The housing market one is a bad example. All of the real estate in the US was stolen through white supremacist fraud and perfidy and the housing market has been shaped by things such as redlining.

The housing market example is rather ironic, considering Blackrock, Vanguard and SSG conspiring to buy swathes of the residential housing market and leaving them empty to drive up prices.

Where can I find the text of this essay? I've searched everywhere and only find people talking our writing ABOUT it, not the actual text.

Adam Curtis nailed conspiracy theory for me. He said it was a way to re-enchant the world through a distorted lens. A darkness in its centre that is impenetrable by reason. I really like Poppers thought on this one as well.

I dunno, doesn't the argument that a handful of people control a lot of what happens in society make a lot of sense in the context of (say) colonialism and capitalism? For example, what's the rational explanation for why freemasons have fingerprints all over the American and Canadian state projects, but shouldn't receive any criticism for their proximity to Indigenous genocides?

At first I thought Occam's Razor. But really it's more of an attribution error? Powerful people's actions are all powerful ignoring the culmination of all those around them.

Where can we find this text?

7:00 wouldn't the better example be to look at someone who is deliberately holding property, artificially lowering supply to increase property values? Most people don't have the capital or the desire to engage in these actions and these actions are dominated by a few large investment corps. both cases are examples of the market just working

Your lectures give me an unprecedented clarity.

People living under capitalism we are indeed very controlled by a very few companies who in conjuction with government decide what we buy and even can control what we want

I love the flag behind you! What's the meaning behind it?

"Karl Popper is a frustrated Austrian" (Sloterdjik)

As we know, Karl R. Popper's concept of the conspiracy theory of society is expounded in his book Conjectures and Refutations. As I have understood, this video outlines only the 4th section of the book concerning this concept. In the 16th section, part 7, there is Popper's important argument to be analized: Popper asserts here that conspiracies do not change the character of social life, and if no more conspiracies were arranged, society would essentially face the same problems that it always has. Is this argument correct? How can a negative influence not change the character of social life if society has improved its life due to pertinent social events and endeavour? In such a case, social life will become worse again.

Perhaps conspiracies should be viewed within their temporal horizon and fears regarding the window of opportunity to alter future events. Take for example Hitler's theory of shrinking markets and his beliefs regarding Malthusian scarcity. A cabal of conspirators is not necessary for the development of a conspiracy theory: events themselves can conspire and our beliefs about the shaping of events.

Wait, are you calling Marx's analysis a conspiracy theory?

Lenin, a conspirator. OK, let's say that is true. In the same sense one could say that James Madison was a conspirator. But Lenin, an adherent or promoter of conspiracy theories? Really? PS Perhaps David is just relaying Popper's contention that Lenin was a conspiracy theorist? Popper looks worse and worse as the capitalist world devolves! The next Popper paper to cover would be "The Poverty of Historicism."

Hello! I love this! I host a 3rd party talk show. I also have a philosophy degree, and have studied much of what you discussed. I'd love to have you on the show.

If we subtract all the 'lizard people' and comparable conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists are mostly people who don't have all the necessary information of the 'object', and who construct the structures, processes and motivations somewhat off the mark, some of them sticking too strongly in their favorite theories when additional and more accurate information comes around. Hence we are all to some extent 'conspiracy theorists', it all depends on who is looking at who, from what position, and with what knowledge. E.g. I may know more about politics than a average person, but if a senator with 40 years of 'rubber hits road' -insider knowledge of politics listens to my theories about politics, he may say something like, "That is too theoretical and vague. In real life politics functions this and that way ..." If the senator so pleases and he has the backing of the 'information megaphones', he could stigmatize me to be a 'conspiracy theorist' with some justification, like you and other political non-insiders. Also, when the information of 'conspiracy theorists' gets too accurate and/or truthful, and it is akward for the said senator, he may pull the protective 'conspiracy theorist' -stigmatization from his sleeve. On the balance it is important for the 'conspiracy theorists' to understand that their theories indeed are often lacking, flawed and gratuitously hostile to the point of stupid. If you e.g. think that you have become an expert of politics, economics and society by reading 2 - 3 months of seedy and "secret knowledge" -containing websites, then we can safely say that your theories are erroneous from the get go. "Secret knowledge" is mostly ----> blind men groping in the dark, reflects the conjectures of those who don't know and understand enough. And if you are indeed right about 50%, but the other 50% is nonsense, then your theory is wrong / too wrong. There are much more errors and inaccuracies than accurate truths, and mostly people miss the mark at least to some extent, but if 'conspiracy theorists' are of the 'developing and capable enough' -sort, they are like heat seeking missiles, who gets closer and closer to the truth as time passes. From the top-down, that kind of accuracy and knowledge of central real life societal and political scenes is mostly seen as problematic, so in addition to stigmatizations, truths are protected by e.g. information overload + non-confirmation of truths by the people in higher or significant network node positions. The former is mostly a non-planned product of technological development, the latter is at partly planned and partly evolved feature of public conversation. 'The little people' may collect plenty of accurate or fairly accurate information, and generate relatively many of good theories, but they rarely, if ever get confirmation from top-down publicly that with this or that theory they have indeed 'hit the mark'. Often the right and wrong theories of 'the little people' are equally maligned, dismissed, sidetracked or ignored by the media etc., so the 'the little people' stay confused, uncertain and hyperactive, perhaps reaching the point of hyper-analysis, which leads in effect to analysis paralysis. 'The little person' may have been right about certain political-economic constellation two years ago, but he never got confirmation about it, so he felt the need for more and more analyzing, developing new and newer theories, and now he is again safely in theoretical La-La-land, grasping at wrong theories, drowning in information overload and possible truths, no way of knowing where to (relatively) stay.

