The term “conspiracy theory” may bring to mind tinfoil hats and ramblings of the Illuminati, but many are more intricate and prominent than scrawlings on a bathroom wall.
Conspiracy theories are everywhere—from television, to public advertisement, to the minds of our friends—raising questions about what’s nonsense and what should be considered for serious debate.
This became clear to anyone who regularly used OC Transpo in September 2013, and found themselves met by a particular advertisement installed in the buses.
“Did you know a 3rd tower fell on 9/11?” asked the advertisements, accompanied by pictures of a demolished building.
Prominent on the ads was the logo for ReThink911, a campaign started by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The group prescribes to the idea that the World Trade Centre 7 could not have fallen from a fire as the American government claims, and that its destruction was “unnatural.”
The group defended their controversial ideas in a statement presented at the Nov. 20 meeting of the Ottawa Transit Commission.
“Unfortunately, still to this day, millions of people around the world are not aware of the collapse of Building 7, let alone have they seen it. The goal of ReThink911 is to make this information widely known by running advertisements in cities around the world, encouraging the public to look at the evidence, and decide for themselves,” read the statement.
“Should such an activity be blocked because some in our society are uncomfortable about the implications of this building being brought down by controlled demolition? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says ‘no’, our right to share this information respectfully – as we have done – is protected.”
Suspicious skeptics
Dave Green, one of the co-organizers of the Ottawa Skeptics refers to members of ReThink911 as conspiracy theorists. “Truthers,” or 9/11 conspiracy theorists, are one of the most prominent groups of conspiracy theorists in North America.
Truthers often find themselves opposed by the skeptic movement, Green said. Skeptics prescribe to scientific discourse, and seek to bring a voice of rationality to debates involving everything from conspiracies and the supernatural, he added.
“The 9/11 attacks were sort of the first big conspiracy theory of the Internet age, there’s obviously a lot of passions on both sides, so that’s how I got into it,” Green said. He firmly opposes the truther movement, and said he believes the approach of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is flawed.
“Their fundamental message is as architects and engineers . . . in their professional opinion, the two World Trade Centre towers and World Trade Centre 7 should not have collapsed the way they did. That is what we call a false appeal to authority,” he explained.
“They’re putting forward their authority as architects as why we should believe them. When you look at what they’re doing, they’ve never actually done any real professional work on the collapses,” he said.
“Everything that you see in their YouTube videos and in their live talks, other people have done previous to them, and they’ve merely rubberstamped it. Nothing that they do can be traced to their actual skill as architects and engineers.”
Green said conspiracy theories, from the plausible to the bizarre, are typically based on the thrill of having knowledge.
“People like the feeling of having insider knowledge that other people lack, you always like to have that feeling of ‘I know something you don’t know,’” he said.
A kernel of truth
Second-year journalism student Kirk Kitzul said he thinks conspiracy theories should be left open for discussion, as many contain a “kernel of truth.”
Kitzul recounted a hypothetical conspiracy theory he developed around Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s 2004 Superbowl performance.
“One that I invented was that Janet Jackson’s nipple slip was created. It was made with the goal of her getting reprimanded for it to show that it was bad and that overt sexuality’s bad,” Kitzul said.
“It would have been a conservative group, obviously very radical that thinks desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said. “They would never want to see a bare boob on TV, but if they thought that’s what it takes to show sexuality as bad, then that’s what they’re going to do.”
Believers of conspiracy theories may also draw their beliefs from the media.
Second-year film student Christy Stackhouse said as a child she believed in Bigfoot, and some of these beliefs persist.
Stackhouse attributes this to her consumption of science-fiction shows.
“Given how much X-Files I watched, I don’t think the supernatural ever left me. Because of that I will always have this small part of it in me,” she said. “Things like Cryptozoology sort of make sense, if you think of how much of the world is undiscovered.”
Conspiracies vs. chaos
Karl Mamer, creator of the Conspiracy Skeptic podcast and writer for Skeptic North, is a prominent figure in the Canadian skeptic community. Mamer said he takes pleasure in dissecting conspiracy theories.
“Conspiracy theories are really just whole strings of bad arguments, put together. Some like to do crossword puzzles. I like to go through conspiracy theories and figure out what the bad arguments are,” he said.
Mamer studied psychology at the University of Windsor, where he first encountered skeptic texts and became inspired to join the movement.
Mamer said psychology offers many answers as to why people become tempted to believe in or start conspiracy theories. One of these answers comes in the form of an instinct called “agency detection” which can cause some people to be irrationally suspicious as a mechanism of defence.
“In terms of psychology I think there’s a lot of things that come into play . . . coming back to our early, formative evolution, there’s this thing called agency detection where if you hear rustling, it’s much better for you to think ‘well maybe there’s a tiger causing that rustling’ than to think it’s just wind,” he said.
“If you make the mistake of thinking it’s just wind and it’s a tiger, it eats you. That agency is not turned off in humans today, so we look at very random things and we’ll see agency behind them.”
Mamer said he believes humans are constantly seeking ways to shape order out of chaos and conspiracy theories are another manifestation of this basic need.
“There’s a basic psychology experiment where you put a person in front of a computer screen, and there’s random dots moving on the computer screen. People instantly make up stories about what’s going on [such as] ‘that dot’s lonely and it wants to be with the other dot’ that’s just the way our brains are wired,” he said. “We tend to want to impose some sort of order on that randomness. People who buy into conspiracy theories need this layer of order on the randomness of their life,” Mamer said.
Fixing bad free speech with more free speech
After reviewing the ReThink911 ads at the transit comission, the council allowed them to continue to run. Mayor Jim Watson called the ads “disrespectful,” but admitted that they met with the advertising standards council’s standards, according to CBC.
Karl Mamer said even if the ads are allowed to continue to run, he thinks skeptic groups will be effective in offering a counterpoint to them, and people will be able to make up their own minds.
“People will see these bus ads, but they won’t remember the URL. They’ll Google it, and if Google is doing their job, or if the SEO wizards of the skeptical sites are doing their jobs, then in the first page of hits they will also get the skeptical things.”
Green agreed.
“I’ve always believed that good information tends to drive out bad information, and they always say the solution to bad free speech is more free speech,” he said.
“They’re welcome to point out their point of view, and I’m welcome to stand up and say, well, their point of view is wrong.”
