Trivia question:
How many people can know a secret?
Whatever you answered, you were probably wrong. Unless your answer was “1”.
Because as soon as more than one person knows a secret, control has been lost and it is no longer a secret.
So what?
The same problem applies to conspiracies. The more people that need to be involved, the less likely the conspiracy could be maintained.
Take “Area 51” for example. Many believe that UFOs and their ET crews were found in the 1950s and been hidden from the world for 70 years. People work there. I don’t know how many. Say it’s 100, for a nice round number. In 60-70 years, you would go through *at least* two to three generations of employees. You would have the original people who were there when the UFO(s) was/were brought in. They would eventually move on/retire/die and be replaced. Those people would eventually move on/retire/die, etc. Today we would likely be in the 4th generation.
So let’s say that there have been 400 people with direct working knowledge of the UFOs. There would have to be people in the chain of command who know what is going on, who assure funding and secrecy are maintained. They would also have to pass the knowledge along to subsequent generations too. Say 500 total. For the conspiracy to work, those 500 people over 70 years would have had to be 100% vigilant, and *never* slip and mention to a family member or friend, or whatever. Seems super unlikely to me, and less likely as time passes.
Again, so what?
Well, this brings me to my point. Trump, and many of his supporters, are suggesting that there has been a conspiracy to rob him of the election through shenanigans in the vote counting.
Votes are counted at the county (or equivalent) level, and certified by the Secretary of State of each of the respective states (and DC). There are 3,141 counties (or their equivalent) in the US.
In order for this conspiracy to succeed, even if it only targeted certain counties, in certain states – would require literally *thousands* of people to know about it, and for not one of them to spill the beans. Not one.
Ain’t happening. Didn’t happen. Move on.
Incompetence? I’ll buy that. I am sure that there have been mistakes and miscounts. Stupidity? Sure, but it’s important to understand the “Law of compensating errors”, which states that in any sufficiently large math equation, mistakes will be made, and that in general they will cancel each other out, and the final answer will be very close to correct.
If there are errors in the vote count, Hanlon’s Razor provides the most likely answer:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
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