Is that a Black Swan or Just a Dark Grey One?

If transformative events that can't be predicted are Black Swans, what do you call the transformative events that some folks could see coming?  The tongue in cheek term "Grey Swan" has been applied to these events, and it is meant to acknowledge that these are not true Black Swan events, but they nevertheless deliver a surprising shock to the system.

The Credit Crunch of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed is sometimes called a Black Swan by folks who misunderstand the phrase.  This may be partially because it was the first earth shattering event that took place after the publication of Nassim Taleb's book.  But Taleb himself suggests the Credit Crunch was no Black Swan.  Many folks (including Taleb) saw the danger building in the financial system and had been warning about it for years.  It may have been a devastating and rare event, but it was not really out of the blue.

Still, when determining what qualifies as a Black Swan, we may run into problems, especially as technology gets increasingly sophisticated and communication gets increasingly powerful.  We already said that just because one nut-job fantasized about some event does not disqualify it from being a Black Swan because it would still be an inconceivable surprise to most people.  But what of the increasing reach of hypotheticals in our lives?  Could our increasing understanding of all the whacky things that can take place in our lives lead to a decrease in events that we would rightly describe as "inconceivable"?

For example if a huge asteroid hit the earth in 1820 and killed millions of people, it would have undoubtedly been a Black Swan.  But what if it happened in 2020?  Can we really say that this would be an inconceivable disaster?  The fact is that scientists have been spending the last couple of decades educating us about Earth's long history of being pummeled from space.  It would seem by our modern understanding that being hit with an asteroid is a when and not an if.  Still, if the asteroid were large enough, it would result in such a devastating chain of events for our planet that it seems disingenuous to deny the event Black Swan status.

If your concern is about the well being of people on a day to day basis, the distinction is not relevant.  If it changed our lives and our assumptions about our own safety on what has till now been a very hospitable planet, the event could be among the most significant in history.  But for strict score keeping about whether it is a Black Swan or merely a dark grey one, the distinction would probably boil down to how seriously the possibility of the event was being considered.  Since we have clever folks tracking extra terrestrial objects this very moment (an international project called "Spaceguard"), mapping out which ones pose risk for potential collision, one could say this event, however devastating when it does finally occur, is not technically a Black Swan.

There is one possibility for Black Swan status associated with such an event, and that is some repercussion from the collision that was not anticipated.  If the collision had some freak side effect that scientists would not have even considered (such as reversing the rotation of the planet) then the event would certainly be a Black Swan.  But a scientifically well behaved natural disaster, however horrible, does not generally qualify as a Black Swan.

The arrival of Europeans in what is now South America would be a good example of a Black Swan, at least to the Myans, Incas, and Aztecs (and all the lesser known native peoples of the time).  It was something that they never spent any time worrying about and it completely shattered their way of life.  The European discovery of the Western Hemisphere some 40 years earlier was also a Black Swan (to the Europeans).  Since Columbus was basically an idiot, he thought he had circled the globe.  The idea that there was a land mass as large as the Americas between Spain and India was, at least to most Europeans of the time, inconceivable.

The proof by circumnavigation that the Earth was round was not, however, a Black Swan.  Even though the popular myth is that Columbus' whacky idea was that the Earth was round, in fact that idea had been well established since the 3rd century BC.  Columbus big idea was that the best trade route to India was to sail West and keep going.

[Aside: The reason I say he was an idiot was that the curvature of the Earth was provable, and most reasonable people knew the approximate size of the Earth.  Columbus contended the Earth was much smaller than people believed and that is why he was convinced that a Western route to India was practical.  Even late in life he denied the science and theorized that the Earth may be shaped like a woman's breast, smaller around the nipple than the other parts.  Seriously, this guy was nuts.]

In any case, over the course of the next few decades, his voyage did prove to be the spark of two major Black Swans, first for the Europeans and later for the indigenous people of the "New World".

And not to belabor the point, but that is how a Black Swan works.  One morning you are waking up to live your normal life and the next morning you are dying of a wound inflicted by a Spanish musket ball and a man you never dreamed existed using a weapon you had never imagined.  Black Swans are not simple surprises, they are game changers.

