Unconscious Conspiracies

[bart]

Unconscious Conspiracies (http://viridia.org/2007/08/16/unconscious-conspiracies/)

I’ve been meaning to write about this idea for a while, but a recent posting (http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/15/essay_the_conspiracy.html) on Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net/) reminded me of it again.


I believe that most so-called “conspiracies” are in fact subconscious conspiracies - meaning that one can be a member of a conspiracy without actually knowing it.


A subconscious conspiracy behaves much like a conscious one - that is, you have some group of individuals who share a covert agenda, one that would be considered detrimental or even diabolical by the general public. There are secret meetings, cover-ups, and a web of insidious influence. And yet, no one in the group realizes that this is going on.


One might ask how such things can go on without the participants being aware of what they are doing? As I often say, “never dismiss human dismissiveness”. It’s easy to convince yourself that what you are doing is “just natural”, that there’s nothing special or untoward about your actions.


Here’s how subconscious conspiracies work: Say you have a group of people in power - goverment officials or perhaps a corporate board of directors. Say also that these individuals are tightly-knit, with a common history and shared goals. Now, also suppose that this group is somewhat insular, isolated from the outside by a layer of protection (by this I mean things like office assistants, press secretaries, and others who mediate the discourse between members of this group and those outside the group - what Heinlein called flappers.) What happens is that these individual eventually, and inevitably, take on a cult-like aspect.


I’ve personally seen this kind of groupthink at work: What ends up happening is that, for any given member of the group, the vast majority of their discourse is with other members of the group. A given factoid (by which I mean literally “having the form of a fact”, which is implied by the suffix -oid) will bounce from one member to another, until everyone ends up believing it, irregardless of its actual truth. “We have the best product in the industry!” says the CEO. And when you ask the CEO why he believes this is true, he replies that it’s because the engineering VP assures him that this is true; And when you ask the same question to the engineering VP, he’ll say that it’s because the CEO says it’s true. And so on.


In a subconscious conspiracy, everyone believes that they are in fact working for the public interest - it’s just that their view of the public interest is completely skewed beyond all recognition.


And of course, when they try to communicate with people who aren’t in the group, there’s a disconnect - they sense that these outsiders aren’t aligned with their goals, and they begin to percieve them as a threat. And of course, once the human threat response enters the picture, collective insanity is not far behind. They begin to exclude outsiders and other people who “wouldn’t understand” from their circle; their thoughts turn to how they can discredit and undermine their enemies - all in the cause of what’s good and righteous, of course.


The most important thing to understand about subconscious conspiracies, however, is that they are merely symptoms of a deeper cause. And as usual with symptomatic maladies, merely treating the symptoms does no good. With a regular, conscious conspiracy, all that you need to is round up the ring leaders and toss them in jail. But with a symptomatic conspiracy, the same conditions that created the conspiracy will simply continue to create new conspiracies to replace the old one.


from http://viridia.org/2007/08/16/unconscious-conspiracies/












One of the best pictures and explanations of "conspiracies" I've ever seen.

[ThePythonicCow]

Yes. We don't have a very good common understanding of how large, complex organizations and structures of civiilization operate, or fail. We see evidence of horrible disconnects and are forced to either dismiss the evidence (and often the messenger) as impossible or else we are given to animating the flawed behaviour as the conscious acts of one or a few consciously evil conspirators.

This article provides one good alternative mechanism for such complex failings.

[dummass]

Unconscious Conspiracies (http://viridia.org/2007/08/16/unconscious-conspiracies/)

I’ve been meaning to write about this idea for a while, but a recent posting (http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/15/essay_the_conspiracy.html) on Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net/) reminded me of it again.


I believe that most so-called “conspiracies” are in fact subconscious conspiracies - meaning that one can be a member of a conspiracy without actually knowing it.


A subconscious conspiracy behaves much like a conscious one - that is, you have some group of individuals who share a covert agenda, one that would be considered detrimental or even diabolical by the general public. There are secret meetings, cover-ups, and a web of insidious influence. And yet, no one in the group realizes that this is going on.


One might ask how such things can go on without the participants being aware of what they are doing? As I often say, “never dismiss human dismissiveness”. It’s easy to convince yourself that what you are doing is “just natural”, that there’s nothing special or untoward about your actions.


Here’s how subconscious conspiracies work: Say you have a group of people in power - goverment officials or perhaps a corporate board of directors. Say also that these individuals are tightly-knit, with a common history and shared goals. Now, also suppose that this group is somewhat insular, isolated from the outside by a layer of protection (by this I mean things like office assistants, press secretaries, and others who mediate the discourse between members of this group and those outside the group - what Heinlein called flappers.) What happens is that these individual eventually, and inevitably, take on a cult-like aspect.


