Do Sabre-toothed Tigers Explain Modern Conspiracy Theories?
Martin Bartels
30 July 2020
Max Delius
The ongoing discussion of conspiracy theories makes me think of a scene in Harry Mulisch's harrowing novel "The Discovery of Heaven": One of the key characters is the astronomer Max Delius who, sitting drunk on a piece of granite one night while looking up at the starry sky, suddenly realises the basic pattern he has been searching for over decades. This pattern was not meant to be understood by humans. Suddenly Max does grasp it, however. And then a small meteorite kills him on the spot.
There are indeed conspiracies. The participants are usually out for economic gain or power. Conspiracies are secret coordinated strategies to achieve benefits. In comparison with other more formally organised social groups such as companies or associations, conspiracies can be categorised as more fragile.
We see conspiracies breaking down all the time. The reason is usually that there are differences of opinion among the participants on the distribution of benefits. One disgruntled person is enough to throw the conspiracy off balance. The larger the number of participants and the more complicated the human network, the lower the chances are that a conspiracy will survive.
An outsider who wants to identify a conspiracy must look for details that suggest a pattern. The word "pattern" seems to be a key word for understanding the emergence of conspiracy theories.
Irrational thinking?
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories
lists 12 principal categories of conspiracy theories. Studying them one by one and discovering new conspiracy theories in the news can be exciting. Again and again one is amazed at the astonishing mental constructions which their creators erect, well beyond rational thought, while claiming to be more rational than others.
If the modern principle of rationality were valid in this context, one could get rid of conspiracy theories by refuting them with arguments and above all with basic facts. But this does not work in this case. Once a large number of people have accepted a theory as plausible or even true, the process of spreading it continues by its own power.
Despite our doubts about the rationality of others’ thinking, nothing frees us from the duty to tackle the matter in a rational way.
There are different approaches to understanding the phenomenon. None of them excludes the others. Together they form a picture that should at least be suitable as a basis for further discussion:
The Ramsey Theory
For almost 100 years the Ramsey theory has been the subject of mathematical research. The theory posits the fact that, if a very large amount of information is available, it is very likely that patterns can be recognised.
http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/gouldm/ramsey.pdf (Martin Gould)
When a person discovers a pattern through combinatorial skills, that pattern is primarily the product of the thinking observer. There is no guarantee that this pattern has anything to do with reality. Nevertheless, the lucky discoverer has the strong feeling of having found an order in an area of apparent disorder.
https://www.ted.com/talks/patrickjmt_the_origin_of_countless_conspiracy_theories#t-260667 (PatrickJMT)
When other people acknowledge the pattern, a collective sense of truth emerges. Even if people feel differently, the number of those who agree with a statement has nothing to do with its validity. A sense of community can be fatally deceptive.
A quote from David Spiegelhalter sums up the matter very aptly:
“I don’t think we can ever fully rationalise ourselves out of the basic and often creative urge to find patterns even where none exist.”
Anthropology
"Lucy’s" impressive remains are exhibited in the Natural History Museum in Vienna. She lived about 3 million years ago. She was the result of a very long process of evolution before her birth. Our modern genus Homo Sapiens has only existed for about 300,000 years. The period of advanced civilizations to which we assign ourselves makes up only a small fraction of the history of our species.
Inevitably, our hardware is still largely that of prehistory. This is why anthropologists can provide us with valuable and possibly uncomfortable information about how we are still being internally wired today. Even if we have experienced accelerated civilisational development in the last few millennia, there cannot have been a decoupling from the patterns of the ancient past in this short period of time.
The ability to recognize patterns in a dangerous environment was and is important for human survival. Whether we are in the savannah or in a modern office, our alarm systems always work in the same way. “Pattern recognition”, the sophisticated capability of detecting and making sense of patterns in our environment, is critical.
When prehistoric human beings looked at a bush and noticed an unusual movement, they hypothetically projected a sabre-toothed tiger or another predator that had an appetite for human flesh. Obviously, the movement could also be related to a harmless breeze or a rabbit. But it prolonged the human’s life to look at every bush and try to see a pattern. Refuting assumptions of risk meant relief for the moment, not more.
