Conspiracy Theory is a Good Thing
• John Vandivier
- speculation is normal
- conspiracy theorizing is a kind of speculation, and is also normal
- everyone on the political spectrum does it: from hillary clinton and the liberals to rush limbaugh and the conservatives, and also ron paul and the independants and libertarians
- telling people speculation including conspiracy theory is bad will result in less curiousity which stifles innovation
- most of all, many conspiracies are true, and they can have important effects which we should be aware of such as unjust law or economic power resulting from cronyism, revolving doors, regulatory capture and more
- it has academic backing - rothbard, oligarchy, regulatory capture...elite networks, clique theory and more
- obviously there are many bad conspiracy theories, but if we eliminated or discouraged any field of inquiry because there have been bad theories, implications, individuals, and so on involved in the field then there would be no encouraged fields at all!
- we encourage bad conspiracy theories them by ostracizing conspiracy theory per se. by not recognizing conspiracy theory as a legitimate field of inquiry, we are preventing best practices from emerging in the field, we are eliminating the possibility of a legitimate authority for conspiracy theory by definition, an authority which would be able seperate whacko theories and good theories, we are stifling an intellectual market which would allow competition to eliminate the poor explanations, we are also encouraging strong, ambitious, success-persuing people to avoid the field, leaving only the remainder to it.