area, and for that land needed to

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Speaker 1: be cleared. So conspiracy theories bloss and Roman said, maybe

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Speaker 1: Nero lit the fire or allowed it to happen, because

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Speaker 1: he clearly has something to gain here. Conspiracy theories pervade history.

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Speaker 1: There's so many examples, like who was really behind the

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Speaker 1: assassination of Julius Caesar twenty years earlier than that, or

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Speaker 1: who was actually responsible for the death of Alexander the Great,

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Speaker 1: which was three hundred and seventy years before that, or

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Speaker 1: who actually wanted to make sure that Socrates was tried

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Speaker 1: and executed before that. So conspiracy theories go back for

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Speaker 1: as long as we have written history, and that's the

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Speaker 1: signature that tells us we're not just looking at a

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Speaker 1: cultural phenomenon but a neural one. Now, it's often easy

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Speaker 1: to take the position of laughing at all conspiracy theories,

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Speaker 1: in large part because they end up being different than

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Speaker 1: whatever we have in our internal models. But I'm going

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Speaker 1: to assert that there are good and bad approaches to

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Speaker 1: analyzing any new explanatory idea, because, first of all, there

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Speaker 1: probably are some conspiracy theories that have some truth value.

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Speaker 1: A tame example would be price fixing, where you have

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Speaker 1: a small handful of companies who control a market, so

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Speaker 1: they all get together and decide that all of them

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Speaker 1: should keep their prices high. Or another example is that

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Speaker 1: of planned obsolescence, where a company will make a product

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Speaker 1: that's pretty good, but it's not going to last you

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Speaker 1: eight years. Instead, it's going to break down in a

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Speaker 1: much shorter time so that you'll have to buy the

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Speaker 1: next model of it, and they'll get to enjoy you

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Speaker 1: as a repeat customer. So our conspiracy theory is true,

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Speaker 1: not true sometimes all the time. I only mention this

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Speaker 1: to remind us that the world is driven by incentives

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Speaker 1: of individuals, and sometimes weird stuff can happen. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course remember that sometimes there are unsolved mysteries, like

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, when a mild mannered man hijacked

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Speaker 1: the Northwest Airlines between Portland and Seattle and exchanged the

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Speaker 1: passengers for two hundred thousand dollars and then kept the

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Speaker 1: crew and ordered them to fly to Mexico City. And

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Speaker 1: then on the flight he did something totally unexpected. He

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Speaker 1: leapt out of the back of the plane with a

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Speaker 1: parachute and the money. This remains one of the great

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Speaker 1: unsolved mysteries in FBI history. Are there conspiracy theories around

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Speaker 1: the shore, but of course it's hard to separate whether

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Speaker 1: something was a conspiracy or whether the investigators were just

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Speaker 1: not talented enough or whether the perpetrator was just too talented. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: it's a big, complicated world, and we can't always rule

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Speaker 1: out conspiracy theories right away because something could be possible.

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Speaker 1: But what we are going to see today is how

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Speaker 1: to think about this through a scientific lens to distinguish

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Speaker 1: which ones have some modicum of possibility and which ones

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Speaker 1: most likely do not. So to begin, I'm going to

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Speaker 1: argue that conspiracy theories are inevitable. There's no way to

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Speaker 1: say if we just get better education and better media,

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Speaker 1: then we'll get rid of conspiracy theories, because in fact,

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Speaker 1: they emerge as I'll argue from a brain locked in

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Speaker 1: silence and darkness trying to understand the outside world. The

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Speaker 1: way brains figure out the world is by making hypotheses.

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Speaker 1: They make their best guesses about how everything in the

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Speaker 1: world fits together. Now, almost everything in the world is

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Speaker 1: beyond the reach of your short little limbs and even

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Speaker 1: your line of sight. So to understand what's happening with

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Speaker 1: groups of people, or politics or societies, we work to

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Speaker 1: put these little puzzle pieces together. Now, we essentially never

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Speaker 1: have all the puzzle pieces, so we always just work

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Speaker 1: with what we can. This is how we function in

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Speaker 1: the world, and brains work to balance their conclusions against

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Speaker 1: an assessment of how likely that hypothesis is. So let

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Speaker 1: me give you an example. Brains cough up hypotheses on everything,

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Speaker 1: usually entirely unconsciously, and then they evaluate those hypotheses, and

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Speaker 1: almost all of them are wrong. So an example is

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Speaker 1: you say, I thought that I had put my keys

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Speaker 1: on the counter right here, But where are they? So

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Speaker 1: your brain runs through simulations. Maybe they're in your pocket

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Speaker 1: from last night's pants. Maybe you accidentally carried them into

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Speaker 1: the other room and left them over there. Maybe you

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Speaker 1: left them in the door. But if none of those

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Speaker 1: hypotheses pan out, eventually your brain starts turning up the

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Speaker 1: temperature to cook up more and more exotic possibilities. Maybe

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Speaker 1: my wife took them accidentally thinking they were her keys.

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Speaker 1: Maybe the electrician who fixed our panel accidentally pocketed them.

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Speaker 1: And eventually, because you've ruled out many of the other explanations,

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Speaker 1: you might come up with something in a more far

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Speaker 1: away range, like the electrician who was here was casing

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Speaker 1: the joint and has plans to come back and rob me,

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Speaker 1: So he took the keys in order to make a copy.

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Speaker 1: Now what interests me is not just that brains come

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Speaker 1: up with increasingly more esoteric hypotheses, that's what brains do,

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Speaker 1: but our evaluation of those hypotheses, because we're always trying

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Speaker 1: to land on a story that makes sense. We're always

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Speaker 1: looking for a through line that takes the complexity of

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Speaker 1: the external world and turns it into something we can understand.

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Speaker 1: So when do we say, yeah, I think that is

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Speaker 1: the optimal explanation. Now, fundamentally, finding the best explanation is

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Speaker 1: a matter of connecting different dots together in ways that

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Speaker 1: best match the world. Here's a visual description of this picture.