I’ve personally seen this kind of groupthink at work: What ends up happening is that, for any given member of the group, the vast majority of their discourse is with other members of the group. A given factoid (by which I mean literally “having the form of a fact”, which is implied by the suffix -oid) will bounce from one member to another, until everyone ends up believing it, irregardless of its actual truth. “We have the best product in the industry!” says the CEO. And when you ask the CEO why he believes this is true, he replies that it’s because the engineering VP assures him that this is true; And when you ask the same question to the engineering VP, he’ll say that it’s because the CEO says it’s true. And so on.


In a subconscious conspiracy, everyone believes that they are in fact working for the public interest - it’s just that their view of the public interest is completely skewed beyond all recognition.


And of course, when they try to communicate with people who aren’t in the group, there’s a disconnect - they sense that these outsiders aren’t aligned with their goals, and they begin to percieve them as a threat. And of course, once the human threat response enters the picture, collective insanity is not far behind. They begin to exclude outsiders and other people who “wouldn’t understand” from their circle; their thoughts turn to how they can discredit and undermine their enemies - all in the cause of what’s good and righteous, of course.


The most important thing to understand about subconscious conspiracies, however, is that they are merely symptoms of a deeper cause. And as usual with symptomatic maladies, merely treating the symptoms does no good. With a regular, conscious conspiracy, all that you need to is round up the ring leaders and toss them in jail. But with a symptomatic conspiracy, the same conditions that created the conspiracy will simply continue to create new conspiracies to replace the old one.


from http://viridia.org/2007/08/16/unconscious-conspiracies/


One of the best pictures and explanations of "conspiracies" I've ever seen.


Ya... Like the weapons of mass distruction conspiracy? :rolleyes: And the untimely death of an independent investigator who keeps insiting that the alleged weapons do not exist?

[we_are_toast]

I'm not sure the article should be restricted to conspiracies. Michael Shermer wrote a book called "why people believe weird things". And from the original posting;

How did we arrive at this juncture where theories are facts and facts are theories? Where nothing is assumed to be what it appears to be, where paranoia afflicts the body politic like an involuntary twitch? This inability to distinguish facts from disinformation, to draw reasonable conclusions from real facts, to be skeptical without denying facts, or to avoid the type of thinking that EJ calls unreason, I believe is the source of many of humanities problems.

From 911 conspiracies, to people screaming keep the government out of my medicare, to evolution denialists, to well oiled propaganda machines, the inability of people to reason well is extremely self-destructive to the advancement of civilization.

With the Corporate media defining journalism as presenting 2 sides of a story no matter how crazy one side might be, to the internet providing the ability to surround yourself with information to support an emotional need without viewing contrary factual information, it looks like things will not be getting better in the near future.

[bart]

Indeed, I agree it shouldn't be restricted to just the conspiracy area. Here's another part of the broader area:


Cognitive biases:

Many of these biases are studied for how they affect belief formation and business decisions and scientific research.


Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias.
Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases.
Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.
Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
Congruence bias — the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.
Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one's own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
Endowment effect — "the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it".[1]
Focusing effect — prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
Hyperbolic discounting — the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.
Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.
Impact bias — the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.
Loss aversion — "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".[2] (see also sunk cost effects and Endowment effect).
Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Omission bias — The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
Planning fallacy — the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
Reactance - the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to reassert a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
Selective perception — the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
Status quo bias — the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same (see also Loss aversion and Endowment effect).[3]
Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) (wikipedia)

[raja]

Belief dismisses dissonant facts and resists logic.

[Rajiv]

Also relevant is Jeff Schmidt' book "Disciplined Minds (http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/)" I refered to it here (http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=42392&highlight=disciplined+minds#post42392)

Who are you going to be? That is the question.

In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict “ideological discipline.”

The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional’s lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.

Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one’s own social vision in today’s corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.

Also look at Susan Rosenthal's "Power and Powerlessless"

The world is a puzzling place. Like Alice in Wonderland, people rush to go nowhere, too many things don’t make sense, and the threat of losing one’s head is ever present. It seems as if humanity has fallen down the rabbit hole and cannot find a way out. Yet, there is hope. If we can understand how we got here and what keeps us here, we can go forward.

Society is divided into two groups of people: a few who wield immense power and the rest who feel varying degrees of powerlessness. As a result, conflicts over power dominate life. Between individuals, the struggle for power kills intimacy. On a social level, competition drives down living standards. On a global scale, the battle for dominance threatens human survival.

Power over others and lack of power are both corrupting. However, power — the ability to control events — can also liberate. Power is not the problem; the problem is unequal access to power. For more than a hundred-thousand years, our ancestors lived in cooperative, power-sharing societies. This book explains how the rule of reciprocity was overthrown and how it can be re-established.

