Conspiracies and Maths

David Grimes came up with an equation to evaluate “how long alleged conspiracies could "survive" before being revealed - deliberately or unwittingly”. How did he come up with the model?
“The mathematical methods used in this paper were broadly similar to the mathematics I have used before in my academic research on radiation physics.”
The gist of it was a predictable conclusion, as one guy summarized it:
“A conspiracy's success is diminished inversely proportionate to the number of its' participants and the time of execution.”

As you might have expected, the Internet had a nice discussion on this! From a Slashdot forum, here are some of the better comments. One guy pointed out:
“One problem with this analysis is that it doesn't take into account *successful* conspiracies...If we are using past performance to predict future trends, shouldn't those conspiracies be counted? There's no realistic way to account for or even detect them.”
Since that is obviously true, another guy pointed out:
“He is working from incomplete data, worse he is working from a heavily biased section of the data (i.e. data that leant towards failure).”

But can anyone on the inside really leak the conspiracy? Would he even be believed? Isn’t that a simplistic assumption because:
“1. It ignores authority and credibility of the leaker
2. It ignores the reach of the leaker”

Even when a huge number people are part of a secret operation, can all of them even get what is going on, asked another:
“Probably only a few dozen people knew of the full scope of the Manhattan project, and probably only a few hundred had any real clue that it even had to do with atoms. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed doing construction, etc., but they had no clue what was going on, and they couldn't figure it out from the little pieces they knew and observed personally.”

I will wrap up with this negative (yet true) comment on most people:
“Everyone keeps believing the conspirators lies anyway. You don't need secrecy, you just need most people to be really gullible and believe whatever they read, instead of questioning it and checking the facts.”

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJanuary 31, 2016 at 10:34 AM

    There is some truth no doubt in your concluding remarks:
    " I will wrap up with this negative (yet true) comment on most people:
    “Everyone keeps believing the conspirators lies anyway. You don't need secrecy, you just need most people to be really gullible and believe whatever they read, instead of questioning it and checking the facts.” "

    There is something I wish to touch upon in the context of Indian Government, by which I mean the netas and babus, who siphon out a huge per cent of tax payers money.

    Since your earlier remark, namely, "A conspiracy's success is diminished inversely proportionate to the number of its' participants and the time of execution." applies in this context, the people get to know the extent of the wrongs done; there were and are plenty of scams and they are not going to go away either.

    Now, I have this question. The netas and the babus are continuing what they always did. How do any secrecy, conspiracy, exposure etc. matter? India's low rank in the world in transparency, honesty, less of corruption etc. will not change for quite some time.

    The point is this: believing in the conspirators may be due to some gullibility as you say. But trusting our netas amounts to wholesome gullibility. Surely it is all very negative but then that is anyway the truth. How can we put pretenses on truth, such as "positively viewing" of our nation's immensity and pervasiveness of corruption and that done so openly?

    ReplyDelete

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