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Speaker 1: A bunch of dots, and the dots are data points. Okay,

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Speaker 1: Now imagine some lines in between connecting the dots, something

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Speaker 1: like a subway map. And now this represents knowledge. And

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Speaker 1: when you can trace a path all the way from

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Speaker 1: one dot to another, we call that inside. And the

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Speaker 1: question is when does something go from insight to being

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Speaker 1: lots and lots of dots all connected to each other

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Speaker 1: in a pattern that no one else sees. And that's

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Speaker 1: what puts us into the realm of conspiracy theories, which

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Speaker 1: is what we'll talk about today. So why do people

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Speaker 1: find themselves there from a neural point of view. I

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Speaker 1: think there are several reasons. First, the brain is all

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Speaker 1: about pattern recognition. Our brains are wired to detect patterns

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Speaker 1: and make connections even when none exists. And this tendency

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Speaker 1: to see patterns even in random data is what's known

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Speaker 1: as apophenia. And by the way, if you listen to

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Speaker 1: episode sixty three about the way that we sometimes see

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Speaker 1: faces and patterns even where there is not a face,

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Speaker 1: that's called paridolia. And note that this is a visual

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Speaker 1: type of apofenia. But apofenia relates not just to what

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Speaker 1: we see, but to any sense like hearing, as well

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Speaker 1: as to con We make patterns out of random data,

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Speaker 1: and this is really at the heart of conspiracy theories.

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Speaker 1: Now there's another thing as well, which is that puzzle

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Speaker 1: solving activates our reward systems. That's why we do Sudoku

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Speaker 1: or wordle or brain teasers or whatever, because we love

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Speaker 1: finding solutions. Presumably this involves the reward systems in the brain,

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Speaker 1: like the neurotransmitter dopamine associated with the reward system. When

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Speaker 1: you engage with a bunch of facts and suddenly see

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Speaker 1: a pattern, we all know the sense of excitement that

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Speaker 1: triggers and the positive reinforcement there. Now, it's for these

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Speaker 1: reasons that we solve puzzles, and of course when we're

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Speaker 1: kids in school, we get rewarded all the time for

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Speaker 1: solving problems by connecting the dots. And by the way,

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Speaker 1: I suspect this is why we love mystery novels. Something

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Speaker 1: seems so impossible and complex and confusing, and the satisfaction

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Speaker 1: is delivered in the final pages when Sherlock Holmes or

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Speaker 1: Hercule Poirot gives the explanation and now that you see it,

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Speaker 1: you thrill in the transition from something seeming impenetrable moments

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Speaker 1: ago now being rotated to a different angle so that

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Speaker 1: you can connect all these dots with ease. It's the

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Speaker 1: same series of events, but now there's a clear path

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Speaker 1: connecting them. So when someone generates a good conspiracy theory

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Speaker 1: to suddenly explain a mysterious event, there is this satisfying

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Speaker 1: feeling of having cracked the puzzle. Plus, I imagine that

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Speaker 1: one of the appeals of conspiracy theories is the overwhelming

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Speaker 1: sense of awe that you are the first person in

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Speaker 1: the world who sees the truth, whereas everyone else is fooled.

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Speaker 1: You're the Sherlock. Now, I want to make clear that

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Speaker 1: even though people often say that conspiracy theories are not rational,

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Speaker 1: it's perfectly in line with what brains do to try

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Speaker 1: to solve problems. It's not necessarily the case that anyone

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Speaker 1: is trying to be disingenuous. It's that the world is

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Speaker 1: large and complex, and the best anyone can do is

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Speaker 1: to try to fit together the lego pieces that we

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Speaker 1: have to try to make a model of what is

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Speaker 1: going on out there. So the desire to crack mysteries

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Speaker 1: to resolve questions, this is presumably one of the things

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Speaker 1: at the heart of our success as a species. It's

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Speaker 1: what drives us to constantly cook up the next solution

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Speaker 1: and find the shorter paths and solve things that would

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Speaker 1: have otherwise been opaque. So why do we like having

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Speaker 1: answers so much? While psychologists point to a number of

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Speaker 1: drives that push us towards finding answers, the first is

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Speaker 1: the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance. When we're faced with

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Speaker 1: facts that don't fit our model or information that conflicts,

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Speaker 1: we experience a state of mental discomfort. I know that

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Speaker 1: I feel this way when something doesn't make sense. It

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Speaker 1: almost hurts physically until I can solve it. So we're

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Speaker 1: always trying to resolve this discomfort, and sometimes conspiracy theories

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Speaker 1: can offer explanations that seem to provide a fit to

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Speaker 1: one's own existing beliefs or biases. A closely related issue

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Speaker 1: is that we always seek things that reduce cognitive load,

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Speaker 1: and this is why we so often look for simple

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Speaker 1: explanations for very complex events. When we're faced with overwhelming

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Speaker 1: our ambiguous information, our brains often prefer a more straightforward narrative,

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Speaker 1: even if it's incorrect, to reduce cognitive load. And I'll

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Speaker 1: come back to this in a little bit, but I

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Speaker 1: also want to mention one more thing. We typically have

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Speaker 1: what's called a confirmation bias, which means we seek out

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Speaker 1: information and we favor information that confirms our pre existing

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Speaker 1: beliefs and we disregard contradictory evidence. This shows up really

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Speaker 1: importantly in conspiracy theories when people selectively gather and interpret

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Speaker 1: information that supports their views. So these are reasons why

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Speaker 1: we seek answers in gener But there are even more

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Speaker 1: specific drives that shape a good conspiracy theory, and that

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Speaker 1: has to do with in group and outgroup dynamics. So

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Speaker 1: we grew up in small tribes for millions of years,

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Speaker 1: and you knew the people in your tribe, but you

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Speaker 1: didn't know those other people on the other side of

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Speaker 1: the hill. So as a matter of our deep history,

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Speaker 1: we have developed suspicions about our outgroups. In other episodes,

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Speaker 1: you've heard me talk a lot about the dynamics of

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Speaker 1: in groups and outgroups. But the key here today is

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Speaker 1: that many details of conspiracy theories are influenced by social identity. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: you are more likely to believe in theories that align

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Speaker 1: with your group's view and portray your outgroups those outside

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Speaker 1: your social or political group negatively to your mind. Your

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Speaker 1: outgroups are predisposed to act poorly and without the kind

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Speaker 1: of excellent conscience possessed by your in group, and that

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Speaker 1: fact gives a great deal of latitude for your theories.