Grey Swans and Conspiracy Theories

We have established that any "Swan", whether black or grey, is a transformation event.  The assassination of John F Kennedy could not rightly be considered a Black Swan.  The man had Secret Service protecting him precisely because it is dangerous to be President.  Granted the security detail was quaint by today's standards, but the point is that it was not "inconceivable" that a President could be assassinated.  Three sitting Presidents had been assassinated before JFK (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) with McKinley's death being just 62 years earlier.  Sixty two years is not exactly recent, but for comparison it has already been 50 years since JFK's assassination.  In 1963 McKinley was still part of living memory for many people.  So, no, the assassination of a President would not be "inconceivable".

This does not mean that it was not nearly unthinkable however.  The world had changed a great deal in the two decades since WWII and no doubt many people would have assumed that the combination of good will in a prosperous nation and modern police methods had made it highly unlikely that a President would be assassinated.  In any case it was a national shock and certainly a transformational event.  Maybe it didn't change the way each American lived his daily life, but the killing, along with those of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., certainly changed society.  On the color scale, though, the event would have to be called a Grey Swan. It was simply not inconceivable enough to qualify as truly Black.

The same thing could be said for the 9/11 attacks.  They stunned many Americans.  An early phrase that was used in the first day of reporting was "A New Pearl Harbor".  It was a surprise attack which set everyone on edge and permanently changed the way Americans think.  In terms of lasting daily impact, the hoops we must now jump through to travel on a plane seems the most far reaching, but the impact on the psychology of the nation is not to be underestimated.  It may be hard to quantify beyond bureaucratic and legal responses such as the formation of the Homeland Security Department and the passage of the PATRIOT Act, but the change to America was immediate and far reaching.

Still, even though the notion of hijacked planes being flown into buildings was stunning, it was not really inconceivable.  The 9/11 attacks were quickly accepted as real things that might happen in the modern world.  So 9/11 was not really a Black Swan either. Grey, of course, but not black.

But here is an interesting feature of these and other Grey Swan events:  There are some people who reject that they took place at all, at least in the way that they are commonly described.  To these people, the so called "conspiracy theorists" there was a certain inconceivability to these events.  The events are so tragic and so hard to wrap our minds around that some folks can not accept them.  These people seek answers beyond the common explanation because the truth (or what is commonly accepted as the truth) sounds very wrong to them.  There is no debate that these events are just as transformational to conspiracy theorists as they are to the rest of the world -- in some sense they may be more transformational to them -- but there is some real difference in how willingly they are accepted at face value.

And that is a key connection between Grey Swans and conspiracy theories.  The fact of the matter is that Grey Swans create fertile ground for conspiracy theories.  I have said before that big events with large impacts create instability and a need for order and that this quest for order is what drives the narrative of conspiracy theories.  Well, we now have a framework for understanding what these "big events" are.  They are Grey Swans -- sudden events generally considered to be highly unlikely even if plausible.  The inability to accept the plausibility of such transformational events may be key to unlocking the origin of the explanatory conspiracy theory.

Maybe You are Already a Conspiracy Theorist and Don't Know it Yet

What an exciting idea for a movie.  Some guy is just going about his business feeling smug for not being so stupid as to believe that The Boston Marathon Bombing was a false flag terrorist attack, when something happens and he realizes that he has been part of a conspiracy all along.  Or maybe a woman is living a perfectly normal life, regarding the poor lost souls who believe in conspiracies with a mix of pity and contempt when she is suddenly informed that the very principles she uses to guide her own life are nothing but oversimplified conspiracy theories.

Of course, these things could never happen in real life, right?  Because there are those who grasp reality and those who let their imaginations get the best of them.  And we are the smart ones.  We always live in the real world and leave the fantasies to others.  We are so much smarter than everyone else... and proud of it.

On The Rachel Maddow Show the other night, Ms. Maddow interviewed Alice Hoagland, a woman whose son died on Flight 93, the 9/11 plane that went down in Shanksville, PA.

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The interview starts at 14:46.  Alice Hoagland uses words like "loony" to describe conspiracy theorists.  She recounts that she admonished them at one point:

You really need to consider a theory before you take it to your bosom, and, folks, you're being sold a bill of goods here.

