So, Gordon White is at it again with his conspiracy … stuff.
Which frustrates me. White is clearly intelligent, and he has some interesting and innovative ideas about magic, spirituality, and even history. I mean I’ve read Star.Ships, Chaos Protocols, and Pieces of Eight, and I thought he made some pretty good points.
But ever since Covid, he’s been a little … maybe unbalanced? I mean, he seems to be vaguebooking about an event he wanted to do, but couldn’t because of the Covid lockdown. Which I get being frustrated about. But then he leverages that into a screed about globalists, archons, shitlibs, and the rest of the comic-book-conspiracy-theorist-villain’s-guild.
And White is not alone. Lots of reasonably intelligent people end up going down the conspiracy “rabbit hole.” Now – believing in an explanatory myth isn’t inherently bad. (And conspiracy theories definitely fit the definition of an explanatory myth.) But like all explanatory myths, investing in them too deeply can lead us into decisions based on bad facts and faulty logic.
Not to mention, joining unhealthy communities can isolate people from their families, friends, and support systems.
Full disclosure – when I was in college, I flirted with conspiracy theories. I found I couldn’t get past a certain point of belief. There was an earnest willingness – and a social requirement – to fully believe every idea, no matter how implausible. Also, there is a person in my not-immediate family who is deeply involved in conspiracies. This person has alienated his family, become homeless, renounced his citizenship, and for a time was actually handing out pamphlets on street corners. He may or may not be living off-grid making a living doing questionable things.
So … yeah.
About conspiracies
When people talk about conspiracies, they talk about “the rabbit hole,” like in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. An after listening to this particular episode of Rune Soup, I went into a bit of a rabbit hole myself. I listened to a podcast referenced by White: an interview by Dr. Kelly Brogan (MD) and Mark Gober about Gober’s new book, “An End to the Upside Down.”
I mean, if I’m going to refute some bullshit, I should at least check a primary source, right?
And got-damn, is Gober’s argument full of it.
For example. A while back, astronaut Richard Gariott did a magic trick on the International Space Station. Gariott is a practiced illusionist, and it was pretty easy to spot the trick. He holds up a hammer and a playing card, and flicks the card downward to simulate a “gravity pocket.” He even explains what he is doing in the (short) video.
Mark Gober is so full of shit that he cites this stage illusion as his proof that the model of gravity doesn’t work. And therefore all science is wrong.
OK, I’m not being totally fair. It’s not that Gober outright says “science doesn’t work.” It’s more like he compiles what he calls anomalies, which are phenomena that don’t seem to fit into his understanding of the universe. Things like cosmic background radiation, and the relationship between a flat disk and a sphere with regards to the shape of the Earth. Like most conspiracists, he start out by reasonably saying “I’m just asking questions.” But the point of those questions is to shake his audience’s fundamental understanding of reality.
According to Brogan and Gober, a listener should just sit with these anomalies for a while and let them “break their brain.” That is, a reader should allow those “anomalies” to disrupt their worldview and their understanding of reality. This causes a dissociation from reality, which the conspiracists call “enlightenment.” A reader is then directed to keep “asking questions,” and pursue whatever cockamamie “theory” an internet rando can cook up. These “theories” usually involve an implausible explanation, proof in the form of a rhetorical “gotcha,” or “a former military official who can’t stay silent anymore.” Oh, and some kind of plot by which powerful people are trying to secretly take control.
In the conspiracist world, the people who actually do the science aren’t to be trusted. Government isn’t to be trusted. But some random weirdo on the world with a keyboard, a webcam, and Thoughts About Aliens is somehow trustworthy.
(Note: I use scare quotes around conspiracy “theories” to separate them from actual scientific theories like gravity, evolution, electromagnetism, and so forth. A scientific theory has a shitload of evidence to support it. A conspiracy “theory” uses the social definition of theory to boost its credibility.)