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Speaker 1: After all, if you were trying to explain some terrible

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Speaker 1: event that happens and you only had your in group,

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Speaker 1: you would be limited in your explanation. But without groups,

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Speaker 1: all the normal constraints of human behavior are unlocked, which

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Speaker 1: opens a broader set of possible narratives to use. Suddenly,

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Speaker 1: you're not talking about your friends and neighbors. Now you're

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Speaker 1: talking about them, that other group that lacks morality and

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Speaker 1: ethics and always wants to trip up the good intentions

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Speaker 1: of your group, And so the impossible now seems possible.

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Speaker 1: This was all a ruse. It was a setup to

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Speaker 1: fool everyone, and only they would be sneaky enough and

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Speaker 1: cynical enough and devious enough to do something like this. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the social benefits that people derive from outgroup

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Speaker 1: accusations is that it can strengthen in group cohesion and identity.

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Speaker 1: So your group, with all of its flaws, can nonetheless

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Speaker 1: feel pretty good about itself. So conspiracy theories typically reflect

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Speaker 1: who our friends are and who our enemies are. In

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Speaker 1: other words, the particular conspiracy that a theorist chooses is

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Speaker 1: consistent with what they already have in their internal model.

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Speaker 1: So if they hate Russians for whatever reason, then that

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Speaker 1: is the target of their conspiracy. If they hate Ukrainians,

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Speaker 1: then that is the target of the conspiracy. And there's

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Speaker 1: one more thing I just want to mention here about

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Speaker 1: in groups and outgroups. Your outgroup doesn't have to be

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Speaker 1: someone with whom you have enmity, just someone you don't trust.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you think they're secretive, and this is why shadowy

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Speaker 1: government organizations so often feature. They are a default outgroup

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Speaker 1: that you don't trust because they reveal their cards so little.

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Speaker 1: We'll come back to that, okay, So returning to the

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Speaker 1: bigger picture of why people generate conspiracy theories, there's another

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Speaker 1: drive that deserves mention, and that is the jern audience.

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Speaker 1: It shouldn't be overlooked that there is a social component

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Speaker 1: to conspiracy theories. So for the puzzle solver, there's often

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Speaker 1: a sense that they will get famous for nailing this

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Speaker 1: thing that everyone else overlooked. The theorist's mind races to

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Speaker 1: visions of the future in which they are on the

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Speaker 1: front page of Time magazine for having figured out what

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Speaker 1: no one else did. All of these are feelings that

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Speaker 1: are natural and important drives of our brains. Not only

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Speaker 1: the desire to simplify a complex model to something that

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Speaker 1: suddenly clarifies our understanding, but also the desire to demonstrate

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Speaker 1: your value to your community. And this social component, I

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Speaker 1: suspect is an important piece of what powers the creation

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Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories. But there's even a slightly more tame

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Speaker 1: way that the social drive expresses itself and that's even

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Speaker 1: just repeating the story. You get something out of telling it.

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Speaker 1: After all. The piracy theory is interesting, so you get

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Speaker 1: the attention at the party or on the couch or

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Speaker 1: on social media. The reason it's interesting is because it

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Speaker 1: challenges someone else's internal model. They think they understand something,

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Speaker 1: and suddenly you tell them, voila, you have a totally

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Speaker 1: different framework for explaining the same thing. That's why it

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Speaker 1: holds their attention. Maybe you weren't the original sherlock who

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Speaker 1: came up with the theory, but you can glow in

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Speaker 1: much of the credit because you're the one spreading the word.

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Speaker 1: So conspiracy theory is propagate because you get to be

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Speaker 1: the one who tells the story. It's like having this

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Speaker 1: precious little gem that you get to show over and over.

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Speaker 1: It's like a gift certificate that you can use, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't get used up. And that's why if you

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Speaker 1: have a good conspiracy theory, you'll tell everybody you know,

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Speaker 1: because it's not only about truth, it's about social dynamics. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is not to say that you as the teller,

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Speaker 1: might not believe it totally, just that you don't have

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Speaker 1: to believe it totally to get all this delicious social feedback. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so these are some of the drivers of why people

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Speaker 1: create and repeat conspiracy theories. We are all driven to

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Speaker 1: solve puzzles and that helps us to simplify narratives and

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Speaker 1: reduce cognitive dissonance. And there are many social components here.

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Speaker 1: Our in groups and out groups typically play big roles

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Speaker 1: in shaping the story. And finally, conspiracy theories tend to

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Speaker 1: be sticky because people could have the impression that they

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Speaker 1: are doing something valuable for their community or at minimum

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Speaker 1: getting social attention for being the one to offer the

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Speaker 1: surprise twist. And in thinking about conspiracy theories from the

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Speaker 1: neuroscience point of view, I realized there we're two more

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Speaker 1: things that are important here. The first has to do

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Speaker 1: with threat detection. One of the most important jobs of

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Speaker 1: the brain is to see trouble coming. What we find

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Speaker 1: in neuroimaging is that the amigdala is like an emergency

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Speaker 1: control center that kicks into gear when anything menacing is brewing,

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Speaker 1: whether that's a real threat or even just a perceived threat.

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Speaker 1: And once you're amigdala is revd up, you operate with

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Speaker 1: heightened suspicion and vigilance. Now like almost everything in neuroscience,

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Speaker 1: we find a spectrum of threat detection across the population.

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Speaker 1: Some people never see threats, possibly at their detriment, while

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Speaker 1: other people have more fear and anxiety and see threats everywhere.

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Speaker 1: I just want to note that Mother Nature always seems

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Speaker 1: to do this. She generates a spectrum, and in some

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Speaker 1: situations or in some eras, one end of the spectrum

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Speaker 1: might do better than another. But it's not to say

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Speaker 1: that there is a single best answer for all situations.

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Speaker 1: Along with threat detection, there's one more thing that brains

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Speaker 1: try to do all the time, which is agency detection.