Anthropologist Brigitte Jordan impressively described the ever-evolving capability of pattern recognition and the urge to constantly use it as a valuable part of human evolution:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.739.5811&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Even when there is no danger, modern man enjoys playing with his ability to discover patterns. It inspires us. However, it is not a method to ensure survival:
https://psyche.co/ideas/see-faces-in-the-clouds-it-might-be-a-sign-of-your-creativity?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b16ae6427a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_16_05_40&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b16ae6427a-70780685 (René Müri, Nicole Göbel)
According to modern scientific thinking, which developed only about 2500 years ago, the refutation of a hypothesis leads to its invalidation. In a dangerous natural environment, however, this thinking would not be successful. It can lead to an early death to conclude that there is no predator lurking behind a bush and therefore to believe that all bushes are harmless. In a dangerous natural environment it is sensible to release adrenaline and react with flight or attack whenever you see a pattern of potential danger.
Prehistoric humans implicitly multiplied the perhaps low subjective probability of danger by the value of what they sought to preserve, i.e. their survival. The latter value was always high. Clearly this pattern of reacting was appropriate.
The word “implicitly” is important in this context: When exposed to a potentially lethal risk, it was crucial that humans react instinctively, at a low cognitive level to be very fast and efficient:
https://cognitiontoday.com/2019/10/why-did-humans-evolve-pattern-recognition-abilities/ (Aditya Shukla)
We should be prepared to acknowledge that the sophisticated human ability to recognize patterns and the historically highly successful mechanisms of reacting by instinct are still fully functional and do make a lot of sense in a modern context, e.g. when we drive a car or ride a bike and expose ourselves to the risk of accidents or when we play tennis. We need this way of thinking for technical innovations and to create and understand art.
There has not been a substantial change of our internal wiring. The trigger may be fear, pleasure or ambition, and the refutation of a hypothesis has no relevance for action once the process has been set in motion.
Dunning-Kruger effect
In contrast to the two approaches described above, the Dunning-Kruger effect has nothing to do with the appropriateness of thinking modes in specific situations. Quite the contrary, its core is plain cluelessness combined with the inability to recognise such cluelessness.
People affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect seem to represent a certain percentage of any population. We all know such people: While they understand very little or stick to misconceptions, they are firmly convinced that they are right and have a deeper understanding than others. In other words, they do not have the mental ability to perceive their inability. Yet they live with a comfortable feeling of superiority.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/31/18200497/dunning-kruger-effect-explained-trump (David Dunning)
This model is very plausible and not at all complicated. It may even seem amusing. However, if a person affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect becomes active and produces and disseminates unfounded "explanations", serious consequences can result.
Fertile soil + seeding
Social environments that harbour collective fears or are characterised by mistrust provide a particularly fertile soil for conspiracy theories. This alone is not a sufficient reason for their emergence. However, if the above-mentioned effects materialise or if an interest group with knowledge of the fertile soil plans to sow conspiracy theories, the mushrooming effect can be powerful.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200522-what-we-can-learn-from-conspiracy-theories (Zaria Gorvett)
This model is very plausible and not at all complicated. It may even seem amusing. However, if a person affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect becomes active and produces and disseminates unfounded "explanations", serious consequences can result.
Conclusions
There is no doubt that conspiracy theorists can cause great harm. But condemning their thinking as irrational as a whole does not promise any progress. It is in accordance with human nature and is often still appropriate in dangerous situations today.
Instead of dismissing a form of thinking and acting as ethically inappropriate, we should openly address the question which method of thinking is right for which area of life.
We only make progress through clearly comprehensible distinctions. The general disqualification of people who use the wrong method in their search for answers only increases the adrenaline level of the addressees. They keep sitting on the wrong bus. They do not question their way of thinking. This is therefore not a strategy that benefits society.
The question is becoming more pressing as the Internet has multiplied the mass of information available for the formation of theories, facilitates their dissemination and allows hordes to form.
To set the stage
Lao Tzu’s words sum up a dramatic contemporary scenario: While in some parts of the world people are increasingly affected by water scarcity, others face the growing threat of too much water due to extremely heavy rainfall and rising sea levels.