A fundamental misunderstanding of science
Most conspiracists fall into the trap of treating science as if it’s a book of unquestionable knowledge. English majors do the same thing with literary canon, and Christians do it with Biblical scholasticism. Conspiracists call this body of knowledge “scientism,” and treat it the same way they treat the mythology of Christianity (or any other religion).
Except that’s not exactly how science works.
Science isn’t just a bunch of old guys saying “This is true because we said so.” And it’s not just stories people started telling around campfires. Science is best understood as a process we use figure out how the world works. Science is a verb, not a noun. And anyone can do science. It’s easy! Start out with an idea, figure out a way to test that idea, and set up an experiment to check it. If it passes – and heck, even if it doesn’t pass – yay you’ve done science!
(Note: When you design an experiment, it has to be falsifiable. That is, there has to be a some outcome that proves your idea false. When I first started exploring magic and woo~ stuff, that part really got me. Because a lot of woo~ phenomena can’t pass the test of falsifiability. But the truth is that if your experiment can’t be proven false, it doesn’t actually prove anything. It’s like self-defense – if it fails during the stress of an actual attack, it’s bad self-defense.)
Now, admittedly there are some limits around science. Many modern experiments require expensive equipment – like measuring gravity waves. And most experiments require a foundational knowledge of existing scientific principles, like biology or physics. And all science requires math.
(Lots. And lots. Of math. I recently realized that my brain likes to move numbers around on the page, which explains why I struggle with scientific equations. And like, math is a non-optional part of science. You calculate a number that your theory says should come out of an experiment. Then you run the experiment, and see how the real number compares to the number you calculated.)
So yes, some scientific experiments have prerequisites. Some don’t. There’s nothing stopping someone from going to a canal full of water, setting up a bunch of stakes of a given height, and measuring whether the Earth is flat or curved.
A second thing about science is that it has to be reproducible. When a scientist creates an experiment to test an idea, they write down how they did it. Then another scientist can run the same experiment and see if they get the same results. (Usually they do. Sometimes they don’t. There was a big deal about reproducibility when researchers announced cold fusion back in the 1990’s.)
And by the time a scientific study gets published, it’s been reproduced a few times. We as a species could not survive on this planet if scientific discoveries were not reproducible. Could you imagine if obsidian could only be flaked into arrowheads some of the time? How about if the battery in your smartphone only sometimes sent electrons through the circuits? If gunpowder only burned some of the time, our wars would look a lot different.
(In reality, sometimes gunpowder doesn’t burn. So smart people used science to find the reasons gunpowder sometimes doesn’t burn. Then they redesigned bullets to eliminate those reasons, and now a gun reliably goes pew pew when you pull the trigger.)
Another important aspect of science is the peer-review process. Instead of measuring science against the christian bible or some other “because-I-said-so” authority, a study is checked by peers. Peers are people who’ve done a lot of training, experimentation, and analysis in their area of study. When a paper is submitted for publication, a group of professionals compare the paper to the existing body of knowledge. Typically, these peers act like a judge’s panel for a specific journal, and each journal covers a specific area of focus. There are peers on cancer research, on gravity, on linguistics, and pretty much everything else.
And if a paper is published, it doesn’t necessarily become gospel. Once published, every other scientist in the field can (and will) pick apart the study and try to find the flaws. In this way, the paper becomes part of something like a conversation, or a debate. And ultimately, the truth of a study depends on facts and reproducible evidence.
And sometimes, a piece of research actually does redefine our understanding of certain areas of science.
Science is not perfect, and I’m not claiming that it is. Egyptian history, for example, has political reasons for the research and science that it publishes. Corporate scientists tend to frame their results in ways that are favorable to a corporation – such as lead in gasoline or the toxicity of glyphosate. This is a fundamental feature of communication and self-interest; some information is always going to be false or biased. The trick is to find ways to control for the accuracy of data, while trying to avoid measures that silence differing views. And I don’t think we always get it right, but I think overall science works better than the alternatives.