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Speaker 1: Did this event happen because of the actions of agents

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Speaker 1: behind it, like other people or groups of people, Like

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Speaker 1: are my keys missing because I with them somewhere stupid

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Speaker 1: or because someone else came in and took them? Not surprisingly,

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Speaker 1: we find the same kind of spectrum here, such that

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Speaker 1: at one end people think that everything just ends up

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Speaker 1: the way it is by natural forces, not by any

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Speaker 1: planning by humans. At the other end, people have hyperactive

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Speaker 1: agency detection, and they are more likely to believe that

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Speaker 1: powerful forces are behind complex events. Now I've been talking

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Speaker 1: about this so far, as though anywhere on that spectrum

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Speaker 1: is equally useful, but in fact, at the extremes we

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Speaker 1: find things like paranoid schizophrenia. People who suffer from this

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Speaker 1: are much more likely to be predisposed to conspiracy thinking.

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Speaker 1: In paranoid schizophrenia, we generally find patterns of suspicious thinking

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Speaker 1: and a heightened tendency to see threats and hidden motives.

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Speaker 1: These detectors are all cranked way up, and the reason

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Speaker 1: that we categorize this as a mental illness is because

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Speaker 1: it tends to in ped the social progress of a

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Speaker 1: person because they're out on a part of the spectrum

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Speaker 1: which is unlikely to be correct very often. Again, I'm

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Speaker 1: not saying that there's no possibility of conspiracies in the world.

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Speaker 1: It's just that if you connect the dots everywhere all

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Speaker 1: the time, it's very unlikely within your lifetime that you

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Speaker 1: are going to be right often if ever. Now, what

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Speaker 1: has always fascinated me about people who suffer from paranoid

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Speaker 1: schizophrenia as I've traveled around the world is an obsession

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Speaker 1: that they have with shadowy organizations, but specifically whatever your

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Speaker 1: local shadowy organization is. So, if you have schizophrenia in

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Speaker 1: the United States, you obsess about the FBI or the NSA.

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Speaker 1: But if you're in Russia, you obsess about the Federal

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Speaker 1: Security Service, the FSB or its predecessor of the KGB.

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Speaker 1: In the United Kingdom, it's the MI six that you

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Speaker 1: worry about. In China, it's the Ministry of State Security,

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Speaker 1: known for its secretive operations. In North Korea, you're sure

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Speaker 1: it's the Reconnaissance General Bureau that's behind whatever conspiracy theory

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Speaker 1: you're working on. So the stories themselves are plug and play.

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Speaker 1: You find the same stories translated everywhere. The thing that

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Speaker 1: changes is the local group that you are paranoid about. Okay, Now,

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Speaker 1: with that foundation about why brains cook up more and

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Speaker 1: more esoteric explanations for things, I now want to pose

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Speaker 1: the question, what are the chances of any particular theory

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Speaker 1: being true? I mean, we all have limited information, and

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Speaker 1: there's a possibility that some things are done in a

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Speaker 1: shady way. But I assert that with any proposed theory,

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Speaker 1: the important thing is to look at it through the

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Speaker 1: lens of probability. And there are a couple of ways

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Speaker 1: that I want us to think about this. First, let's

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Speaker 1: consider the optimal number of people involved to keep a

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Speaker 1: conspiracy going. My guess is that this number would have

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Speaker 1: to be very small, like two or three, because that

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Speaker 1: would give just enough power to do something maybe interesting,

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Speaker 1: but it wouldn't involve so many people that you're guaranteed

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Speaker 1: that somebody is going to defect. Now, the fact is,

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Speaker 1: any of these conspiracy theories that float around, like the

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Speaker 1: moon landing was faked, or JFK was murdered by a

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Speaker 1: larger organization, or nine to eleven was an inside job

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Speaker 1: by the American government, all of these would require an

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Speaker 1: enormous number of people to keep a secret. And the

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Speaker 1: question is, how do you keep a really big secret

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Speaker 1: in the face of someone involved getting drunk in a bar,

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Speaker 1: or talking in his sleep or having a deathbed confession.

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Speaker 1: Now you can model this mathematically by his assuming that

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Speaker 1: each day there's some very tiny probability of defection or

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Speaker 1: of accidentally spilling the secret, and then you look at

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Speaker 1: time ticking along, and if each day you have a

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Speaker 1: tiny probability of the secret coming out, the chance that

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Speaker 1: that secret survives drops with time. This is done mathematically

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Speaker 1: with what's called a survival analysis. So, for example, say

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Speaker 1: on a given night, you have a super small chance

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Speaker 1: of getting drunk and spilling the secret. Let's say it's

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Speaker 1: a point zho one chance. Then after a year of

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Speaker 1: having to keep this secret every day, there's a larger

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Speaker 1: chance that you have spilled the secret, And after two

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Speaker 1: years the chance is even bigger, and so on. But

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Speaker 1: now here's where I think it's really interesting. There's a

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Speaker 1: branch of math called game theory, which studies the interaction

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Speaker 1: between people and the strategies they use and the outcomes

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Speaker 1: that happen, especially when the outcome for each person depends

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Speaker 1: on the choices of everyone who's involved. In other words,

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Speaker 1: what happens when people are making independent decisions, but those

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Speaker 1: decisions are actually all related to one another, but the

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Speaker 1: outcome depends on all of the decisions. One of the

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Speaker 1: most famous versions of this is a puzzle called the

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Speaker 1: prisoner's dilemma. Now there can be many versions of this,

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Speaker 1: but here's the basic idea. Two criminals get arrested, but

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Speaker 1: instead of getting thrown in the same cell, they're separated

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Speaker 1: into different cells and interrogated independently. The police investigator says

433
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 1: to each one, look, we don't have the evidence yet

434
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: that you guys robbed the bank, but we can charge

435
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:37,920
Speaker 1: you right now on a lesser offense, and you're both

436
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: gonna get one year in jail. But if you confess. Now,

437
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: if you rat out your partner, he'll get ten years

438
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: and you get to go home. And by the way,

439
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 1: if they both rat each other out, they'll both do

440
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: seven years. So each prisoner can either stay silent and

441
00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:57,400
Speaker 1: not admit that they were up to anything, and they'll

442
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: both just spend a year in prison, or each prisoner

443
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: can make the decision to defect to rat out his partner,

444
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: because that way, as a defector, you can go free,

445
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:13,360
Speaker 1: while the prisoner who stayed silent would receive a long sentence. Now,

446
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:16,239
Speaker 1: the key is that if both prisoners remain silent, if

447
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 1: they don't admit anything, then they can only be charged

448
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: on the lesser offense. They will both have a much

449
00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 1: shorter sentence, so that it turns out as the optimal

450
00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: solution for both of them mutual cooperation and a short sentence.

