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> otherwise intelligent friends Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim.

by hnarn 4y ago

> otherwise intelligent friends Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam. I think that if you see “intelligent” people that have a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, such as when you discard these extraordinary claims due to the lack of extraordinary evidence, maybe you need to re-evaluate what “intelligent” actually means, or how you qualify it. The most intelligent people I’ve ever met are filled with doubt, because they have the skill I just mentioned. Faced with extraordinary claims they respond “that’s strange, I wonder if it can be substantiated” — they do not respond by fervently trying to convince anyone they meet that something REALLY crazy is going on and we all need to figure out the “real” state of things IMMEDIATELY without regard for method and process. What I might agree with you in, is that conspiratorial thinking much like alcoholism or gambling addiction, obviously CAN “infect” very intelligent people, because they are at the end of the day just people. But an intelligent person with a mental illness does not make them less intelligent, nor does it make that mental illness more “real”. The real and fundamental problem underneath all of this is the so-called “post truth society” we’re increasingly moving into, where what’s actually true doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and people just feel like they’re combatants in a war of ideas, and the more they push their ideas regardless of their truthfulness, the more true that idea becomes. That might be true for ideology, or cultural movements, but it’s not true for investigative journalism and scientific exploration.

colordrops 4y ago
What makes you the arbiter as to what is an "extraordinary claim"?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I do think this is a legitimate question. The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. It seems precarious to apply different levels of scrutiny to claims based on such a basis.
  - hnarn 4y ago
    > The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. That is what extraordinary means: that it violates our previous experiences, that it is "out of the ordinary". Human beings navigate reality based on previous experience, and most of the time it serves us really well. Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist, for example. That doesn't make it true, but it's a reasonable assumption to start at, because the vast majority of human beings (not all) have not had an experience involving extraterrestrials, nor do they trust another human being who has (i.e. secondary confirmation): so when a third party claims that this has happened to them, it's hard to take in, because it's "extraordinary". The statement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is nothing but an acknowledgement of the fact that human beings work this way, and that even though it's not a fail-safe way to reason, chances are that you'll end up with a correct conclusion more often than if you simply start every reasoning with "we have no idea what is true". Primary confirmation of something you can observe or reproduce, or secondary confirmation of the same via someone you trust, are the two primary ways we reason about what we believe, because we are social creatures. In my opinion, when you go down the path of equating all secondary confirmations with each-other, disregarding expertise, consensus, or anything else that might give weight to that secondary opinion because "you can't trust anything anyway", I believe that you are walking down a dangerous and anti-intellectual route, and that this is the reason behind many of the things that are dividing societies worldwide today. Obviously I'm not saying an expert is correct by definition, nor am I saying that the majority is always right, but both of those statements are more true than false: no wonder that when you flip those statements around, you end up with some "kooky" conclusions.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      What you're saying sounds completely uncontroversial[1] to me, but there are several claims in here that are impossible or really difficult to validate. I see claims like this a lot, and they are often of the shape "most people x" or "the vast majority of x y". The only time that these claims can be anything other than gut feelings is the case where the speaker is somehow aware of all of the events in the set. Something like "I took 100 samples and 99 of them met the conditions". This is going to seem pedantic, and I think you'll get a pass from people with the same preconceptions who don't habitually ask "do I really know this?". > Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist, for example. Testable hypothesis, and one I might assume myself. Is it true? Realistically, I have no clue, and I have no reasonable way to judge whether you do either. > the vast majority of human beings (not all) have not had an experience involving extraterrestrials, nor do they trust another human being who has Same as above. I think it's incredibly difficult to know much of anything specific about "the vast majority of human beings". And then the ambiguity on what constitutes "the vast majority" makes it more of a quagmire. There are billions of us. A fraction of a percent is vast. The vast majority might as well be infinity when it comes to our ability to know things about it. Would you agree? I think these claims would be much more robust if you put some constraints on them: ie the vast majority of people in my social circles/media consumption that I trust to have shown me what they really believe. But you'd sound a little kooky if you said that, and it wouldn't be that powerful of a statement. All that said, I believe your conclusions. I just have a fascination with picking at people's (and my own) confidence in uncontroversial claims that are hard to substantiate. [1] My favorite types of things to poke at, which probably does make me a bit of a kook. Edit: I have tried to eliminate "most people x" and "the vast majority of x y" from most of what I write for these reasons. It still comes out inadvertently sometimes. Edit2:I missed one: "most of the time it serves us really well". Same comment.