And this leads me to a final aspect of science: what to do with anomalies. A conspiracist looks at an anomaly, and thinks “A-ha! This is proof that Science is Wrong!” A scientist looks at an anomaly and says “Huh, that’s weird. I wonder what’s going on there? And how I can figure it out?”
The central problem with conspiracy arguments
…is that they are almost always rhetorical. Conspiracists take something one scientist says and compare it to something another scientist says. When there seems to be a contradiction, a conspiracist reads that as “proof” that Science Doesn’t Work.
What you don’t see, are conspiracists digging out tools and reproducing an experiment to try and disprove it. Or going into the peer-reviewed journals to read actual scientific studies. I have yet to see a conspiracy theorist cite the barest minimum review of scientific literature.
Conspiracists would have us accept anomalies as evidence that science and the scientific method are fundamentally flawed. And therefore, we should ignore all of the evidence and conclusions drawn by science. In this way, conspiracists are using evidence to attack and undermine scientific conclusions.
Scientists, on the other hand, use data to support their conclusions.
Conspiracists tend to take the position that science is an ethos – an unquestioned body of academics and knowledge, jealously guarded and protected from attack. It resembles a hierarchy of power, as if there’s some science-Pope out there deciding what’s “real,” who metes out punishment to those who defy him.
But I haven’t found that to be the case. What I have found, is that conspiracists tend to make extraordinary claims. These claims, if proven true, would buck decades of provable scientific data. So the reviewers ask conspiracists for extraordinary evidence. Since conspiracists don’t know how to do the math or run the experiments, and they haven’t read actual studies on a particular topic, they do not have the basic knowledge and skills needed to test and prove their ideas.
Conspiracists often feel like they’re being dismissed by scientists. Or that they’ve been excluded or looked down on by mainstream science. And it’s not that conspiracists aren’t intelligent – it’s more like, conspiracists don’t know how much they don’t know. When you don’t know a lot about a topic, it’s hard to have any kind of meaningful conversation with someone who does. So it’s not so much that scientists are being snobbish, it’s more like, how do you have a conversation with someone who doesn’t understand the topic?
And sometimes it’s not so much that they’re uninformed, as it is cherry-picking their data. Very often, conspiracists ignore or overlook important data that would undermine their claims. For example, in the case of the “gravity anomalies” conspiracy, Gober ignores two very important facts. First, that gravity can be measured to be variable at different places on the Earth’s surface. And second, that gravity affects the clocks on satellites differently than clocks on Earth.
As predicted by Einstein, clocks move a bit more quickly on satellites in orbit than they do on Earth. And we can measure this by sending data back and forth in real time to the satellites that are in orbit. When we calculate the time-shift equations, they match the actual measured time-shift on satellites. (Here’s an in-depth explanation for time dilation on the moon.)
If you take just a moment to consider those facts, the idea of a “gravity pocket” becomes highly implausible. Gravity is a force that’s so pervasive and constant that we can reliably predict how it affects clocks at various distances from the Earth. So if someone wanted to claim that there are “gravity pockets,” we would expect a really solid case backed up with solid calculations. We probably would not accept a stage illusion as proof.
When met with uncomfortable data like this, conspiracists often get defensive. They tend to attack evidence that contradicts them, then claim that an authority figure is suppressing the truth. They will say, for example, that a government agency is manufacturing satellite data for show. Or they will trot out a convoluted explanation for how a satellite can orbit above a flat Earth. Conspiracists will perform endless mental gymnastics to avoid using certain data in their explanation.
And at some point, conspiracies rely on a scenario that is so complex, and with so many people and moving parts, that it stops being realistic. Consider Mercury retrograde – is it more likely to be a trick of perspective between two objects moving in circles, or that one moving object slows down, goes backward, slows down again, and then goes forward? Any kid who’s played tetherball on the playground knows that the ball goes one way around the pole – and if you want it to go the other way, you have to hit it. The tetherball doesn’t just magically change directions on its own.
I mean, I get it. Conspiracists know that the government does bad things, which is true. And often they experience something that they think science can’t explain. And they want to feel special, like they’re a member of a Secret Club that knows the Real Truth. They want to be seen and heard.
