I asked the Gemini 2.5 Pro (Preview) AI:

Today, what are the most popular texts criticizing Karl Popper's epistemology?

Let's go through Gemini's answer. I think this will be reasonably useful because the AI is trained on many statements people wrote about Popper and about these critical texts. I expect these answers to provide a reasonably representative mixture of what many philosophers have written.

Identifying the "most popular" texts criticizing Karl Popper's epistemology today involves looking at works that remain highly influential, are frequently cited, and continue to shape discussions in the philosophy of science. Based on these criteria, here are some of the most significant texts and influential lines of criticism:

1. Thomas S. Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962): This is arguably one of the most impactful books in the 20th-century philosophy of science and offers a profound challenge to Popper's views.

• Main Criticism: Kuhn argued that Popper's emphasis on falsification as the primary activity of scientists misrepresents much of scientific practice. Kuhn introduced the concept of "normal science," where scientists work within an established "paradigm," solving puzzles rather than constantly trying to refute the paradigm itself. Falsification, for Kuhn, is more characteristic of "scientific revolutions" (paradigm shifts), which are rarer and more complex social and psychological processes than Popper's logical schema suggests. The "Kuhn-Popper debate," particularly prominent in the collection Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, 1970), highlights these differences.

Popper didn't say that falsification is the primary activity of scientists. He said scientists need conjectures and refutations, not primarily refutations. Popper emphasized this point, even titling a book Conjectures and Refutations.

Popper's goal wasn't to observe what scientists do in practice then accurately document it. He used abstract, logical reasoning to analyze how science could, should, and couldn't possibly work. Responding about what the primaries activities of scientists are or aren't is not very relevant to Popper's main ideas.

The "normal science" and "scientific revolutions" issue is basically about sociology, psychology and human behavior. If it's correct, that wouldn't make Popper's logical analysis of epistemology incorrect. What people are like today (or even their unchangeable human nature) is a separate issue from the logic of knowledge creation.

These claims don't challenge Popper's main, logical points about epistemology. They're a side issue from what I wanted to defend or discuss.

1. Imre Lakatos - "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970): Published in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, this work attempts to provide a more sophisticated version of falsificationism that addresses some of the criticisms leveled against Popper (including Kuhn's).

• Main Criticism (and development): While a student of Popper, Lakatos acknowledged the naivety of "dogmatic falsificationism." He proposed that scientists work with "research programmes" consisting of a "hard core" of theories protected from refutation by a "protective belt" of auxiliary hypotheses. A research programme is progressive if it leads to novel predictions and degenerating if it only makes ad-hoc adjustments to anomalies. This implicitly criticizes Popper's simpler model by showing how theories can be legitimately shielded from falsification, at least temporarily.

Popper's model was focused on a different thing. Popper focused more on the logic of abstract epistemology, not on the behavior of people. The behavior of people is more complex and is also a different topic. Popper's focus on logic not psychology or behavior was even in his book title, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Again, this criticism a bit off topic and doesn't actually try to challenge Popper's main epistemology claims.

1. Paul Feyerabend - Against Method (1975): This book presents a radical critique of the idea that there is a single, universal scientific method, including Popper's falsificationism.

• Main Criticism: Feyerabend advocated for "epistemological anarchism," arguing that major scientific advancements often occurred precisely because scientists violated established methodological rules. He contended that any prescribed methodology, including falsification, would stifle scientific progress. His famous slogan is "anything goes."

This doesn't actually claim that Popper's epistemology methods are wrong or don't work. It just claims that there might exist other working methods. None are mentioned here. There is no mention here of any defense of the particular methodologies that Popper said don't work (like induction or justificationism).

I don't recall Popper saying there couldn't possibly be any other methods. If Feyerabend actually knows of any other viable methods, that would be interesting, but that isn't mentioned here. I tried following up with Gemini:

Short answer. Did Feyerabend defend any specific methods besides Popper's as viable?

It said:

No, Feyerabend famously argued against the idea of any single, universally prescribed scientific method, including Popper's, being uniquely viable.

Instead, he advocated for methodological pluralism, famously encapsulated in his phrase "anything goes," suggesting that scientists should be free to use whatever methods, rational or irrational, best suit their research and lead to progress, rather than being constrained by one specific set of rules.[1] He didn't champion another specific method over others as the single correct one.  

So Feyerabend said go ahead and do anything even irrational things. I guess he also was in favor of using illogical methods. This strikes me as either silly or not really talking about the same things as Popper. Methods that, as a matter of logic, cannot work ... cannot work. So don't use them. What would make some sense is using methods that people don't know how to explain in words or logically defend in hopes that they have differences from the methods that have been logically refuted. Human behavior is often quite complex so even if some elements of it are logically wrong, progress could be made because other elements are better. But this is again getting into issues of human behavior instead of the abstract logic of science and epistemology.

1. Hilary Putnam - Various Essays (e.g., "The 'Corroboration' of Theories" in Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, 1975): As detailed previously, Putnam raised significant objections to Popper's epistemology.

• Main Criticism: Putnam focused on the untenability of Popper's rejection of induction, arguing that if corroboration provides no reason to believe a theory is more likely to be true or reliable for future predictions, then science becomes practically irrelevant. He also emphasized, in line with the Duhem-Quine thesis, that theories are not tested in isolation, making straightforward falsification problematic.

Saying not to reject induction because you don't like the consequences is a bad argument. You can't figure out what's true based on what you'd like to be true.

Also, Popper didn't think science is irrelevant. Putnam is taking some extreme, exaggerated version of Popper's position, then finding he dislikes it, then concluding that Popper must be wrong and we can stick with some standard views despite Popper's criticisms of them.

You don't need any alternative in order to refute something like induction. Again, all of these criticisms strike me as not really focused on logical analysis.

Being unhappy about Popper's alternative doesn't make it false, and it's also weird to be unhappy over conclusions Popper himself didn't reach and denies.

Regarding testing theories in isolation: that's an important issue which Popper worked on, other thinkers worked on, and which could still be worked on more. It's a difficulty that comes up for Popper and others, which we could still figure out better ways to handle, but which isn't a decisive refutation of Popper's epistemology.

1. The Duhem-Quine Thesis (articulated in works by Pierre Duhem and W.V.O. Quine, e.g., Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," 1951): While not a direct critique solely of Popper (Duhem predates much of Popper's relevant work), the implications of this thesis are fundamental to many criticisms of falsification.

• Main Criticism: This thesis asserts that a hypothesis cannot be tested in isolation because empirical tests of a hypothesis require numerous background assumptions (auxiliary hypotheses). Therefore, when an experiment yields a result contrary to the hypothesis, it's not clear whether the fault lies with the hypothesis itself or one of the auxiliary assumptions. This makes conclusive falsification of a single theory difficult, if not impossible.

Yes. Popper discussed this. His methods can be used despite these issues because they don't rely on conclusive proof of anything. All our knowledge is tentative and fallible.