She explains that these folks "reduce everything to theory" and

I've come to the conclusion that you really can't talk to these folks, you can't reason with them because they are so invested in the crazy story [they have gotten hold of].

And later she explains she simply thinks of them as "mental patients" because "they are off their rockers".

Well that is a stern appraisal from someone who (we hope) has a firm grasp of reality.  One could assume based on her dismissal of these crazy loons (who are so invested in their own ideas that they can not accept anything else), that Alice Hoagland is a lucid thinker in charge of her own mind.  Certainly she would never ascribe to anything so nutty as a "conspiracy theory."

Well let's think back to a few things we have said about conspiracy theories.  This is what we know:

1) To a conspiracy theorist, everything that happens is intentional.  It is part of a plan.

2) Conspiracy is linked to anxiety.  The more anxious something makes us about our place in the world, the more traction conspiracy theories will have.

3) Conspiracy Theories have an Event, Story, Reveal, Puppet Masters, and a Grand Plan.

And as we have touched upon but have not quite gotten to, the "evidence" that "proves" conspiracy in the minds of those who Ms. Hoagland calls "loonies" is usually not very straight forward.  It usually takes a lot of supposition and stretching to join the logical threads.  The lack of concrete evidence does not deter conspiracy theorists who say you must infer from the cracks in the official story.  The doubt cast in your mind by our imperfect ability to witness reality is where you must draw your assurance that conspiracy theories may be true.  We will explore this more later, but it was a critical component to touch upon now.

Because I want to examine this from a new angle.

What is one of the first things we hear when an inexplicable death occurs, especially of a child or someone in a horrible random event, like a bombing at a public spectacle?  Someone usually says it was part of "God's Plan."  The solace they offer is that we can't understand the mysteries of the world and that horrible and inexplicable and seemingly undeserved tragedies befall us in life, but we shouldn't worry, because God has a plan.


Earlier I wrote:

 It is very unnerving to live in a world where transformative (and usually horrible) events can take place without warning and for no good reason.  So a conspiracy theory seeks to provide peace of mind by showing how the seemingly random event was not random at all but was in fact part of someone’s plan. 

Ms. Hoagland herself claims that the best way she can think of to deal with conspiracy theorists is to use the "serenity prayer".

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

If this is true, we can assume that Ms. Hoagland is not an atheist.  Yet wasn't she just chastising these crazy people for boiling everything down to theory and, basically, not doing the math?

Mr. Universe

I want to spend a great deal of time on this so I will be coming back to it quite often.  Not because I think that if you believe in God you must be insane, but rather just the opposite.  If you can be a sane person and believe in God, then you must be very careful about the names you call others who believe things that they have no evidence to support.

And just as importantly, we need to realize that the quest for answers and order in the universe that leads us to the idea of God is part and parcel the same drive that leads conspiracy theorists to their explanations.


Remember my comment:

The Grand Plan is the explanatory bow that ties up the package into a neat orderly and self contained idea.

I was talking about conspiracy theories at the time, but couldn't I just as easily have been talking about religion?

There are those who will claim that there is a difference here.  But there is no difference, not of any significance.  Whether I believe that the government faked the 9/11 attacks in order to take away our freedoms and start a war in the Middle East or I believe that God hand selected the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre because he has a Divine Plan for how the universe unfolds, I am ascribing speculative motives to powerful forces with not a shred of evidence beyond conjecture.

Now, don't forget, I have gone to some pains in my past comments to stress that part of having an open mind means that you must accept that anything can be true, at least at first blush.   So I am not saying that there is no God and there is no Divine Plan.  But it is undoubtedly the same mental process that makes one seek order from existential chaos which produces the conspiracy theory or makes us quest for God .   Maybe there is a god pulling levers and controlling the universe.  I happen to doubt it. But I wouldn't call someone a loony for thinking so, or at least not any more of a loony than anyone else who believes conspiracy theories.  And I am suspicious of people who begrudge others their quest for order in a chaotic world.  I may find their answers a little too pat.  I may think they don't comport well with reality as I have experienced it.  But that would apply equally well to many religious people I have known as it would conspiracy theorists.  Who am I to be the arbiter of where someone seeks order and meaning?