These are all normal human things.
But just because you can tell a story that fits the data points you’ve chosen, doesn’t mean that story is correct. Anyone can tell a story to explain a phenomenon. But we don’t know if it’s correct until we test it.
Could the conspiracists actually be right?
I will say this – conspiracists aren’t inherently wrong about a cabal of assholes trying to dominate the world.
They’re just wrong about who the assholes are, and how they operate.
Consider the Heritage Foundation in the US, and its agenda outlined in Project 2025. It’s very clear that they intend to use wealth and political power to seize control of the US government. This meets all the definitions of a conspiracy – except the secret part.
And if you look at some of the military data leaked from the past few presidential administrations, you can see that some government agents are using the military, surveillance, and law enforcement inappropriately. (Like, Project MK Ultra was a real thing.)
If you look at how cops behave, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) , you can see an erosion of civil rights and growing possibility of a fascist / police state.
So it’s not that conspiracists are inherently wrong about some of their ideas. But when they take their shot at who’s behind it, they pick aliens and adrenochrome instead of billionaires, religious zealots, and racists.
As with everything else that’s going wrong on this planet, the problem is greedy assholes. And they aren’t really hiding anything. It’s not as exciting as aliens and shadowy government agents and the Illuminati, where you get to be part of the Secret Resistance.
But if you look at the evidence – the money trail, the people who write legislation, and the people who always seem to benefit from a particular project – it’s not hard to see that it’s just rich greedy assholes.
My position in this
I’m not really a scientist, but I am science-adjacent. I do water testing, so I collect water from a client and take it to a lab to be analyzed for contaminants.
Certain contaminants, like lead, arsenic, and bacteria, can cause health problems. And we want to remove those contaminants so they don’t cause health problems.
We know this because of science.
(Also, I did about 2.5 years of hard science classes in my undergrad, before my brain’s tendency to move numbers around on the page suggested maybe I should work with words instead.)
Also, as a Pagan, I think that my spiritual practice works better when it’s rooted in provable facts, not stories. Don’t get me wrong, stories are great! But stories can be problematic, especially when people treat them as true. (Like legislators who believe Biblical End Times are a literal fact, happening now, and are writing laws based on those beliefs.)
Any time I experience something that doesn’t fit with my understanding of the world, I try to reason my way through it. Was that a ghost, or creaky pipes? If I can’t reason my way through it, I try to explore or test it. If a noise comes from the kitchen, I’ll go and listen and try to find the source. Is it a ghost or the refrigerator?
And again, it comes back to facts and evidence. When I was in junior high, I got involved with a religious Christian cult through a girlfriend. And that messed with my mind. I felt like it upset my understanding of the world, and I did not like that feeling. (True story – my girlfriend at the time thought Dungeons and Dragons was satanic. So one night, I actually put a Bible on top of my D&D books to see if one or the other caught fire. In the morning, there wasn’t even a scorch mark.)
Because of that uncertainty, I developed this habit of being careful about the beliefs I place my trust in. My life is more effective and more meaningful when my worldview is rooted in facts, logic, and evidence than it is when I’m just accepting anything that anyone says.
And I think the Buddhists would agree with me. Of the three root poisons, one is Delusion – believing things that are not true. Greek Philosophers might agree too, considering the value they placed on logic.
The intersection of science, narrative, and spirituality
One core tenet of conspiracists is switching to a “meaning-based worldview,” instead of a science- or fact-based worldview. The thing is, I don’t think there has to be a contradiction between meaning and scientific fact.
Consider gravity. It’s a universal force, and everything that we can see and measure is subject to it. It tends to pull objects together inescapably. When two objects are in each others’ gravity, they tend to orbit, whirling as if dancing. When the gravity is especially strong between two objects, time slows down. Sometimes a third object comes into orbit, dramatically affecting all three.
That sounds a lot like love, doesn’t it?