451
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: But it never happens because individually it's actually better to

452
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: defect to betray your partner, which leads to a worse

453
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,040
Speaker 1: outcome for both of them. The expected outcome essentially every

454
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: time is that both don't want to take the chance

455
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: that the other is going to rat them out, so

456
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 1: they take the option to betray. Now there's a parallel

457
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 1: here with anything that requires a lot of people to

458
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: cover it up. So let's say there were some conspiracy.

459
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: For the guy who decides to break from the group,

460
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:05,320
Speaker 1: he frees himself from getting in trouble, and he's incentivized

461
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: to do so before someone else in the group does

462
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: it to him. He doesn't want to be the one

463
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: who's been ratted out. He wants to do the ratting.

464
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: And presumably if you're the first guy who comes clean,

465
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: you'd be world famous. If you're the guy who says, look,

466
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: I was there, here's how we set up a studio

467
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: and filmed a fake moon landing, and here's all my

468
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 1: proof and documentation, or here's how he orchestrated this incredibly

469
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: sly assassination of a president and kept it secret for decades.

470
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: But now I am coming clean, or my conscience has

471
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: gotten to me, and two and a half decades after

472
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 1: nine to eleven, I'm going to explain how this was

473
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: done as an inside job, and I'm going to write

474
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 1: an internationally best selling book on this and beyond every

475
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 1: news and morning show and presumably make a ton of

476
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: money because I'm the one who chose to blow the

477
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:58,400
Speaker 1: whistle for reasons of guilt or over some internal argument,

478
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 1: or because I can win the prisoner's dilemma this way,

479
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 1: because I suspect that some other guy on the team

480
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: is on the verge of spilling the means, whatever the reasons,

481
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:11,720
Speaker 1: game theory would suggest that the rational thing to do

482
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: would be too defect before someone else does. And this

483
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: is why I look skeptically at UFO conspiracies. It's not

484
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: that I don't think the cosmos is enormous and there

485
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: could be other life forms out there. In fact, I

486
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: think it's inevitable. But all the conspiracy theories about UFOs

487
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,720
Speaker 1: I find difficult to believe because it's very hard to

488
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: get a large group of people to keep a secret.

489
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: The incentives are just too high to defect. The defector

490
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 1: could say, you know what I want protection, I want

491
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: a seven figure deal with Penguin Random House to publish

492
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: the best selling book of the decade. I want to

493
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:50,160
Speaker 1: be played by Tom Cruise in the movie of My

494
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 1: Life and so on. Okay, so maybe you'll say, well,

495
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of military discipline involved, a bunch

496
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 1: of hard men who would never crack. But what about

497
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: their law young haired rebellious kid or their gen z grandkid.

498
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: They'd be thrilled to be on CNN revealing what they

499
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: discovered in the attic, like a little piece of spaceship

500
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: or a secret correspondence, and then everyone on their social

501
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 1: media would give them thumbs up. And at the heart

502
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 1: of this discussion about getting a big group of individuals

503
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: to keep a secret is a critical question what would

504
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:26,840
Speaker 1: be the point of keeping a secret? For example, what's

505
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:30,719
Speaker 1: the point of keeping a secret about aliens having landed

506
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty seven. The conspiracy theorist always insists that

507
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: the government keeps it a secret because if it's revealed,

508
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: the public will freak out and some sort of unspecified

509
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: chaos will rain. But that argument seems specious to me,

510
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: given that every person is talking about aliens in Roswell. Anyway.

511
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 1: It just so happens that my brother went to military

512
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: school in Roswell, New Mexico, so I've been there plenty

513
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: of times, and they sell t shirts there with UFOs

514
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: on them, and hats and toys with UFOs and so on,

515
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: and outside Roswell and even outside New Mexico. Almost everyone

516
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: in the nation who I run into recognizes the name

517
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 1: Roswell precisely because they've heard about this supposed alien crash landing.

518
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: But the conspiracy theory requires, for its upkeep that every

519
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: single person who knows anything has to stay quiet because

520
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:26,479
Speaker 1: the nation would freak out if they knew. And yet

521
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: that is all that almost anyone associates with the town

522
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: of Roswell. It seems like a leak at this point

523
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: would be anti climactics. Someone would come out with the

524
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:41,040
Speaker 1: big reveal and everyone would say, yeah, tell me something

525
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. So I'm not making the claim that

526
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: we are the only life form in the cosmos. Statistics

527
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: would suggest there should be lots and lots of life

528
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: pervading the galaxies. But I am suggesting that it's probably

529
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:56,320
Speaker 1: going to be easy to know when we actually get visited,

530
00:32:56,360 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: because it won't depend on dozens or hundreds of people

531
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 1: keeping a secret with no particular clarity on why the

532
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: secret is being kept. Or take the Moon landing, some

533
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: small fraction of the population still says this was actually

534
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: a hoax. Now, this one is easy to address because

535
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: with some equipment you can actually prove to yourself that

536
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: it's not a hoax. I was lucky enough to meet

537
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong, and he would always say that he was

538
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: just a lowly worker whose job was to put a

539
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:31,280
Speaker 1: mirror on the Moon. Now he was obviously much more

540
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:33,720
Speaker 1: than that, but it's true about him placing the mirror.

541
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:37,080
Speaker 1: The mirror is there to bounce a laser light off of,

542
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,000
Speaker 1: so you can measure the distance to the Moon with

543
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: millimeter precision by using the speed of light. This is

544
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: called lunar laser ranging. And by the way, there are

545
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: now six mirrors on the Moon, three placed by the USA,

546
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: two by the Soviets, and one by India. So you

547
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 1: can prove this to yourself by bouncing a laser off

548
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: the Moon. But let's say you didn't know about the

549
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: retroflectors and you thought there was a possibility that the

550
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:03,959
Speaker 1: moon landing had been faked. Again, there are presumably an

551
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: enormous number of people who would have to have been

552
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 1: involved here, certainly more than two or three I would guess.

