Conspiracy theories: delusions or future surprises?

‘Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.’ George Leonard in The Silent Pulse.

One of the benefits of scenario planning is said to be that it reduces surprise, an otherwise inevitable feature of the future. But where to find the ideas that make us aware of surprise before it happens?

It turns out there is a ready made class of ideas that would greatly contribute to future surprise if just some of them turned out to be true. This is the category of officially annoying ideas for which the CIA coined the term conspiracy theory, in its public assessment of the Kennedy assassination. A working definition might be that a conspiracy theory is an allegation which if true could well be something that officialdom would want to keep under wraps. Wikipedia offers a comprehensive list of conspiracy theories described with a whiff of suitably off-putting disdain. It is not that these ideas are secret – or not any longer – they have long since escaped into the wild and the game is now to keep up enough ridicule to discourage people from looking too closely. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, the event is public and undeniable. What is at stake is the claim by pesky critical thinkers that the evidence for a lone gunman doesn’t stack up and that an actual conspiracy must have been involved.

Of course, not all conspiracy theories would significantly change the future if true, as many of them relate only to our understanding of the past. There is apparently one about the Roman emperor Nero, concerning whether he really died in office or escaped into exile. It is is hard to see how the truth about this could affect our future in the 21st century. But some, the ones that interest me as a futurist, would have a huge impact on the future if true. For example, claims that there are various officially suppressed technologies such as anti-gravity, free energy, or electromagnetic healing, represent big surprise changes in the future if true. The same applies to claims that extraterrestrials are here or that climate disaster is not inevitable after all.

So what is a futurist to do with these ideas? It is certainly tempting to wonder whether some of them might actually be genuine and a properly curious futurist might well wish to sneak a closer look. I would argue that it makes great sense to examine the ones with large potential downstream impacts, to be aware of exactly what is claimed and to review the evidence that is offered. Furthermore, it is then worth tracking them to see if they are becoming more or less plausible over time as either additional evidence is brought forward, or convincing falsification is offered (something a little better than merely asserting that a claim has been debunked).

The next question is what counts as evidence. One of the tests of a worthwhile future scenario is supposed to be plausibility – not definitive proof, since we have no direct access to the future for verification (or at least not without time travel, unless that is true too). So futurists are used to operating in a grey zone between truth and fiction, trying to spot things that will become true later but which are not yet taken seriously.

Even in science definitive proof can be elusive when a radical new idea is being put forward, and philosophers of science have grappled with the question of what constitutes proof. The philosopher Karl Popper argued that no single item of confirmatory evidence could prove the truth of a theory, although many items of corroborating evidence would increase our confidence. His famous argument that a theory could however be decisively falsified, or disproved, turned out to be less clearcut than it first appeared, and he ultimately argued that what finally counted was critical thinking. What this means in practice is that we should be willing to think through the pros and cons of any given theory (conspiracy or otherwise) and have confidence in our own conclusions.

Not only is evidence inherently problematic, but what evidence there is could potentially be subject to deliberate efforts to sow confusion and doubt. There are many methods used in information warfare which would be suitable for this. Misdirection, used by conjurors, is a staple. To avoid you seeing the trick being done, your attention is drawn to something else happening at the same time. For example, suppose the media fanfare about rocket-based space launches is intended to distract attention from the implications of antigravity spacecraft? Another ruse might be to seed the conspiracy space with bogus conspiracies, to draw in overly credulous conspiracy enthusiasts and thereby expose them to ridicule on all fronts. Is this why flat earth theory has recently been gaining adherents, attracted by glossy but preposterous explainer videos released on the internet? Yet another ploy would be the limited hangout, in which a small amount of genuine information is released either to deflect attention from more sensitive information, or mixed with disinformation to muddy the water. It is as well to be aware that if officialdom really does not want the truth of something to be known, it does have the ability to go to great lengths to fool Joe Public.

