5 ms·

Sorry; sort of referencing information theory and also the rationalism movement. One way of thinking about information is "the extent to which something is a su

by jerf 7y ago

Sorry; sort of referencing information theory and also the rationalism movement. One way of thinking about information is "the extent to which something is a surprise". The rationalists point out that you need to be sensitive to that. Dismissing NXVIM and Epstein today may seem easy, but the question is, would you have believed the truth about them before you heard it [1]? If not, that is a surprise to you, real information, real signal, and you shouldn't discard it. It does not mean that the only logical conclusion is to believe Pizzagate must be true in its entirity!!!11!1. But it does mean you have something to grapple with, a strong signal that your previous model is false in some manner. Brains are lazy and take least effort paths, and the least effort path is just to ignore that there was a contradiction, but your really shouldn't do that. For myself and my priors, Pizzagate as a whole is a bit much to swallow. But "Epstein and NXVIM are the tip of an iceberg, albeit one much smaller than Pizzagate" is not at all. As I alluded to earlier, there's plenty of history that would support that no problem. Read accounts of cults and what they were like to live in from those who escaped, for instance. Human psychology has some very strange, yet weirdly popular, corner cases in it, especially weird ones around group behavior. I do not understand them either intuitively or intellectually, I can not explain them, but clearly they exist. [1]: Bearing in mind that Epstein today is still just somewhat well-sourced allegations with a lot of prior reason to believe they are plausible even just from the mainstream news reports of the past including public knowledge of related past convictions, but that NXVIM has been through court cases and some verdicts have been reached, though I believe they are ongoing overall.

duxup 7y ago
Do you feel like Epstein and NXVIM are related in some way? I feel like you draw keep drawing connections between all these things when the connection is basically that you think people wouldn't belive some non specific past claim about Epstein... and so that means something about Pizzagate? I don't think that people might not belive a thing, anything, and then find out it is true ... has anything to do with anything else.
- jerf 7y ago
  "Do you feel like Epstein and NXVIM are related in some way?" That they are two similar things that people would not have believed before that turned out to be true. (Or very likely true.) "I don't think that people might not belive a thing, anything, and then find out it is true ... has anything to do with anything else." Probably better to link to something you can poke through than try to explain it myself: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GJ4ZQm7crTzTM6xDW/focus-your-uncertainty https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GJ4ZQm7crTzTM6xDW/focus-your... That is in the middle of a sequence, you may find it helpful to start at the beginning, but it's starts speaking directly to what I was referring to. (I actually don't consider myself a "rationalist", for variety of reasons, but I still have learned a lot from them. But I do endorse the specific idea that if you can explain why something is true, and explain why it is false, equally fluidly, you have no explanation. I recommend them for their reading about their ways of thought, and thinking about them carefully; I recommend significantly more care and intellectual inertia when they try to create enormous castles of further inference on top of that.)
  - duxup 7y ago
    This still reads like a conspiracy theory type argument where just because in your mind something you feel may have been rejected was true (without any clarity on what exactly that is)...then you insert another topic people reject in an effort to support it along with a bunch of vague implications that they're related.
    - jerf 7y ago
      I would consider that a mostly-accurate summary. However, where you appear to believe that's logically fallacious, I'm saying, it's actually mathematically rigorous, and a valid and underused mode of thought. If you find yourself nervous because of the metaheuristic "any mode of thought that makes 'conspiracy theories' seem more likely is suspicious", I endorse that metaheuristic. For the most part, this sort of thinking tends to slice through crazy conspiracy theories, not endorse them. One of the major characteristics of a lot of crazy conspiracy theories is an ability to explain/explain away anything, and this mode of thought will help you recognize that and slice it away. The reason why it's slicing the other way here in this particular instance is that we are getting fairly unambiguous positive evidence that is at least in the direction of Pizzagate. This is unusual; unambiguous positive evidence in favor of a "conspiracy theory" does not happen very often, so we should expect to have unusual reactions to it. As I've said above, it doesn't mean that therefore the rational thing to do is to accept it entirely. But it does mean the rational response is to raise its probability in your mind a bit, along with other hypotheses the evidence is compatible with (like my "it's bigger than these two things but not Pizzagate-scale" example above). We can also bear in mind that we are not obligated to come to the decision today. If Pizzagate is true, and if the Q line is true, then we are going to get more evidence in the future. If it is false, then this will (based on past history of such things) fizzle and die. We can use those predictions and watch the world to see what happens. (And, yes, those are very simplified; I can generate another half-a-dozen possibilities and their corresponding predictions easily.) In another year, hopefully we will be closer to the truth, whatever it may be, than we can be (let alone "are") today.

by jerf 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

Do you feel like Epstein and NXVIM are related in some way? I feel like you draw keep drawing connections between all these things when the connection is basically that you think people wouldn't belive some non specific past claim about Epstein... and so that means something about Pizzagate? I don't think that people might not belive a thing, anything, and then find out it is true ... has anything to do with anything else.

jerf 7y ago
"Do you feel like Epstein and NXVIM are related in some way?" That they are two similar things that people would not have believed before that turned out to be true. (Or very likely true.) "I don't think that people might not belive a thing, anything, and then find out it is true ... has anything to do with anything else." Probably better to link to something you can poke through than try to explain it myself: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GJ4ZQm7crTzTM6xDW/focus-your-uncertainty https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GJ4ZQm7crTzTM6xDW/focus-your... That is in the middle of a sequence, you may find it helpful to start at the beginning, but it's starts speaking directly to what I was referring to. (I actually don't consider myself a "rationalist", for variety of reasons, but I still have learned a lot from them. But I do endorse the specific idea that if you can explain why something is true, and explain why it is false, equally fluidly, you have no explanation. I recommend them for their reading about their ways of thought, and thinking about them carefully; I recommend significantly more care and intellectual inertia when they try to create enormous castles of further inference on top of that.)
- duxup 7y ago
  This still reads like a conspiracy theory type argument where just because in your mind something you feel may have been rejected was true (without any clarity on what exactly that is)...then you insert another topic people reject in an effort to support it along with a bunch of vague implications that they're related.
  - jerf 7y ago
    I would consider that a mostly-accurate summary. However, where you appear to believe that's logically fallacious, I'm saying, it's actually mathematically rigorous, and a valid and underused mode of thought. If you find yourself nervous because of the metaheuristic "any mode of thought that makes 'conspiracy theories' seem more likely is suspicious", I endorse that metaheuristic. For the most part, this sort of thinking tends to slice through crazy conspiracy theories, not endorse them. One of the major characteristics of a lot of crazy conspiracy theories is an ability to explain/explain away anything, and this mode of thought will help you recognize that and slice it away. The reason why it's slicing the other way here in this particular instance is that we are getting fairly unambiguous positive evidence that is at least in the direction of Pizzagate. This is unusual; unambiguous positive evidence in favor of a "conspiracy theory" does not happen very often, so we should expect to have unusual reactions to it. As I've said above, it doesn't mean that therefore the rational thing to do is to accept it entirely. But it does mean the rational response is to raise its probability in your mind a bit, along with other hypotheses the evidence is compatible with (like my "it's bigger than these two things but not Pizzagate-scale" example above). We can also bear in mind that we are not obligated to come to the decision today. If Pizzagate is true, and if the Q line is true, then we are going to get more evidence in the future. If it is false, then this will (based on past history of such things) fizzle and die. We can use those predictions and watch the world to see what happens. (And, yes, those are very simplified; I can generate another half-a-dozen possibilities and their corresponding predictions easily.) In another year, hopefully we will be closer to the truth, whatever it may be, than we can be (let alone "are") today.