The Purpose of Conspiracy Theory Is What It Does

In his latest article, David Robert Grimes traces the history of the anti-vaccine movement. Ever since Edward Jennner's early experiments, using a relatively mild disease (cowpox) to protect against a much more serious one (smallpox), people have expressed scepticism, fear, scorn and outright opposition to all forms of vaccination.

Vaccine hesitancy has increased significantly in the last few years, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and Jim Reed's article also notes that the sheer quantity of vaccinations that are being pushed onto people has resulted in a degree of vaccine fatigue, even among NHS workers.

Those who believe in the efficacy of vaccines, and in the important contribution that vaccine makes to public health, tend to see the anti-vaccine movement as fueled by conspiracy theories, immune to scientific argument because the adversary in this game plays according to rules that are not generally those of science WHO 2007.

In relation to another area that has promoted strong opposition in some quarters, the idea of eating insects as a source of protein, Riley Farrell's article quotes Stephan Lewandowsky, who suggests arguments based not on the content of the beliefs but on their purpose. You're not going to be successful if you say, Uncle Bruce, you're crazy… don't believe this utter nonsense. But instead, you can ask: What function do your beliefs serve? Why are you believing this?

Many politicians and internet celebrities take strong positions on vaccines, bug eating and other topics, and some of these may be cynically driven by the desire to build support and revenue rather than their own private beliefs - for example vaccinating their own families while attacking vaccines for everyone else. For such people, the purpose of these positions may be clear, although they probably won't acknowledge it. But as for Uncle Bruce, it's not at all clear what kind of answer Professor Lewandowsky would expect or accept, or what arguments this would lead to.

Underpinning all of these movements is a distrust of authority, especially governments, big business and scientists. And yet a willingness to trust the biggest businesses on the planet - the tech platforms and their Generative AI tools that add fuel to these theories, and generate income for themselves. Obviously.

 

 

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Riley Farrell, How eating insects became a conspiracy theory (BBC 4 September 2025)

David Robert Grimes, The strange history of the anti-vaccine movement (BBC 5 September 2025)

Jim Reed, Rise of vaccine distrust - why more of us are questioning jabs (BBC 16 January 2025)

WHO Bulletin 27 November 2007 86(2):140–146. doi: 10.2471/BLT.07.040089

Time and Propinquity

In an interview with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, Adam Curtis describes Jim Garrison as "godfather of modern conspiracy theories" (7:44), and "one of the ideologists of our time" (8:18).

Garrison's method was searching for patterns, following a principle he called Time and Propinquity. As Curtis comments: "Funnily enough, that's exactly how artificial intelligence works." (8:30)

Cut to Jeremy Bentham, whose hedonic calculus also referenced propinquity. Social media algorithms are designed to maximize arousal and excitement, so this can be regarded as a form of hedonic calculus. Whereas Bentham's aim was to maximize positive affect and minimize negative affect (greatest happiness, greatest number), social media platforms will try to leverage any affective response that promotes engagement and supports their commercial goals, including outrage.

In an interview with Michael Brooks, Curtis acknowledges that his documentary method also involves making connections and drawing parallels. He regards his role as asking “have you thought about looking at the world this way?”, pulling back a bit and looking at what is happening in a different way. But, he insists, that is not the same as a conspiracy theory.

Curtis spotlights a number of interesting characters from different parts of the world in different decades. Sometimes there are family connections - Afeni and Tupac Shakur, George and Ethel Boole (plus Geoffrey Hinton) - or crossed paths (Michael de Freitas and Stokely Carmichael). Sometimes a character we met in Act One appears back on stage in Act Three (Bernard Kouchner). Are these significant juxtapositions or merely coincidences? Curtis doesn't answer this question directly, but he does claim that this collection of material serves to explain something important about where we are today and how we got here.

The selection of archive material is not dependent not only on Curtis's editorial judgement, but also on what was captured, preserved and available. For some scenes, we might ask - who filmed this, why did these people consent to being filmed, and to what extent are these scenes representative of the vast number of other scenes that were never filmed or properly archived? What conclusions can we draw from the fragments that happened to be available to him?

 

I met a traveller from an antique land ...

 

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Ben Brooker, The world according to Adam Curtis (Overland, 25 March 2021)

Michael J Brooks, What Does The Future Hold? An Interview With Adam Curtis (The Quietus, 12 February 2021) 

Adam Curtis, Can't Get You Out Of My Head (BBC 2021)

Adam Curtis, From Tupac to Dom Cummings: meet the cast of characters in Adam Curtis's new series (Guardian, 6 Feb 2021)

Kermode and Mayo, Adam Curtis interviewed by Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode (29 January 2021)

Sam Knight, Adam Curtis Explains It All (New Yorker, 28 January 2021) 

Adam Koper, Thoughts on Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out of My Head (26 February 2021)

Adam Koper, A critical conceptualization of conspiracy theory (Constellations, 2023)

Fred Litwin, On the Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison the Great Accuser (2020) 

Wikipedia: Chekhov's Gun, Hedonic Calculus

Related posts: All Chewed Over By Machines (May 2021), Optimizing for Outrage (March 2021) 

Designing a Conspiracy

An interesting suggestion from derekcolman in a comment about MindGames.