1. Larry Laudan - e.g., "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem" (1983) and Beyond Positivism and Relativism (1996): Laudan famously criticized Popper's central project of demarcating science from non-science (or pseudo-science) using the criterion of falsifiability.

• Main Criticism: Laudan argued that the demarcation problem is a pseudo-problem and that no single criterion (including falsifiability) can successfully distinguish science from non-science in all historical and practical contexts. He pointed out that many well-established scientific theories have been unfalsifiable at certain points, while some pseudoscientific theories can be formulated to be falsifiable.

These texts and the arguments they contain remain central to understanding the limitations and challenges to Popper's epistemology. They are standard readings in most philosophy of science courses and continue to inform contemporary debates about scientific methodology, rationality, and the nature of scientific progress.

Popper's demarcation criterion is a terminology suggestion related to his commentary and criticism of some thinkers like Marx, Freud and Adler. It's not a very important issue to his epistemology. Science can use many types of criticism, including empirical tests. If Popper was wrong about terminology and some scientific claims can't be empirically tested, that's OK because non-empirical criticism would still work.

My conclusion is that none of these six criticisms actually sounds like relevant, logical criticism of Popper's core epistemology claims. They're mostly either indecisive points (like about some things being difficult) or off-topic points (mostly about human behavior rather than the logic of how knowledge can and can't be created). These points mostly, even if they are correct, aren't a threat to Critical Rationalism. If anyone knows that any of these AI summaries are wrong, or knows of any more relevant criticisms, please let me know.

When I've looked at Popper criticism papers in the past, and books advocating rival schools of thought, including pro-induction textbooks, my general experience has been similar to this: most of it misses the point and is more clearly off-topic than wrong. Many of the criticisms of Popper are things I could concede while still liking Popper and getting a lot of value from his ideas that weren't criticized. And a lot of the positive claims that contradict Popper, like about induction, are too vague to engage with directly. I can respond with meta-criticism about how it's vague or doesn't address key questions, but that is less satisfying than actually being able to respond about epistemology. If anyone knows of some good materials to engage with and/or has enough knowledge about induction and is open to debate, let me know. I've been looking for many years.

I've tried making guesses about induction to add details. I've tried branching (they could mean X, Y or Z, so let me respond to all three). I've tried filling in blanks, writing my own summary of induction, etc. I haven't found this an effective way to enable writing critiques that inductivists accept. I, like Popper, have been accused of attacking a straw man. I think I could pick any of the six texts Gemini listed, criticize it, and be accused of attacking a straw man or dumb text by some inductivists and told that I should have responded to some of the good inductivist literature instead. I don't want to attack a straw man; I don't actually want to guess what inductivists think or fill in blanks for them; I don't want to put words in their mouth; I want them to write it down so I can respond to quotes. I've never been able to find anything suitable to engage with that addresses the key questions necessary for me to write Popperian criticism instead of either asking clarifying questions or filling in blanks myself. I've also asked over a dozen inductivists to provide a realistic, detailed, step-by-step example of using induction, but none of them have ever been willing to try, and I've never found that in literature. Nor have I ever gotten a list of steps to do induction that I could follow. So I've failed to find any abstract induction theory with enough information to engage with well and I also failed to find specific examples or steps for induction. That leaves me wondering what exactly persuaded anyone to be an inductivist.

A critic of Karl Popper on Reddit wrote:

Here's an exercise for you: to the best of your ability, restate and respond to Putnam's criticism of Popper in 'The 'Corroboration' of Theories' or Lakatos's criticism of Popper in 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes'. Bonus points for also stating how they differ from each other. Shouldn't be too difficult since you're aware of these common criticisms of Popper!

So let's take a look at that Putnam text. It opens:

... Sir Karl's fundamental attitudes: 'There is no method peculiar to philosophy'. 'The growth of knowledge can be studied best by studying the growth of scientific knowledge.'

Philosophers should not be specialists. For myself, I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man's knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.

I checked the three unsourced quotes. They're from Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, in the 1959 preface to the first English edition. The third quote has significant edits with no indication that Putnam made changes. Let's go through them in order.

The first quote omits Popper's italics.

The second quote omits italics, begins mid-sentence, and changes the first word to begin with a capital letter.

The third quote, the block quote, also starts mid-sentence and edits the first word to be capitalized.

So far these issues are somewhat minor. But it gets worse. The third and final sentence of Putnam's block quote is:

And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.

Here's the sentence Popper actually wrote:

And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from narrow specialization and from an obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill, and in his personal knowledge and authority; a faith that so well fits our 'post-rationalist' and 'post-critical' age, proudly dedicated to the destruction of the tradition of rational philosophy, and of rational thought itself.

Putnam deleted the words "from narrow specialization and".

Putnam deleted the comma after "special skill".

Putnam replaced the semi-colon and everything after it with a period.

Putnam didn't communicate that he made edits.

Deleting words from the middle of a quote without using an ellipsis or square brackets is unacceptable.

Putnam's text is a reprint of a text that Popper already responded to, plus a brief response to Popper's response. In Putnam's followup he has a section "The Charge of Textual Misrepresentation" which responds to Popper's claim that Putnam had misrepresented Popper. It doesn't address these quotation issues, which seems careless to me: if you're going to address that kind of charge, you ought to double check the accuracy of your quotes!

This does not inspire confidence that Putnam's text is worth reading or contains good criticism of Critical Rationalism (or that the Lakatos text, recommended by the same Redditor, is good).

Lakatos, it should be noted, is a fan of Popper. Here's how Lakatos begins his contribution to The Philosophy of Karl Popper, edited by Paul A. Schilpp, volume 1, page 241:

Popper’s ideas represent the most important development in the philosophy of the twentieth century; an achievement in the tradition— and on the level—of Hume, Kant, or Whewell. Personally, my debt to him is immeasurable: more than anyone else, he changed my life.

So it doesn't make sense to cite Lakatos when you want to dismiss Popper as a bad thinker who should be ignored and whose fans shouldn't be debated.

And Putnam is a partial fan of Popper, not someone who thinks Popper should be dismissed or ignored. Here's how Putnam begins the text the Redditor recommended:

Sir Karl Popper is a philosopher whose work has influenced and stimulated that of virtually every student in the philosophy of science. In part this influence is explainable on the basis of the healthy-mindedness of some of Sir Karl’s fundamental attitudes

And Putnam wrote a text trying to engage with Popper, plus a followup. Putnam did not behave like some Redditors (who ironically cite Putnam) who think Popper should be treated as an unreasonable outcast and his claims and fans ignored without debate.

Philosophy is an important field because it provides some premises for all other fields. Issues that are very relevant to many fields include: how to be rational and objective, how to deal with bias, critical thinking, organizing knowledge, debate, how to learn effectively, how to find and correct errors, problem solving and goal accomplishing methods, and integrity.

Philosophy is an underserved field. There isn't a lot of good work being done in philosophy. A lot of the effort is basically about history of philosophy and isn't really bringing useful breakthroughs relevant to other fields today like modern science. A lot of philosophy work is inductivist, justificationist, indecisive, etc. It broadly ignores Karl Popper and there aren't good debates happening. Ideas like JTB (knowledge = justified, true, belief) and credences are bad.