Keeping these caveats in mind, it is worth taking a closer look at conspiracy theories which could have important implications for our future. These would have great potential for improving human lives, outweighing the security justification for secrecy, and representing serious moral hazard if not disclosed, and have a considerable body of purported evidence which has steadily increased over time. The conspiracy theories that fit these criteria include the energy and propulsion technologies already mentioned. The energy technologies allegedly tap quantum vacuum background energy that is abundantly available at all points in space. The propulsion technology allows the shielding or manipulation of gravity, which could enable replacement of conventional aircraft. It is claimed that these technologies have been used to construct ‘flying saucer’ type spacecraft for several decades, supposedly including the TR3B triangular spacecraft, which is featured in a number of witness videos uploaded to the internet. Three US patents covering these technologies, US10144532B2 (2018), US10322827B2 (2019) and US20190348597A1 (2019 pending), were granted to the US Navy in 2018 and 2019. Strictly speaking, so much has now been disclosed about these particular technologies that they are in effect no longer conspiracy theories, but represent established military know-how, even if they would still be widely disbelieved. This weirdly schizophrenic situation is a strong indicator that a process of ‘stealth disclosure’ is underway, possibly in psychologically gradual stages, and may in due course involve other previously secret matters.

The significance of these patents if released for civilian use is obviously enormous. At a time when energy shortages and carbon emissions are on everyone’s mind, these concerns would be eliminated at a stroke. Flying cars and low cost space travel would become available, roads and ugly power lines could be dismantled, and the economy would be free to boom. Scenarios resembling 1950s science fiction spring up, almost ready written.

If we were to conclude that certain conspiracy theories such as these are on the balance of probabilities true, then we are dealing with ideas that fall into the futurist’s grey zone. As a pragmatic matter they must be treated as untrue in the present, but there is always the chance that officialdom might change its mind in the future and reveal that they are indeed true. This official disclosure would presumably reveal that they have been true all along, and that say, civilian sightings of TR3Bs in the past were not delusional. So while they were designated as untrue, with much parading of misdirection such as chemical rockets, they were in active use by the secret parts of the state, just not made available to the private economy for the general betterment of human life. Military secrecy would have supervened, an idea which is fairly easy to believe, however disagreeable it may be.

Any important idea that must currently be regarded as untrue but which could plausibly and easily become true is of course perfect material to be included in scenarios and other future prognostications. Particularly if the idea in question is familiar as a concept from science fiction, is already supported by a good deal of evidence, is actually believed by a subset of the population, and would be a big deal if true. What more could a futurist want?

The sustainability of lemmings

A month ago, at the end of October 2022, I gave a presentation at Cranfield University that critiqued the existing policy approach to achieving sustainability. Here is the essence of my argument, which is based on my work over many years on the concept of industrial ecology and sustainability as future-oriented responses to the environmental crisis:

Organizations of all kinds are now urgently prioritising sustainability, but it is not clear that they have properly understood the objective they are aiming to achieve. For the most part they are desperately trying to avoid a disastrous future rather than trying to achieve a rationally-defined desirable future condition. Even if the motive is to avoid a bad outcome, having an effective strategy still depends on setting a clear, actively desirable objective. Merely acting out of fear is likely to mean adopting a strategy agenda set by someone else, without considering where it might lead until it is too late.

The essential idea of sustainability is that human society should be able to continue on a path of prosperity and development, while nature – the natural environment – is simultaneously able to thrive and flourish indefinitely into the future. The primary way this can be possible is for technology and infrastructure design to be adapted to match the patterns and processes of the natural ecosystem. This does not require any new technological breakthroughs, helpful as that might be, because it can be done through the redesign of existing technology – given an understanding of what is needed and a willingness to act.

Existing programs and policies for sustainability pay lip service to this idea, but are unlikely to achieve it in practice. For example, focusing almost exclusively on reducing the flow of carbon by curtailing energy use will only address a small part of the design requirement for environmental sustainability, and will impoverish the economy so much that the necessary technologies will never be affordable. If our economic prosperity is unsustainable because it is under threat from environmental catastrophe, shutting down the economy is hardly a way to sustainably preserve it. Our only plausible aim as human beings would be to save both our economy and nature, bearing in mind that “saving” means achieving a condition of sustainability, in which both thrive indefinitely.