"The 9/11 conspiracy is a perfect example, and was intended to be so. The perpetrators of that crime were already aware in advance that the best way to elude discovery of the true facts was to evoke the construction of conspiracy theories, which the general population would see as the imaginings of nutters. Thus it was possible to get general acceptance of the official story by default, even though it does not stand up to close scrutiny."

So we are asked to believe not only that the conspirators worked out a plan that could be kept secret, but also that the conspirators designed the secret so that anyone who leaked the secret would be disbelieved. And not just because the story looked implausible, but because the story would look just like a classic conspiracy theory.

This seems like a lot of extra trouble. What I think makes a lot more sense is to design a decoy conspiracy, which conspiracy theorists will easily believe and everyone else will regard as a joke. This will subsequently make it a lot harder for anyone who uncovers the real conspiracy to make it look plausible.

So even those who agree with derekcolman that the official story doesn't stand up to close scrutiny should try not to be misled by the false clues that the conspirators may have created, which are designed to distract even the most dedicated conspiracy theorists. In other words, even if there was a conspiracy, it isn't necessarily the one that the conspiracy theorists think they have uncovered.

Perhaps official stories never stand up to scrutiny. This is because officials always want to tidy up the story.

The Purpose of Conspiracy Theories

#BGT Prompted by recent allegations suggesting that "Britain's Got Talent" (which she refers to as "Simon Cowell's talentless contest") was fixed, Marina Hyde suggests that we concoct conspiracy theories in order to excuse our twisted fascination with things (Guardian 3 June 2011).

"So what are we to make of people's need to believe in conspiracy theories such as the one floated above? In his famous essay on conspiracy theories in America, the historian Richard Hofstadter noted that a significant part of these tales is psychological projection – people ascribe their own worst traits to the imagined enemy, thus relieving themselves of various kinds of responsibility. And so with an increasingly savvy reality TV audience, who understand that Cowell always wins, yet watch in ever greater numbers and have to find a way of elevating their involvement into something more than a mug's game. Both fans and haters need to develop outlandish conspiracy theories because they can't actually believe millions upon millions are genuinely in thrall to this stuff."

Richard Hofstadter "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964)

Hofstadter's essay and other materials about conspiracy theories can be found on the website of Dr. Kenneth A. Rahn, Sr.  See especially The Academic JFK Assassination Site and Nonconspiracists United.

CIA Funding Conspiracy?

Fidel Castro claims Osama bin Laden is a US spy [Guardian 27 August 2010]. Castro credits Wikileaks for this information.

Now if the CIA wanted to discredit Wikileaks, this wouldn't be a bad way of doing it. Of course, I'm not saying that Castro is on the CIA payroll, but it makes as much sense as bin Laden being on the CIA payroll. Conspiracy theorists probably think they both are.

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Update

@wikileaks (via @glynmoody) posts a link to an item headed "The CIA Should Kill Julian Assange" (founder of Wikileaks) on a website called Right Wing News ("Kneecapping Barack Obama at every opportunity"). I don't even want to speculate about the people behind this item, or their purpose for publishing it.

CERN and Conspiracy Theories

If you so want to believe in conspiracy theories that you thought the CERN Large Hadron Collider was a sinister plot to blow up the universe, then you won't be calmed by the news that it is broken.

"Well, er, obviously, you know, they can't tell us what they really saw when they switched on the beam, because it would freak out BOTH the religious lobby AND the science lobby. So they are, like, just pretending that it's broken."

So instead of the scientists getting the hadrons to whizz around in circles, it would be pleasing to imagine that some exotic hadrons are getting scientists to run in panic-circles at high speeds.

Conspiracy theory is often an attempt to impose an artificial elegance on otherwise meaningless events. If the LHC is broken, what does that really mean?

Among other things, of course, CERN bears some responsibility for the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee, who used to work at CERN, is upset that the Internet is now turning against CERN and circulating wild and unscientific rumours about the possibility of disaster [Warning sounded on web's future, BBC News 15 September 2008]. On my Software Industry blog, I compare quashing Rumour on the Internet with one of the Twelve Labours of Hercules.