Pagans like to use the four (five) element system to describe our world in meaningful ways. And these symbols enrich the meaning we experience in the world. But they also give us a sort of “handle” by which we can influence the world back. If you think about it, the four elements of Earth, Water, Air, Fire are very similar to the four phases of matter – solid, liquid, gas, plasma. And if you want to add a mysterious fifth element, you might consider that to be the space between things, or consciousness, or spiritual energy.
The thing is, these narratives aren’t contradicted by scientific evidence. Rather, they are somewhat supported by it. So I would suggest that, rather than science contradicting a meaning-based spiritual practice, science can actually enhance it. But in order for us to develop a meaningful relationship between science and symbolism, we have to cultivate new mental habits and skills.
The first is to recognize that we each have some kind of bias. None of us is an impartial observer, and we are very often motivated to want to believe certain things. I may want to believe that the creaky noises are ghosts! But wanting it to be true doesn’t make it true. What’s worse, is that we all like to think we have a more objective view than other people. And all of us are wrong. Being aware of the things we want to believe, and factoring that in, will help us avoid beliefs that aren’t true.
The second is that we should consider ourselves to be curious explorers, rather than stubborn defenders. Yes there are times when we should be setting and enforcing boundaries. But at the same time, the only way to grow and improve is to admit when we’re wrong. And then make an adjustment. A person who refuses to admit they are wrong can never be correct – because being correct requires feedback and adjustment.
The third is to understand that “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer, even for science. If the question is “Do ghosts exist?” then the correct scientific answer is “there isn’t enough data to say for certain.” No one has been able to prove in a lab that ghosts exist, and no one has come up with an experiment that can test for them. So it would seem like ghosts are a phenomenon that only happens in our minds. It just happens in the minds of a whole lot of people. When science says “I don’t know,” and a particular story isn’t causing harm, I see nothing wrong with a story to explain things.
The fourth is to avoid the assumption that our experience and understanding is the same as everyone else’s. I’ve experienced ghosts and energy, but I can’t assume that everyone else has. Likewise, I have a cousin who worked on the particle collider at CERN. My understanding of physics and subatomic particles is nowhere near his. In order to have a fact-based and functional understanding of my world, I have to acknowledge that my cousin knows things about physics that I am completely unaware of.
(More than that, there are probably things in the universe that a human brain cannot understand. That shouldn’t stop us from trying! But I think it’s important to remember that we know a lot less than we think we do. This especially applies to mediocre white guys on podcasts. If a mediocre white dude is challenging a claim by an expert – especially if that expert is credentialed, female, brown-skinned, and/or liberal – you’re probably safe ignoring him. You can always check it with another source.)
The fifth is that things are generally more complicated and nuanced than I might expect. For example, Mark Gober and his “upside down” ideas seem to treat gravity in a certain way. But he doesn’t seem to be aware of the time dilation effect, and all of the calculations and experimental data that support it. He also doesn’t seem to be aware that there are measurable variances in gravity, and good explanations for them. And he doesn’t seem to be aware that some astronauts have a hobby of doing stage illusions. If he was aware of those things, he might come to a different conclusion about the appearance of a “gravity pocket.”
Which brings me to my sixth principle, which is to be aware of agendas. When a scientist does an experiment, they generally have one of a couple agendas – they might be trying to make something useful and profitable, or they might be trying to satisfy their curiosity. (And those aren’t mutually exclusive.) When a conspiracist makes a claim, it’s usually part of their brand – which often includes books, a subscription service, speaking fees, and personal coaching. The more people they can get to believe them, the more money they can make.
(Note: It’s weird how right-wing conspiracists criticize Anthony Fauci because “he made a lot of money” on Covid. The implication is that Fauci invented Covid in order to make a profit. It’s even weirder how conspiracists don’t seem to notice that Fauci’s critics are making money drumming up criticism. If money is a universally corrupting force, I would think it would corrupt ring-wing influencers just as much as government scientists. And if money universally corrupts, we could still discern what’s helpful by checking facts and provable evidence.)
