In Defense of Flat Earthers

Conspiracy theorists are more logical than you think

It just makes sense: the Earth is flat, COVID is a hoax, 9/11 was an inside job, chemtrails make us docile sheeple, and there’s a DC pizzeria where elite members of the Democratic Party sexually abuse children (#PizzaGate!). You might disagree, laughing at these conspiracies and those who believe in them. But conspiracy theory believers might be more logical than you think. 

Common wisdom gives us a simple explanation of why people—some more than others—believe in conspiracies: they are hopelessly confused. It’s true that we can be irrational. Researchers have documented hundreds of cognitive biases, and many of them are linked to the belief in conspiracies. 

We tend to prefer information that confirms, not disconfirms, our beliefs (confirmation bias), like when UFO believers put their faith in a photograph but discount scientific evidence. We also assume that major events must have equally major causes (proportionality bias), perhaps explaining the belief that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone when assassinating JFK. And we tend to see patterns where there are none (illusory correlation), like the “27 Club” myth about famous musicians being unusually likely to die at 27 (e.g., Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse), despite evidence showing no real patterning in the age distribution of celebrity deaths.

Despite these biases, sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true. In 1950, the US Army secretly sprayed bacteria on San Francisco to test the city’s susceptibility to anthrax, causing a number of people to develop urinary tract infections and resulting in one death. But even if secret military attacks on civilians are rare, UFO junkies, bigfoot hunters, and flat-earthers might actually be more rational than you think.

The Hidden Logic of Conspiracy Theories

How can conspiracy beliefs be logical? Well, philosophy distinguishes between two kinds of logical beliefs: those that are “logically sound” versus “logically valid.” A logically sound belief coherently follows from true premises, like:

Premise 1: All beagles are dogs

Premise 2: Snoopy is a beagle

Conclusion: Therefore, Snoopy is a dog

A logically valid belief coherently follows from any premises, regardless of whether they are true. Logically valid beliefs can be wrong but still internally consistent, like: 

Premise 1: All things that have hidden cameras are Russian sleeper agents

Premise 2: All trees have hidden cameras

Conclusion: Therefore, all trees are Russian sleeper agents

This argument is “logically valid” because the conclusion coherently follows from the premises. If it were the case that 1) all trees have hidden cameras, and 2) all things that have hidden cameras are Russian sleeper agents, then it would also be true that 3) all trees are Russian sleeper agents. This is a common feature of conspiracy theories: the conclusion might be false, but the reasoning steps are logically valid.

Conspiracy beliefs are often reasonable inferences based on false or incomplete assumptions. This is especially evident when considering the logic of #PizzaGate, a conspiracy theory about a government-run child trafficking ring in the basement of a Washington DC pizzeria.

#PizzaGate: A Logical Inference From False Assumptions

A month before the 2016 presidential election, WikiLeaks released emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. When right-wing internet vigilantes went sleuthing, they found something suspicious: multiple emails referred to dinner plans with “cheese pizza,” which seemed similar to “c.p.,” an abbreviation that pedophiles use online to refer to “child pornography.” 

Further investigation revealed that John Podesta had corresponded with the owner of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington DC that had hosted Democratic lobbying events. These online detectives put together the pieces and launched the theory of #PizzaGate: high-profile Democrats were running a child-sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. As the theory went viral online, concerned citizens began to take action. Some protested outside the White House with sincere signs saying “Our Children Matter.”

Figure 1. Protesters concerned about #PizzaGate gather around the White House. Reporting by The Washington Post.

The #PizzaGate conspiracy reached its peak when 28-year-old Edgar Welch stormed Comet Ping Pong pizzeria with a gun, demanding the immediate release of the children enslaved in the basement. To his surprise, there were no children—or even a basement. But although Welch was wrong, it’s easy to see how his reasoning could be logically valid.

Logically valid argument #1:

1. John Podesta’s leaked emails include mentions of “cheese pizza.” (True premise)

2. On certain online forums, “c.p.” is shorthand for “child pornography.” (True premise)

3. Emails with “cheese pizza” are admitting to child trafficking. (False premise)

4. Therefore, John Podesta is involved in child trafficking activities. (False but “logically valid” conclusion)

Logically valid argument #2: 

1. Comet Ping Pong hosts lobbying events for John Podesta. (True premise)

2. If someone knows a child trafficker (Podesta), then they are also involved in child trafficking. (False premise)

3. Therefore, Comet Ping Pong is hosting a child trafficking ring. (False but “logically valid” conclusion)

From here it’s just a short step to the ultimate false but logically valid conclusion of #PizzaGate, which should spur to action any well-meaning citizen concerned about victims of child trafficking:

