My post about "Never attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence" (this post) brought a lot of thoughtful e-mails and I thought I'd share a few with you. This one is from Carl Cafarelli…
My own preferred way of phrasing this is that we often attribute to a Machiavelli what is actually the work of the Three Stooges. Keep fighting the good fight.
And here's one from Tim Kinseth…
Agree completely about conspiracy theories. Some people are so paranoid and some people just have to have a bad guy. The thing with all the J.F.K. conspiracy nuts was the belief that something as monumental and earth-shattering as the death of the President of the United States could not possibly have been caused by one loser guy with a cheap rifle. It had to be some whole nation or awesome force. When I argued the matter with friends, they'd come back with the claim that the lack of evidence of a massive conspiracy proved there was a massive conspiracy because only a massive conspiracy could hide evidence that well.
And finally, here's my old pal Pat O'Neill…
Another important point to consider when dealing with conspiracy theories is summed up in "correlation is not causation." Just because two things occur together — even if that happens frequently — does not mean one caused the other. One example of this I recall from my youth was when people would claim that rockets launched from Cape Kennedy were causing the weather conditions that resulted in hurricanes making landfall in Florida.
Yeah. We see a lot of that from anti-vaxxers these days. Someone got a shot of Pfizer and died four weeks later…so naturally, it had to be the shot. At the same time, they dismiss the cause-and-effect of COVID-19 rates rising in areas with low vaccination rates. That just might be correlation equaling causation.
I think Tim above is right: Some people need bad guys. They have to blame every bad thing on someone…usually the same someone. I even have to remind fellow Trump-dislikers that you can't blame every bad thing that happens on the guy. He might not be responsible for DoorDash screwing up my order last night. Tucker Carlson might be right. It must have been Joe Biden doing that.
Thanks to all who wrote in.