I’m not sure all conspiracists are playing pretend in order to fleece people. Like Gordon White – I get the feeling he genuinely believes what he’s promoting. But I find it interesting that he is also offering subscription and paid spiritual services in conjunction with his belief structure. With Dr. Brogan, I can’t tell if she believes what she’s saying – but she too has a paid subscription service. And books. And a podcast.
My checklist
So my method for evaluating the agenda of a particular scientist or conspiracist is to ask:
- Are they certain? Like, if you talk to a scientist, they tend to be cautious about a claim. They’ll say “The evidence suggests,” or “we’re pretty sure about this,” which indicates openness to new information. If a conspiracist is certain about their claim, they’re probably not thinking critically. Or they might be overlooking important evidence.
- Do they personally benefit? If so, how – is it financial, social, sexual, or in trade? If there is a benefit, does the conspiracist address any conflicts of interest?
- Are the things they are teaching actually helpful for the people listening? (I’m looking at you, Alpha-Male-Manosphere.)
- Are the conspiracist’s ideas leading people to be more effective in their lives, or less?
- Does the information help people get closer to truth, or closer to stuff that isn’t true? Is there an effort to correct mistakes when new evidence is revealed?
- Do they have a basic understanding of the topic they are making claims about? If I don’t know, how could I find out some basics to make a comparison?
- How does the conspiracist treat non-believers? How do they treat relationships between followers and their families? Is the conspiracist treating followers like a special in-group, to be treated more favorably than non-believers? Are they encouraging followers to isolate and cut ties with their families and social groups?
As I mentioned before, there’s some complexity and nuance to these questions. It’s not like a score of 7 automatically causes me to reject them. Rather, I use the answers to paint a picture of the person who’s making the claim – and their motivations. If I think they’re deceiving or exploiting people, I tend to reject and condemn them. If I think they’re generally trying to be helpful, I might keep following them or maintain relations. If they’re unwilling to adjust their views, I might avoid certain topics of conversation, or eventually just manage them out of my life.
I think at the end of the day, a lot of people who get into conspiracies are good-hearted and well-intentioned. And I think a lot of them may feel lost or disconnected, and it must feel really good to find a place where they feel like they belong. And I think it’s especially seductive to feel special, like they have secret insider information.
I also think telling people to reject scientific evidence creates groups who are more vulnerable to fraud. And it’s not easy to tell the difference between the well-intentioned and the fraudsters. And I find it unfortunate when good-hearted people are exploited or isolated by bad-faith conspiracists.
Final thoughts
So, life on this planet is hard. Especially now, with all the problems this planet is facing (and which are generally caused by greedy assholes). And in times of trouble, humans turn to stories so that we can feel better about things.
And some of these stories grow in depth and meaning and take on a spiritual dimension.
And I think that, as magicians and/or Pagans, we can be more deliberate in the stories and spiritualities that we cultivate for ourselves. Sure, there’s a time and place for fantasy and play-pretend. But there’s also a time and place for truth, facts, and evidence – because they’re critical for us to make effective and beneficial decisions in our lives.
Conspiracies often motivate people to stand on street corners handing out pamphlets. “If people only knew,” they’ll say, “there would be mass outrage. The people would revolt and overthrow this corrupt regime.” Only, most people know greedy assholes are using cops and courts and government to do shady shit. Shouting on a street corner doesn’t help.
The things that do help are the changes we make in our own lives. If I run into evidence that disproves one of my beliefs, it’s my beliefs that should shift. If I’m gonna vote, I should probably learn about the candidates for office. If there’s a corporation doing shady shit, I should stop buying things from them. If there’s a greedy asshole manipulating laws and regulations to exploit other citizens, I should speak up and work to hold them accountable for their misbehavior.
And that goes for me too! I should be accountable to those whom I’m in relationship with. Which – and this should go without saying – includes the planet and everything that lives on it.
Thoughts? Shoot me an email at dmkoffer at gmail dot com.