Rabbits are DUMB!

And why is that? Is it because of their overzealous imagination, their propensity for disbelief, or their extreme paranoia? All three, actually. Especially since they mean the same thing (ok, don’t snigger at my cheap trick). Let me continue what I was saying earlier, about conspiracy theories. In particular, let’s look at what the common mistakes made are.

The first mistake that many conspiracy theorists make is that they do not account for the famous rule-of-thumb known as Occam’s Razor: Complicated stories are less probable than simple ones. Many such theories unnecessarily complicate what happened, usually to account for one tiny flaw in the ‘official’ story. There’s nothing wrong with such an approach, except that from the universe of possible corrections, the theorist chooses the potentially controversial one. Further, such theories very often employ logical fallacies. One example of a widely noticed fallacy is analogous to a doctor assuming that a person definitely doesn’t have cancer when evidence of cancer is absent. Such an assumption is valid only when evidence of no cancer is present. Putting this slightly differently, one could say that inconsistencies in a narrative are not necessarily indications of the opposite. Another important thing to think about is the number of conspirators. A simple rule is, ‘The more the number of conspirators required in a theory, the less likely it is to be the actual turn of events’. Conspiracy theories also need to be falsifiable. This means that the specific claims of the theory have to be such that they can be disproved. If this is not the case, it might mean that the theory is nothing but a convenient explanation of the facts.

Very often, conspiracy theories are like old-age economics. Just like the latter, they believe that all individuals act rationally, and always maximize the utility of consequences to them. However, most of us would realize that this is not the case at most times. This is the reason people doing MBAs have subjects like Behavioral Finance along with Economics. This argument was developed by Graham Allison in his book Essence of Decision, and he called it the Rationality Theorem. When people believe in rationality, they automatically exclude factors like bureaucracy and misunderstandings from their explanations of events, and consider only available data and results. In the rational world, all events are explained on the basis of rationality of participants. But a stubborn teenager’s fight with his dad should be more than enough to convince us that the opposite is often the case.

There are more problems with conspiracy theories, which I am sure you aren’t surprised to hear. Many such theories use ‘never-before seen government documents’ or ‘restricted files’ to arrive at conclusions. There is no way one can prove or disprove such claims of convenience. All one can say of such theories is that their veracity is questionable, at the very least. Finally, coming back to an allusion I made earlier, people tend to believe that significant events have significant causes. A study has been reported, in which four versions of an event were presented to the subjects where a foreign president was

1. Successfully assassinated
2. Wounded but survived
3. Survived with wounds but died of natural causes at a later date
4. Was unharmed

The subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of major events, i.e. where the president died, than in the other versions.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly was startled when I read of this study. But somewhere in my head, I think it all fits in with our subliminal need for excitement. Like our Indian batsmen, who play badly to make the game more exciting for the audience (unrelated, actually, but what the hell! … all bloggers voice their opinions on matters of public interest). Next time, I’ll try to be a little more interesting, considering that I myself fell asleep writing this portion. I’ll try to trash some popular theories. Won’t do too much, but hopefully, you’ll get the idea…