It's hard to find philosophy bloggers worth reading or philosophy YouTubers worth watching. The field feels pretty empty. It's not like video games where there's tons of decent material available. It also feels very empty compared to politics. This is partly because academic philosophers engage with the public at low rates, which is partly because the public doesn't like them, which they would partly blame on the public not having enough expertise and intelligence. I put more blame on the philosophers lacking communication skill, having dumb ideas, obscuring the lack of substance with complexity, etc. Academic philosophy is a field that alienated Richard Feynman and Karl Popper; it's not just ignorant or dumb people who are unimpressed. Lots of smart, well-read people think academic philosophy isn't very good currently.

And academic philosophers are very into gatekeeping, so if a lay person reads some of their favorite books and has some ideas about them, they still generally won't want to engage with that person. They also don't mind ignoring Objectivism even though Rand is one of the most famous and best selling philosophers. They aren't really trying to engage with stuff that resonates with more people. Lots of them are happy in their little niche where they often play office politics and social climb instead of actually challenging each other appropriately. Part of what many of them like about their niche is the lack of criticism and lack of threatening types of debate that would challenge their key claims or premises in a way where they could potentially clearly lose the debate.

Most philosophers don't even try to work on rationality and other really useful, practical topics. Even the ones whose speciality is epistemology generally turn it into something abstract and disconnected from decision making, learning and debate.

Less Wrong (including Effective Altruism) cares about rationality but they aren't mainstream or academic philosophy, they're quite hostile to Critical Rationalism (even without my addition of rejecting credences, weighted factors, etc., which they'd really dislike), they won't debate and choose not to engage with lots of criticism, and they moderate their forums to limit dissent. Objectivism also cares about rationality but Objectivists don't actually try to study and analyze as much as Less Wrong and also broadly aren't open to debate or free speech discussion either. I've never found the discussion quality to be good at Critical Rationalism forums either and I haven't found Theory of Constraints forums at all. These sorts of forums allow some discussion and have some argumentative members, but if you want more structured discussions/debates that actually go somewhere and reach any important conclusions, rather than short verbal skirmishes that people quit in the middle, then people stop talking to you or moderators intervene.

A lot of people, including academic philosophers, seem satisfied by Facebook and Twitter for discussion. Social media isn't designed for serious discussions that reach important conclusions. Academic journals aren't designed for back-and-forth discussions either and are gatekept. In general, most intellectuals seem to think of debate as something that happens in voice, preferably in person, as a one-day event, rather than something that's best done in text over a period of many days (having some voice debates with a time limit like two hours is fine but I don't think those should be primary).

The people who will debate some on the internet tend to not think of themselves as top experts, tend not think of the conclusions of their debates as being important to the world, and if they start losing a debate they often either flake or get angry/upset/tilted. It's hard to get anyone to have multi-day text debates and take them really seriously. That kind of activity just doesn't have enough people in general, not just for philosophy topics.

I don't see a bunch of great text debates happening between other people; the primary issue isn't lack of access or gatekeeping, it's that people don't do this stuff enough.

You can find some long disorganized debates on internet forums, but it's hard to find anything that's structured in a way to reach clear conclusions. In my experience, as soon as I start asking for structured debate and bringing up suggested methods to accomplish it, people stop debating. In the past, I had no trouble getting some long disorganized debates that failed to stay on topic, keep track of everything that was said, and reach clear conclusions. But now that I'm looking for more effective discussions, and have some ideas about methods (and am open to alternative methods if anyone else has ideas about how to have productive discussions), I find it's hard to get discussions. And I don't think that is about me because I don't see other people having those kinds of conversations without me.

I think many people don't want discussions that result in clear conclusions because then they can lose. I think most people don't like to risk losing. Also, most people aren't good at cooperative critical thinking and pursuing the same topic in a way that no one loses; if it's not adversarial debate, people tend to lose interest and flake, maybe because a lot of their motivation is the "someone is wrong on the internet" type or because the internet forum posters don't see themselves as capable of doing serious, important research and the academics don't do research that way.

Tons of people do their own thing and make their own claims without being willing to thoroughly address much criticism. They attract fans, funding, promotions, etc., or they fail to. There is a competition to get those resources where people and their theories try to be more appealing than others rather than directly debating others about which theories are true. This happens in many intellectual fields, like various sciences, not just in philosophy.

I don't have a solution. I just think this is an important problem that's worth bringing up. There's a lack of people doing useful work on key areas of philosophy that underly other fields, and there's a broad lack of organized, effective discussion and debate in the world.

I'm going to edit this post and repost it later. I'll leave this part for now:

For more information about how I think about intuition, see:

• Don’t Suppress Your Intuition
• Intuition and Rationality
• Intuition and Rational Debate
• Intuition Is Part of Rational Living

People often refuse to identify themselves (and sometimes others) with behaviors only done a small minority of the time. But a typical jerk is someone who is a jerk 10% or less of the time, and mostly only when there's some sort of reason not totally at random. Having some reason, even a bad one, gives them an excuse that helps them not view themselves as a jerk in their own mind.

People who are interested in philosophy commonly try to identify their philosophical skill level with their best and most focused activities. When they make dumb errors, they blame being tired or distracted or whatever (which is how they spend most of their lives) instead of blaming inadequate skill and practice.

These two things are sort of the same but sort of reversed.

Here's how they're different: With bad things, people commonly look at what's typical in order to avoid seeing themselves as bad. Their bad traits don't count because they do them the minority of the time. But with good things, they look at their best results, not their typical results, in order to see themselves as especially good. This is biased.

Here's how they're the same: In both cases, people identify with their better results not their worse results. This is biased.

This way of evaluating isn't applied universally to everyone. People may evaluate friends and family like this. But if they don't like someone and he's a jerk to them sometimes, they will consider him a jerk, not evaluate him by the times he wasn't a jerk.

This comes up with specific issues, not just broad evaluations. If someone quotes correctly 95% of the time, they'll likely consider themselves good at quoting. But if they misquote 5% of the time, I'll think of them as a bad quoter. Who's right? Well, if a book contains 100 quotes, and 5 of them as misquotes, is that good? I don't think that book did a good job. I think being a misquoter is like being a jerk: don't do it at all. And it'd actually be unusual to misquote 95% of the time. Misquoting occasionally is what typical misquoters are like, just like being a jerk occasionally is what typical jerks are like.

Not Who I Am

There are celebrities who misbehave badly then issue an apology in which they say "that's not who I am". But it is. They did it. I think they mean in most hours of their life, they didn't do it, so they identify as the kind of person who doesn't do it. But that's not how that works. You only have to rape one person, once, to be a rapist. You only have to yell at your secretary once a month to be a bad boss.

Criticizing "that's not who I am" is not original. Here are two articles about it: SorryWatch's “THIS IS NOT WHO I AM” and Nola's 'That's not who I am' is wrong. And it's the wrong thing to say | Opinion.