Business is fond of the adage that “you cannot cut your way to growth”, yet many businesses are doing just this by blindly following fossil fuel abandonment targets without knowing how the energy required for prosperity will be supplied in the future. It seems they have been mesmerised by the publicity onslaught focused on a single type of scenario depicting the end of the world from climate change. Like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, they are not behaving rationally. Other futures are possible.

The rational response would be to use currently available energy to create the technology base for a fully circular economy, which would close the loop of materials usage, eliminating all waste and pollution, including out-of-balance carbon. Existing carbon-focused energy reduction policies are not going to achieve this.

At root, there are three policy levers available to deal with our environmental challenge. Three big variables are at work: the size of the population, the level of affluence, and the type of technology being used to achieve affluence. One theoretical policy option would be to reduce the human population, but this would not meet the sustainability criterion of enabling continued human development, rather it would involve the exact opposite – the retrogressive and unacceptable politics of eco-totalitarianism and genocide. Self-induced population reduction may work for lemmings (although this is actually a popular misconception), but definitely not for human beings. Another possible policy option would be to reduce affluence, by imposing eco-austerity – for example by cutting the energy people need to heat homes and power businesses. This would run counter to the aim of continued prosperity and development, and it could only look like a reasonable option if the third lever, technology, is ignored or rejected. The third option, technology, is the obvious choice and is eminently feasible since we have all the necessary technological know-how, and it primarily needs only the use of design skills to reconfigure technological infrastructure.

But this does not mean having an obsessive and one-track-minded focus on reducing carbon use. It means transforming the way technology enables prosperity. All the elements, not just carbon, need to be configured into a closed-loop flow. Furthermore, this does not mean reducing use to zero, but reducing leaks (aka waste) from the circular flow to zero. The only possible, flawed, justification for reducing actual usage towards zero would be if the flow of all materials remained linear – as it is now – rather than becoming circular. Our existing pattern of resource use is linear or straight-line – “take, make, waste”. This pattern is what creates resource scarcity and unsustainability. Circular means “make, use, recycle, make, use, recycle…” a virtuous circle that can continue indefinitely while allowing an adequate level of materials usage for prosperity but without depleting resources or putting pressure on the environment.

At the moment governments are setting “sustainability” policy by abandoning the technology policy lever and pushing for affluence reduction. This will not lead to true sustainability, it will lead to impoverishment. Businesses and governments would do better to ignore the PR siren song of “zero use” and instead focus their efforts on building a circular economy. Our future would then be both sustainable and prosperous.

Do business and government leaders have the courage to focus on this constructive path instead of the fear-driven path of affluence reduction?

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For more background on closing the loop as a path to sustainability, see details of my work in this area at:  https://www.synthstrat.com/cyclic-economy

The presentation I gave in October on this topic at Cranfield University is here https://well-1011.wistia.com/medias/0o2xjj3pug (1 hour 2 minutes) – with a five minute introduction here: https://youtu.be/7-i2xCpLiss

A scenario of the present

Since the beginning of the current global health crisis, there have been signs that an even larger story is playing out in the background. To make sense of this I have approached it the same way I research and create future scenarios. The present situation is highly complex and has many puzzling features and, like the future, is not easily understood in terms of existing analysis. The prevailing narrative says that we are seeing nothing but a tragic outbreak of zoonotic disease – but the available clues point beyond that and suggest the need for a deeper level of explanation.

The danger is that without deeper exploration the situation can easily be interpreted more negatively than is warranted. Freedoms are being reduced in the name of emergency response, and it is easy to imagine this is part of a plot to remove these freedoms permanently. While this is possible, I also think more hopeful interpretations exist, though they are harder to see. My aim here is to offer a potentially more optimistic interpretation, while still acknowledging that darker scenarios exist and vigilance is important.

What follows is an alternative scenario of the present, an attempt to decipher the larger story by integrating as many scattered puzzle pieces as possible. There are endless possible scenarios, and this is one of several that arguably pass the test of plausibility. However, I’m certainly not claiming or asserting that it is correct. All the ideas here are speculative, but the point of a scenario is to assemble an exploratory narrative and ask “what if” this turns out to be true? Can we learn from it and be more prepared and less likely to be surprised? The key thing is the logic of the story and I simply offer it as an example of the level of explanation that may be needed to make sense of what is happening. Time will tell.

