Very nice article.
I'd like to highlight this part (emphasis mine):
"Here is an interesting question to ponder: In what kind of society will it be easiest for the ruling elite to do bad things in secret, to everybody else’s disadvantage, without people finding out? In my view, in a society where most people believe that claims about the ruling elite doing bad things in secret must be laughably absurd and therefore necessarily incorrect -- you know, ‘conspiracy theories.’
I would submit that this is a law of anthropology: When those in power are watched less, they tend to get away with more.
On the basis of this law, if someone ever asks you the question, ‘Might there not be conspiracies by the ruling elite?’, you can already produce an intelligent guess even without doing any research on any specific allegation of conspiracy. You can ask yourself this: Is it the case that most people automatically believe that conspiracies cannot be happening? The answer is yes, because ‘conspiracy theories’ are supposed to be automatically idiotic. This makes conspiracies much easier to carry out, and with such a tremendous incentive, it would be surprising if the ruling elites were not in fact taking advantage. But in order to find out what exactly the ruling elites are or aren’t doing, of course, scientific research -- i.e. research that other people can verify -- will be necessary, because false accusations of conspiracy are also possible, and publications that allege conspiracies without providing documentation should not be trusted.
I leave you with this question. How to interpret the fact that The New York Times, which is supposed to be keeping an eye on government, tells us that ‘conspiracy theories’ are automatically incorrect?"
A fair point, ALWAYS ignored by media parrots here.
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