Coronavirus, Conspiracy, and the Limits of Knowledge
I’m going to start this article with a question that will probably make around 99% of people switch off immediately, but please bear with me:
How do you know that coronavirus exists?
This might seem like a trite and possibly even distasteful question. You know about it because everyone’s talking about it. You know about it because you read about it or saw it on the news. You know about it because people you love have died as a result of it. You know about it because you’ve personally suffered from it.
But… how do you really know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it exists?
I’ve recently found myself trying to convince people of the existence of coronavirus on Facebook. They variously think the whole thing is a ploy by mysterious powers to get us to stay at home, an excuse by Bill Gates to vaccinate us with microchips (how or why is unclear), or an excuse for the government to roll out 5G (which itself they consider to be at best dangerous and at worst some sort of insidious mind control technology).
The thing is, I don’t know that coronavirus (by which I mean either the viral strain SARS-CoV-2 or the disease COVID-19) exists. I strongly believe it does, but I don’t absolutely 100% know that it does. I don’t have an electron microscope, nor the scientific training to interpret whatever I might see if I did have one. Most of us are in the same position.
What does this mean? It means that we need to trust the experts, by which I mean the people who do have electron microscopes and do have the training to interpret what they see with them.
The problem is: who decides who’s an expert and who isn’t? How do we know which experts to trust?
In fact, very few people will read the scientific papers written by the experts anyway. They’ll just read or watch the news and trust whatever it is that the journalists tell them about whatever the experts are saying. This introduces a whole other layer of uncertainty; who are these journalists? Which ones can we trust? Do they have hidden agendas? Are we being told the truth?
If you combine this basic epistemological uncertainty with a certain level of paranoia, it’s very easy to end up believing pretty much anything and, regrettably, there are many people who stand to profit from proposing alternative theories, or generally sowing confusion and mistrust.
In the age of the internet and social media, what this results in is a slew of opinions, and then a slew of opinions on those opinions. My opinion is that this opinion is the right opinion. We end up even further from the truth than we were when we started.
Navigating the Library of Babel
If you look hard enough, the internet will contain pretty much any opinion you care to find. It’s like Borges’ imaginary Library of Babel, which contained not just every book but every possible book. All books containing all possible combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation characters were in there, including (but not even slightly limited to):
“…the detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, the faithful catalog of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogs, the proof of the falsity of those false catalogs, a proof of the falsity of the true catalog, the gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary upon that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book into every language”
At first, as Borges’ story goes, everyone was excited about the library because it contained all the truths in the world, but then over time they realised that it also contained all the falsehoods too and — crucially — they had no way of discerning which was which. There might have been a book that could help them, but there were also an infinite amount of books that would mislead them.
In many ways, this describes the internet. With our infinite access to knowledge, we feel like Gods, but teamed with our inability to discern truth from falsehood, sometimes we can feel that we’re just scrabbling about in the dirt.
What do I know, anyway?
The thing is, what can we really know for sure? All I have direct access to is my own perceptions; inner in the form of emotions, and outer in the form of physical sensations. Neither of these things will directly tell me whether coronavirus exists or not, or how it came into being. Neither will give me any direct insight into Bill Gates’ intentions, or the potential dangers of 5G wireless technology. Neither will inform me of what is happening in the world at a subatomic or astronomical level, or anywhere that my perception can’t reach.
What I really know for sure is desperately limited.
So, we have two options:
Option 1: Believe only what we can directly perceive, and act accordingly
This leaves us pretty limited, though should not be discounted. In fact, I think it might be a sensible idea to base most of our day-to-day decisions on those things that we can directly perceive. Is the food I’m eating making me feel better or worse? Does my neighbour seem sad or hungry? Am I enjoying playing the guitar? Is this jumper comfortable? Does my job make me feel fulfilled?
Many of the important decisions that we make on a daily basis can be based on these direct perceptions and, cumulatively, if we as a society are in touch with and act kindly on these real feelings, I am in no doubt that the world would be a better place (though that is, of course, just my opinion).
However, this limits us to acting only on the evidence of our own senses. What if a bus is coming around the corner and will run us over if we don’t believe the person shouting at us to move? What if a parent tells us not to eat something because they say it’s bad for us? What if scientists tell us that there is a global pandemic and that we need to stay inside?
Option 2: Trust, within reason, the testimony of experts
FACT: If we are to speculate about matters beyond the reach of our direct perception, we have no choice but to trust the testimony and opinions of others.
The problem is, as we’ve seen, there are near-infinite opinions out there. Which do we trust? We trust the opinions of the experts. How do we know which people are experts? We trust our news source of choice to report accurately on what the experts are saying. We trust the consensus. We trust the system.
In fact, our whole epistemological system is based on trust. We cannot exist without trust. Businesses run on trust. Friendships run on trust. Trust makes the world go round.