In this scenario of the present, there is indeed a larger story running behind the scenes. Two major covert operations, both global in scope, are underway. One is essentially an outright power play, an attempt to consolidate and extend illicit power that already exists. The other is broadly opposed to the first and has the character of an enforcement operation against an entrenched criminal network, or network of networks.

This is a hidden war, but not a neatly defined war between nation states. The protagonists are alliances of transnational actors that are headquartered in a variety of countries. Both groups are using the outbreak opportunistically as cover for what is happening. The power play group hopes to exploit the travel, transport and business restrictions to consolidate political and economic power, while the enforcement group is using the restrictions in a jujitsu move to limit the physical movements of the power play group. Each side has access to advanced weapons, some secretly developed. It is said that the virus itself was originally engineered as a weapon – but it was released accidentally, which has wrong-footed the power play group.

Both groups operate through a variety of transnational organizations, corporations and agencies, that they control or influence. The two groups have varying degrees of direct power and political influence in various countries. A good part of the indirect influence has been achieved by the power play group through the accumulation of personally incriminating information about powerful individuals. The struggle includes a pivotal contest for control of communications channels and the internet, which have both been gradually weaponized over time.

The present clash between the two groups is the culmination of many years of preparatory moves by both sides. Since the protagonists are distributed across the political and organizational spectrum internationally, this might well be thought of as a global civil war – an expansion of the cyber civil war that has already been underway for several years. As the clash progresses there may be collateral consequences as each side makes moves and counter-moves. These could include temporary utility outages, most probably to electric power. The internet might go down for up to several days. Military movements and operational actions may also be seen.

If the enforcement group makes headway or succeeds in choking off the power play group, they will then face the challenge of explaining publicly what has been going on and gaining trust. Such an announcement could come later in April. The power play group may then make a last-ditch stand consisting of an attempt to discredit and hinder the enforcement group, using media messaging and fomenting social unrest, or even some form of violent retaliation.

This would be a hazardous juncture for the general public, who will be torn by perplexing cross-currents of information, and it is at this point that the advice to stay at home for personal protection would be more important than ever.

This is of course just a scenario, and you may well think that this interpretation of current events is simply too far-fetched. But it might be worth holding in the back of your mind in rough outline, just in case events take an unexpected turn and a more complex explanation is needed.

On the bright side, suppose this scenario is approximately correct and the enforcement group prevail. We could then be witnessing a major historical turning point. Many people have been hoping the outbreak will have a positive transformative outcome, and this deeper story might just be the way that hope is fulfilled.

Only time will tell.

Some thoughts about the future of scientific observation

Thinking about the future of science might seem futile, since future science by definition consists of knowledge we do not yet have. But it is worth recalling William Gibson’s comment: “The future has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” Science is a socially determined activity as much as a purely knowledge-driven one, so it is very probable that new knowledge already exists but remains stuck on the periphery because it does not fit established ways of thinking. 

Science as a whole has expanded very rapidly over the last hundred years and is now beset by significant conceptual lags between disciplines. Quantum physics is at the forefront of a potential new paradigm but the wider culture struggles with its implications. Meanwhile, other scientific disciplines continue to operate on the assumptions of classical physics as a matter of convenience. 

If the future of science is already partly here, it may not be evenly distributed because its acceptance depends on the reexamination of fundamental assumptions. Arguably this even includes the nature of scientific observation, a basic building block of all science. 

Science is based on close observation of physical phenomena, with the aim of understanding their nature and source. Hard sciences such as physics work with phenomena that are considered external to and separate from the observer. The scientist is supposed to be an impassive objective observer – rather like noticing the editing and camera work of a film rather than getting caught up in the story. 

The phenomena being observed are considered as part of a reality which is presumed to exist independently of the observer, though the observer may be able to influence it to some degree. Not only are the observer and the observed thought of as separate, but the phenomena being observed are also classically regarded as separate from each other. This conventional mode of scientific observation can be thought of as “externally directed”. 

