3 ms·
A lot of the time, this might not be a property of the update process so much as the prior itself. A conspiracy theory is often something that can explain any
by jbay808 6y ago
A lot of the time, this might not be a property of the update process so much as the prior itself.
A conspiracy theory is often something that can explain any lack of observational evidence for itself (because it's covered up!). If the prior on the conspiracy being true is too high, the update on contrary evidence will be very weak just because the conspiracy theory makes weak predictions about upcoming observations, so it loses probability mass very slowly as a whole, with probability mass mostly just being shifted within the context of the theory.
("They're covering up aliens!" --> no evidence of this after fifty years? --> "It's worse than I thought; they must be using mind control!")
The only cure for this might be preventative -- just maintaining a strong doubt on deep conspiracy theories. But that also means resigning yourself to never believing in one before it's revealed. If it turns out you live in a reality where the government is using mind control to conceal aliens, you'll not be the one who realizes it before everyone else.
- yorwba 6y ago> the conspiracy theory makes weak predictions about upcoming observations, so it loses probability mass very slowly as a whole That may be the case for conspiracy theories, but I'd expect the theory that dogs are dangerous to make much stronger predictions. On the other hand, maybe people who're afraid of dogs don't expect them to behave differently, they just think that everything dogs do is scary (which is true, since they're scared by everything dogs do.)
- jbay808 6y agoI think you're right; it could be either. In this example, if their fear of dogs causes them to misperceive a dog's excitement as anger, then it's closer to the scenario in the article. But if their paranoia is such that they perceive the dog is acting friendly but interpret that as the dog luring them into a sense of safety to bite them later, then it's more like the conspiracy theory case.
- Siira 6y agoIt’s about power; Dogs being violent isn’t super rare, and if a dog decides to get violent, I have no control over it. The probability of the danger is low, but it is sufficiently bad even in mild cases that I do not want to take any chances.