Intelligent Conspiracy Theories: Part I

A methodology for where to look

I. INTRODUCTION

Psywar is upon us.

The number of actors who seek to influence our fundamental beliefs and actions is greater than ever before. Their vectors for influence are more subtle and intimate than ever before. And, if you believe what I believe, this comes against a backdrop in which the mainstream narrative from our own institutions - the progressive, managerialist, technocratic post-war consensus - is deeply flawed.

We live in a hostile information environment. The fundamental aspects of a healthy human existence are degraded: a mental health crisis mounts, political fractures worsen, deaths of despair spiral, materialism and nihilism abound, and people choose not to reproduce.

But we cannot let this paralyze us. In our own lives, we must act. Action after action, carefully considered, oriented towards the true, the beautiful, and the good. We must be decisive where others flail.

Paolo Roversi, Kirsten (1989)

This guide is not intended as a tool for those pursuing systemic change, but as a reference for people who want to pursue limited human goals: where to live, how to live, how to uplift those whom you love. It is my ambition to empower you with a methodology for the pursuit of specific truths which are important to you when making these decisions.

Mine is a framework for those with worldviews already outside the center. This is a subtle and unique problem: many existing guides on how to navigate conspiracy theories will suggest that you are on the wrong path and are likely radicalized and indoctrinated if your investigations lead you outside the Overton window. Unfortunately, this perspective fails to account for the fact that the Overton window itself has gradually slid into radicalized and alienating parameters. It is evident that mainstream assumptions no longer produce physically and spiritually healthy people.

If dissidents are to navigate these wildernesses of belief intelligently, generating outcomes which are healthy and life-affirming in our personal affairs, we must proceed with a sophistication of analysis which is often lacking. You will be familiar with various categories of conspiracy theorists who have allowed radical but flawed beliefs to consume them.

These flawed theories can make for entertaining reading, but I find them largely depressing; genuinely intelligent people with good instincts waste tremendous amounts of their own and other people’s time by failing to follow principles of rigorous analytical thought. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Before you begin, there are foundational interventions you should pursue if you haven’t already: being strong of mind and body will give you the calmness and confidence to stay the course. All the usual recommendations apply: exercise, eat well, pray. Once these are fundamental pillars are in place, you can begin.

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II. SUBTLETIES FOR DISSIDENTS

It is important that a break from consensus does not become a break from truth. Do not assume that because you believe that a particular dissident worldview is correct, the constellation of specific actors that shares this worldview are necessarily intelligent or competent at rigorous analyses. There is much self-flattery that goes on (‘our sphere has all the smartest people’), often unwarranted.

Likewise, it is not true that all who remain tethered to the mainstream are idiots. Within specialist (generally non-political) domains, these people can be real experts and have unparalleled access to truths.

Many in dissident spheres will have found our positions due to their good instincts and predispositions, rather than through careful reasoning, intellectual horsepower, or deep experience. Their correct beliefs might be a product of having stumbled across the right red pill at the right time - luck. This is all well and good, but it does not imply that their factual assertions on any specific issue should be naively trusted.

Treat fellow dissidents with charity but quiet skepticism. Few will be geniuses. Many incorrect assumptions will become cemented in the sphere as a result of groupthink, unchallenged. The most intelligent people are the most adept at self-deception.

When one discovers a sphere of people with whom one agrees, it will be tempting to grasp at mirages. Confirmation bias is real. After you have become alienated from the mainstream consensus and have wandered alone, at the first sign of like-mindedness and camaraderie it will be intensely tempting to uncritically align yourself with an entire spectrum of beliefs. Recent converts are the most fervent. But do not abandon your principles. Keep your own mind sharp and questioning.

III. OUR BETS ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS OUR BELIEFS

If your dissident worldview has some truth to it, it should - taken as a whole - allow you to more skillfully navigate reality, and make your life better than if you adopted the mainstream worldview. By ‘better’ I mean the increased ability to instantiate truth, goodness, and beauty in your life. I do not mean easier; being a dissident is not always easy.

The intelligent dissident will recognize that his worldview is more correct than the mainstream one, but it does not make him immune from being incorrect on many particular issues. Likewise, in the vast majority of random questions, the consensus view will deliver reasonable value. This is part of how it became a consensus view.