But there is another realm of human experience. In addition to experience of an “outside world” there is experience of an “interior world”. This interior experience consists of phenomena such as thoughts, emotions, memories, dreams and perceptions. These phenomena are the focus of so-called “soft” sciences such as psychology and they are also a major area of interest in philosophy. 

Scientists would ideally like to observe this interior world in the same way as the outside world. External phenomena can be detected and measured, and the measurements analysed mathematically. Interior phenomena are not so accessible. It is not possible from outside to access a dream or a memory in the subjective form in which it is experienced. But brain states can be detected and measured, and the neural correlates of mental experience can often be identified. Precisely because they can be detected and measured, brain states are frequently taken as the appropriate scientific observables of interior experience. 

A scientist observing someone else’s brain turns interior phenomena into exterior phenomena by approaching that brain as an external object. Inner experience is thought to be produced by the collective activity of neurons and the actual inner experience of the observer becomes little more than a side effect. In this way, scientific reduction is applied, breaking down the interior phenomena into their supposed underlying causes. 

But there is a catch. Cognitive activities such as scientific theorising involve an interior experience of comprehension that cannot itself be detected in the neural correlates of theorising when observed from outside the brain. Indeed, all of science depends on interior cognitive phenomena such as understanding that cannot be detected when the brain is observed from the outside. By treating interior phenomena as exterior phenomena we are attempting to understand our own understanding by reducing it to other phenomena in which the understanding can no longer be seen. 

The human brain is an information processing system and many neuroscientists take the view that subjective experiences such as understanding will turn out to be the emergent outcome of complex information processing, much as a computer can produce complex outputs from the simple digital components of 0s and 1s. The objection to this line of argument is that subjective experiences require a conscious self that is aware of its own internal states and experiences.  However information-rich the computer’s output may be, there will be no understanding unless there is a conscious self to understand it – a position philosopher John Searle argued for in his famous “Chinese room” thought experiment. 

Many computer scientists believe that computers themselves will become conscious if they are organized like the brain and if they are powerful enough, a position called “strong AI” by Searle. Even supposing this may happen in the future it would be difficult to establish. If consciousness is necessary for the experience of interior phenomena, and if interior phenomena cannot be directly observed from outside, how would we even know if a computer became conscious? Would it tell us it is conscious, as a human being might? Could we trust such self-reporting as a reliable phenomenon for exterior observation when consciousness itself cannot be observed from the outside? 

The enigma of interior experience will almost certainly remain intractable as long as scientists observe interior phenomena from the outside. This is why philosopher David Chalmers famously called consciousness “the hard problem.” Trying to explain the subjective experience of consciousness by deriving it from the contents of its own awareness – externally observed phenomena – seems an inherently implausible move. If consciousness is a bottom-up effect, built up from simpler components, then we have no idea what could possibly constitute a “component” of the seamless subjective quality of conscious experience – other than rather questionable ideas such as that consciousness arises from logical operations. Without this knowledge, the strong AI position involves a circular act of faith in which externally observed phenomena – which are only known through the medium of conscious perception – are held to be the cause of interior conscious experience. 

There is a long history of theorizing in philosophy about whether the external physical world or the interior mental world represents the true nature of reality. The prevailing scientific consensus is that the external world of experience is the real world, despite the difficulty that all scientific observation of external phenomena requires an interior phenomenon of meaningful perception. This question is a live topic of debate in the philosophy of physics but with no immediate prospect of agreement. Meanwhile, regrettably, the dominance of external observation is tending to suppress insights arising from interior experience. 

Scientific research does not necessarily have to wait for the disagreement about the two types of experience to be resolved. One way to sidestep the impasse would be to think about the outside and inside worlds as merely two different modes of experience. There could be two equally valid directions of scientific observation: “externally directed” observation and “internally directed” observation, without attempting to establish one as better or more real than the other. They would be two alternative ways of seeing, reminiscent of the interior and exterior perspectives proposed by writer Ken Wilbur. Inward observation would essentially be a conscious self observing the contents of its own consciousness and taking their felt value and meaning as primary or irreducible elements of observation. The externally observable neural correlates of interior experience would then be simply that – correlates, not causes. 

