New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 182
Before the geocentric model of the universe fell and was replaced by the heliocentric model of the solar system, the movement of the planets across the night sky couldn’t be explained neatly by assuming simple circular orbits that all go around the Earth. The invention used to “correct” the model had the name “epicycles.” The idea was that the planets went around in little circles on their big circular orbits around the Earth, thereby allegedly explaining the phenomenon of retrograde motion using an early, and wrong, model of celestial mechanics. This attempted patch of a bad theory tells us something about conspiracy theories: when the evidence starts going against them, they have to generate epicycles to keep themselves going. This is a way we can know a conspiracy theory for what it is, in fact, at least sometimes. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains epicycles and how we can learn to spot them to figure out which kinds of conspiracy theories (and cult ideologies) are likely to be false. Join him for a clarifying discussion.
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2 comments
This is a great analogy.
The fundamental proposal here is that complexity (the “epicycles”) can replace or excuse the inability or unwillingness to confront (observe what really is).
I don’t agree with using the term “conspiracy theory” here. It was a propaganda term invented by the CIA to invalidate the citizen investigations that were taking place around the JFK assassination which were indicating the existence of a government conspiracy to kill JFK. In this case, the Warren Report was the document adding unnecessary complexity to the event, claiming that a single bullet jumped all around bodies and a vehicle, causing several injuries. It would have been simpler to attribute the various injuries to several different bullets fired from different positions, which was, in fact, what happened.
Same is true of the report on 9/11 by the way. As well as government stories on several other events it was involved in. The looking has now been done. The simplification has been accomplished. And – sometimes – conspiracy is the most obvious conclusion. So let’s get over the fact that conspiracies don’t account for all awful incidents; they do account for some of them, per very thorough and sincere investigation.
The essential problem, then, is a failure to be honest. And such failures are often accompanied by embellishments to stories that make little or no sense. In this sense, the heliocentrism problem was a different breed of cat. The research finding challenged the authority of a religious/political hierarchy, and those in control could not tolerate it. Though “conspiracy theories” also tend to challenge such a hierarchy, that structure is no longer obvious in the modern world, and so the analogy – to that extent – fails.
It might be more relevant to study what happened to the Gnostics as the new Christian (Catholic) church gained power in Europe. The Gnositcs were dealing with mystical data that was not that obvious to anyone. There was truth in their observations, but they could be dismissed due to the difficulty involved in observing them. It is, similarly, difficult to observe facts that are being kept secret from us. The fact of planetary rotation is not that difficult to observe, as no one is actively keeping it a secret. The conspiracy that killed 3,000 people on 9/11 is very difficult to observe because it is actively being kept secret.
Anything that is being kept secret also has a tendency to attract bizarre explanations or outright lies. Because, how, after all, can you prove any of it wrong? But that is its own phenomenon unrelated to events or situations that are relatively obvious, but simply not being confronted (observed). These distinctions must be recognized by anyone who honestly wants to address the various situations we face here on Earth.