Namit Chaturvedi suggests that the rumours are a cheap publicity stunt, and the anti-LHC protestors are actually on CERN's payroll. Problem with this theory is that the timing doesn't fit - most of the publicity (and hype) predated the rumours. I prefer the theory that people are circulating the rumours purely to annoy Tim Berners-Lee.


And finally. I searched for CERN on the BBC News Website to find sources for this post, and I got the following results.

Hadron Collider forced to halt
The Large Hadron Collider at Cern is out of action, a week after its launch, when magnets fail as helium leaks into the tunnel.
» 85% relevance | 19/09/2008 | similar stories

Fading giant brought back to life
National Trust volunteers work to restore the Cerne Abbas Giant's famous outline.
» 83% relevance | 16/09/2008 | similar stories

Interesting juxtaposition, huh? Try and make a conspiracy theory out of that, I dare you.

Timing and Regime Change

Two days after the regime change in the UK, the new Prime Minister was not woken up with the news of an attempted car bombing in Central London. (He was not told until 6am, and was displeased when he heard that the new Home Secretary had been told hours ago.) The following day, there was an attack on Glasgow Airport. The country remains in a state of critical alert.

Nobody seems to have any doubt that the timing of these incidents is related to the regime change in the UK. But what exactly is the point?

From a political point of view, the timing is bad for the Conservative Party. Instead of their devoting Gordon Brown's first weekend as Prime Minister to mounting the first of many attacks on his policies and personality, they were obliged to express the usual outrage at the attacks, and their general support (subject to the usual exclusions and caveats) for all necessary security measures.

Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith appeared on television dressed just right - he looking statesmanlike, she looking like a plain clothes policewoman - and the public will be suitably calmed.

In the past, conspiracy theorists have often imagined that the main beneficiary of security attacks has been the state machinery itself, and have tried to find links between the perpetrators and the security forces. For all I know, false allegations about this week's incidents may already be circulating on the Internet.

But if we discount explanations of this kind, we are left with a puzzle. Why do the plotters of these attacks care whether Blair or Brown is Prime Minister - what possible difference does it make to their supposed agenda?

But that's just the point - it doesn't. The underlying message of these attacks is that, as far as the plotters are concerned, nothing has changed. And presumably nothing would change if the Conservatives were elected either. This message is reinforced by the timing, and therefore helps to explain the timing.

In other words, the trigger for the events is the non-occurrence (in the eyes of the plotters) of real regime change. This is another example of an intriguing phenomenon - positive effects produced by negative causes. (Although the reality of regime change may be a matter of opinion, it is the opinions of the plotters and their potential supporters that we need to look at first if we wish to understand the timing of their actions.)

Spam

As far as I can tell, dodgy email divides roughly into two categories - meaningful and meaningless. I can see the point of messages that are trying to persuade me to buy something, reveal my bank account number or open a dodgy attachment. But what is the purpose of messages that don't give me any way of responding even if I wanted to? Messages with cryptic headers and apparently random comment.

In his post on Spammers (Aug 2006, post no longer available), Dilbert complains about low quality spam. In other words, spam that is not fit for purpose. But this assumes we know what the purpose is.

In this post, I'm going to take a different tack - try to work out the purpose of dodgy email from its actual effects.

Firstly, I believe I can see the purpose of the "meaningful" ones. If hundreds of millions of these are sent, and only one person in a million responds, that may generate sufficient value for the sender, in terms of money or identity data received, or malware distributed. (For some purposes, a one-in-a-million effect is quite good enough.) Even if such messages irritate and inconvenience people, this does not seem to detract from the sender's purpose. This is, after all, not very different from other forms of direct marketing (although the economics are different).

But what about the "meaningless" ones? Are these the result of incompetence on the part of the sender (failure of execution), or are they driven by an entirely different purpose? Let us consider the possible effects of these messages.

1. Effects on the sender. Perhaps these are trial-and-error messages whose primary purpose is to monitor and learn more about the current state of the Internet and the prevailing filtering mechanisms.
2. Effects on the filters. Perhaps these are messages designed to overload and confuse the filtering mechanisms, both technical and human.
3. Effects on the Internet as a whole, multiplying traffic and generating business for infrastructure companies. And perhaps ultimately driving people away from email onto other ways of communicating.

I find some of these purposes (1 and 2) easier to believe than others (3). A POSIWID extremist would probably see the whole thing as a massive secret conspiracy involving Microsoft, Cisco and Symantec, but using POSIWID in this way to generate conspiracy theories is just silly.

Thus POSIWID isn't a tool to be used indiscriminately, but often helps us make sense of situations that are otherwise puzzling.

del.icio.us tags: POSIWID
Technorati tags: email POSIWID

Conspiracy Theory

POSIWID appears to encourage the creation of conspiracy theories - looking for the hidden agenda that will explain actions - especially when the official story doesn't seem to add up.

