"The state is a basic ordering feature of any state society..."
Oh that's rather recent, or at least let's be clear that we are talking nation state as we currently know them. The government of England at the time of our Revolution wasn't even a state as we would recognize one now. Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community traces the centralization of institutional authority in the state (nation state, from liberal to totalitarian) and the concomitant diminishment of institutions (and their authority) outside of the state. The nation state itself is just a few centuries old and we're really talking about the state that has grown in the wake of The Great Enrichment (courtesy of Deirdre McCloskey). Prior to that the parasitic limit on what could be extracted out of the economy (as well as the competition for that from other institutions) greatly limited the scope of the state.
The common conclusion: people tend to oversimplify cultures, groups, and systems, imagining they are more coherent and structured than they actually are. We like to believe in a few core “keys” that explain everything, even though reality is messy and random.
When faced with a messy reality, we prefer neat stories, whether it’s “my culture is guided by a few core values” (eg Left/Right) or “a secret group is pulling the strings.” This pattern-seeking helps us feel confident and connected, but it often leads us to mischaracterize events, cultures, or problems, sometimes in harmful ways.
Our desire for simplicity and coherence makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, because they offer the kind of neat, central explanation our minds crave when reality is actually messy.
Excellent analysis. However, I believe it leaves out an important phenomenon that weakens your thesis to some degree - political ponerology. There are sociopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellians who understand and consciously exploit the cooperative group dynamics you outline here for personal gain, or even just out of sadism. In any society, and particularly in sick societies, such individuals tend to rise up through the ranks of institutions to positions of power and influence. And they use these institutions to carry out conspiracies.
Fauci and Collins are Exhibit A for this phenomenon. Funding gain of function research and then covering up the lab leak wasn’t just an emergent phenomenon resulting from pursuit of bureaucratic interests. It was a conscious conspiracy orchestrated by dark triad personalities. Same with promoting lockdowns and silencing the “fringe epidemiologists” who were presenting evidence and argument that undermined the case for lockdowns.
As you note, it wasn’t a Grand Conspiracy to serve outside interests like BigPharma or the Rothschilds or whoever (the “see through state”). It was, as you argue, a response to bureaucratic incentives.
But it wasn’t just that. It was Dark Triad personalities setting bureaucratic priorities and dictating the amoral means by which those priorities would be pursued. The Covid debacle does not happen absent Dark Triads at the top echelons of these bureaucracies. The ponerization of our institutions was a “but for” cause of Covid tyranny.
Were people of strong individual character like RFK Jr., Battacharaya, Kuldorf, Prasad, etc., running the show in 2020, things would have progressed much differently. Agree or disagree with these individuals on specifics, I would submit they all have the rare virtue of being neither conformists nor individuals who score high in the dark triad traits. Institutions led by such individuals behave very differently from institutions led by the Faucis and Collinses of the world. In a species made up predominantly of conformists, leadership (strong individuals of character versus Dark Triads) counts for a lot. The institutional characteristics you describe here are not inevitable. They follow from the sorts of individuals society and institutions elevate to positions of authority.
“A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China. There is zero evidence for this.”
"The state is a basic ordering feature of any state society..."
Oh that's rather recent, or at least let's be clear that we are talking nation state as we currently know them. The government of England at the time of our Revolution wasn't even a state as we would recognize one now. Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community traces the centralization of institutional authority in the state (nation state, from liberal to totalitarian) and the concomitant diminishment of institutions (and their authority) outside of the state. The nation state itself is just a few centuries old and we're really talking about the state that has grown in the wake of The Great Enrichment (courtesy of Deirdre McCloskey). Prior to that the parasitic limit on what could be extracted out of the economy (as well as the competition for that from other institutions) greatly limited the scope of the state.
Pairs well with Robin Hansons recent piece:
More Random Than We Realize
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/more-random-than-you-realize?selection=ffecb320-83d0-4dc1-8775-bf2afe36a2ee
The common conclusion: people tend to oversimplify cultures, groups, and systems, imagining they are more coherent and structured than they actually are. We like to believe in a few core “keys” that explain everything, even though reality is messy and random.
When faced with a messy reality, we prefer neat stories, whether it’s “my culture is guided by a few core values” (eg Left/Right) or “a secret group is pulling the strings.” This pattern-seeking helps us feel confident and connected, but it often leads us to mischaracterize events, cultures, or problems, sometimes in harmful ways.
Our desire for simplicity and coherence makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, because they offer the kind of neat, central explanation our minds crave when reality is actually messy.
Excellent analysis. However, I believe it leaves out an important phenomenon that weakens your thesis to some degree - political ponerology. There are sociopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellians who understand and consciously exploit the cooperative group dynamics you outline here for personal gain, or even just out of sadism. In any society, and particularly in sick societies, such individuals tend to rise up through the ranks of institutions to positions of power and influence. And they use these institutions to carry out conspiracies.
Fauci and Collins are Exhibit A for this phenomenon. Funding gain of function research and then covering up the lab leak wasn’t just an emergent phenomenon resulting from pursuit of bureaucratic interests. It was a conscious conspiracy orchestrated by dark triad personalities. Same with promoting lockdowns and silencing the “fringe epidemiologists” who were presenting evidence and argument that undermined the case for lockdowns.
As you note, it wasn’t a Grand Conspiracy to serve outside interests like BigPharma or the Rothschilds or whoever (the “see through state”). It was, as you argue, a response to bureaucratic incentives.
But it wasn’t just that. It was Dark Triad personalities setting bureaucratic priorities and dictating the amoral means by which those priorities would be pursued. The Covid debacle does not happen absent Dark Triads at the top echelons of these bureaucracies. The ponerization of our institutions was a “but for” cause of Covid tyranny.
Were people of strong individual character like RFK Jr., Battacharaya, Kuldorf, Prasad, etc., running the show in 2020, things would have progressed much differently. Agree or disagree with these individuals on specifics, I would submit they all have the rare virtue of being neither conformists nor individuals who score high in the dark triad traits. Institutions led by such individuals behave very differently from institutions led by the Faucis and Collinses of the world. In a species made up predominantly of conformists, leadership (strong individuals of character versus Dark Triads) counts for a lot. The institutional characteristics you describe here are not inevitable. They follow from the sorts of individuals society and institutions elevate to positions of authority.
As a former smoker, now vaper, people often scratch their heads as to why those in Tobacco Control are so opposed to safer forms of nicotine. But as Lorenzo explains, just look at the incentives: https://arielleselyaphd.substack.com/p/the-state-of-academic-research-on-1ce
Your writing sometimes reminds me of Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Some might consider this an insult, some a compliment.
“A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China. There is zero evidence for this.”
This didn’t age too well, NPR. 🤣
Brilliant 👌