Logically valid argument #3

1. If a business is involved in child trafficking, then it is harming children. (True premise) 

2. If someone is harming children, we should intervene to stop it. (Common sense) 

3. Comet Ping Pong is involved in child trafficking, therefore, we should intervene to stop it. (#Pizzagate Conspiracy Conclusion)

When we break down the PizzaGate conspiracy in this way, we can see that it actually contains true premises (e.g., c.p. = “cheese pizza” and “child pornography”) sprinkled in with some false assumptions that logically lead to false conclusions. The New York Times mapped out the premises of the PizzaGate conspiracy, with the correct connections shown in black and the incorrect leaps shown in red:

Figure 2. The true (black) and false (red) assumptions that led some people to believe in the #PizzaGate conspiracy. Reporting by The New York Times.

Of course, we should criticize false beliefs and the spread of misinformation. But the cognitive causes of PizzaGate—forming logically valid beliefs based on incomplete observations—is something we do everyday. Imagine a high schooler whose crush smiles at them. They conclude that their crush likes them back, and so they ask their crush on a date. Too bad—their crush was smiling at the person standing behind them.

Premise 1: People smile at their crushes (True premise)

Premise 2: My crush was smiling at me (False premise)

Conclusion: My crush likes me back (False but logically valid).

This amorous high school student might be embarrassed, but they are not an idiot. It’s hard to make sense of facts when we are feeling big emotions, like romantic crushes—or when we are worrying about exploited children. Research confirms that we’re especially likely to reason incorrectly in emotionally evocative scenarios, like #PizzaGate. So even if Edgar Welch (and our love-struck high schooler) are wrong, we should give them some credit. They are doing their best to infer the truth about their world.

The logical validity of conspiracy beliefs means that we should have more compassion for those who end up with false beliefs, but it also suggests that we should be more skeptical of our own beliefs. No matter how logical we are, logic still leads us to false conclusions when applied to incorrect assumptions about the world. Even you, dear reader, might have less of a grip on the truth than you would like to believe.

The Truth Is Hard To Know

Truth is hard to come by. For 15 years, Kurt believed that cutting onions made you cry brown tears because my onion-cutting grandma wore a lot of mascara. It was only once I was in college that I realized I was wrong. Sam grew up with harsh winters in New Hampshire, but only recently discovered that salt doesn’t melt ice—it just lowers its melting point. And Helen was in college when she found out that “getting your tires rotated” means switching their positions, not just spinning them around. These realizations might sound trivial, but they illustrate a bigger point: our grasp on our everyday reality is often shakier than we think. Research shows that many people hold basic misconceptions about the world, even failing to understand how objects move.

Consider this thought experiment: you tie a rock to the end of a string and swing it around your head in a circular motion. If the string suddenly snaps, what path does the rock follow? Many of us imagine a curved trajectory (see the image on the right) as the rock keeps “spinning off,” but physics tells us the rock would travel in a straight line tangent to the circle at the moment the string breaks (see the image on the left). When researchers posed this question to college students, only 51% correctly predicted the path on the left. The rest traced incorrect paths, with 30% imagining a curved trajectory and 19% tracing a different path altogether.

Figure 3. The rock would follow the path on the left when released, but 49% of people get this wrong, holding incorrect intuitions about how objects move.

The 30% who predicted the curved path on the right were wrong, but their intuition mirrors a widely held belief from medieval times, known as the “impetus theory of motion.” This theory, held by philosophers as well known as Galileo, proposed that objects in motion carried a gradually diminishing internal force, or “impetus,” that caused curved paths. It wasn’t until Newton introduced his laws of motion that we understood that objects in motion remain in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

It’s humbling to realize that even with centuries of scientific progress, our intuitions about basic phenomena can be so archaic and wrong. And even Newton, who invented calculus and was considered by Einstein to be “the smartest person who ever lived,” was not immune to conspiracies and false beliefs. He was a firm believer in alchemy, and spent much of his career searching for the Philosopher’s Stone, a biblical object rumored to turn substances into gold.

Just as Newton and Galileo failed to understand aspects of their world, so do we. A famous study on “The Illusion of Explanatory Depth” found that most people overestimate their understanding of everyday objects like zippers, toilet flushers, pianos, fireplaces, and ballpoint pens. People reported a strong understanding of these objects (“Of course I know how a zipper works!”), but when asked to explain the mechanisms behind them, they realized just how superficial their understanding was.

If we don’t really understand how zippers work and how objects move, despite encountering these things every day, how confident can we really be in our more complex beliefs about morality, politics, and the universe? And if we all live with flawed understandings of the world, perhaps we should be a bit more forgiving of others who end up down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. These people are often wrong, but not illogical. We’re all doing our best to make sense of a complex world, and sometimes this means getting a little lost along the way.