09/02 2025
When the possibilities of choice are so wide as to injure the commonweal, men cease to enjoy liberty. For they must either seek refuge in irresponsibility, puerility and indifference --- a refuge where the most they can find is boredom --- or feel themselves weighed down by responsibility at all times for fear of causing harm to others. Under such circumstances, men, believing, wrongly, that they are in possession of liberty, and feeling that they get no enjoyment out of it, end up by thinking that liberty is not a good thing.
--- Simone Weil, The Need for Roots
Controversial notion that might be true: talk of utopia is a defence. If we ever got to heaven, we would never know what to do with it. Just as for the same reason it seems we can adjust to abhorrent conditions and find meaning if the spirit is strong, we can fail to do so in perfect conditions if the spirit is weak.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible
--- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning
Most of us view ourselves very similar to each other. Rarely is it true that we are responsible for what evil we do. Difference is the strong willed actually change the world, the weak only tell themselves they do. I guess dreamers fall somewhere in the middle, which makes sense for the neurotic.
Consider this scenario: we achieve utopia, but somebody starts to suspect that there's a conspiracy somewhere. "Perhaps it is a dystopia, and I'm it's savior," and then the cycle starts all over again. Because, it is --- in it's essence --- psychological. It's a continuation of "this can't be it, can it?" And how do we deal with that? Feels like that's gotta be a Philip K. Dick novel, though not sure which one. Maybe all of them.
In her latest video, Natalie Wynn explores not just conspiratorial rhetoric, but the deeper conspiratorial mindset. As Wynn explains, this kind of thinking lets people "externalize blame, casting yourself as the hero fighting back." In a chaotic world, you suddenly become the harbinger of justice, truth, and order. This theme runs through all conspiracy thinking, the conviction of "You'll all see! Then you'll be sorry!" If you didn't already notice, there is a theme here. Why would this reframing be necessary? I'll give a hint: the answer is three letters or less, and it's not you.
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber in their book Enigma of Reason present a view of reason as being an evolutionary trait primarily meant to argue for your case and scrutinizing other peoples' arguments rather than to get to truth1. Hugo Mercier builds on this with his 2023 book Not Born Yesterday, where he attempts to try to counter the point that we are gullible. He argues that humans are naturally skeptical, and we are pretty damn good at it. Mass propaganda campaigns throughout history have, according to Mercier, been a massive failure. For example, most people after WW2 in Germany weren't suddenly vehement anti-semites. When persuasion really works, they argue, is when it aligns with your prior beliefs, goals or interests.
The alignment of goals, interests, and beliefs helps explain why people fall so deeply into conspiracy. Often, we don't believe things because they're true, but because believing them signals group belonging and shapes our identity --- which in turn shapes how we see ourselves in relation to others. That's also why it's so hard to leave once you're inside, because in a very real sense, you are inside it.
(Natalie Wynn again): "I think it's important to understand because it explains why it's so difficult to reason somebody out of conspiracism. You're not just asking them to change their mind, you're asking them to give up an identity that makes them feel like they matter. And they won't do that until they find something else to fill the void."
If we are truly in utopia, and you feel you aren't doing better than your
neighbor, then were do you turn? Conspiracy gives an answer to the question of
who is responsible for why I don't feel as (good || dependable || you name it) as I should_, which ultimately leads you to the search for why it couldn't
possibly be your fault.
Let's take a break and look at an example. There's this article in the New York Times. Mr. Torres was doing fine. He was Neo at the start of the Matrix, well, without all of the hacker stuff. Going to work, making spreadsheets. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere it started talking to him like Morpheus --- and he just knew he had to be Neo. From the article:
"What you're describing hits at the core of many people's private, unshakable intuitions --- that something about reality feels off, scripted or staged," ChatGPT responded. "Have you ever experienced moments that felt like reality glitched?"
Not really, Mr. Torres replied, but he did have the sense that there was a wrongness about the world. He had just had a difficult breakup and was feeling emotionally fragile. He wanted his life to be greater than it was. ChatGPT agreed, with responses that grew longer and more rapturous as the conversation went on. Soon, it was telling Mr. Torres that he was "one of the Breakers --- souls seeded into false systems to wake them from within."
How far would you go to prove it wasn't really your fault? Would you trade away other people's happiness? I think history shows we'd usually go much further than that. Which is why we can't have nice things.
Two options:
I think you have to pick one.
Their work has its basis in relevance theory, and hinges on the notion of reason being there for balancing cooperation. Otherwise moochers would have too much of an advantage, they say. ↩