‘Everything Is a Conspiracy Theory When You Don’t Trust Anything’ ⇥ youtube.com

Hank Green, who lives in Montana, spotted something weird with his mail-in ballot: in all categories, the Democrat candidate was listed last. That seemed odd. So he looked it up:

Since every district — and there’s a ton of them — is getting a different ballot anyway, the candidates on each ballet — it turns out — are in a different order.

To eliminate bias, the candidates are initially ordered in alphabetical order. But then, it gets shifted by one for every ballot in the sequence.

Clever.

Green quotes the saying “everything is a conspiracy theory if you don’t know anything” but, as he is wont to point out, that is negative and unkind. A better version, he says, is “everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t trust anything”.

I like that.

Mike Masnick, Techdirt:

I’d add a caveat to that as well, though. You have to not trust anything and also not have the intellectual curiosity to find out what’s true. Hank is the kind of person who does have that intellectual curiosity. Even though he was initially concerned, before he spouted off, he did the research and found out that his concerns were unfounded.

I think Masnick’s addition is fair, but also a little redundant, I believe. Someone who lacks trust to the degree of believing fantastical tales about the world is also someone who, upon looking things up, will disregard what they are reading. Being intellectually curious requires trust: in others, to provide accurate information; and in oneself to admit a lack of knowledge, and be able to assess new information.