🤖I dictated this article to an LLM as part of my Writing with Robots series.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.
Did you hear that deodorant infects your thyroid with the NSA’s mind-control nanobots? I’m never wearing deodorant again!
However, all conspiracy theories have one thing in common: they are far too flattering to human beings.
It's always the same plotline. The story begins with a revelation: the world is not as it seems, and the public has been deceived. OH NOES! A secret elite – the Illuminati, globalists, reptilian shapeshifters, or worst of all, the Rothschilds – pull the strings behind every government, every corporation, every war. Every breakfast cereal brand! Only a tiny group of enlightened initiates have pierced the veil, usually after binge-watching a suspicious number of grainy YouTube videos — such as you, Larry Wompkins! You are the Chosen One! Now give us your banking information to save the universe!
This dastardly plot requires that vast networks of people, across huge spans of time, execute a coordinated plan, maintain airtight secrecy, and leave behind no paper trails except the ones discovered by neckbeards on Reddit. It requires flawless discipline… where most human organizations can’t figure out their coffee maker.
Anyone who has ever worked in government, or even a medium-sized company, knows the reality: groups of humans are almost universally incompetent. Meetings about meetings, emails that “get lost”, and leadership that can’t successfully coordinate lunch, let alone global domination. Think Dilbert, not Dr. Doom.
Whistleblowers leak. Interns gossip. Bureaucrats forget to lock the filing cabinet. Even the mafia chiefs keep getting killed by their own bodyguards. If the CIA and the NSA can’t keep their secrets off Discord, why on earth would we believe that some ancient cabal has managed it flawlessly for centuries?
Look at the last 80 years. The Watergate cover-up didn’t even last a week. The Manhattan Project, which involved 130,000 people, leaked to the Soviets before it was even named. The CIA lost track of bin Laden before 9/11. Even the vaunted US Air Force has accidentally dropped nuclear weapons on the American homeland. Twice.
The Vatican is almost 2,000 years old, and led by hooded celibate mystics with Latin codenames. They somehow can’t keep their secrets out of the tabloids, alongside headlines like “Kylie Jenner stuns in genuine mammoth-hide potato sack”. At least they have cool hats.
Even the Scientologists – despite billions in assets and a real nasty legal team – got their secret cult theology¹ uploaded to WikiLeaks.
Oh, and then accidentally confirmed their authenticity by filing a copyright claim.
Oops.
Human endeavors, especially secretive and large-scale ones, do not resemble James Bond villainy. They resemble The Three Stooges run Area 51.
So the fundamental error of the conspiracy theorist is imagining that humanity is capable² of sustained, large-scale competence. We are not. We are, as a whole, bunglers, leakers, oafs, and opportunists. Eventually some dope always spills the beans. Our institutions are not composed of supervillains—they are more of a mix between the DMV and a bunch of middle-aged dads trying to dress the kids for school (they can’t).
We like to imagine smoke-filled rooms of elites pulling levers behind the curtain. But real smoke-filled rooms have inconclusive committee meetings, missed memos, budget overruns, and someone’s cousin brought in as a favor who messes the whole thing up. Somewhere, a man in an ill-fitting suit is spilling coffee on the master plan while two others argue about whose turn it was to feed the lizard people. Add the leaky sieve of whistleblowers, office politics, sabotage, embezzlement, and good old-fashioned incompetence, and the global conspiracy collapses faster than a White House press secretary under cross-examination.
This is actually far more terrifying than any conspiracy theory. There is no secret shadow government. The planet is actually being run by those gibbons you see on the late-night news.
At least actual gibbons can be bribed with bananas.
So this is why we are unlikely to have any real long-term conspiracies.
As a whole, we seem to be far too stupid to run any.
As a whole, we seem to be far too stupid to run any.
And if there really are aliens in Area 51, somewhere Bozo the Clown and friends are hitting them with rubber chickens.
Footnotes
- Their secret mythology involves the escapades on an evil emperor in a galaxy far, far away. This doesn’t sound familiar at all.
- Now, it’s true that in real life, pockets of competence can occasionally arise. They in fact produce most of human progress. They’re rare — a dozen Boeings for each SpaceX, a million Salieris for every Mozart! But even they are rapidly snuffed out by human nature itself, typically within a few decades. Competance is rare, precious, and fleeting. And certainly doesn’t last centuries in flawless secrecy.