But it is one thing to search open-mindedly for a hidden agenda, and another thing entirely to presume its existence without evidence. Sometimes it is not conspiracy theory but chaos (cock-up) theory that best explains some complex series of events.

For example, Anthony's post entitled Boom Bang-a-Bang attributes the latest events in the Middle East to the cock-up theory, and rejects the "received wisdom" that the bombing of the UN Lebanon post (BBC report) was a deliberate act.

The BBC report ends with an interestingly ambiguous comment:

"The UN post was on high ground, in an area once occupied by Israel."

Anthony's reason for choosing cock-up over conspiracy is that he cannot see how this outcome delivers any advantage to the Israelis. Doubtless correct in this case, although of course well-crafted conspiracies are often complex and obscure - like grandmaster chess - and not intended for public scrutiny. By arguing in this way, Anthony is leaving himself the option to advocate conspiracy theories in other cases, where the balance of advantage may be different.

But I need to say more about the relationship between POSIWID and conspiracy. The purposes to which POSIWID refers are not always consciously planned purposes, but can often be emergent and unplanned. Complex systems often resist and frustrate the actions (even the conspiracies) of the leading actors - it is as if these systems had a purpose of their own. Thus POSIWID is just as amenable to cock-up explanations.

del.icio.us tags: POSIWID
Technorati tags: conspiracy POSIWID

Mr Prescott Remains

Lovers of conspiracy theories will be interested to note that Ruth Kelly, thought to be a member of Opus Dei, [organization website, BBC report] has taken over the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, after the embarrassing disclosures concerning Mr Prescott. However, Mr Prescott retains his official perks, causing outrage in some quarters. [BBC News] Perhaps he knows too much.

Why do people in public life take these risks? And who leads them into temptation?

See earlier posts Achilles Heel (Jan 2006), Identity Theft (Jan 2006), Mr Prescott Regrets (April 2006), Mr Prescott Remains (May 2006).

Links updated 20 April 2015

Terrorism

After an appalling series of events in London, the British media have been full of assertions about the purpose of terrorism, from which various conclusions for action are derived - usually striving to do the exact opposite of what the terrorists are supposed to want, apparently based on POSIWID-style arguments.

• the purpose of terrorism is to foster division, therefore we must remain united ...
  
• the purpose of terrorism is to undermine our democratic traditions, therefore we must preserve and protect ...
  

For my part, I am happy to go along with a general preference for unity over discord, and for democratic rights over authoritarian reaction. But I think it is absurd to argue for this preference simply in order to frustrate the imagined wishes of some constructed entity.

In the London Times, Matthew Parris (July 23rd, 2005) suggests that an image of the terrorists, as belonging to a tightly coordinated yet agile global enterprise, is the result of an unwitting conspiracy between four separate powers: news media, Government, security services and the terrorists themselves. Even if this image is untrue (and Parris is careful not to say it is), each of these powers benefits, in different ways, from promoting this image.

(Parris has written about conspiracy before: Oct 19th 2002, Feb 1st, 2003).  update  Adam Curtis made a similar point following the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, : "Neoconservatives, 'terror journalists' and Osama bin Laden himself all had their own reasons to create a simple story of looming apocalypse." Guardian May 3rd 2011)

Talking about the purpose of terrorism only makes sense if we conceive of terrorism as a reasonably coherent system. But this conception is itself subject to various agendas. POSIWID may be a useful analytical technique for working out what is going on (WIGO). But it does not justify a simple response to a complex situation.

Silencing Oswald

One of the best known POSIWID arguments is about the assassination of JFK, and the subsequent shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. Following the assassination, political power shifted from Chicago to Texas, so this must have been its purpose. The effect of Ruby's act was to silence Oswald, so this must have been its purpose.

Ruby perhaps thought he was acting alone and spontaneously, and his friends still insist on this. But for POSIWID, conscious intent doesn't matter. Perhaps someone put the idea of retribution into Ruby's head; perhaps someone else got Oswald to smile, knowing that this would trigger Ruby's anger.

Conspiracy Theories

One converse of POSIWID - when you find a purpose surviving, look for the system whose purpose it is. Nothing happens by accident.

When used casually, this leads to wild conspiracy theories. Various imaginary purposes may be served by the death of a rich young woman in a Paris subway - therefore some agency must have planned this event to serve one of these purposes.

The trouble with this approach is that it doesn't allow us to discriminate between alternative explanations. Any given event may have a vast number of different consequences for different people. How do we decide which of these consequences to elevate to the status of "purpose"? Was the death planned to allow some middle aged man to marry his mistress, or to sell newspapers, or to distract the public from some other matter, or what?

Make your own conspiracy theory ...