- syzarian 4y ago
  We all evaluate factual claims and determine whether or not we think they are true or plausible. Each of us is an arbiter of what constitutes and extraordinary claim in the same way each of us is an arbiter of what is moral/immoral. A kook can be spotted by the way they talk. They have knowledge others don’t. They don’t say, “I’ve read that…” or “It seems like this might have happened.”. They speak with certainty and argue by assertion. Making one claim after another all without evidence. They link together facts by claiming some cabal or powerful person is behind things and a refusal to agree means you are a victim of propaganda. The thinking is disorganized. They have a need to evangelize their ideas and tend to think coincidences can’t happen. Correlation is causation.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Aren't you exhibiting some of the characteristics you now describe?
    - syzarian 4y ago
      At the end of my second paragraph feel free to add, “In my opinion.”. I was stating my criteria for evaluating whether or not someone is a kook. While no one has appointed me an arbiter of such things I do have to evaluate claims and reason about them. Similarly no one appointed me an arbiter of morality but I do have to make moral judgements and determine wether or not a given act is justified or unjustified.
- harvey9 4y ago
  Taking the supplied example "Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. " Individual false flag military operations are not uncommon, but widespread destruction of one's own country for propaganda purposes would be extraordinary.
  - hnarn 4y ago
    > Individual false flag military operations are not uncommon There are many historical examples proving that false flag military operations in themselves is not a conspiracy theory, it's something that has happened and will continue to happen. What is extremely important though is context. A famous false flag operation from history, for example, is the "Gleiwitz incident": Nazi Germany attacked its own radio station in 1939 to justify attacking Poland. Even at the time, it was obvious that something about this was fishy, because anyone could understand that Poland did not have anything to gain by starting a war with Germany -- a Germany that by the way had annexed Austria and the Sudetenland the year before. Of course, nobody in the German political leadership actually cared what people believed, much like Russia today spreads misinformation about Ukraine that is borderline laughable. It's not always about the information being believable, it can also be a show of force: I'm lying to your face, we both know it, but what are you going to do about it?
    - akimball 4y ago
      > it's something that has happened and will continue to happen. That does not imply that it is not a conspiracy theory. It implies that it is a correct conspiracy theory.
      - hnarn 4y ago
        No it does not. It simply means that it’s far from impossible. Many things that are “far from impossible” are blatantly false.
    - harvey9 4y ago
      I'm not denying the historical reality of false flag operations, I'm saying they were individual events rather than a prolonged widespread campaign of (self-)destruction.
- hammock 4y ago
  Interesting question that illuminates why the position of the Overton window is important- it sets the boundaries of which claims are “extraordinary” and can therefore be attacked with this thought-terminating cliche
  - hnarn 4y ago
    Which thought terminating cliche specifically are you referring to?
    - colordrops 4y ago
      "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
      - hnarn 4y ago
        Why are you answering a question that wasn't posed to you?
cpa 4y ago
Very smart people join cults all the time, and it's quite well understood that you don't get them to leave a cult by showing them how irrational it is.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  I think the parent is saying that ipso facto joining a cult means that they weren't actually 'very smart', only in appearance.
  - hnarn 4y ago
    At least I think it might be a good idea to question what we individually mean by "intelligent" or "very smart" when we see people that we think harbor these traits behaving in a way that we strongly dislike. The definition of intelligence is not a completely uncontroversial subject.
  - akimball 4y ago
    As is often said of GPT.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      That's an interesting way to put it.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Cults are like a confidence grift. Everyone has weaknesses, and the people running these things target and exploit them. Smart people often make dumb choices.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    > I think the parent is saying that ipso facto joining a cult means that they weren't actually 'very smart', only in appearance. If by "intelligent" we mean the conventional thing -- learns new things easily, capable of reasoning through complex tasks, would do well in med school/law school/phd programs/finance/engineering, picks up creative disciplines quickly, etc -- then are we sure it's not exactly the other way around? People become invested in cults and conspiracies for emotional reasons, not rational reasons, and conventionally intelligent people are extraordinarily good at post hoc rationalization. More importantly, they're often better at mitigating or managing some of the downsides (eg, maintaining good-enough status in a cult, avoiding talking about the conspiracy in certain circumstances, etc.). At least, this has been my experience with some extended family who fell into a cult: the ones I could consider "smartest" were stuck in the cult the longest, because they could rationalize their way into an answer for everything.