So who or what do we trust?
During the coronavirus crisis, some of the dubious social media posts that have received a lot of traction have been videos of doctors claiming that the whole thing is completely overblown, that their hospital is in fact nearly empty, and that they don’t understand why everyone is being told to stay at home, the implication being that there is another nefarious reason why we are being told to stay at home.
This sort of testimony is appealing because it mimics our direct perception and it appeals to our direct emotion. I watched these doctors speaking and I could tell that they were honest people and that they cared about the truth, so I believe what they say. Leaving aside for the moment the possibility that they might not in fact be honest, it is worth stepping back a little to look at what is happening here.
People believe the rogue doctors’ testimony because they seem honest, and then jump to believing their conclusions. But, just because they are doctors and they are honest people, does that give them the authority to talk about what is happening in other hospitals? To talk about what is happening globally? To speculate about the intentions of myriad scientists, governments, and journalists around the world?
Given our human predilection for trusting real people and the direct evidence of our senses and emotions (albeit via the medium of a YouTube video), their testimony can seem more compelling than that of a newsreader or politician who is being paid to talk to us.
That doesn’t, however, mean that their conclusions are true. All we can really know from some doctors saying that their hospital is empty (assuming we trust them) is that their hospital is empty. We need to weigh this “fact” against many, many other doctors saying the opposite, and many scientists, journalists and politicians across the world and across partisan divides also saying the opposite.
The doctors might be nice guys, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
How we develop a consensus
It is clear that, to know (or at least come close to knowing) whether coronavirus exists, we need to trust at least some of what we read and watch in the media.
As Yuval Noah Harari described in his book Sapiens, as humans, we tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world around us. Religion is a story. Science is a story. Epidemiology is a story. These stories are like maps that help us describe the world, navigate effectively through it, and make meaningful collective decisions about how we should behave to hopefully fulfil our human needs and desires.
Examples of such stories are:
- “Coronavirus is a random genetic mutation that was first transmitted to humans in a wet market in Wuhan and spread to humans across the world because it is highly contagious by nature. We need to develop a vaccine to stop it spreading and minimise disease and economic impact.”
- “Coronavirus was purposefully developed in a top secret laboratory by scientists working at the behest of shadowy powers to create a virus that would require an expensive vaccine that would both make the instigators lots of money and allow them to insert microchips into the entire human population with the intention of being able to control us all.”
In modern human society, there is a marketplace of stories, either formal or informal. Theoretically, good (accurate) opinions rise to the top and bad (inaccurate) opinions are discarded. What we are left with is a consensus; a generally accepted picture of the world as we know it, that we collectively use to make decisions.
Wikipedia is the embodiment of this marketplace of stories; anyone can edit it, but if someone edits it with a “fact” or opinion that is not sufficiently referenced or too subjective, it will be removed by other editors. The scientific peer review system is similar: anyone can publish a scientific paper, but for it to be respected, it needs to be reviewed by qualified peers within the same discipline. In fact, most of our media has evolved in the same way. A newspaper that repeatedly published falsehoods would not last long. Even the most ideologically extreme newspapers must adhere to some sort of journalistic code of ethics, generally including a commitment to truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, and impartiality.
What all of these systems ultimately develop is a consensus; a general agreement about which story clings most closely to the various facts that we are able to know. Collectively, the Wikipedia articles, peer reviewed journals, journalistic codes of ethics, and various other systems act as a means to create, regulate and develop our understanding of the world.
Consensus vs. conspiracy
The thing is that, looked at through the lens of paranoia, consensus can look very much like conspiracy. Why, when there are so many potentially differing stories, do most people believe this one central story? Wake up sheeple! If we don’t understand the various mechanisms by which humans develop a story and come to accept this story as truth, the very system itself can seem deeply suspicious.
Conspiracy (or, less pejoratively, alternative) theories, by their nature, reject the consensus story. The crucial thing to be aware of is that, in so doing, they also question the whole system by which the consensus has been developed. My suggestion is that it is on this level that they need to be tackled.
All major conspiracy theories, such as that coronavirus doesn’t exist (or is purposefully man-made), or that 9/11 was an inside job, not only make a range of claims about the events in question, but they also implicitly make another claim: that the means by which the consensus has developed is illegitimate.
It is this implicit claim — that somehow the real truth has bypassed all these myriad systems of regulation that help us as humans to develop a consensus — that is the real problem with all conspiracy theories. It means that — if we are to believe the conspiracy theory — we also need to stop believing that our human network’s ability to develop a consensus is effective. It means that we must accept that we can no longer have faith in the scientific peer review system. It means that we cannot trust the broad majority of journalists, politicians and people in authority.
This leaves us in a pretty difficult situation: if we cannot trust the network of human beings to effectively develop and evolve our consensus stories, we cannot trust anything more than the direct evidence of our senses.