Is a person who says that the Boston Marathon Bombings were a false flag attack more wrong than a person who claims that a rape resulting in pregnancy is God's will?  What if the person says that neither event was God's will but God had the power to stop it and did nothing (presumably because he has a plan)?  As soon as you bring your faith in God into a discussion of conspiracy theory, you have lost the intellectual high ground.

So one more time, just to summarize.  Ms. Hoagland argues that you just can't REASON with these people, and then cites the serenity prayer as her coping mechanism.  Does that really sound like reason is the guiding principle of her life?  It sounds more like her faith is what gives her strength.  Yet she belittles others for having an unshakable belief in something she disagrees with.  It may be true that they have no rational reason for believing what they do about 9/11.  But does she have a rational reason for believing in God?  Can we really expect others to believe only what is reasonable while we ourselves resort to faith to define our place in the cosmos?  Is there a map that shows us where reason applies and where faith is necessary?   Is faith just something we use when we want to believe something but can't find any evidence for it?  What does it say about your own awareness if you allow yourself to believe in things which are not logical but call others loonies for holding illogical beliefs?

I know, I am probably barking at the moon.  As Ms. Hoagland herself suggested, you just can't reason with some people.

Think it Through, People.

I just got a book I am very excited about called "Debunking 9/11 Myths".  It is part of my reading for my interest in the 9/11 conspiracies.  I am, I realized the other day, not so much a conspiracy theorist as a conspiracy theory-ologist.  I am more interested in the conspiracy theories themselves than the specific assertions of any given theory.

But to my chagrin, one of the little blurbs printed at the front of the book under the heading "Praise for Debunking 9/11 Myths" was from Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic Magazine and author of the book "Why People Believe Weird Things".

He states:

Even though I study weird beliefs for a living, I never imagined that the 9/11 conspiracy theories that cropped up shortly after that tragic event would ever get cultural traction in America...

Really?  That should be an embarrassing thing for Mr. Shermer to admit.  For someone who claims to study "weird beliefs" it is a wonder he has no understanding of where these beliefs come from.  But maybe I am being unfair.  It's not like he ever wrote a book entitled, "Why People Believe Weird Things"...  Except, of course he did.

His comment is ridiculous.  It's as if I told you, "Even though I consider myself an expert in what scares children, I am surprised that these eight year olds are having nightmares after sitting up watching the movie 'Night of the Killer Zombie Clowns'."

Seriously?  You write a book on why people believe weird things and you can't see conspiracies associated with the most transformation event in 40 years gaining any traction?  The "skeptic" community is very fond of preaching about knowledge through logic and observation.   It's funny when a ground ball like this rolls through the publisher of Skeptic Magazine's legs, and all he can say is, "Wow, that was a tough one to field.  Never saw that one coming."

Now of course I am not saying that Shermer is wrong and that the evidence in the book does not dispute certain claims made in some of the most common 9/11 conspiracies.   The facts do disprove some assertions of the conspiracy theorists, but so what?  This would be like my claiming that the children are perfectly safe in their beds.  "So what the hell are they whining about?  I honestly don't understand how they can still be scared after I have explained to them that monsters are not real."  This misses the point.  It shows I don't really understand why the children are scared to begin with.  So rather than simply boast that I have looked under the bed and found no monsters there, so they must be a bunch of cry babies, it would be more fruitful to use my logic, and my grounding in reality, to comprehend what conspiracy theories are actually saying about the world.  Addressing the facts without addressing the fear is pointless.  It may make you feel smarter than someone else, because you are so clever not to believe in zombie clowns or false flag terrorist attacks.  But it doesn't actually promote anyone's understanding of reality -- yours or the conspiracy theorists'.  Because guess what, conspiracy theories are part of the reality you claim to have such a handle on.  Monsters may not be real, but the nightmares they cause certainly are.

The reason this is so upsetting to me is that this is not some oversight.  This is a kind of intellectual corruption.  This is the mental equivalent of a police officer who busts people all day for selling drugs and then comes home to fire up his bong.   The "deep thinking logic" community more than any other has an obligation to think things through.

Being a skeptic isn't about wielding facts like clubs to bludgeon stupid people into submission.  (He says later in the same blurb, "...the book length treatment of this codswallop will stop the conspiracy theorists in their fantasy prone tracks.") Being a real skeptic, an authentic deep thinker, is about (or should be about) using the power of thought and observation to understand the process of thought and observation.

