The label "conspiracy theory" carries zero informational content regarding the truth-value of anyproposition to which it is applied: a false proposition is false whether or not it is so labeled, and a trueproposition remains true regardless. Yet the label functions as one of the most effective mechanisms ofepistemic suppression in contemporary discourse. This paper identifies the mechanism responsible for thisdisjunction between informational vacuity and rhetorical power: ad hominem laundering — the process bywhich an attack on the speaker is disguised as an evaluation of the proposition through the application of apseudo-epistemological label. We demonstrate that the statement "that is a conspiracy theory" performs thesame logical operation as "you are a liar," but camouflages this ad hominem as an epistemologicalclassification. The analysis proceeds through five arguments: (1) a formal demonstration that the label’struth-value information is exactly zero; (2) a self-selection argument showing that the pool of claimscirculating as "conspiracy theories" is structurally biased against deliberate fabrication, since rationalfabricators self-select into fiction; (3) a tripartite analysis of receiver responses revealing that the label’seffectiveness correlates inversely with epistemic competence — the signature of an epistemologicalobstruction device; (4) an analysis of how the label inverts the burden of proof by exploiting informationasymmetries; and (5) a demonstration that the label bypasses the examination of boundary conditions,terminating inquiry before evaluation begins. The paper concludes that the label is structurally illegitimateregardless of the truth-value distribution of conspiracy theories, and that naming the mechanism — adhominem laundering — removes the condition on which its success depends: invisibility.
Franny Philos Sophia (Thu,) studied this question.