If we accept the implicit assumption that underlies all conspiracy theories, we are left without a system to navigate the truth. It is akin to dismantling the boat because we don’t like the direction it’s going in.
The limits of consensus
I am not saying that we shouldn’t question the consensus — in fact, it is exactly through constant questioning that the consensus develops and evolves. That is why science looks different to what it did 10 years ago, or 100 years ago. That is why Nixon was eventually forced to resign. That is why our understanding of coronavirus as I write this differs from how we understood it 3 months ago.
I am also not saying that there are not or have not been any genuine conspiracies, in which rich and powerful people have conspired in private in order to gain more money or power. Of course they do and have done this. I know that mainly because I’ve read about it in the news; investigative journalists are hugely incentivised to uncover uncomfortable truths because that’s what sells newspapers.
There are also several levels of propaganda, from fairly benign over-simplifications that are intended to get a message across clearly to a disparate population (“stay home, save lives”) to the sort of nightmarish totalitarian narratives of which Orwell and Huxley warned.
Clearly we must not be blind to the potential for great injustice to take place through the manufacture of a demonstrably false or evilly-skewed consensus, as this potential is real. It happened in Nazi Germany and it is happening right now in North Korea.
However, we should also be thankful that it is not happening in most modern societies. We have a free press. We have various forms of independent regulation. We are able to communicate freely amongst ourselves.
So should we all just relax then?
No, we shouldn’t.
We are privileged to live in a society that allows for a wide range of viewpoints to be shared. We are privileged to live in a society in which those ideas that are most useful, effective or true are able to rise to prominence. We are privileged to live in a society where those ideas that are most dangerous, ineffective or false can be openly shunned. We are privileged to live in a society where politicians and powerful people cannot lie to the public without being held to account.
I can almost hear the conspiracy theorists laughing at the naivety of that last paragraph. He thinks the press is free! He thinks politicians don’t lie!
In many ways I agree. The press has become more skewed of late. Politicians have been getting away with more lies of late. And there’s an astounding array of bullshit being spread across the internet making it a lot easier for the press and the politicians to get away with it.
What does that mean? It means we need to cling more closely than ever to the systems we as modern societies have developed to build an effective, accurate and constantly evolving consensus. We need to cherish and honour the regulatory systems we have developed; the scientific peer review systems, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, OFCOM, Wikipedia, and many more. We need to increase penalties on politicians, publications and people of authority who knowingly lie or mislead. We need to develop systems to transparently, fairly and systematically limit the spread of inaccurate information from fringe news sources.
I would argue that the biggest danger of all is that we start distrusting the systems that we use to help us develop a consensus. That’s the very last thing we should be doing. We should be clinging ever more closely to them. We should be building regulatory panels to regulate the regulatory panels.
Remember, aside from the evidence of our own senses, all we have to access knowledge is these systems. We rely utterly on them. And, if we can’t rely on them, we can’t rely on anything.
I believe the mainstream media (yes! I do!) because I know that it is built on the edifice of humanity. That’s why it’s mainstream. Of course, each news source has its own editorial slant, and some are more skewed than others, but I trust myself enough to be able to sift fact from opinion, identify the facts, and then develop my own opinions on those facts. But I will not and cannot question the facts themselves, because I have no other way to get to these facts than through some form of media.
Trust the system, or trust nothing
The fundamental fact is that we have no other choice but to trust this system of consensus-finding that we have built that manifests itself, in amongst other ways, as the mainstream media. Not because we are sheeple or willfully ignorant, but because all of the media we consume comes to us by this means. And we are the system.
Imagine, if you will, that the mainstream media is untrustworthy (this will be easy for some). What that means in effect is that all media could be untrustworthy. That terrifying but plausible story you found on an alternative news site about 5G mind control, or coronavirus being a government plot, or Bill Gates being a child-eating vampire from Mars, is as likely to be propaganda or misinformation as the front page article in The Guardian about how the government have been accused of not preparing effectively for the coronavirus. The only thing that differentiates the two when it comes to matters of fact is that one sits somewhere near the top of the edifice of human consensus and one doesn’t. If you stop trusting one third-party news source brought to you across the digital airwaves, why should you trust any? What is it that makes you think your source of information is any truer than anyone else’s?
You may as well be wandering the corridors of Borges’ Library of Babel desperately leafing through book after book of random nonsense.
Ultimately, our knowledge is limited to the evidence of our senses, and the trust in our human systems of consensus. This means that our actions must first and foremost be driven by our direct feelings and perceptions of the immediate world around us; are we acting kindly and authentically to ourselves and to those around us? Secondly, we must work together to constantly improve and develop the systems that help us create a consensus of opinion, and then we must trust that consensus.
Beyond that, as Wittgenstein said:
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
