5 ms·

There's a weird parallel to the pizzagate kerfuffle. Lots of people who wanted to get to the "real truth" by only looking at online sources, like it's some sort

There's a weird parallel to the pizzagate kerfuffle. Lots of people who wanted to get to the "real truth" by only looking at online sources, like it's some sort of virtual escape room that's been pre-built with clues. Staring at google street view images and trying to find the pattern in all the store signs on the same block, coming up with bizarre circular logic around "cp" where references to pizza at a pizza parlor meant children were being abused. Finally one of them bothered to show up in person (with a rifle, to "save the children") and found... a neighborhood pizza shop with no basement. And when he went back online and said "hey guys, I checked it out and there's nothing there" they all decided he was a government plant. It's like people have forgotten the real world exists, and is the actual reality that's being referred to online.

jancsika 4y ago
I'm not sure I see the parallel. In the first example, a forum poster was taking the absence of evidence to be evidence of absence. In fact I've never met a person who didn't have a story about making such a mistake, so I'd venture to guess we all do that at some point in our lives[1]. In your example, however, people were confusing the absence of evidence with an imagined preponderance of evidence. That's an error on a very different level, like accidentally joining a pyramid scheme or getting sick from eating an entire piece of plastic fruit. 1: See? :)
- drc500free 4y ago
  I think I see the parallel as being more a streetlamp problem (looking for the keys under the streetlamp even though you dropped them in the yard, because there's no light in the yard). "Absence of evidence/evidence of absence" and "seeing patterns in random noise" are just two different ways brains mess up when confronted with empty sample data. The thing that's in common is a belief that if there was something to observe, it would necessarily be in the place you're looking. Maybe it's a form of map-territory confusion. I've seen it quite a lot professionally, whether it's "let's sell business travel via facebook rather than linkedin, because facebook has better analytics and conversion tracking" or "a disorder is only real once it's listed in the DSM-V" or "this UX issue can't be a real issue because all of our current customers say they are ok with it." People sometimes just pick a systematically wrong approach to learning about the world, leading to a wide range of silly outcomes.

jancsika 4y ago

I'm not sure I see the parallel. In the first example, a forum poster was taking the absence of evidence to be evidence of absence. In fact I've never met a person who didn't have a story about making such a mistake, so I'd venture to guess we all do that at some point in our lives[1]. In your example, however, people were confusing the absence of evidence with an imagined preponderance of evidence. That's an error on a very different level, like accidentally joining a pyramid scheme or getting sick from eating an entire piece of plastic fruit. 1: See? :)

drc500free 4y ago
I think I see the parallel as being more a streetlamp problem (looking for the keys under the streetlamp even though you dropped them in the yard, because there's no light in the yard). "Absence of evidence/evidence of absence" and "seeing patterns in random noise" are just two different ways brains mess up when confronted with empty sample data. The thing that's in common is a belief that if there was something to observe, it would necessarily be in the place you're looking. Maybe it's a form of map-territory confusion. I've seen it quite a lot professionally, whether it's "let's sell business travel via facebook rather than linkedin, because facebook has better analytics and conversion tracking" or "a disorder is only real once it's listed in the DSM-V" or "this UX issue can't be a real issue because all of our current customers say they are ok with it." People sometimes just pick a systematically wrong approach to learning about the world, leading to a wide range of silly outcomes.