In general, these apologies involve one of two scenarios. Either they did something really bad (like murder) which you are supposed to never, ever do, so just doing it once stands out and makes you a bad person. Or they did something that's less bad but they did it repeatedly, so it was a pattern of behavior, not a one time exception. In both of those scenarios, it is who they are. They really are a person who is willing to commit one million-dollar embezzlement, or they really are a person who is mean to a subordinate every month.

For some of these apologies, they admit to and apologize for some facts about their behavior, but they deny being that kind of person. But the facts and the denial contradict each other. The apology is self-contradictory, yet that's what they say in public using a script that was written or at least reviewed by a public relations expert.

I think this works some because a lot of people are dishonest with themselves. They categorize some of their bad behavior as special exceptions that don't really count. They don't keep any data on how often these exceptions occur. And so we live in a world where a waitress can be on the receiving end of rude behavior almost every shift, but most of the people doing it think that was just a rare, special exception and they aren't a rude person (if they even recognize that what they did was rude). When lots of people make these exceptions, it adds up to being common behavior in our society.

Since lots of people are dishonest about who they are, it makes sense that they would accept an apology with the same dishonesty. And their habit is to deny being a bad person unless the evidence is overwhelming, so if a celebrity made honest admissions they would think he was being forced into it by overwhelming evidence against him. So honesty can be interpreted as confessing to being really bad (much worse than the real facts of the matter), since many people wouldn't admit to anything unless they were really backed into a corner and had no other options, at which point they would admit to as little as possible.

Special Exceptions Add Up

Another example of exceptions is walking off the designated places for people at a tourist spot in nature. Many people think it's OK for them to ignore the sign and go past the fence because it's just a one-time special exception for them, and their footsteps won't do much harm. But many people do that and it adds up to the plants in that spot getting trampled and killed. That kind of problem is common in America but it may be less common in some other countries like Japan (going by vague reputation, not detailed knowledge). I think that kind of behavior may be one of the things that gives American tourists a partially bad reputation abroad (they also have a partially good reputation, e.g. for being willing to spend money in other countries).

Or imagine a society where every person gets angry and yells just once a month as a special exception. No one thinks of themselves as a yeller since they rarely yell. But yelling would be quite common in public. A crowd of 100 people would have 3-4 people who yell today. Walking for 30 minutes along a downtown sidewalk past busy shops and restaurants, you could easily pass over 1,000 people (including people who are indoors but close enough for you to hear them yell), so you'd likely hear some yelling. If you attend high school or college, you'd hear yelling most days. If you work at an office or warehouse with hundreds of people, you'd hear yelling most days. People often do a poor job of considering "If literally everyone made the exception I want to make, what would the cumulative effect be?" If the results of everyone doing it would be bad, and you do it, you're part of the problem even if you think to yourself "that's not who I am" since you rarely do it.

In our society, people who think or say they yell once a month often yell more, like 1-3 times per month, plus some extras in one particularly high stress month, so maybe 30 times per year not 12.

What if some people yell daily but you only yell once a month? Are you not really part of the problem, since you rarely yell while other people yell a lot? Should you blame the frequent yellers for why you often hear yelling in public? I don't think so. You yell enough that if everyone did what you do, there'd be tons of yelling. You're part of the problem, not part of the solution. For a quieter, calmer society, you'd need to yell less; just getting the daily yellers to be like you wouldn't solve the yelling problem.

I read Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking by Laila Mickelwait. Overall I thought it was pretty good and it seemed mostly true (I didn't independently check most of the claims). I was disturbed by what Pornhub was able to do in public while being one of the world's most popular websites. I thought it was an interesting example of a big company getting away with a bunch of crime out in the open without needing to keep it very secret. This is related to my post Conspiracies Are Often Unnecessary and to my belief that lots of large companies break lots of laws and we have inadequate law enforcement about white collar crime and fraud.

What did Pornhub do? Here are some of the main issues. They let people easily upload any video without providing any documentation about who is in the video, how old they are, whether they consented, or who is uploading it. They put a download button next to many videos. They ran a tiny, understaffed moderation team that fast forwarded through videos with the sound off, had no way to tell whether many videos were legal or not, and approved many videos that obviously weren't legal. When victims asked for videos they were in to be removed, they were asked for documentation and proof (putting the documentation burden on victims not uploaders), and removal was a big hassle with delays. After removal, the same videos could be uploaded again because viewers had downloaded it before it was taken down, and then victim would have to start over and face another huge hassle trying to get the same video removed again, and this could happen many times. What kinds of illegal videos did Pornhub have? Among other things, they had videos of minors and of rape. It was easy to find illegal content by putting in search terms like "12 years old" or "middle school". Pornhub wasn't trying very hard to prevent that content from being posted, nor to restrict searches to make it hard to find, nor to find it and take it down after it was on the site.

A lot of people knew what Pornhub was doing before Mickelwait, but they didn't know of good ways to tell the world. They didn't think they had good whistleblowing options. Once Mickelwait went viral, lots of people started whistleblowing to her. I think some of them recognized the problem partly because of her explanations, but some already hated Pornhub and thought it was committing crimes before she said anything. Also, many illegal videos contained comments saying they're illegal in the comment section on the Pornhub website. Many videos were obviously illegal so viewers noticed and complained. Pornhub could have, but chose not to, use those kinds of comments to help them find and take down illegal videos. But many people noticing illegal videos, and being willing to write an online comment about them, didn't lead to the police and courts dealing with the issue. (For every person willing to post a comment on a Pornhub video saying it's illegal, there must have been many more people who just left the video without commenting. I figure most people on Pornhub don't write any comments, and also many people don't want to admit in writing to having visited illegal content.) I think the government was being really irresponsible not to notice and take action about a bunch of crime that was easy to find, and that helps explain why whistleblowing isn't as effective as David Deutsch thought it would be. The cops and FBI often don't care before an issue goes viral online and gets covered in newspapers, and I bet at least one person did report the problem (before Mickelwait's first public comment on the subject) to some government agent or department that didn't care or cared but wasn't able to take effective action (e.g. because their boss' boss didn't care and wanted them to work on other projects).

Pornhub still exists and I don't know exactly what happened after the events in the book or how popular or profitable it is today. Pornhub was one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, and was making hundreds of millions of dollars per year, when Mickelwait challenged it.

Although I largely liked the book and agreed with its main points, I had some criticisms that I thought would be interesting to share.

Dishonesty

For context, a Pornhub executive's mansion was intentionally burned down. It was still under construction so no one was hurt. One narrative blamed Mickelwait, saying her tweets and #Traffickinghub advocacy inspired one of her fans to commit arson. She plausibly claims it was probably done by someone who lived nearby who had criminal connections and a grudge, not by any of her fans. Even if one of her fans did it, I don't think that'd be her responsibility (that's based on what I know – I don't think truthful tweets that Pornhub commits crimes would make her responsible for a fan committing arson).

