Conspiracy Theories
By Very nice post from Ezra Klein:
More pernicious, I’m starting to think, is anti-paranoid punditry in American politics, in which scary-but-plausible theories are dismissed simply by calling them conspiratorial. Because we all know the ancient Latin logical fallacy reductio ad conspiratorium that eliminates theories assuming collusion between actors in service of complicated ends. Nothing so unlikely could ever occur in this reality, pal.
The problem is that some conspiracy theories really are just beneath contempt, and don’t deserve serious responses. But the admission I just made provides an opening for a very problematic rhetorical device. Not that pundits need such an opening to avoid dealing with facts and evidence and so on, but still. “We went to war in Iraq in order to enrich Halliburton” is probably pretty wrong, and maybe even a little stupid, but it deserves an evidence based response in a way that “Bill Clinton ran drugs through Arkansas and raped a woman each day after breakfast” really doesn’t. But there’s no good standard I can identify to make that determination.