Stephen Hawking once suggested that parapsychology was for those who could not grasp physics.  Besides being a clumsy and self congratulatory comment, it revealed the limits of his own intellect.  His inability to appreciate the depth of the human mind and its capacity to theorize and invent in its quest to understand the world around it was laid bare by his assertion that anyone who could not do what he could do was a simpleton.  They could not handle the truth so they made shit up.  That is exactly the common riff of most skeptics who claim to understand why people "believe weird things".

Physicians once bled their patients and treated fever with leeches.  Today's doctors prefer aspirin, and many of them look back on these primitive practitioners with a special smugness unique to modern scientific man.   But how many scientists appreciate how similarly crude their methods will appear to thinkers of the 22nd century?  Stephen Hawking is no doubt a brilliant physicist, but it is a major error in reasoning for him to assume that his chosen field of study can explain all there is to know.  Or that in 300 years, what he calls science will not look very much like the pseudo science he is so quick to denigrate.

If Stephen Hawking could explain how dreams function or where empathy comes from I would be happy to accept his dismissal of the rubes of the world who can't do non-linear algebra.  But surely there are some folks who can handle the math just fine thank you very much who may still believe that there are forces at work which we can't yet explain or comprehend.  So I would simply challenge him to prove his assertion.   Stephen Hawking says parapsychology is for those who can't handle physics.  Fine.  He should prove it.  Using physics.  He should show how physics can explain why people hold the beliefs they that do.  Then I will believe him.

To reiterate, the problem with many smart guys like Hawking, or skeptics like Shermer, or even deep thinkers like Douglas Hoftstadter (who I took to task in my first pass at conspiracy theories), is that they get lazy.  They are used to reaping such benefits with their logical process that they fail to consider what they do not know.

This is the ultimate sin for any mathematician or skilled logician, and here's why: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem proves that for any sufficiently powerful formal system there will be statements which are true which can nevertheless not be proven.   Hoftstatder spends at least half of his book "Godel Escher Bach" explaining what this concept means and how it was discovered. Yet he somehow fails to take it to heart.

This inability to logic your way out of every puzzle goes way beyond conspiracy theories or "weird beliefs" and speaks to the nature of reality itself.  For those who hang their hat on logic and math, maybe you didn't get the memo.  One of your own already proved that there are true things which escape any formal system of logic.  The proof is rather obtuse to a non mathematician, but Hofstatder does a briliant job of parsing it out in his book.  But the point is that Godel proved this -- using math.

Suppose you're a stubborn logician and you want to claim that Godel is wrong.  Well, that's just fine, because Godel proved his Theorem mathematically.  So if you want to assert that Godel's Theorem is wrong, then you have to contend with the fact that Godel was able to prove something that was wrong. That suggests there are things which can be logically proven that are nevertheless wrong.  That is at least as dangerous as Godel's real medicine.  So, okay, maybe you want to back up and say if he proved it using logic it must be true (that's what all logicians want to think after all, isn't it?)  Well, the off course it's check-mate because then you are accepting the proof of his theorem.  And that means he is right.  And his theorem states that not all True statements can be logically proven.

It is often said then when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  This is the problem with the logical approach taken by Shermer and Hawking and even the Godfather of thinking about thinking Douglas Hosftatder himself.  They enjoy using logic, so they approach every issue convinced that there is no other way to view the world.  But in relying on logic so heavily, they ultimately get sloppy with how they start to swing it around.

Interestingly Hoftstadter went off the logical rails when talking about skeptical thinking, just as Mr. Shermer did.  Specifically where he went astray was when he was on the board of the Skeptical Inquirer and he parted ways with some of the others because he thought they wasted too much time dealing with nonsense.  He contended that some ideas are so ridiculous on the face of it that they weren't even worthy of scientific rebuttal.  He said they violated common sense!  That sounds an awful lot like someone saying that parapsychology is for folks who can't handle physics, doesn't it?  And it sounds a lot like all of the ridiculous prognostications that people who enjoy the history of science are fond of trotting out at cocktail parties.  Wasn't the belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun taken as an obviously ridiculous notion at one time?  It violated what was plain for all to see -- that the Sun circled the Earth.

