The Conspiracy Theory of Everything

I should state from the outset I am not actually promoting any of the conspiracy theories I discuss below.

I find conspiracy theories interesting as an artefact of human culture, revealing people's anxieties and their inventiveness at assimilating them into a compelling narrative. Sometimes they can be frustrating when the standards of evidence-based reasoning I normally look for are set aside. Perhaps I have a love/hate relationship with conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theorists are highly motivated to research facts and figures that might otherwise escape my attention. My knowledge of the Knights Templar and of the flight paths of Little Black Helicopters has been immeasurably enriched by the efforts of conspiracy theorists. Various fascinating historical events that would otherwise lie inert and unconnected are brought to my attention by conspiracy theorists because of the beguiling kaleidoscopic combinations that can be created. The rollercoaster ride is only spoiled by the moment when a statement that is not entirely supported by the facts is presented and an appeal to credence is made on the basis that "what else could explain [observation X]?" and with a bump I am back on the ground.

Conspiracy theories tend to have in common a reliance on the principle that something is proven if no alternative explanation has been offered. The abandonment of logical validity at this point frustrates me, but the ride has usually been exciting up to that point.

I dislike conspiracy theories that rely mainly on a sense of superficial plausibility, often supported by nothing more than an inferiority complex, that leads to a rejection of something for which there is ample evidence on the grounds that "they would say that". The evidence of course remains unexamined by them in any real detail as that would risk spoiling the spurious sense of emotional fulfilment that comes from believing some authority figure has been outwitted and we have seen through their lies. Lunar conspiracy theories tend to fall into this category.  

The lunacy of lunar conspiracy theories has been adequately debunked elsewhere. Another conspiracy theory that really "boils my piss" at the moment is the chemtrail/geoengineering story currently doing the rounds. This is a relatively young conspiracy theory and so it is still burdened with more immediately obvious nonsense than is usually the case with mature and well-refined conspiracy theories that have evolved through natural selection to discard assertions that don't stand up to the most cursory scrutiny. Give it a few years, then come back to me about it.

One thing to say in praise of conspiracy theorists is that they are amateurs, in the best sense of the word. They are not motivated by mere compliance with professional standards in pursuit of a pay check. They are motivated by something more fundamental, often involving a strand of altruism. And, to be fair, sometimes, just sometimes, they get it right. For example, false flag attacks are a staple of conspiracy theories. Most of these are nonsense, but history does show that sometimes false flag attacks do indeed occur. The problem with conspiracy theorists is they often don't recognise the need to be as suspicious of any conclusions you jump to youself as you are of any potentially misleading statements you are being asked to believe by others.

The pinnacle of conspiracy theories is of course, the meta-theory, which explains that the very existence of conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy. For example, it is asserted that the term "conspiracy theory" itself was devised by the CIA in order to create a conceptual template for discrediting leaks and speculations about various covert activities. Henceforth these could all be dismissed as just "conspiracy theories".

I like to develop my own meta-conspiracies about conspiracy theories I don't like. So, for example, conventional lunar conspiracies have been developed to distract from what's really going on - the real lunar conspiracy is not that we didn't go to the Moon, but that we went their earlier and/or more often than is publicly admitted, secretly developing NSA listening posts on the Sea of Tranquillity without congressional oversight, or launch sites for terrible weapons, or neutral zones to meet with representatives of extraterrestrial societies. After all, it now costs less to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to earth than it cost to make the movie Titanic (see, that would be an example of the kind of interesting factoid in which conspiracy theories abound).

And chemtrails? That is actually misinformation propagated virally by fossil fuel interests to persuade us "the government" or "new world order" is artificially creating the conditions we recognise as climate change, thereby letting those who actually profit from the pollution that is really causing it off the hook.  

But I am going to be a bit more ambitious in my final conspiracy theory. I am going to place a bit more emphasis on the theory and less on the conspiracy, and present for your delectation and amazement one that describes the origin of the universe in suitably melodramatic terms. I am going to offer a conspiracy theory equivalent of the Theory of Everything that is sometimes suggested as a legitimate objective of theoretical physics (I don't believe it is a legitimate objective, but that's another story)

"The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy a civilization is able to utilize [...] It was first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev." Initially there were three Kardashev Types, I, II and III, corresponding roughly to consumption, by a civilisation, of all the energy resources available from a planet, a star and a galaxy respectively. The scale was redefined quantitatively on the basis of a logarithm of energy consumption by Carl Sagan and others, according to which human civilisation is currently about Type 0.724.

The scale was then extended in a way that took us into metaphysical terrain. Type IV would apply to beings would could manipulate and exploit the entire universe. We have to wonder if God has a Kardashev Type of IV, or whether the power to actively define what the universe actually is extends to a fifth type.

Imagine, if you will, beings whose technology allows them to master the material world over all length scales, from the sub-atomic Planck length to the entire universe. How could this be achieved? Perhaps they can extract energy from quantum vacuum fluctuations by coupling to these probabalistic phenomena in some way. What if there was a malfunction and this process ran out of control? The ensuing chain reaction would result in the destruction of the entire universe, with the explosion corresponding to the Big Bang we infer from our own astronomical observations.

The universe is a consequence of an industrial accident experienced by a Kardashev Type IV civilisation prior to and resulting in the Big Bang.

What other explanation is there?