Guerra-Pujol on Betting on Conspiracy Theories: Kurt Godel and “The Leibniz Cover-Up”

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, University of Central Florida; Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, has published Betting on Conspiracy Theories: Kurt Godel and ‘The Leibniz Cover-Up’. Here is the abstract.

My contribution to this 2021 symposium on “Alternative Realities, Conspiracy Theory, and the Constitutional and Democratic Order” will explore a little-known conspiracy theory: The Leibniz Conspiracy. Although this particular conspiracy theory is a relatively benign and trivial one in the larger scheme of things, it nevertheless merits careful study because of the man who invented it, the great logician Kurt Gödel. That one the greatest minds of all time could formulate such an elaborate and far-fetched conspiracy theory shows us why beliefs in conspiracies are so compelling, widespread, and unavoidable and also why most psychological explanations of conspiracy theories are off the mark. In the alternative, I will propose a Conspiracy Theory Betting Market. In brief, a betting market would aggregate all available information about the truth values of various conspiracy theories by allowing people to bet on their beliefs about past events.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.