What thinking person intentionally wants to repeat that silly mistake by claiming that he knows what must be false even without taking the time to examine it scientifically?  Wouldn't a claim that appears to violate common sense be the most interesting claim to examine scientifically?  If we used common sense as the arbiter of truth, how many things that were true in the 1600's could we have actually proved?  There is no reason to believe that the common sense of the 20th century (When Hofstadter made his ruling) is any more prescient than the common sense of any other era.  So why use it as a measuring stick at all?

Will healing crystals and ESP be explained and accepted someday just as the Earth's orbit around the Sun is today?  Maybe not.  But dismiss an idea -- any idea -- out of hand because it does not match what you believe and you're not behaving like a scientist.  In fact you're behaving like the zealots you enjoy belittling.  The sad fact is that many people who preach logic and call others fantasy prone fanatics are themselves engaged in the laziest mental exercise of all -- dogma.

The Roll of Paranoia in Conspiracy Theories

PARANOIA

I wanted to be much further along by now with a consideration of signal theory and perception, and if I were, a discussion of paranoia would overlay nicely onto the concepts already presented.  But rather than wait to get caught up on all that, I thought I might jump ahead.  The consideration of paranoia may in fact lay the groundwork for some of that perception discussion later and it will certainly assist us in discussing conspiracy theories now.

So before I set out to talk about paranoia specifically, let me simply speed through some framework concepts that will help put this into context.

One way of viewing human thinking is to consider that we are each little information handling signal nodes in a complicated interconnected environment we call civilization (or “the human race”).  Our reaction to any given piece of data can be seen as a result of the context into which we place this data (this is where we are going with “information—context—action” model).  The data we react to can be an external event we witness, an external piece of information brought to our attention, or an internal thought we produce.  (This includes the thoughts we produce when we dream.  More than one person has been inclined to act differently after having a dream.  This suggests our own thoughts, including our own subconscious thoughts, can transform how we behave toward the outside world.) 

The founder of social psychology Kurt Lewin explained what we’re discussing with the formula:

        B = f(P,E) 

which translates into “Behavior is a function of the Person and the Environment”.   It’s a nice start, but we’ll go beyond that a bit to inspect how “Person” means that information processing unit we call the brain and “Environment” is really just a bunch of facts which are put into context by the mind.

So for now, let’s take it as wrote that one way we can view human thought and activity is as if we are all simply little information processing modules, taking information in, and processing it in such as way to as to produce action. 

On the most basic level, our response to threats can be seen in this context.  A mother bear will fight aggressively if she perceives the safety of her offspring is in jeopardy.  This is a very obvious example of external events giving rise to perception and that perception giving rise to a response.  It is, on some level, the primary function of a brain in the same way the primary function of a heart is to pump blood through the body.  Perceive, Comprehend, and React.  Or as I have put it, (receive) Information, (place it into) Context, (translate it into) Action.

So that’s the three cent course.  Now on to paranoia.

Paranoia is a processing mistake.  External events are seen as threatening more often for a paranoid person than for a non-paranoid person.  It is no coincidence that this condition is associated with anxiety and fear, because it is a close cousin to those concepts.  If we are anxious, we react more suspiciously to events around us, and likewise if we are in danger, we are more anxious.  So it may be hard to establish which chicken predates which egg.  Are we paranoid because we are anxious, or are we anxious because our paranoia makes us believe we are under constant threat?  There may be no way to tell.

For our purposes right now, it is sufficient to say the two forces are related and leave it at that.

For now we should simply view paranoia as a processing defect in the information module.  This is separate from a perceptual defect.  A defect in perception would involve seeing or hearing things which are not there (or failing to see or hear things which are real).  A paranoid person can usually take in the facts of the world around them perfectly well.  It is what they do with this information that is at issue.