Mickelwait wrote, quoting a newspaper then responding, with bold added by me:

“During the lead-up to the torching of Antoon’s mansion, extremists began doxing Pornhub employees and issuing violent threats online. Shepherding this movement was an outfit called Traffickinghub…‘Burn them to the ground!’ read a tweet shared on the Traffickinghub founder’s profile four days before the arson attack.”

I never uttered or wrote those words and Adam knows it. He also knows that I have often publicly condemned acts of violence and have always called for accountability within the bounds of the law. But truth doesn’t seem to matter when you are a “pick me” journalist with the chance to get the CEO of MindGeek on the media record for the first time in history.

The newspaper didn't say she uttered the words. It said she shared them. So I'm guessing she retweeted them but won't admit it. So, just based on reading her own account without checking anything else, I suspect she's dishonest. I guess she probably tricked the majority of her readers with this part, but when you write like this, some of your readers (especially the smarter, more educated ones who are more likely to have blogs, fans, platforms, money, etc.) will notice and dislike it.

I think writing like this was unnecessary. Even if she tweeted "Burn them to the ground!" herself it would have been metaphorical. It wouldn't actually make her responsible for arson. I personally don't like tweeting or retweeting adversarial, inflammatory comments like that which lack useful information, but it's a pretty normal thing that many people do. Our society doesn't think it's a very big deal in general, so being dishonest about it isn't necessary. (I think if everyone in the world would stop the adversarial, inflammatory comments, that would be a big deal, but it doesn't make much difference whether Mickelwait participates when so many other people are too.)

Principles

Mickelwait favors lots of things that would hurt Pornhub without seeming to consider various political philosophy principles. For example, one of her major goals was to get credit cards to stop working with Pornhub so that Pornhub couldn't accept money from viewers or advertisers. (They could still take cryptocurrency but would lose most of their income by relying on that.)

On the one hand, I see the point that credit card companies shouldn't help with crime. On the other hand, shouldn't Pornhub get their day in court? What if Pornhub didn't break the law but is put out of business with no trial and no due process because advocates pressure credit card companies? Or what if Pornhub is guilty but some other innocent company is destroyed by taking away their ability to accept credit card payments online? In general, I don't think credit card companies should act as police, judge, jury, lawyer or roles like that. Instead, it'd be nice if the courts would produce a reasonable verdict quickly and then credit card companies could base their actions on the outcome in court. I know we live in a society where court cases can drag on for many years, and a lot of laws aren't enforced well, so I see the temptation to try to do activism by other means, but there are some downsides there which Mickelwait doesn't seem to consider.

There are similar issues with going after web hosts, domain registrars, and all sorts of service providers. Realistically, having an online business requires working with some other companies. If an angry online mob can get those service providers to stop working with you, it can kill your business (or non-commericial personal website) without you getting an appropriate chance to defend yourself. I want to live in a world with a lot of freedom where putting up a website and accepting online payments is broadly accessible to almost everyone for almost any purpose. There can be exceptions like if the website is involved in crime, but I do think "innocent until proven guilty (in court)" is an important principle for dealing with crime.

I don't have an easy answer or great solution here. I do think credit card companies and other service providers should do some due diligence to check that they aren't participating in crime. They shouldn't exercise none of their own judgment. But if the courts haven't ruled against a website, and the reason for that isn't obscurity, then I see issues with service providers deciding it's a criminal enterprise when the courts did not.

I do also think, in general, that businesses should be able to make their own decisions, not be forced to work with a company they consider immoral and don't want to work with. But I also think it's good if there are some web hosts, credit cards and other services that are willing to work with companies that some people consider immoral. I don't want unpopular companies to be unable to exist even if they break no laws.

If a company can get a bunch of customers who like their stuff, and it isn't criminal, then I do think generally think they ought to be able to find some services providers to work with. I don't think all the service providers should be controlled by prudes. And they aren't. For example, in 2000, American Express decided not to work with porn websites (they said this was due to lots of chargebacks, not morality), but Visa does work with porn sites. Visa cares about bad publicity though, so a lot of public pressure and news articles can get Visa to drop a customer, even if Visa doesn't think the customer is a criminal enterprise. But public pressure and due process are different things, and it's really problematic if a bunch of outrage, which may be incorrect, can make a company go out of business. Well, let me be more specific. I think it's fine to complain about a company and boycott them, and if they go out of business from losing too many customers, that's fine. It's OK in general to publicly complain and try to get customers to turn against a company. Even if the complaints are wrong, public discourse should exist and customers are allowed to make mistakes. But if a company has plenty of customers who don't agree with the pressure campaign, but they go out of business anyway due to pressure on just a few specific service providers like Visa that don't actually agree about the problem but are coerced into compliance, that seems problematic. But I also suspect that Visa evaluated Pornhub's crime or lack of crime in a bad faith manner, which seems bad.

So I think there are some nuanced issues here that merit analysis. I don't have an easy answer. But Mickelwait didn't provide thoughtful analysis of this in her book. She doesn't seem to have considered these issues when pressuring credit card companies to stop working with Pornhub, nor later when writing the book. Her focus just seems to be on her side winning. For her, it seems implied but not stated that the end (Pornhub losing) justifies most legal means (maybe not lying or some other things that are widely considered unethical? I don't know).

Conclusion

I want to reiterate that I thought the book was mostly good and interesting. I thought it had convincing points about Pornhub committing lots of crime. And many other porn sites have similar problems. Maybe there are some sites where they get signed documents from everyone in every video saying they consent and they're old enough; I don't know; but Pornhub and some others are nothing like that (or weren't a few years ago; I don't know what changes they've made since then).

On a related note, I watched the documentary Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story. It's really bad but Pornhub was much worse. Also, in 2020, someone got 20 years in jail for their involvement with the company GirlsDoPorn.

Certainty is, by standard dictionary definition, knowing for 100% sure that it's absolutely impossible that you could have made a mistake. This contradicts fallibilism which says you can't get a 100% guarantee that any thought process contains no mistakes.

The practical consequences of certainty are things like refusing to debate, not listening to suggestions or criticism, rejecting new scientific theories, being passive-minded or dogmatic, treating forward-thinkers and outliers badly, and even executing heretics.

Fallibilism isn't skepticism. Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff, who clearly aren't skeptics, advocated fallibilism (they didn't do as good a job of advocating it as Karl Popper, but they did say it's correct and make their important claims compatible with it). Fallibilism is compatible with reaching conclusions, taking actions, and not being hesitant, wishy-washy, or endlessly unsure. We can make mistakes, and we should take that into account when deciding how to deal with life, but it shouldn't stop us from doing things. Fallibilism should lead to doing things in robust, resilient ways with margins of error, openness to suggestions and criticism if someone sees a mistake. It should lead to valuing free speech, debate, transparency, objectivity, and ongoing, active attempts to think and learn better.