My experience as a physician compelled me to write this book. As the sister of a disabled child, I thought that doctors had the power to end suffering, and I wanted that power. After I graduated from medical school, I learned how powerless doctors actually are. Most of my patients’ problems were rooted in family dynamics, financial difficulties, and conflicts at school and at work. I studied psychotherapy in the hope that combining mind and body skills would be more useful. It was — I could help people move from uncommon misery to common misery. The problems created by alienation, oppression, and exploitation remained beyond my control.

After listening to thousands of people’s stories, I have concluded that social power is necessary for human health. Most people lack the happy, healthy, fulfilling lives they deserve because they are kept powerless and mistakenly accept this state of affairs as natural or self-inflicted. In fact, most human suffering is preventable. This book reveals what must be done.

Part One explains that society does not arise from human nature. On the contrary, current social arrangements violate human nature. Part Two shows how power is divided by class. Part Three investigates how power and powerlessness are perpetuated. Part Four reveals how powerlessness can be transformed into power.

Knowing that the material in this book would be controversial, unbelievable to some, I carefully referenced every fact, every quote, and every contentious statement. To my dismay, the final draft contained more than 1,400 references spanning 70 pages. To make the book shorter and more affordable, I cut out most of these references; however, I will be happy to provide specific references on request.

A just world is possible. Human beings create society, and we can change it. The need for change is urgent. Everywhere, there is injustice, anguish, and anger. This book explains how society shapes people, how people shape society, and how powerlessness can be converted into the power to transform the world.

[rdrees]

Very interesting.

Is this an explanation for why you instantly sought to "discredit and undermine" me--an outsider to the iTulip community--the moment I made my first post that expressed skepticism at iTulip's thesis?

[bart]

I'm glad you found it interesting.

Feel free to interpret it any way you like, but what actually happened is that I was looking up cognitive biases on my FAQ page (which are also posted above), and saw that link.

I had been wanting to post it for some time since it goes a long way towards balancing the true tinfoil hat nutters, while also being quite clear on what "the conspiracy" mostly is in my opinion. I've been in the "behind the scenes effects & influences" ( http://www.nowandfutures.com/grins/oz_curtain.wav ) for many years, with some of them being quite nefarious as represented so well recently by the GS piece in Rolling Stone by Taibbi... and many others over the years.

There's also this, from a much stronger view:
"The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us."
Twilight of the psychopaths (http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html)

[bart]

rdrees - if the shoe fits, wear it.

Your continual "reactions" after I have carefully detailed multiple times why I objected strongly to your initial post does not make your case very well, to say the least. And that it continues isn't exactly helpful to your case either. You can choose to exhibit manners and similar, or continue as you are.

I'll respond to your other posts later today. Today is the day I do massive chart updates to my site, and it takes a while.

[MarkL]

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
-Benjamin Franklin

[$#*]

I'm glad you found it interesting.

Feel free to interpret it any way you like, but what actually happened is that I was looking up cognitive biases on my FAQ page (which are also posted above), and saw that link.

I had been wanting to post it for some time since it goes a long way towards balancing the true tinfoil hat nutters, while also being quite clear on what "the conspiracy" mostly is in my opinion. I've been in the "behind the scenes effects & influences" ( http://www.nowandfutures.com/grins/oz_curtain.wav ) for many years, with some of them being quite nefarious as represented so well recently by the GS piece in Rolling Stone by Taibbi... and many others over the years.

There's also this, from a much stronger view:
"The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us."
Twilight of the psychopaths (http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html)
Great stuff bart. Thanks! The list of cognitive biases is also interesting, when gathered all on one page.

Regarding the first quote from viridia.org I believe the author makes one of the most common confusion when trying to analyse conspiracies, by neglecting the cultural-axiological factor. A true conspiracy is always based on a secret that defines an agreement to act together in order to achieve a result desired by its members.

Conspiracy - A combination of people for an evil purpose; an agreement, between two or more persons, to commit a crime in concert,
as treason; a plot.

There are many cases of congruent actions designed to further the interests of a group of individuals that do not fit in the classical definition in the sense that they are not bound by a terrible/immoral/illegal secret when acting in collusion.

The perception of the "terrible secret" that has to be kept from the rest of the world. in order to avoid a punishment of some sort, is the trademark of a real conspiracy.

The interesting part is that in most of the so called "high level conspiracies", the individuals perpetrating them are convinced they are doing nothing really wrong and they are naturally entitled to benefit from their action, the part with keeping the secret being just for avoiding noise and protesting from the idiots or morons who don't get it and who deserve to get fleeced anyway. The really sad part is that while the "high level conspiracies" are perpetrated by members of the elites in collusion, the lower hierarchical levels are involved in some sort of subconscious conspiracy too, not just as blind followers.