553
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 1: To pull off a moon landing hoax where the entire

554
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: world is watching and you want to fool the whole population,

555
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:21,320
Speaker 1: you would need the participation from the entirety of NASA,

556
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 1: from the production crew, from the newscasters, you certainly need

557
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,360
Speaker 1: the whole astronaut core to be on board, and probably

558
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 1: the president and presumably hundreds of engineers who went home

559
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: to their families each night. And every one of these

560
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: people was at risk of getting drunk or talking in

561
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 1: their sleep, or having spasms of guilt or religious conversions

562
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 1: or deathbed regrets or whatever. So the key whenever you

563
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 1: are confronted with a conspiracy theory is to ask what

564
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:56,239
Speaker 1: are the probabilities. You shouldn't dismiss a new hypothesis on

565
00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:00,239
Speaker 1: the grounds that anything outside your internal model simply can't

566
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: be true. Instead, you should consider the numbers, how many

567
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: people would have to be involved, what incentive structure would

568
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: keep them not talking, how much time has passed where

569
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: they could have had a chance to slip up or

570
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: make a purposeful confession. Okay, now, I just want to

571
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: take a minute to address something that I often hear

572
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: people lament about conspiracy theories, and that is the idea

573
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: that the Internet is a key problem here. This is

574
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 1: what allows for the easy flooding of conspiracy theories. I

575
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 1: think the Internet is not particularly powerful here. Why because

576
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: Whenever someone asserts this to me, I say, okay, let's

577
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: say you wanted to make a new conspiracy theory, say

578
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden actually has an alien baby. So what

579
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 1: do you mean that the Internet gives you the technology

580
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 1: to flood the world with your crazy idea? Really? Picture this.

581
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:58,480
Speaker 1: You post this statement on your x account, and you

582
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 1: do a selfie video, and you post it to Insta

583
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: and TikTok. Now, the question is is the Internet meaningfully

584
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 1: allowing you to flood society with your conspiracy theory or

585
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: does nobody care that you've posted this? Do you get

586
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: hundreds of reposts or do you get none? When people

587
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: talk about how easy it is to flood a conspiracy theory,

588
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:25,200
Speaker 1: what they overlook is a subtle but critical point, what

589
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: makes a really good conspiracy theory? Because it has to

590
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: live in a very narrow range to get love online,

591
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:38,240
Speaker 1: you can't flood the Internet with anything. Just like Darwinian evolution,

592
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 1: only a very tiny number of ideas make it and

593
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:45,439
Speaker 1: have successful reproduction. So this leads us to the really

594
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:50,360
Speaker 1: important question what kind of conspiracy theories stick? And the

595
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 1: answer is it has to make a really good story.

596
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 1: As I said earlier, the story has to connect the

597
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,399
Speaker 1: dots in a way that it's interesting and surprising and

598
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: has explanatory power and reduces cognitive load. A good conspiracy

599
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: theory is one that has an appealing narrative structure. Many times,

600
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:18,320
Speaker 1: when something happens, like the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, it's because

601
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:22,839
Speaker 1: of a mistake or incompetence or an oversight, and those

602
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: don't make an interesting story. And this is what opens

603
00:37:26,600 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 1: the opportunity for conspiracy theories to blossom, if they can

604
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: put together a bigger and more exciting story. My guess

605
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: would be in fact, that if some random chance event occurred,

606
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 1: you're always going to get a conspiracy theory blossoming. And

607
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: if you re ran the exact history a thousand times,

608
00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 1: every time, the randomness of the event would not be believed,

609
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 1: and instead alternative explanations would shoot up around it. Why,

610
00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: Because we want story, We want a clear explanation. Story

611
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 1: gives meaning to events. And by the way, I think

612
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: we can flip this description and look at it from

613
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: the brain's point of view. Sequences of events that have meaning,

614
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:16,320
Speaker 1: in other words, things that resonate in the internal model,

615
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: as in this cause this, which caused this, this is

616
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: what we call a story, as in, I have a

617
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: narrative that explains this, and the narrative is easy to

618
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 1: remember because each thought follows from the last, and there's

619
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: a minimum that I have to memorize because the pieces

620
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: fall into place. So what makes a good conspiracy theory, Well,

621
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: it can't be too complex. It has to be a

622
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 1: digestible story, and it has to be plausible, even if unlikely. Plausible.

623
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: It often involves a shadowy group or simply any out group,

624
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 1: and it has to be surprising and compelling. So, coming

625
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 1: back to the Great Fire of Rome in the year

626
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:18,240
Speaker 1: sixty four, who the heck knows how the fire started.

627
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: It might have been someone cooking a chicken and a

628
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: spark flu or some candle in a house somewhere melted

629
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,399
Speaker 1: most of the way and then fell over, or there

630
00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:32,439
Speaker 1: was an accidental spark from a blacksmith, or maybe someone

631
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:36,280
Speaker 1: doing a religious ritual, or a seven year old kicking

632
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: embers around or whatever. They didn't have forensic tools for

633
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: the investigation at that time, and even if they did,

634
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 1: it's not clear that they would have found the answer.

635
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: But the story that Emperor Nero would directly benefit from

636
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: having this land cleared. That's straightforward, and it's spicy and

637
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 1: compelling and repeat worthy because of the simplicity and deviousness

638
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. Or a weather balloon randomly landing

639
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: in Roswell is obviously not the kind of thing that

640
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:11,720
Speaker 1: people are going to get all excited about write books

641
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: and start clubs over. But alien life covered up by

642
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: the government that is a very compelling plot. Or Oswald

643
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 1: acting alone in JFK's assassination is one kind of narrative,

644
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: but it's not nearly as compelling as a larger story

645
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: where lots of secretive people decided that they wanted the

646
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:35,000
Speaker 1: president dead. So to work, a conspiracy theory needs to

647
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: have a good narrative. Now, I've watched news events happen

648
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 1: for years and conspiracy theories come out about them, and

649
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: the thing that has struck me as so interesting is

650
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:49,879
Speaker 1: how the whole thing unfolds. Like physics, as in, if

651
00:40:50,160 --> 00:40:53,080
Speaker 1: X happens, then you're guaranteed some group will come out

652
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 1: and say, wait, what if why happened? So, for example,

653
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: Nero's rome gets incinerated, but someone realized says, hey, he

654
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,680
Speaker 1: could benefit from this because the land is now clear.

655
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 1: Therefore he might have been the one to have caused this.