While the poem captures the ambivalence of water perfectly, the words "soft and weak" also seem to describe the way modern civilisations have responded to it. Their foggy perception and sluggish action is just as dangerous as the threats themselves.
Why Water?
The focus of this essay is to use the prominent example of water to help identify concrete approaches for dealing rationally with the issue of climate change. Climate change affects us in many ways, including the expansion of deserts, forest fires, the salinisation of soils, landslides, extreme weather events, agricultural crop losses, loss of biodiversity, spread of disease and human and wildlife migration.
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Scientists and engineers have laid the foundations for our prosperity. And only these elites can show us the way to overcome the harmful externalities of these very engines of our wealth. This article supports the thesis that we are technologically and organisationally in a position to successfully meet these challenges, step by step.
One obstacle to the mobilisation of existing resources lies in the fact that the general public has only a vague understanding of the issue. They do not realise that, unless we make controlled sacrifices, nature will impose uncontrollable sacrifices on us.
We urgently need to overcome the human tendency to trivialise and understand with our minds and hearts what will happen if we do not listen to the guidance of our scientists and engineers. However, while these experts hold the keys to the right strategies, they are only trained to communicate with other scientists. This leads to a situation of misunderstanding and therefore a lack of adequate action.
Blurred perception of facts
Every day, we are all exposed to an overdose of reports about minor and major disasters in all forms of media. We more or less defend ourselves against this by ignoring some news, i.e. reducing the strain on our nerves by filtering information. It is human nature to rely on the mostly correct assumption that unpleasant developments will eventually end and change for the better. In the case of climate change, however, looking away and hoping things resolve themselves doesn’t appear to be a winning strategy.
A wealth of scientific analyses on climate change is available to everyone, but these are mostly comprehensible only for other scientists.
We should openly acknowledge that most people in the northern hemisphere have a sense of empathy for people "in the south" who are plagued by overpowering rains, flooded lowlands, islands disappearing into the water, eroding coastlines or droughts. However, the geographical distance and lack of awareness of the frequency of such disasters dilute solidarity. Collective psychological repression can set in quickly.
Most people in the northern hemisphere do not consider an increase in average temperatures of a few degrees to be alarming. Many even express relief that the winter is often milder than in the past. Loud protests by campaigners are experienced and understood by most citizens as a disturbance or perhaps exaggerated fearmongering.
At the level of policy, scientifically informed decision-makers attend international conferences on climate change, where they negotiate with other decision-makers on action plans that have no teeth but are presented as hard-won progress. And they are increasingly supporting “green” sectors of the economy. However, they are often reluctant to share the full extent of their knowledge about the problem because they do not want to jeopardise their recognition by “rocking the boat”.
The factual impact level is decisive for citizens
There is controversy about the interplay of causes of climate warming (industrial emissions, volcanic activity, ocean currents, etc.). We don't want to debate that here. What is more relevant are the changes in global average temperatures and their trends, as determined by scientific methods.
Instantaneous interruption or reversal of a climatic process?
Changes to the climate are not new in human history, and certain events have triggered reductions in temperature. A striking example of a break in climatic developments is the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in the year 536 CE, whose dust made the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere so opaque to sunlight over a period of more than 20 years that temperatures fell drastically ("Little Ice Age").
Recently, it has been hypothesised that ice ages were triggered by asteroids.
It may be tempting to pin our hopes on the possibility of such events helping us to mitigate climate change, but while we cannot rule them out, events of this kind are rare and unpredictable, we must not include them in projections. It would be absurd to hope for random external causes that could interrupt or stop the progress of global warming. While hope is a human propensity, it is not suitable for contingency planning.
Our real bottleneck
What is preventing us from taking appropriate action to minimise and reverse the rise in average temperatures?
Citizen perception of the nature and dimension of the threat is inevitably blurred, because the daily reports from the media are mostly unstructured and not comprehensible to non-scientists. The reports do not allow us to recognise the essentials.