The desire for certainty and skepticism are linked together. A major cause of skepticism is seeking infallible certainty but being disappointed by failing to get it. If you seek 100% certainty as a requirement of knowledge, then you will get a bad outcome: you'll fail and give up on knowledge or you'll think you succeeded and close your mind to debate and criticism. Accepting fallibilism helps avoid skepticism. This is why Ayn Rand said omniscience is not the standard of knowledge: you don't need perfection or certainty to have knowledge, and setting the criteria for knowledge so impossibly high will result in you thinking nothing is knowledge. Karl Popper had a similar opinion that infallibility is not a requirement for knowledge; there's nothing wrong with fallible or conjectural knowledge and in fact that is what all the scientific success in human history used (since infallibility is impossible, science must always have used fallible knowledge).

Why debate, or listen to a critic, if you're convinced that it's absolutely impossible that you're wrong? You already know in advance that he's wrong and you're right. Either you won't debate or you will view debates as public performances where the wrong and bad people can be corrected, attacked, mocked, or something else where you never consider listening to them and it's never a rational debate where you are open to being corrected yourself.

Certainty, as defined above, is rejected by both Critical Rationalism and Objectivism. Confusingly, Objectivism provided a different, non-standard definition of "certainty", which fits the dictionary poorly, and said that we can have that other type of certainty that doesn't contradict fallibilism. Objectivist-certainty, also called "contextual certainty", means reaching a conclusion while doing your best, and feeling confident enough to take actions using your conclusion, but knowing that you may change your mind if there's ever any new information, new evidence, new ideas, new arguments, new discoveries, etc.

Objectivist-certainty is called "knowledge", "conjectural knowledge", "fallible knowledge" or "tentative knowledge" in Critical Rationalism. Critical Rationalism, like Objectivism, says that infallibility or the standard dictionary definition of "certainty" is not a requirement to have knowledge.

Who is into infallibilism and standard-dictionary-certainty? Some academic philosophers who define knowledge as "justified, true belief" or similar. According to them, anything that turns out to be mistaken was never knowledge. The only way to have knowledge is to have absolute certainty that something is true, and that you'll never change your mind no matter what, otherwise maybe it isn't really knowledge. Popper and Rand both rejected this viewpoint.

Uncertainty

Why is it uncertain that I'm seeing a cat over there which exists? Because sometimes physicists, ontologists, epistemologists, vision researchers, logicians, or zoologists come up with a new discovery that requires rethinking a lot of what we thought we knew. Also, human sight and memory are both fallible, people hallucinate or get confused, people sometimes make mistakes about whether they are awake or dreaming, aliens with advanced technologies could interfere, or we could be living in a simulation and the computer programming controlling the simulation could interfere. These things aren't literally impossible.

Also, you simply don't have any 100% positive proof, and if you tried to you'd run into problems not only with logic and proof but also with physics. If you write the proof down on paper then (as David Deutsch explained in The Fabric of Reality) the correctness of the proof depends on your understanding of the physics of pen and paper. Even if you avoid writing, your understanding of the physics of brains could be mistaken, as could various aspects of your understanding of minds.

Would I raise any of those objections if you said you exist and contain water, you're reading this on a computer that exists and contains silicon, the computer is on a desk that exists and is made primarily of wood, and you can see your cat in the room with you, etc? No. I'd agree with you. I simply don't 100% rule out that anyone could ever come up with a reasonable disagreement. I would be open to debating the topic if someone disagreed.

Can people make bad faith claims and waste time in debates? Yes. There are many ways to recognize and defend against that (though it remains a difficult problem sometimes and better strategies could be developed). The effective ways to deal with it don't require refusing to consider any criticism on certain topics where you feel certain. And the lack of certainty stuff is rarely what trolls actually bring up – it's too abstract, technical, unintuitive to many audience members, and unlikely to emotionally trigger most people.

Knowledge

What is knowledge? It's a subset of information or data. Information is basically anything that could be measured. A grain of sand or drop of water contains vast amounts of information because it contains vast numbers of atoms that could be measured in multiple different ways. Most information isn't knowledge. Knowledge is useful, it has purpose, it's goal-oriented, it solves problems, stuff like that. This is basically the standard dictionary meaning of "knowledge" (but not the "justified, true belief" meaning favored by some philosophers). Some dictionary definitions require that knowledge be contained in a mind, but others allow it to be in books, on computer disks, etc. The concept of being able to write down your knowledge and read it again later makes common sense, fits some dictionaries, and is the Critical Rationalist view.

Note: The definition of “information” that I’m using is in widespread use and has made it into dictionaries now but it's not the standard historical definition, which is more like “facts” or “knowledge”. The more modern definition of "information" that I’m using is more specific and includes non-knowledge. It’s connected with modern developments in physics, math, computer science, information theory and biology. People needed a word for, among other things, the information stored in computer disks or in genes.

I don't think a good, exact, technical, formal definition of knowledge is known. But that's OK. We don't need that to discuss knowledge or do science, and we might even be able to invent artificial general intelligence without it.

What can be accomplished with fallible, uncertain knowledge and no rigorous definition of exactly which information is and isn't knowledge? Everything scientists and philosophers have ever accomplished in human history, since they were all fallible and none of them had a way better definition of knowledge.

According to Critical Rationalism, the only known way of creating knowledge is through evolution. However, it seems problematic to define knowledge in terms of the output of evolution because maybe one day a different way of creating knowledge could be discovered. Humanity has had very poor results trying to come up with other knowledge creation methods so far, but that doesn't mean there are no others.

The physicist and Critical Rationalist David Deutsch hypothesized that knowledge is large structures in the multiverse whereas non-knowledge information forms much smaller multiverse structures. Even if this is correct, it isn't actionable: we can't see the whole multiverse and observe structure sizes. And it doesn't give an exact delineation of how large the structures have to be to count as knowledge, which is similar to me not giving an exact statement of how useful information has to be to count as knowledge.

Critical Rationalists view knowledge as something we keep trying to improve so an exact definition of the minimum cutoff doesn't necessarily seem very useful. We want ongoing progress, not to reach the bare minimum then stop. And we don't spend our time arguing that something isn't useful enough to count as "knowledge"; we aren't trying to do that type of gatekeeping. If anyone thinks an idea is knowledge, then it's above the cutoff; it can be discussed, debated, criticized, improved on, etc. The point of the cutoff is just to clarify that a grain of sand isn't full of knowledge; the cutoff isn't meant to be used against human beings. If people have dumb ideas, we criticize them as incorrect rather than trying to deny they meet the definition of "knowledge".

Are incorrect ideas knowledge? Broadly, yes. People try to come up with good, useful ideas, and while they make mistakes, that doesn't mean there is no knowledge present. Non-knowledge can be thought of like white noise, random junk data or arbitrary information. If a human thought something was a good idea, then it's not going to be anything like random noise; it will actually have a lot of order, structure, correctness and usefulness to it even if it's quite badly wrong with lots of big mistakes.

Objectivism also often views incorrect ideas as knowledge because they were correct in some limited context. Criticizing ideas changes the context but doesn't make them wrong in their original context that doesn't include the new information in the criticism. This is important to how imperfect people who make mistakes can make progress anyway. If each mistake totally invalidated each idea, then science would never have gotten anywhere because making scientific progress only using perfect ideas is way too unrealistic and infallibilist.