7:00 yeesh

Are you doing PHD in philosophy?

Is there actually an article that Popper wrote with this title, or are these ideas gleaned from Popper's 'Conjectures and Refutations?' Near the end of Chapter 4 in a footnote, Popper surprisingly says about Karl Marx, "3 In the discussion which followed the lecture, I was criticized for rejecting the conspiracy theory, and it was asserted that Karl Marx had revealed the tremendous importance of the capitalist conspiracy for the understanding of society. In my reply I said that I should have mentioned my indebtedness to Marx, who was one of the first critics of the conspiracy theory, and one of the first to analyse the unintended consequences of the voluntary actions of people acting in certain social situations. Marx said quite definitely and clearly that the capitalist is as much caught in the network of the social situation (or the 'social system') as is the worker; that the capitalist cannot help acting in the way he does: he is as unfree as the worker, and the results of his actions are largely unintended. But the truly scientific approach of Marx has been forgotten by his latter-day followers, the Vulgar Marxists, who have put forward a popular conspiracy theory of society which is no better than Goebbels' myth of the Learned Elders of Zion." Marx initial foray was to criticize the 'conspiracy of landlords,' a feudal holdover still prominent today.

cameras looking nice today!

Great video. Where can I find this essay?

Let's have all of us youtube commenters conspire to determine whether or not David will have a good day 😁

"That marginalized group" seems to have quite some power over politics, banking, Hollywood, mainstream media, academia, hedge funds, social networks, big tech corporations... We saw how Kanye West, the richest black man in history was left without a bank account at JP Morgan and his Adidas contract for just an interview. You are attempting some serious gaslighting here!

David also has a video on this channel dealing with Jack Bratich's concept of Conspiracy Panics. (See Bratich's book of that title.) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g6ekpqip3MWliZc.html Does Popper's position on conspiracy theories reflect conspiracy panic? It's a question worth asking. Now, what about the political work of Peter Dale Scott, Alfred W. McCoy, and others in the emerging field of parapolitics (a.k.a. 'deep politics') and it's reception? How about David Ray Griffin?

I am thankful to Popper for some of his contributions to quantum theory, but when it comes to politics I think he just completely missed the mark sometimes. Of course, he is right on this point here, but he failed to acknowledge that capitalist society is not a free society and that there are very real and deep power differences therein.

The Open Conspiracy and its Enemies, Vol. I: I Smell Poo Poo, K. R. Pooper, 1945, University of Anglo Bullshit

You should check out Guy Debord’s second book Comments on the society of the Spectacle. It has a lot to see about the role of disinformation in capitalist society

Promo sm 🙌

Popper with that desperate lib cope of "Marxist analysis is also a conspiracy theory because I refuse to read Marx, much less understand him". It's a pity that the work doesn't go in the direction the title made me think it did (analyzing attribution to society itself as a form of conspiratorial thought). That would have been a lot more interesting as a set of ideas.

Exactly why Soros has developed his open society around Poppers ideas and we're living the outcomes all over the west!