Citizens need an overview that is communicated in an honest, understandable and clearly structured way. Only when citizens have realised the nature and scale of the problem will decision-makers have the courage to take action with determination. In essence, it is about legitimising protection strategies that are considered unpopular today.
Given that citizens do not have access to graspable knowledge, we have a transformation problem. And this can be overcome if science presents the overall scenario from a certain distance. Figuratively speaking: It is not about describing every pixel point of an image, but about showing the image as a whole. The holistic representation deviates from the usual approach of scientists, because each of them is professionally held to focus on "pixel points" in their respective area of specialisation. This is the only way science makes progress, but that's not what is needed here.
The contours of the hologram can be communicated in an understandable way using e.g. the key points mentioned above:
If the effect of a detail is not legible, the presentation of the measurement can be improved. In particular, the exponential impact of very small changes in average temperatures in the atmosphere goes very much against human intuition. We can compensate for this disadvantage in perspective: Instead of referring to changes in temperature in degrees Celsius, we should consistently communicate changes in basis points, i.e. in hundredths of a degree Celsius. For example, labelling a temperature rise as "32 basis points" would be correct and would make the difference easier to comprehend than "0.32 °C". This method is a common practice in the financial industry. There, too, this method of representation is helpful in raising awareness that a small change can have massive implications.
Comparing our planet with human bodies helps us to comprehend the effect of changes in temperature: If your body temperature rises by 1° Celsius, you have a fever and are not feeling well. If the temperature rises by 1.5 or even 2° Celsius, you are very ill and hardly able to work. It is similar with our planet: If it experiences increases in average temperatures of this magnitude, it shows the symptoms of a "serious illness". However, this "fever" does not go away after a few days.Truthful and comprehensible holographic description will work like a call to action as sensible citizens will refuse to accept the idea that their lives, that of their children or that of their grandchildren, will be exposed to significant and unparalleled danger.
Here is a simple example of a call to action: It is true that the onset of toothache does not necessarily trigger a reaction in us straight away. We are perhaps still hoping that it will go away on its own. But at some point we turn to the dentist for help. We may later find the dentist's bill stressful, but the relief of finding a solution to the problem outweighs this. It is necessary that we anticipate, that we sense the expected greater pain, in order to take the initiative.
Governments will only act vigorously when informed citizens demand it vigorously. There has been pressure from sections of the population for a long time, but its direction has always been vague and therefore not sufficiently effective.
And like a dentist, a government cannot act for free, but will send bills to taxpayers. The later the comprehensive strategy is implemented, the higher the bill.
Defensive and offensive measures
The necessary government action plans are not the subject of this article. It should only be mentioned that defensive measures are necessary first, e.g., improved meteorological warning systems, raising and strengthening of dams and dykes on the sea coast and rivers, preparation for the abandonment of non-defensible areas. In addition, measures are needed to halt the dangerous trend and then slowly reverse it. These essentially consist of avoiding emissions and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Desperate measures?
The keyword for desperate actions is "geoengineering". This could imply approaches such as making either the atmosphere or our oceans absorb less sunlight or bind more CO2. While these approaches sound exciting, they are not fully developed and run the risk of causing irreversible damage. As such it is unlikely they will be used.
Sabotage of the communication of scientific work
There are two groups working against open and fair communication between science and the citizens.
Refuseniks who are not interested in facts work against this. They are used to believing their own feelings and those of their friends from social networks. There should be no discussion with them, because deviations from their assumptions act as fuel for them. Science will not lead them out of their dream worlds.
Then there are the sceptics, who may have expert knowledge but only select those parts of it for their thinking and communication that seem to support their rejection of action. This is a dangerous species, because “expert” sceptics can claim some credibility and can disrupt societal communication successfully. The only way to weaken these people is to persistently ask them for better and well-founded alternatives. Then they have to provide verifiable answers or quietly hoist the white flag.
Acknowledgements:
My heartfelt thanks go to Professor Reinhard Gast. As a practising geologist and experienced researcher, he has helped me to grasp the exponential impact of seemingly minimal changes in the temperature of our atmosphere, similar to our own bodies, and the uniqueness of the current situation.
Authorship disclosure:
Fully human generated