656
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 1: With thousands or millions of brains thinking about the situation,

657
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: it is absolutely inevitable that that version of things will

658
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: come down the pike next or after JFK's assassination. The

659
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:24,319
Speaker 1: FBI ran twenty five thousand interviews and that's how they

660
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But that's just

661
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: fuel for the fire. We're guaranteed that another version of

662
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,879
Speaker 1: the story is inevitable. I really can't think of a

663
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 1: single big event in history where one story came out

664
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:42,239
Speaker 1: and everyone said, Wow, what a world we're in, and

665
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 1: everyone shook hands on the narrative. So nowadays I'm putting

666
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: together a model of this because my assertion is that

667
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:54,839
Speaker 1: what unfolds every time is inevitable. When X happens, there

668
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 1: are many people in the world who could have had

669
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,439
Speaker 1: a vested interest in it. As one random example, when

670
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: Hamas invaded Israel, someone I knew suggested, Hey, this seems

671
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:07,720
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing that Russia could have been behind,

672
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 1: because Russia wants to get the attention off of themselves

673
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 1: for their attack on the Ukraine. And of course that's

674
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:18,080
Speaker 1: true that Russia would theoretically like to have a distraction,

675
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:21,320
Speaker 1: But does that mean that Russia was behind it? Well,

676
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: I can't know. But just because an entity has an interest,

677
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: does that tell you something meaningful? Maybe? Maybe not. So

678
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:32,959
Speaker 1: the model goes like this, an event happens. Then let's

679
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: say there are ten entities in the world, like governments

680
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:40,080
Speaker 1: or people or organizations who could, in theory, have something

681
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: to gain from that. What will inevitably happen then is

682
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: that all ten will become the targets of different conspiracy

683
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 1: theories because they could in some way benefit, perhaps directly,

684
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 1: perhaps very circuitously, but they could benefit from the event

685
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: that just happened. So all ten of them will be

686
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,919
Speaker 1: the target of a round of YouTube videos and AM

687
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,240
Speaker 1: radio programs and so on saying hey, look, I think

688
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:10,359
Speaker 1: they were behind this event. And then there's the second level.

689
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:14,319
Speaker 1: There's the people who could benefit from having someone else

690
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:19,800
Speaker 1: accused of benefiting. So in a cartoon example, we might say, well,

691
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,760
Speaker 1: Ukraine would benefit if people thought that Russia was behind

692
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:27,399
Speaker 1: the attack. So then it becomes a second level conspiracy

693
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 1: because the idea is that they would benefit from igniting

694
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory about Russia, and I suspect that good

695
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists can do third level and fourth level theories,

696
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: where they can point to anywhere on the map and

697
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: connect enough dots to make a story. The story might

698
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 1: not be compelling to everyone, but if it involves the

699
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: right out groups, it can get traction, at least among

700
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: a particular in group. In other words, the cascade of

701
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories following any event seems to me totally predictable,

702
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:03,399
Speaker 1: because in any random situation, there will always be other

703
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:06,319
Speaker 1: parties that could be seen to benefit from it, other

704
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: countries or governments, or individuals or shadowy organizations. And because

705
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: of the inherent complexity of the world, there will always

706
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 1: be a large canvas upon which to draw connections between dots.

707
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:24,720
Speaker 1: And I just want to address one final point. Someone

708
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: asked me recently if I thought that conspiracy theories were

709
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:31,280
Speaker 1: more common right now than they are at other times

710
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:33,720
Speaker 1: in history. I don't know, and I think it's hard

711
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 1: to study that with high resolution, But two things seem

712
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 1: clear to me. The first is that we always retrospectively romanticize.

713
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:46,279
Speaker 1: We imagine that previous eras were more rational, whereas any

714
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 1: close reading of history tells us that's absolutely not the case.

715
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:51,719
Speaker 1: The second is, like I mentioned before, there have been

716
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: lots and lots of conspiracy theories all throughout history. I

717
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:58,360
Speaker 1: mentioned the plot against Socrates, or the death of Alexander

718
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:02,319
Speaker 1: the Great, or the assassination of Julius Caesar. But I

719
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: have to allow that only tells us that conspiracies exist

720
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: across the centuries of millennia, but it can't tell us

721
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:12,319
Speaker 1: much about whether there's some slight up and down that

722
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:16,239
Speaker 1: happens on the scale of decades. So this is very

723
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 1: speculative and maybe erroneous, But I've been wondering if conspiracy

724
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: theories grew more popular around twenty twenty than they were

725
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:27,960
Speaker 1: in the years just preceding that. Now, again this is

726
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: just a speculation, but if it's true, I feel like

727
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: I have an explanation for that, and that is covid.

728
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 1: I'm making this conjecture because of something you've heard me

729
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: say a million times that brains build internal models of

730
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: the outside world to try to predict things as best

731
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:47,960
Speaker 1: they can. Fundamentally, the brain is a prediction machine, and

732
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 1: that is why we have brains, and that is why

733
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:53,400
Speaker 1: we have been so successful as a species. But what

734
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: happens when our internal models suddenly are not predicting. Well.

735
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: Example I've ever seen at a societal level was when

736
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: COVID hit. It all seems clear enough in retrospect, as in,

737
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 1: that's what happened, and the world did this and that,

738
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 1: But if you can really put yourself back and let's

739
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 1: say March of twenty twenty, what you might remember is

740
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: that the whole thing seemed not possible. We all heard

741
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: there was some virus in China that people were worried about,

742
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: and it started hitting our ears, some discussion about it,

743
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:28,840
Speaker 1: and then at some point you heard the term SARS

744
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 1: COVID two virus for the first time, and eventually you

745
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: hear COVID nineteen and you realize you've heard that word

746
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,239
Speaker 1: a couple of times now, and then it starts being

747
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,480
Speaker 1: part of more conversations, and pretty soon it's all anybody

748
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:44,720
Speaker 1: is talking about. But the feeling that essentially everyone had

749
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:47,799
Speaker 1: was that this is somehow going to get taken care of,

750
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: because that's why we have governments, and they have all

751
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:54,000
Speaker 1: kinds of special departments and units and people in white coats,

752
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: and surely this is the kind of thing that somebody

753
00:46:57,000 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 1: will take care of and it'll just blow over, just

754
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: like everything else is blown over. After all, we haven't

755
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: had a meaningful pandemic since the nineteen eighteen influenza epidemic,

756
00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:10,439
Speaker 1: and now, for goodness sakes, it's twenty twenty. We're living

757
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,840
Speaker 1: in the future. There's not going to be anything to

758
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: worry about here. And at some point in the middle

759
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: of March twenty twenty, it became clear that we all

760
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: needed to shut down our businesses and offices temporarily and

761
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: work from home, something most of us had never done.