The task of a dissident is thus to identify the smaller set of specific questions on which his alternative worldview presents a significant value divergence from the mainstream consensus, and to drill down into these questions to get as close to the truth as possible. This value differential can be either positive or negative (ie. some dissident views - if correct - can make your life significantly better by adopting them over the consensus perspective, while some dissident views, if incorrect, can significantly harm you and your family).

Naturally, you will be drawn to investigate issues on which you believe you are uniquely correct. But your task is also to identify where you are wrong in ways that will harm you unacceptably. In particular, you should be aware of those issues that have the potential for deep and sustained damage because they go undetected - precisely because within the assumptions of your worldview, a shallow analysis would render them plausible.

This is an expected value (EV) calculation. Specifically, you want to identify and isolate those particular issues with the greatest expected value variance, and drill into them to reduce your uncertainty to ensure that you are selecting the life decisions which you can reasonably believe will result in the highest expected payoff.

This may seem like oddly technical language to be using, but the precision that this language affords is necessary for the sophistication of analysis that we are pursuing. This is because the intelligent conspiracy theorist recognizes that in the territory he operates within, uncertainty is a constant. It cannot be eliminated, only reduced, managed, and integrated into probabilistic decision-making processes. This is why I am borrowing terms from the field of probability theory in this guide.

For our purposes, we will be thinking about expected value calculations in the same way that advanced, mathematically-literate poker players do. This is a useful framework: professional poker players navigate uncertainty in high-stakes adversarial games in which their opponents are trying to actively deceive them into making bad decisions.

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IV. ALLOCATING OUR FOCUS

In poker, expected value is defined as the sum of the probability of each possible outcome from your decision multiplied by its payoff. In other words - the likelihood of each of the possible effects of your decision and how significantly good or bad each effect would be for you if it occurred.

Specifically, we want to isolate decision spaces in which the stakes are high and there is likely a significant differential in the expected value between the mainstream-recommended course of action and the dissident-recommended course of action.

In this essay I will focus on which questions to investigate, and in follow-up pieces I will suggest methodologies for how to investigate them.

Conspiracy theories fall into various categories: 

• Those so unknowable that serious analysis is impossible;

• Those that are knowable but don’t matter to you because this knowledge doesn’t relate to any decisions you will have to make;

• Those that are knowable and relate to decisions you will make but still don’t matter because there are more important factors in making those decisions;

• Those that are knowable within a reasonable degree of confidence, where their truth or falsity has a meaningful impact on important decisions. 

It is the final category that we pursue.

Examples of questions that might fit our desired specifications:

• Should my pregnant wife take an emergency vaccine?

• Do I rely on infrastructure which is vulnerable to a competency crisis?

• Is a particular social media platform compromised by a doxxing group?

• Is a media figure with significant influence over me controlled opposition?

• Are certain chemicals likely to affect my son’s development?

Examples of questions which would fail the test for me (but which I have watched consume other people):

• Was there illegal interference in the 2020 election?

  • Why I disregard this question: it can’t be rerun; we should have stricter voting measures regardless; I’m not going to convince anyone else to change their opinion; others couldn’t do anything about it even if I could convince them; I believe there are other, already existential flaws in our democracies anyway.

• Is the sitting pope an anti-pope?

  • Why I disregard this question: I don’t have access to the truth about the machinations of the cardinals who put him there; I can’t influence any substantive changes to the current arrangement; the theology is complex; I have to follow the same commandments in my daily life and trust in God regardless.

• Are divorce laws intentionally set up to punish men?

  • Why I disregard this question: We should get married and have children regardless of how adverse the system is; there is a higher law which is operative.

• Is Michelle Obama a man? 

  • …

Note that I have calibrated my calculations on my life and the real world things I can achieve. This calculation might look very different if I was a politician, or a cardinal, or a professional commentator or activist in one of these fields. You will have to manage your own uncertainty portfolios and decide where to drill down based on your own calculations.

V. MANAGING UNCERTAINTY PORTFOLIOS

The intelligent conspiracy theorist does not lose himself in a single question on which he insists on the validity of a single theory; he recognizes the importance of a range of questions tied to specific decisions and accepts that certainty regarding specific theories will be rare. Thus he manages a range of questions: an uncertainty portfolio.

