lol yes. But it’s not the regular evidence of shoestring infrastructure and lack of process that casts doubt on these grand conspiracies. It’s the diminishing conditional probability, over time, that they are somehow always the exception.
If we flip a fair coin once, the odds of not getting tails is 50%. If we flip twice, the odds diminish to 25%. Flip 20 times, the odds diminish to 0.000001%.
This is the conditional probability that makes the concealment of large and/or longterm conspiracies implausible: we say that the odds of getting heads on the 100th toss, conditioned on the probability of having already gotten heads 99 times, is less than a billion billion billion to one.
And the grander the conspiracy, i.e. the more individuals involved, the more “coin flips” regularly occur, and the faster these infinitesimal odds are reached — hence the expression “too many minions spoil the plot.”
So while mistakes are indeed unsurprising, the fact that none have ever uncovered big old conspiracies (especially the likes of flat earth, fake moon landing, aliens, etc.) suggests the odds of their veracity are, at this point, vanishingly small.
I think it’s important to agree on a definition of “conspiracy theory” and also on what qualifies as spoiling or revealing the plot in these discussions. Otherwise we’re probably talking about different things.
Legit, if you want to know if a conspiracy is true, just wait 20-50 years and the CIA will declassify the related documents. Most of them are open secrets that happen to be difficult to corroborate as they’re happening. Very few rely on outright secrecy. More just plausible deniability during the period where the public would be up in arms about it.
We can’t even stop our privates from telling their stripper girlfriend about the mission they’re going on the next day, and people think there’s a giant conspiracy out there where nobody talks…
Then there’s the Warrantless Wiretap program under the Bush Administration. Cheney kept the authorization memo in his personal lawyer’s safe. Only 7 people knew it existed. Shit still leaked.
Only 7. That’s perfect. I forget who said “three may keep a secret if two are dead” but of all the mustache twirling pricks in that admin, Cheney should have known.
Edit: it’s Ben Franklin’s joke, apparently. I doubt he’d mind.
I mean, I agree with you. I’m not claiming “there are no good toupees.” I’m pointing to [the alopecia market] as evidence that [a pill to cure baldness] couldn’t be kept secret by the [shadowy cabal of elites with gorgeous hair] for very long.
If no one actually knows the plan other than the guy in charge, no one can leak the plan:
An example of compartmentalization was the Manhattan Project. Personnel at Oak Ridge constructed and operated centrifuges to isolate uranium-235 from naturally occurring uranium, but most did not know exactly what they were doing. Those that knew did not know why they were doing it. Parts of the weapon were separately designed by teams who did not know how the parts interacted.
True, and interesting since this can be used as a statistical lever to ignore the exponential scaling effect of conditional probability, with a minor catch.
Lemma:
Compartmentalization can reduce, even eliminate, chance of exposure introduced by conspirators.
Proof:
First, we fix a mean probability p of success (avoiding accidental/deliberate exposure) by any privy to the plot.
Next, we fix some frequency k1, k2, … , kn of potential exposure events by each conspirators 1, …, n over time t and express the mean frequency as k.
Then for n conspirators we can express the overall probability of success as
1 ⋅ ptk~1~ ⋅ ptk~2~ ⋅ … ⋅ ptk~n~ = pntk
Full compartmentalization reduces n to 1, leaving us with a function of time only ptk. ∎
Theorem:
While it is possible that there exist past or present conspiracies w.h.p. of never being exposed:
they involve a fairly high mortality rate of 100%, and
they aren’t conspiracies in the first place.
Proof:
The lemma holds with the following catch.
(P1) ptk is still exponential over time tunless the sole conspirator, upon setting a plot in motion w.p. pt~1~k = pk, is eliminated from the function such that pk is the final (constant) probability.
(P2) For n = 1, this is really more a plot by an individual rather than a proper “conspiracy,” since no individual conspires with another. ∎
Such examples of OpSec competence make it easy to dismiss the majority of government conspiracy theories IMHO.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Toupee_fallacy
Basically “I can always tell” as an actually fallacy. Neat
Cool resource, thanks for the share!
lol yes. But it’s not the regular evidence of shoestring infrastructure and lack of process that casts doubt on these grand conspiracies. It’s the diminishing conditional probability, over time, that they are somehow always the exception.
Can you explain?
If we flip a fair coin once, the odds of not getting tails is 50%. If we flip twice, the odds diminish to 25%. Flip 20 times, the odds diminish to 0.000001%.
This is the conditional probability that makes the concealment of large and/or longterm conspiracies implausible: we say that the odds of getting heads on the 100th toss, conditioned on the probability of having already gotten heads 99 times, is less than a billion billion billion to one.
And the grander the conspiracy, i.e. the more individuals involved, the more “coin flips” regularly occur, and the faster these infinitesimal odds are reached — hence the expression “too many minions spoil the plot.”
So while mistakes are indeed unsurprising, the fact that none have ever uncovered big old conspiracies (especially the likes of flat earth, fake moon landing, aliens, etc.) suggests the odds of their veracity are, at this point, vanishingly small.
Gotcha.
I think it’s important to agree on a definition of “conspiracy theory” and also on what qualifies as spoiling or revealing the plot in these discussions. Otherwise we’re probably talking about different things.
Legit, if you want to know if a conspiracy is true, just wait 20-50 years and the CIA will declassify the related documents. Most of them are open secrets that happen to be difficult to corroborate as they’re happening. Very few rely on outright secrecy. More just plausible deniability during the period where the public would be up in arms about it.
I go back to the veteran comedian every time.
Then there’s the Warrantless Wiretap program under the Bush Administration. Cheney kept the authorization memo in his personal lawyer’s safe. Only 7 people knew it existed. Shit still leaked.
Only 7. That’s perfect. I forget who said “three may keep a secret if two are dead” but of all the mustache twirling pricks in that admin, Cheney should have known.
Edit: it’s Ben Franklin’s joke, apparently. I doubt he’d mind.
They dropped this to make themselves look incompetent!
4D chess by the deep state!
“No! This is not how the game is meant to be played.”
Right, because people never make simple mistakes 🙄
People who get paid half a mill to code mess up basic stuf like this by accident all the time
I mean, I agree with you. I’m not claiming “there are no good toupees.” I’m pointing to [the alopecia market] as evidence that [a pill to cure baldness] couldn’t be kept secret by the [shadowy cabal of elites with gorgeous hair] for very long.
Compartmentalisation helps
If no one actually knows the plan other than the guy in charge, no one can leak the plan:
True, and interesting since this can be used as a statistical lever to ignore the exponential scaling effect of conditional probability, with a minor catch.
Lemma: Compartmentalization can reduce, even eliminate, chance of exposure introduced by conspirators.
Proof: First, we fix a mean probability p of success (avoiding accidental/deliberate exposure) by any privy to the plot.
Next, we fix some frequency k1, k2, … , kn of potential exposure events by each conspirators 1, …, n over time t and express the mean frequency as k.
Then for n conspirators we can express the overall probability of success as
1 ⋅ ptk~1~ ⋅ ptk~2~ ⋅ … ⋅ ptk~n~ = pntk
Full compartmentalization reduces n to 1, leaving us with a function of time only ptk. ∎
Theorem: While it is possible that there exist past or present conspiracies w.h.p. of never being exposed:
Proof: The lemma holds with the following catch.
(P1) ptk is still exponential over time t unless the sole conspirator, upon setting a plot in motion w.p. pt~1~k = pk, is eliminated from the function such that pk is the final (constant) probability.
(P2) For n = 1, this is really more a plot by an individual rather than a proper “conspiracy,” since no individual conspires with another. ∎