Is human knowledge ever true, correct or perfect? There is nothing that says it can't be. We can't absolutely, infallibly prove we're right and made no mistakes. But sometimes we may have made no mistakes. However, even if we had an idea that is the absolute perfect truth with zero errors, we would have no way to know that with certainty. We may be correct sometimes but we don't infallibly know which times those are. Karl Popper talked about the ancient philosopher Xenophanes making this point thousands of years ago.

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Many people have contributed to the ideas discussed here including Karl Popper, Elliot Temple, David Deutsch, Claude Shannon (information theory), Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Xenophanes and Socrates.

David Deutsch wrote an article (originals) about conspiracy theories and we had conversations about them. It's an interesting topic which is worth analyzing not just dismissing. I now think he was right about some of the logic of his analysis, but wrong about how it applies to the world. Deutsch says:

A conspiracy theory is

• an explanation of observed events in current affairs and history … which
• alleges that those events were planned and caused in secret by powerful (or allegedly powerful) conspirators, who thereby…
• benefit at the expense of others, and who therefore…
• lie, and suppress evidence, about their secret actions, and…
• lie about the motives for their public actions.

How would Deutsch apply this to some examples? Based on a decade of experience conversing with him, I think he'd say Diddy parties and Epstein Island could not exist. They should be rejected as conspiracy theories. (That would have been his position before everything came out, not now.)

Why?

The Diddy parties and Epstein Island claims are explanations about secret actions by powerful people. They benefitted at the expense of others, lied about the events, suppressed evidenced, and lied about their motives.

Here is the kind of logical analysis I think Deutsch argued for and believes:

1. Diddy parties or Epstein Island couldn't have been kept secret enough. There's no way to vet every new guest well enough to know they don't have a conscience. There's no way to prevent lower level workers (assistants, delivery people, pilots, etc.) from finding out, and some of them will have a conscience. Some people who disapprove will find out that Diddy or Epstein is lying.
2. It'd just take one whistleblower going to the media to stop Diddy or Epstein. That would result in many news stories and court convictions.

I agree with part 1, but I think part 2 is wrong. I think Deutsch's arguments about the difficulty of keeping conspiracies fully secret were largely good. However, I think he was wrong about the consequences of partial secrecy.

Diddy and Epstein couldn't be open and honest. Lying and trying to keep their secrets was necessary. If they just said the full truth of what they were doing in media interviews, they would have quickly gone to jail. But they couldn't fully keep their secrets. Deutsch was right that keeping conspiracies fully secret is really hard and generally unrealistic. However, partial or even open secrets can actually be pretty effective.

Dealing with Leaks

As a powerful person, you have many options for dealing with anyone who tries to expose you.

You can retaliate against whistleblowers, e.g. firing them or worse.

You can intimidate potential whistleblowers. You can publicly smear them and then some of your fans will probably send them threats.

Whistleblowers have a harder time exposing stuff when they only have partial evidence, not the full picture, so partially successful secrecy still helps.

Whistleblowers often have less status, credibility, power and influence than you. They have less ability to get media attention, they have less trust, if it's just your word against theirs you'll probably win.

You can call in favors with the legal authorities to get charges dismissed, get rulings in your favor, or get charges brought against your enemies.

You can hire great lawyers and PR firms.

You can hire private investigators to find dirt on whistleblowers, then use the dirt against them.

You can sue whistleblowers for defamation even if what they're saying is true. It can be an awful experience for them even if they win in court. Defamation lawsuits, or cease and desist letters threatening them, or merely the person knowing you might sue without you ever saying anything, can all discourage people from speaking out.

You can also sue media companies for defamation, even if their statements were true. They know that and it makes them more cautious about what they'll publish.

You can offer people large amounts of money to sign non-disclosure agreements. You can give rewards and bribes to people who go along with you.

You can make signing non-disclosure agreements a condition of being hired and then sue any whistleblowing employees for violating their agreements.

You can say whistleblowers are lying. Say they're jealous or looking for attention. Say they're bitter over some other conflict, real or made up.

Due to mechanisms like these, plus the apathy of law enforcement, the media and the public, partial secrecy is often enough to get away with lying. Even if some people know you're lying and want to whistleblow, it may not matter much. Even if some social media creators and journalists make accusations, you can deny it and it might never get a lot of public or law enforcement attention.

If the complaints against you go viral online, you're more likely to get in serious trouble. But most good complaints don't go viral. There's so much competition for online attention. Only a few things can go viral out of many, many issues people are talking about. Once something goes viral, a lot of people will say it's awful who would have never lifted a finger to do anything about it before it was viral.

Apathy, Complacency and Complicity

Most members of the media, public and law enforcement don't care that much about lots horrific stuff. It’s partly because horrific stuff is pretty widespread – there are tons of huge problems in the world that compete for attention. It's partly because people are distracted by sports, celebrity gossip and many other things they pay attention to that are fun not depressing. There are also widespread biases like misogyny and racism that are relevant: people sympathize less with victims they're biased against.

Epstein didn't hide his secrets super well. Deutsch was right about the difficulty of total secrecy. Epstein had to deal with court cases. Victims went to the authorities. But he kept getting away with it for additional years anyway. It’s just not something our society will definitely fix as soon as we find out. A lot of bad things just aren't taken that seriously by our society, and therefore thinking they may be happening doesn’t actually require a fully successful conspiracy.

Our society often gives poor treatment to whistleblowers, tattle tales, narcs, squealers, complainers and victims.

I think it’s widespread that e.g. CEOs have secrets, lie about company policies, lie about their motives, and suppress evidence. They do a lot of the elements of a conspiracy. But they do it partially and imperfectly. It's way too hard for them to make sure no employees ever find out and every new executive is vetted to be a bad person before being promoted.

They rely on media and law enforcement being mediocre, the public being dumb or uninterested, their ability to pressure people and reward people, their social network, their PR firm, their lawyers and defamation lawsuit threats, and many other tactics that don't require full secrecy. Even if some people know they're lying, they can often get away with it indefinitely.

We keep finding out belatedly that powerful people had been secretly doing bad things for many years. But it was never really fully secret – it couldn’t be due to Deutsch’s logical analysis. Most people see the downsides of whistleblowing and don't try it, and the people who do try often fail and regret it.

After the truth is revealed, it's in the interests of complicit people, both powerful people and regular people, to say it was more secret than it was in order to deny being as complicit as they were. So a lot of things that come out were actually kept less secret than is generally believed.

Misbehaving Companies

You can read books or watch documentaries to learn about the misbehavior of companies like DuPont, Purdue Pharma, Pornhub, Philip Morris and other tobacco companies. Did any of them successfully have a fully secret conspiracy? No. Deutsch is right that that's too hard. They used partial secrecy and other tactics and that worked pretty well.

Even when the truth comes out, many of the people involved remain rich and out of prison. People seeing these outcomes may think it's worthwhile to do horrible, illegal things to make money because even if you get caught you have a good chance of staying out of jail and keeping a lot of money. Gentle outcomes also discourage whistleblowing: why go to the trouble when, even if most of the world believes you, justice is still unlikely?

