Conspiracism vs. Creativity

Although Alison Green wasn't writing about conspiracism, a recent post of hers at Ask a Manager indirectly reminded me of that phenomenon, and the seemingly creative ways that conspiracists purport to explain what's "really going on."

Green takes a question about what might motivate instances of apparently mixed messages from management in a couple of instances the writer is aware of, and the immediate short answer is what caused me to think of conspiracism:

You're imagining this as all more cohesive than it is -- that there's a grand plan unifying all their actions, but very often there isn't.

Green tackles each of the scenarios in turn, and culminates in a list of typical reasons situations like the ones she was asked about occur:

• Plans changed, and the earlier conversations planning the change took place above their heads and they weren't even aware it was under discussion.
• Plans changed, and they were in those earlier conversations but didn't think it would go the way it went, or were simply juggling too many other things to game out exactly what it could end up meaning for everyone under them until it actually happened.
• Someone above them mentioned something that put pressure on them (and therefore their team) in a way they weren't anticipating earlier.
• Something happened that you don't know about that is changing how they're approaching something / how much they care about it (for example, they told you last month you didn't need to stress about expense report deadlines and they then discovered your coworker hadn't turned any in for a year and so now they're less laissez-faire about it).
• They're being pulled in multiple directions and so haven't sat down and thought things through as deliberately as you're imagining; they are managing through chaos.
• They messed up. Sometimes this may simply be because they're human, and other times they might not be a great (organized/thoughtful/attentive) manager.

Hanlon's Razor states that one should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Not everything on the above list qualifies as stupidity, but many can look a lot like stupidity. All are things known to occur frequently enough that it makes sense to consider them as possible explanations before jumping to the conclusion that a puzzling event is motivated by some kind of plan.

Needless to say, similar kinds of things to the above non-exhaustive list can occur in other situations involving any kind of organization.

In light of the above, conspiracist "explanations" look far less creative than a truly deliberate consideration of the possible causes of a puzzling event.

-- CAV