Paranoia is by definition based on delusion.  The general belief is that others are “out to get you”.  External events are seen as related to hidden agendas.  And importantly the impact of external events on the paranoid individual is blown out of scale.  If there is a traffic jam, the paranoid individual is unable to see how this presents a major inconvenience for all the drivers on the road and instead focuses on how he is impacted.  Believing himself to play an outsized role in reality, he can easily convince himself that the cause of (or reason for) the traffic jam is specifically related to his life.  “The police created this traffic jam in order to stop me from getting to the library before it closes so that I will have to pay a late fine for my library book.”  When asked why the police would do such a thing, the paranoid person has a perfectly logical explanation which is an extension of the tracks already laid for his current train of thought.  “Maybe it’s because they know I have been doing more reading lately.  They want to make it harder for me to continue to get books from the library because they know if I continue my research I will discover what they are really up to…”

This may seem like an exaggerated example.  As someone who has had repeated contact with several clinically paranoid people, I can assure you it is not.  It is not my desire to make fun of this condition nor to rely on a stereotype of what it means to be paranoid.   In my mind this example is an honest sketch of the logical process in the mind of a paranoid person.  It may make us uncomfortable to the point of a nervous chuckle, but it is really the way some minds function.  If we are thinking about thinking as a process in the real world and not just an abstract ideal, we need to consider all engines, even ones that backfire, ping, or burn a mixture which is too thin.  It is not my intent to ridicule these defects, merely to consider how they fit into the big picture.

Now, paranoia must involve delusion, as was said above. We can only observe paranoia when we can see that the interpretation of events is out of step with reality. As the old joke goes, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”   But reality is very tricky business.  It is quite possible that there is no such thing as one objective reality external to all of us.  More probably we help create reality by perceiving it.  In essence, we till the soil of information like some kind of signal processing ants.  How we interpret the outside world shapes the very world we are observing.  This is why minds are “quantum computers” and how Werner Heisenberg (and Schrödinger’s Cat) will enter the discussion before too long.  In short, when we want to say something is based on falseness, that it is “delusional”, we need to tread carefully.  Objective Truth may not exist, and even if it does, it is very hard to determine whether we have ascertained it.

But along the spectrum of reality, the wide grey band that separates black from white, there is usually a point at which we can say we are no longer in the realm of generally agreed upon truth.  I may not quibble about whether Lebron James or Kobe Bryant could have beaten Michael Jordan in his prime.  The truth about such things is hard to determine.   But if someone were to assert that his three year old son was so good on the court that he could beat Michael Jordan and Kobe and Lebron all playing against him in a three-on-one game, it is safe to say that is simply not true.  Just because true and false are separated by a thick grey line does not mean there is no such thing as true and false.  I am even willing to concede that there is one chance in some astonishingly high number that a three year old with such skills could someday exist.   But that number could be so great that we could play out the history of the human race a billion billion times and never see such an individual born into the world.  My belief that “impossible” is very dangerous medicine does not preclude me from feeling that some things are so nearly impossible as to call them impossible if only for the sake of convenience.

So the point is that even though reality itself is a greased pig we could chase around the yard all day, there are some things that are so far outside of generally accepted fact as to be rightly proclaimed false, at least until convincing evidence to the contrary is provided.

Some things are simply false.

And therein lies the root of what we can call delusion.  For delusion is the belief that something false is in fact true.  Paranoia is rooted in such an error.

But here’s a fascinating little feature of paranoia that ties in with conspiracy theories.  The explanations of a paranoid person, the minor conspiracies that they spin to explain the daily events of their lives, have at their root the same source as conspiracy theories that deal with Big Events.  They seek to create order from randomness.  Or to be more fair to all involved, they seek to reveal the hidden order behind the apparent randomness.

Remember how paranoia is linked to anxiety?  External events are perceived as more threatening because the observer is anxious, and/or the observer is anxious because of the perceived threats.  Well interestingly, the most fertile breeding ground for conspiracy arises from events which shock the community.   When JFK was assassinated, it tore the fabric of society.  It created a wound that left a permanent scar.  If personal anxiety increases the paranoia that gives rise to personal conspiracy theories, it should be no surprise that events which are wrenching to the community could give rise to the same process.  In short, the event makes people feel so unsafe that they seek an explanation that can maintain some kind of stability and meaning in their lives.  People don’t create or buy in to incredible conspiracy theories because they are stupid or gullible.  They do it because they are scared.  The scarier the event, the more appealing the tidy explanation of a conspiracy theory becomes.