To a considerable extent this is what psychology has done, but psychological phenomena are still persistently regarded as ultimately caused by physical phenomena that can be detected and measured by external observation. The observational bias, even in psychology, is that the “real” world exists to the outside of conscious observers and psychological phenomena are interpreted as merely an emergent side effect of brain functioning. 

Seen through the lens of internally directed observation, consciousness becomes the fundamental property that enables observation itself – it appears as an ontological primitive, a primary feature of reality which cannot be broken down into anything else. Thoughts, memories and dreams become not the product of external material processes but phenomena or qualities intrinsic to consciousness, to be encountered as the basic content of interior experience and observation. 

In a binocular combination of interior and exterior observation, exterior observables would not be “more real” than the interior ones. The interior ones would not have to be constructed from the exterior ones. They would simply be two aspects of reality meeting in conscious experience. 

If exterior and interior observation were used in tandem this could well lead to breakthroughs for science as a whole. Many aspects of experience that are currently discounted as merely subjective could be revalidated and revalued. The two directions of observation would support complementary hypotheses which could be experimentally evaluated. 

Quantum theory, for example, could benefit from interior observation. Quantum effects are weird when viewed from the perspective of external observation because it posits a universe of separate phenomena that exist independently of awareness. Quantum paradoxes might make more sense from the perspective of interior observation, in which existence and awareness are intrinsically related.  

Certain experimental findings suggest quantum effects are the result of an interaction between quantum-level reality and consciousness, but this idea has met with considerable resistance. As a line of thought it is blocked by the assumption that externally observed “physical” reality could not be affected by consciousness because it is “more real” than the interior phenomena of conscious experience. Adopting the perspective of interior observation could help us to take puzzling quantum effects at face value. This will not be easy: we have a deep assumption, inherited from an earlier stage of science, that the arrow of causal dependence runs from outer to inner experience. Possibly quantum theory is exactly the frontier where empiricism can only advance if we allow ourselves to treat interior and exterior phenomena on at least an equal footing and begin to ask if just possibly the causal arrow might point the other way. 

Internal observation would challenge other widely held assumptions. The perspective of external observation gives rise to the idea that consciousness must be generated from components that are themselves unconscious. This leads to the assumption that only brains, and maybe only human brains, are conscious. But seen through the lens of internal observation, consciousness appears as a primary feature of reality, which leads to a quite different assumption. From this perspective, we should expect to find consciousness everywhere in the universe at all levels. It would become the prerequisite for existence of any kind – after all, without consciousness nothing can register as existing, which is indistinguishable from a situation in which nothing exists. 

Furthermore, internal observation could open the door to taking the paranormal more seriously. Such things as psychic and spiritual experiences could be explored without the preliminary requirement of having to explain them in terms of phenomena that can be observed externally. They would be valid interior phenomena to be investigated in parallel, internally and externally, without rejecting them because they are only “in the mind”. 

Looking to the future, science appears to be under growing pressure to open up to a broader view of observable reality. Quantum puzzles and other anomalies that now confront science, not to mention the advent of artificial intelligence, place the nature of human understanding and consciousness at the frontier of science. If scientists insist on the perspective of exterior observation alone, this is likely to hinder the further significant advance of science. If in the future scientists adopt something like the mode of interior observation proposed here, a new frontier would open up, and an expanded philosophy of science could lead to advances in theory and breakthroughs in technology.  

Peak oil now

It is interesting to speculate that the horrendous BP oil mega-spill in the Gulf of Mexico may come to be viewed as the defining moment when Peak (Easy) Oil arrived. Up to now the advent of Peak Oil has been difficult to pinpoint in time because it was a function of many variables in constant dynamic interplay. For instance, as the financial crisis depressed demand, it pushed the peak further away in time. However, in the case of physical phenomena, failures often depend on a small triggering factor. When a sheet of glass under bending stress finally breaks, the failure propagates from a tiny existing crack. By analogy, this may also be true of developments in time. The oil mega-spill has suddenly dramatised the stark difference between the technology and economics of easy oil and the much higher risks and costs of oil from difficult environments. This unpredictable time-specific event may well set off a cascade of responses that "fix" the moment of Peak Oil and precipitate it into reality. Future historians take note!