762
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you remember the details, but

763
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 1: it seemed like we were going to have to shut

764
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: things down for a few days, and pretty soon we

765
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:36,760
Speaker 1: were all dismayed to realize this was going to last

766
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: at least a couple of weeks, and suddenly the world

767
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: became highly unpredictable. By your brain. It used to be

768
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: that the biggest surprise you'd had was maybe your local

769
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: store rearranged things so the toilet paper moved from Aisle

770
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: six to Aisle eight. But you never in your life

771
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: saw a situation where they simply said, we don't have

772
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: any toilet paper. The supply chain broke, and you probably

773
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 1: never even thought about the supply chain before, and now

774
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 1: you didn't know if the Starbucks down the road was

775
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,399
Speaker 1: going to be open, would your haircut place be open,

776
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: would the bank be open? Suddenly all of your prediction

777
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: abilities were afraid. Our internal models in March twenty twenty

778
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:25,759
Speaker 1: suddenly revealed themselves to be woefully inadequate. So what happens

779
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: when our internal models suddenly are not doing a good job.

780
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:33,640
Speaker 1: I hypothesize that they grasp for foundation, They grab for

781
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 1: things that would seem to return them to a firm footing.

782
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: So I watched this and myself and in all my colleagues.

783
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: You would read an article that said this is all

784
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:46,320
Speaker 1: going to be over by next week, and you think, okay, cool,

785
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 1: I got it. I believe the argument. I can repeat

786
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:51,400
Speaker 1: this to my friends. And then ten minutes later you

787
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: read an article that says two hundred thousand Americans are

788
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: going to die and you think, wow, well that was

789
00:48:57,640 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: well argued. I get it. I can repeat this to

790
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 1: my friends. Now. It's not easy to remember now, but

791
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:06,800
Speaker 1: we were all going back and forth on completely different

792
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: predictions about the world and everything happening around us. We

793
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 1: had a breakdown of the internal model. And this, I suggest,

794
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:21,800
Speaker 1: is when conspiracy theories really thrive. Why Because we're seeking

795
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 1: harder than ever to find foundation, to place our understanding

796
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 1: of the world on firm ground, and whackier and wackier

797
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:36,520
Speaker 1: theories can scratch the itch of reducing cognitive dissonance and

798
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: giving good explanations for things. And the fact is, the

799
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:42,759
Speaker 1: main thing we learned from the pandemic is that the

800
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:46,840
Speaker 1: world is very complicated and fragile, and when it's suddenly

801
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 1: tossed into a blender by a global pandemic, the results

802
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: can be unpredictable. But our brains aren't in that business.

803
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:58,640
Speaker 1: They're in the business of finding hypotheses that allow the

804
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 1: mind to impose a narrative that makes sense. Okay, so

805
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: let's wrap up. What we saw in this episode is

806
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:09,799
Speaker 1: that conspiracy theories have been with us for as long

807
00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 1: as we have recorded history, so it's not something brand new.

808
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:15,359
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I did make the argument that

809
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,280
Speaker 1: there may be small periods of time, like during COVID,

810
00:50:18,320 --> 00:50:21,359
Speaker 1: when the brain's internal model is having a harder time

811
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: landing predictions and therefore is more susceptible to compelling stories.

812
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 1: We also saw that brains love to solve puzzles, and

813
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:33,840
Speaker 1: this is something like a compulsion for brains which always

814
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: want to lighten cognitive load and reduce cognitive dissonance. But

815
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: the fact is that events in the world tend to

816
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:43,640
Speaker 1: be quite complex, so there are many ways to solve

817
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 1: the puzzle, some more straightforward and some more arcane. And

818
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:51,239
Speaker 1: the reason the arcane explanations are sometimes appealing to some

819
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: people is because they give an opportunity to confirm biases

820
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:59,320
Speaker 1: about our outgroups. And I also emphasized the social aspect

821
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: of that is gained from having the conspiracy theory. Finally,

822
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:07,919
Speaker 1: I suggested that we can't always know what is true

823
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 1: and not true because the world is complex, But the

824
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: most sensible thing to do is to approach any particular

825
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:20,759
Speaker 1: suggestion with a scientific lens and ask yourself questions about it,

826
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 1: like how many people would have to be involved, do

827
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 1: they have realistic incentives that would allow them to spend

828
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: the rest of their life in prison if they get caught,

829
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:33,840
Speaker 1: And with the increasing passage of time, how likely is

830
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:37,279
Speaker 1: it that none of the people involved would defect in

831
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,760
Speaker 1: order to save themselves from punishment and make themselves famous

832
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:45,160
Speaker 1: as the whistleblower. Most conspiracy theories that float around are

833
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 1: not particularly robust When viewed against the background of these questions,

834
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 1: and very often it's because the conspiracy theories are not

835
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 1: built on a good model of human behavior. In a

836
00:51:57,200 --> 00:51:59,799
Speaker 1: future episode, I'm going to dive into this issue of

837
00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: why conspiracy theories are generally unlikely because of the difficulty

838
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:08,800
Speaker 1: of keeping anything confidential. That upcoming episode is called why

839
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 1: is it so hard for the brain to keep a secret?

840
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 1: I don't mean to imply that these considerations would rule

841
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: out any conspiracy theory, but certainly many or most conspiracy

842
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:24,600
Speaker 1: theories are ruled out by a good understanding of our

843
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 1: neural drives and the resultant insight into human social dynamics.

844
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information

845
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:41,000
Speaker 1: and to find further reading. Send me an email at

846
00:52:41,040 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 1: podcasts at eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and

847
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:47,920
Speaker 1: check out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for

848
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 1: videos of each episode and to leave comments Until next time.

849
00:52:51,760 --> 00:53:02,440
Speaker 1: I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.