Let's examine an example in more detail: Johnson and Johnson (J&J). They're currently trying, again, to have a subsidiary go bankrupt to get out of lawsuits from over 60,000 people claiming their baby powder contained asbestos and caused cancer.

In 2018, Reuters published the article: Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder. In 2020, J&J finally stopped selling that type of baby powder in the US. In 1999, J&J was sued by Darlene Coker, who was dying of cancer at age 52 and thought J&J's baby powder was the cause. J&J knew their product contained asbestos and had written documents saying so, but their lawyers managed to avoid handing over those documents when Coker's lawyer requested them.

A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.

The documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators’ plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and scientific research on the health effects of talc.

So lots of people knew. Lots of it was written down. But J&J kept selling a toxic, cancer-causing product it in the US for 50+ years after knowing about the problem. People outside the company had some knowledge of the problem decades ago but failed to get justice. And today it looks like J&J is dragging out the court proceedings for years while some of the victims die of the cancer J&J gave them. I think it's likely J&J will pay too little in damages and carry on as a successful, rich company, and few or none of the guilty individuals will go to jail.

J&J's actions are the kind of thing Deutsch would dismiss as a conspiracy theory that couldn't happen. He's right that it couldn't be kept fully secret, but wrong that full secrecy is required to get away with horrible actions.

Late Adopters

Most people don't have an "early adopter" mindset. They think if an idea was great or true, it'd already be popular. Someone else already would have noticed first. This comes up in many contexts.

With a new philosophy idea, most people won't seriously consider it until after it gains some popularity. Ideas have to be first be promoted by early adopters and then gradually gain more prestige and recognition before most people will listen.

With whistleblowing, people think "That company (or powerful person) couldn't be doing that; if they were, they'd go to jail". Because so many people think that way, it's hard to expose companies. The public is generally skeptical that really bad things could be happening. People's own families sometimes won't believe them about what their company is doing.

Journalists should have more of an early adopter mindset than most people. They're supposed to be investigating stuff that isn't yet known. So maybe 0.5% of people and 10% of investigative journalists think like early adopters. That would mean a whistleblower has to contact 7 different investigative journalists to exceed a 50% chance of finding one who would listen. (The odds improve if the story is extremely important and you have really solid evidence, but the odds are worse if it's more speculative, only fairly important, or you lack written documentation. Even if they believe you, most journalists won't care that your mid-sized employer is breaking some laws.)

And most people don't whistleblow because they themselves don't have an early adopter mindset. They think if things were really that bad at their company, some of the dozens of other employees would already have noticed and said something.

Having only partial information amplifies these issues. It's much easier not to whistleblow, or not to listen to a whistleblower, when you have a few concerning pieces of evidence, not the full details of everything. Employees often know CEOs are lying about a few things but don't know the full extent of the problems and lying.

Open Secrets

A great example of open secrets is Harvey Weinstein. He lied and hid evidence but didn't do a great job of keeping things secret. Many people knew about his sexual misbehavior. It was an open secret in Hollywood for many years before he got in trouble due to the #MeToo movement. Why didn't people speak out more? He was powerful and used his power to try to ruin the careers of his enemies. He could cost you a role in a movie. Another reason for keeping quiet was fear of being sued for defamation. Even if you're rich, famous and telling the truth, the threat of a frivolous defamation lawsuit still has a chilling effect on speech.

In 2005, Courtney Love overcame her fear of being sued for defamation and spoke out to the media about Harvey Weinstein, although only in a limited way. She knew more but she was afraid to say it openly. It's not like she was holding back from speaking more clearly because she liked Weinstein and wanted to protect him; I think it was fear. She was probably also afraid that he would harm her career by telling people not to hire her, but fear of a lawsuit is what she actually said out loud:

Comedy Central Reporter: Do you have any advice for a young girl moving to Hollywood?

Courtney Love: Ummm... I'll get libeled if I say it... If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons, don't go.

What was the result of Love bravely speaking out? Weinstein lost his job in 2017 and was arrested in 2018. I don't think either journalists or law enforcement did a serious investigation in 2005 after Love's comment. Her old comment got attention after he got in trouble. And Love says she was banned from the CAA talent agency for speaking out, so she did face retaliation that harmed her career.

Fear of Frivolous Lawsuits

The bad behavior protected by potential and actual frivolous defamation lawsuits can be all kinds of things besides sexual harassment. The bad behavior could be using child labor, selling products that cause cancer, selling products that don't work, plagiarism or scientific data fraud. Alleged scammers can sue too. Chainalysis is being sued for $650 million for their "2023 Crypto Crime Report" which said YieldNodes is an "investment scam". YouTuber Coffeezilla is being sued by Logan Paul for calling CryptoZoo a "scam" (and providing reasoning and evidence). There are many more similar lawsuits, and there are far more lawsuit threats than actual lawsuits, and there would be even more threats and lawsuits if so many people weren't keeping quiet out of fear.

John Oliver is a comedian who does funny investigative journalism for HBO. He's supported by a staff including writers, researchers and lawyers. Unfortunately, you can't make a show like that without dealing with lawsuits. Any media organization that wants to share reasonable criticism of terrible companies and people has to be prepared for court. Here's a Reddit title: Here's Why It's a Bad Idea to Sue John Oliver | Oliver did an episode about coal executive Bob Murray. Murray sued. The suit was dismissed. Oliver did a follow-up about how destructive these lawsuits can be to the non-wealthy. It still cost HBO $200K in legal fees and their libel insurance tripled. Here's Oliver's follow-up episode about SLAPP lawsuits.

Donald Trump uses lawsuits because they cost his enemies money, make them miserable, and discourage legitimate free speech criticizing him. In 2006, he sued author Tim O'Brien for defamation for estimating Trump's net worth (using cited sources) well below Trump's own claims. The Atlantic's article Why Trump Won’t Stop Suing the Media and Losing says Trump admitted what he was doing:

As Trump told me in an interview in 2016, he knew he couldn’t win that suit (he didn’t) but brought it anyway to score a few points. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and [O’Brien’s publisher] spent a whole lot more,” he said then. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

Conclusion

Many real world scenarios approximate a conspiracy. People put effort into keeping stuff pretty secret. They lie about facts, hide evidence, and lie about their motives. They have to do that; being really open and honest would quickly land them in jail. Due to the logical issues Deutsch pointed out about conspiracies, they generally won’t succeed at total secrecy. But partial secrecy can be good enough because our society often lets powerful people (or privileged people, or sometimes just anyone) get away with lying and breaking laws as long as they aren't too open and blatant about it. There are many ways people discourage and retaliate against whistleblowing, manage media stories, or get favorable treatment from law enforcement. Defamation law makes it too easy for guilty people to sue truth tellers in a slow, expensive, stressful, time-consuming legal process that sometimes reaches the wrong verdict. These factors help make up for secrets being partially exposed. Fully secret conspiracies are often unnecessary for getting away with some pretty awful stuff.