himinlomax 4y ago
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (...) As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam. Most conspiracies theories are extremely implausible. However there is a conspiracy theory about Covid that is so extremely plausible that it's the claims that it's not that should require extraordinary evidence. That theory is that the perfectly pedestrian hypothesis that a lab studying dangerous pathogens could have experienced an industrial accident resulting in a pandemic was covered up by both a totalitarian government and other individuals with a personal interest in the matter. Where am I going with this? Well, I posit that years of throwing around accusations of "conspiracy theorism" and promoting dodgy "fact checking" that typically involves mere opinions rather than incontrovertible facts has made downright demented ideas like Ukraine bombing itself more palatable. In other words, "they lied to us about Wuhan, they must be lying about Ukraine" or something.
- oneshtein 4y ago
  This incident, which caused release of virus, was filmed and was available on YouTube, see https://web.archive.org/web/20200407175030/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w7SAeNcXA8 https://web.archive.org/web/20200407175030/https://www.youtu... (2019.09.16, explosion at Vector BioSafety Level 4 lab, Novosibirsk, RF). Observe the soldier in the background at the 01:05 timestamp who appears to have taken a water tube from the BSL4 lab. This is concrete proof rather than a mere speculation. It's worth considering why the Russians removed this video.
  - hammock 4y ago
    For those who don’t speak Russian, can you tell us the content of the video?
    - oneshtein 4y ago
      See these articles in English for details: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosion-smallpox-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosi... https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/explosion-vector-hoping-best-while-preparing-worst https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/explosion-vector-hoping-be... Following an explosion, first responders and firefighters entered a building to inspect (break into) every room on every floor for signs of fire. It has been reported that some Russian firefighters have been known to steal items during these inspections, as they can deny responsibility after a door lock is broken. The video shows a soldier pouring out water from a stolen water bottle while the director of the BSL4 lab speaks. There were several investigations conducted by independent Russian reporters into this incident and the subsequent outbreak of an unknown virus in Siberia that occurred shortly after, but I am unable to locate them now.
pastacacioepepe 4y ago
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence Extraordinarity is subjective. For you those claims might be extraordinary, for others they may be logical. I can guarantee you a time will come when the positions will be reversed. Failing to understand this shows you're also having a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, as pretty much everyone else. The problem is that you seem more interested in attacking the intelligence of people who disagree with you than in understanding what makes their claim ordinary for them.
- mistermann 4y ago
  Watching casuals practice "epistemology" (as they perceive it) is a lot like the Gell Mann Amnesia Effect, or watching congresspeople discussing TikTok: in over their heads, and not aware of it (in large part because we live in a culture where what is "true" is by consensus/memorization, and any suggestion of serious epistemic practice is (often emotionally and insistently) dismissed because that "is" "pedantic" or "is" a "conspiracy theory"...both socially conditioned behaviors, in fact (as a boolean)). Easy way to trigger the phenomenon: introduce the notion of complex causality (as opposed to justification) into a Ukraine war discussion, and observe with fascination the highly probabilistic responses from humans (perform 100 experiments, aggregate the ensuing responses, and you will have a normal distribution, gee, a lot like how ChatGPT works). I have LOTS of practice doing this (on a variety of topics, religion is another easy one) on platforms where longer and finer grained arguments are socially acceptable (they tend not to be on more intellectual sites like HN). This very thread has numerous artifacts of various associated phenomena, but it's all normal so goes unnoticed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
tshaddox 4y ago
I think intelligence and interest in the truth are for the most part entirely independent. Someone may easily have the cognitive ability to discern the truth but no interest in doing so, especially when they’ve chosen a personal and group identity that would be threatened by recognition of the truth.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. “Extraordinary” is always judged in regard to the judging party’s priors, and people have wildly different priors (and people on both sides will say – with some accuracy on both sides, though very much not equal accuracy – that this is because the other side has priors that are influenced by disinformation spread as propaganda by the other side.)
adalacelove 4y ago
I like your reasoning but I think you are mixing intelligence with rationality, which usually correlate.