If you remember that movie about Enron (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) one could consider Ken Lay and Skilling as the elite level of the conspiracy, while those young traders making fun of fleecing the grandma as members of the subconscious conspiracy.

I believe the same happened with the Goldman Global Crisis (Fleecing) of 2008.

[llanlad2]

This is an article I remember reading (on the BBC website) at the height of the UK Member of Parliament expenses scandal on why "group-think goes further than conformity. It also means rationalising decisions and behaviour that you might normally reject."


<!--S mvb--> <!--S mvb--> By Michael Blastland <!--E mvb-->
<!--E mvb--> People measure their behaviour and beliefs by those around them, so could MPs have thought that their now discredited expenses system was entirely reasonable?
Of course you have your own moral code, of course you do, your own sense of right and wrong, just as MPs do.
So imagine you park your bike in a bike shed. A sign says: no graffiti. On your return, you find a leaflet stuck to the handlebars. What do you do with it? Chuck it in the street, or bin it elsewhere?



That depends, says Ramsey Raafat from University College London, who describes a set of curious experiments in Holland.
"When the riders or owners returned to their bike, 33% of the people chucked the flyer, littered, broke a norm.
"But when there was a slight manipulation, everything's the same - we have our bike shed, bikes, prominent 'no graffiti' sign - but now there's graffiti in the area, so a norm has been violated. Now interestingly in this situation, a whopping 69% of the riders when they returned chucked the flyer. And so in this instance when one norm's violated - the graffiti violation - there's a massive effect on another norm of littering."
Is that a surprise? We've always known that behaviour is sometimes easily influenced. How else, you might have found occasion to ask, does the nice lad from the nice family next door become a lout in a mob, lurching, swearing, singing offensively down the road? Because his frame of moral reference temporarily stops at those around him. He sees no-one else.
Us and them
But group-think goes further than conformity. It also means rationalising decisions and behaviour that you might normally reject. Littering comes to feel not only convenient, but also - so you tell yourself - right in the circumstances.

Is it this sort of group-think that has allowed MPs to think their expenses system - in recent weeks shown to have been widely abused - was reasonable? Could it also distance them in other ways from the electorate?
In the exclusive neo-gothic henhouse that is Westminster, is it any wonder they flock together? When the rules - from tradition or otherwise - are idiosyncratic, where they arrive mystified and dependent on the kindness of the party whips to show them the ropes, where the career path depends on doing as others do… what would you do if not conform, and then, being clever, find smart reasons for doing so?
Much about Westminster conspires to make it separate. Much about the expenses saga suggests that MPs stopped seeing their world as it might look from outside the group. As many have observed, when they saw others doing it that made it feel all right. What was odd became normal.
Cash in post box
Danny Dorling, a professor of geography at Sheffield University, has been observing the parliamentary expenses scandal. With MPs' sense of reward and entitlement in mind, he says it's sometimes hard to get out of your head the idea that the privilege enjoyed by your group is anything other than normal.

“ When one norm is broken, we become more likely to break another - essentially the spreading of disorder ”
Ramsey Raafat
It's entirely understandable, he says, that MPs think like this.
"It's not helpful to think like this, but you have to work very hard not to do it," says Mr Dorling.
If that's true, it reminds us that MPs are not only representatives, but people with group interests of their own who sometimes do lose touch precisely because they are a group. It also reminds us that in this respect they are much like everyone else. Hearing about the problems, the misery, the grind of the constituency cases that MPs are asked to take on, I suspect that if they can lose touch given their experiences, so can we all.
For a final, bizarre illustration of where our immediate social influences may lead us, Ramsey Raafat cites another experiment in group-think.
"Now stealing - if one was to steal, that's a powerful norm violation. We learn at a very early age not to steal. So how do they do this? This is very elegant. They had a post-box and sticking out of it was an envelope with a five-euro note attached. Now in the control condition - no litter and no graffiti - only 13% of people stole, took the envelope.
"However when there was graffiti or litter surrounding the post-box, a whopping 25% or 27% of people stole. That's more than a doubling of norm violation. And, again, it's a powerful effect of how when one norm is broken, we become more likely to break another, or essentially the spreading of disorder."
Today expenses, tomorrow your hubcaps? No. Not least because the world beyond Westminster has reminded MPs of the view from elsewhere.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/8133834.stm

Published: 2009/07/03 18:11:49 GMT

© BBC MMIX

[ThePythonicCow]

There's also this, from a much stronger view:
"The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us."
Twilight of the psychopaths (http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html)

Excellent, bart, excellent. Thanks for that link.

You have earned another stripe for your tin foil hat with that one.