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"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

by 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.
  - duxup 7y ago
    > we are getting fairly unambiguous positive evidence that is at least in the direction of Pizzagate What exactly is that? >and if the Q line is true You mean the person who has repeatedly posted false info? Photos where they claim to have secret information that were just taken from other websites, that people were arrested who haven't been... so on. This all still seems to boil down to connecting things with nothing to connect them under the guise of not rejecting something.
    - jerf 7y ago
      "You mean the person who has repeatedly posted false info? Photos where they claim to have secret information that were just taken from other websites, that people were arrested who haven't been... so on." This does not meaningfully distinguish Q from any other media outlet. You may note, reading between the lines of this conversation to date, that I don't exactly give a lot of blind credibility to anybody claiming to have information for me. "What exactly is that?" That powerful people are involved with more sex crimes then we thought before. You kinda didn't get what you expected out of this conversation, did you? You expected to be dealing with some sort of raving lunatic who could be easily mocked for boldly overreaching. Unfortunately, you're kinda the one overreaching here. "Pizzagate is a conspiracy theory that is not true and anyone who believes it or even entertains it is crazy, therefore any evidence that could potentially point to it being true must be false and/or unimportant, therefore these bits of information can't be important and must not mean anything, lest anybody give any credence to a false conspiracy theory", which I think is what you're trying to feed me here, is not a logically-defensible position; it is as riddled with fallacies as "Pizzagate is probably true so the slightest bit of evidence that seems to support it should be immediately believed and is also probably true and also proves Pizzagate, which will also prove the next bit of evidence true." In fact, it's almost the same bundle of fallacies in both cases.

by jerf 7y ago

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.
- duxup 7y ago
  > we are getting fairly unambiguous positive evidence that is at least in the direction of Pizzagate What exactly is that? >and if the Q line is true You mean the person who has repeatedly posted false info? Photos where they claim to have secret information that were just taken from other websites, that people were arrested who haven't been... so on. This all still seems to boil down to connecting things with nothing to connect them under the guise of not rejecting something.
  - jerf 7y ago
    "You mean the person who has repeatedly posted false info? Photos where they claim to have secret information that were just taken from other websites, that people were arrested who haven't been... so on." This does not meaningfully distinguish Q from any other media outlet. You may note, reading between the lines of this conversation to date, that I don't exactly give a lot of blind credibility to anybody claiming to have information for me. "What exactly is that?" That powerful people are involved with more sex crimes then we thought before. You kinda didn't get what you expected out of this conversation, did you? You expected to be dealing with some sort of raving lunatic who could be easily mocked for boldly overreaching. Unfortunately, you're kinda the one overreaching here. "Pizzagate is a conspiracy theory that is not true and anyone who believes it or even entertains it is crazy, therefore any evidence that could potentially point to it being true must be false and/or unimportant, therefore these bits of information can't be important and must not mean anything, lest anybody give any credence to a false conspiracy theory", which I think is what you're trying to feed me here, is not a logically-defensible position; it is as riddled with fallacies as "Pizzagate is probably true so the slightest bit of evidence that seems to support it should be immediately believed and is also probably true and also proves Pizzagate, which will also prove the next bit of evidence true." In fact, it's almost the same bundle of fallacies in both cases.