Having a clear explanation of the world - whether right or wrong - is comforting, and stepping into ranges of uncertainties is uncomfortable and challenging. Few have the strength to consistently embrace this framework. It does not help that our education and examination systems are predicated upon the memorization and recall of ‘correct answers’ rather than probabilistic reasoning.

But a portfolio approach is necessary because one’s best course of action regarding important decisions should often be determined by the implications of uncertain answers to many questions at once.

For example, the decision of where you live might be affected by several calculations, with different factors and probabilities weighed against each other. A toy example: if you’re considering moving to a wealthy liberal town with an immaculate environment - free from a legal agricultural chemical that you’re nevertheless concerned about - but in which there have been accusations that the local teachers try to hide LGBT classroom activism from parents, which they deny.

In modern poker theory - which has been refined by increasingly sophisticated mathematical analyses of the ‘game theory optimal’ strategy to play the game - this tolerance of uncertainty is the difference between an exploitable and a profitable player.

Ability to incorporate game theory optimal strategy separates the various levels of player-type, ranging from amateur (most exploitable) to professional (least exploitable). The sophistication of their play is directly tied to their ability to tolerate and manipulate uncertainty. A rough categorization of the levels of their sophistication is as follows:

1. Novice - no tolerance for uncertainty. Looks at the hand he is dealt and plays it according to its strength. Doesn’t attempt to make inferences about other player’s hands.

2. Amateur - low tolerance for uncertainty. Plays the hand he is dealt while making adjustments based on the single hand he thinks his opponent has.

3. Regular - moderate tolerance for uncertainty. Plays the hand he is dealt while making adjustments based on the range of possible hands his opponent might have.

4. Expert - high tolerance for uncertainty. Acknowledging his opponent’s uncertainty as well as his own, the expert plays according to the range of hands he might be perceived as having, while making adjustments based on the range of hands he believes his opponent might have. (Note that this is the level at which you are starting to take advantage of your adversary’s uncertainty to curate your own image, in order to reduce risk to yourself).

5. Professional - manipulation of uncertainty. Incorporates sophisticated analytical techniques to reduce uncertainty about opponent’s ranges, analyzes and manipulates how his opponent perceives his own ranges, estimates a mathematically optimal play in any given situation, and modulates this with a degree of randomness to avoid predictability in future hands before acting.

The expert player is making a wide range of calculations, incorporating not just probabilistic calculations about his opponent, but calculations which incorporate his opponent’s uncertainty about him. He acknowledges the interdependence and iterative nature of the relationship, and manipulates his opponent’s uncertainty and takes advantage of his own ability to deceive, all while paring down to a single, profitable action.

In a follow-up piece, I’ll break down a case study according to these principles that revolves around doxxing, tech companies, and hostile NGOs, in which the exploitation of uncertainty becomes relevant.

The expert player’s calculations about mathematically optimal plays occur at the portfolio level, rather than the individual hand level. This means optimality is derived not from maximizing profit in a single hand, but acknowledging that life is an iterative game in which many hands will be played, and circumstances and information will change. Any one hand must be considered in the context of all that have come before and all that will follow.

The risk of losing it all on any one hand must be minimized, while the ability to profit from promising hands maintained. Some hands will emerge as important, and others - the vast majority - can be discarded with minimal consideration. Competent players will immediately discard about 70% of hands after quick consideration. They will concentrate their attention on making nuanced decisions with the remaining 30%, in which they judge themselves to be in an advantageous position to pursue value.

Some hands will revolve around minimizing exposure, and others about maximizing gains. Information leaks which might allow opponents to refine their strategy and exploit the player must be avoided. Information gleaned about opponent’s flaws must be retained and incorporated into future play. Uncertainty is ever-present but ever-changing. They don’t make existential bets until they have to, preferring to make profitable decisions over many smaller hands to reduce huge swings and to temper the decisiveness of luck.

The lesson: be comfortable operating in conditions of uncertainty, recognize that your opponents are too, and that your task is to be disciplined and intelligent, not tilted, stubborn, or irrational. 

V. FROM THE PORTFOLIO TO THE SPECIFIC

Our next task - when we have identified a particular question in our uncertainty portfolio for heightened investigation because of the potential value it presents - is to conduct a deep dive into this particular question (a conspiracy). A methodology and case study for this deep dive will be discussed in Part II.

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Sic transit imperium,

Johann