Re: My review today in wsj of conspiracy theories
[{"sender": "Ed a", "recipients": [], "timestamp": "Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 10:36 PM", "subject": "They're Not Really Out to Get You", "body": "They're Not Really Out to Get You\n\nBy EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN\n\nDec. 18, 2015, Wall Street Journal\n\n|\n\nConspiracy, a word derived from the Latin “to breathe together,” has been a salient part of the darker side of\nrecorded history ever since some 60 conspirators in the Roman senate, including Brutus and Cassius, plotted\ntogether to assassinate Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. Nowadays the “C” word does not always sit well with\njournalists, who commonly employ it in conjunction with “theory” to describe paranoid distortions of reality.\n\nEven so, a criminal conspiracy is not a rare phenomenon. Not only was a foreign conspiracy responsible for the\nmonstrous 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center (as well as the previous attempt to blow it up in 1993) but,\naccording to the Center on Law and Security at Fordham University, over 90% of routine federal indictments\nfor terrorist attacks since 9/11 contain at least one conspiracy charge. The government's pursuit of conspiracies\nis by no means limited to terrorism. Conspiracy charges are the rule rather than the exception in cases brought\nagainst businessmen accused of fixing prices, evading environmental regulations, using insider information or\nlaundering money.\n\nBut there are also pseudo-conspiracies that exist only in a delusionary or misinformed mind. And some of\nthem achieve a huge following. In Pakistan, according to public opinion polls, a majority of the population\nbelieves that the 9/11 attack was staged by President George W. Bush to launch a war on Islam. The claim that\nthe 1969 moon landing was faked is still around. Just two days ago a crew from a Russian TV channel rushed\nto my apartment to interview me about a viral post on YouTube in which the deceased director Stanley\nKubrick supposedly made a deathbed confession to having filmed the landing in a Hollywood studio—even\nthough everything about the post, including a fake Kubrick, was untrue.\n\nWhy people believe in pseudo-conspiracies is the focus of Rob Brotherton's fascinating book “Suspicious\nMinds.” Mr. Brotherton, an academic psychologist, advances the thesis that the belief in pseudo-conspiracies\nproceeds from the “quirks and foibles” in the way that the human brain, or at least some human brains, process\nevidence. He lucidly reviews studies showing common defects in the brain's wiring, such as the bias that\nselects evidence to confirm rather than undermine a pre-adopted thesis. “We seek what we expect to find,” as\nMr. Brotherton puts it. Relatedly, “biased assimilation” causes us to “interpret ambiguous events in light of\nwhat we already believe.”\n\nDiscussing Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Mr. Brotherton\naccepts Hofstadter's characterization of proponents of politically motivated conspiracy theories as “paranoid”\nand suffering from “‘a psychic phenomenon” that prevents them from seeing the absurdity of their position. But\nhe disagrees with Hofstadter that this condition affects only a small number of people on the fringes of society.\nFor Mr. Brotherton, “conspiracy theories thrive in the mainstream.”\n\nUntil the controversy over the validity of Warren Commission's 1966 report on the Kennedy assassination, the\nphrase “conspiracy theory” had a more neutral meaning, suggesting a plausible yet unproven claim about\nmultiple actors in a single event. Only in the aftermath of the Warren Commission did it become a derogatory\nterm used to suggest theories that subvert conventional wisdom. To those who doubted the commission's\nfinding that a single gunman killed Kennedy, Earl Warren became, Mr. Brotherton’s says, the “figurehead in a"}, {"sender": "jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]", "recipients": ["Ed"], "timestamp": "12/19/2015 2:28:32 PM", "subject": "Re: My review today in wsj of conspiracy theories", "body": "could 1 pay you to organzie my story into a coherent presentation. . probaly a six- 9 moth job."}]