by hnarn 4y ago

colordrops 4y ago

What makes you the arbiter as to what is an "extraordinary claim"?

marginalia_nu 4y ago
I do think this is a legitimate question. The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. It seems precarious to apply different levels of scrutiny to claims based on such a basis.
- hnarn 4y ago
  > The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. That is what extraordinary means: that it violates our previous experiences, that it is "out of the ordinary". Human beings navigate reality based on previous experience, and most of the time it serves us really well. Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist, for example. That doesn't make it true, but it's a reasonable assumption to start at, because the vast majority of human beings (not all) have not had an experience involving extraterrestrials, nor do they trust another human being who has (i.e. secondary confirmation): so when a third party claims that this has happened to them, it's hard to take in, because it's "extraordinary". The statement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is nothing but an acknowledgement of the fact that human beings work this way, and that even though it's not a fail-safe way to reason, chances are that you'll end up with a correct conclusion more often than if you simply start every reasoning with "we have no idea what is true". Primary confirmation of something you can observe or reproduce, or secondary confirmation of the same via someone you trust, are the two primary ways we reason about what we believe, because we are social creatures. In my opinion, when you go down the path of equating all secondary confirmations with each-other, disregarding expertise, consensus, or anything else that might give weight to that secondary opinion because "you can't trust anything anyway", I believe that you are walking down a dangerous and anti-intellectual route, and that this is the reason behind many of the things that are dividing societies worldwide today. Obviously I'm not saying an expert is correct by definition, nor am I saying that the majority is always right, but both of those statements are more true than false: no wonder that when you flip those statements around, you end up with some "kooky" conclusions.
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    What you're saying sounds completely uncontroversial[1] to me, but there are several claims in here that are impossible or really difficult to validate. I see claims like this a lot, and they are often of the shape "most people x" or "the vast majority of x y". The only time that these claims can be anything other than gut feelings is the case where the speaker is somehow aware of all of the events in the set. Something like "I took 100 samples and 99 of them met the conditions". This is going to seem pedantic, and I think you'll get a pass from people with the same preconceptions who don't habitually ask "do I really know this?". > Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist, for example. Testable hypothesis, and one I might assume myself. Is it true? Realistically, I have no clue, and I have no reasonable way to judge whether you do either. > the vast majority of human beings (not all) have not had an experience involving extraterrestrials, nor do they trust another human being who has Same as above. I think it's incredibly difficult to know much of anything specific about "the vast majority of human beings". And then the ambiguity on what constitutes "the vast majority" makes it more of a quagmire. There are billions of us. A fraction of a percent is vast. The vast majority might as well be infinity when it comes to our ability to know things about it. Would you agree? I think these claims would be much more robust if you put some constraints on them: ie the vast majority of people in my social circles/media consumption that I trust to have shown me what they really believe. But you'd sound a little kooky if you said that, and it wouldn't be that powerful of a statement. All that said, I believe your conclusions. I just have a fascination with picking at people's (and my own) confidence in uncontroversial claims that are hard to substantiate. [1] My favorite types of things to poke at, which probably does make me a bit of a kook. Edit: I have tried to eliminate "most people x" and "the vast majority of x y" from most of what I write for these reasons. It still comes out inadvertently sometimes. Edit2:I missed one: "most of the time it serves us really well". Same comment.
syzarian 4y ago
We all evaluate factual claims and determine whether or not we think they are true or plausible. Each of us is an arbiter of what constitutes and extraordinary claim in the same way each of us is an arbiter of what is moral/immoral. A kook can be spotted by the way they talk. They have knowledge others don’t. They don’t say, “I’ve read that…” or “It seems like this might have happened.”. They speak with certainty and argue by assertion. Making one claim after another all without evidence. They link together facts by claiming some cabal or powerful person is behind things and a refusal to agree means you are a victim of propaganda. The thinking is disorganized. They have a need to evangelize their ideas and tend to think coincidences can’t happen. Correlation is causation.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Aren't you exhibiting some of the characteristics you now describe?
  - syzarian 4y ago
    At the end of my second paragraph feel free to add, “In my opinion.”. I was stating my criteria for evaluating whether or not someone is a kook. While no one has appointed me an arbiter of such things I do have to evaluate claims and reason about them. Similarly no one appointed me an arbiter of morality but I do have to make moral judgements and determine wether or not a given act is justified or unjustified.
harvey9 4y ago
Taking the supplied example "Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. " Individual false flag military operations are not uncommon, but widespread destruction of one's own country for propaganda purposes would be extraordinary.
- hnarn 4y ago
  > Individual false flag military operations are not uncommon There are many historical examples proving that false flag military operations in themselves is not a conspiracy theory, it's something that has happened and will continue to happen. What is extremely important though is context. A famous false flag operation from history, for example, is the "Gleiwitz incident": Nazi Germany attacked its own radio station in 1939 to justify attacking Poland. Even at the time, it was obvious that something about this was fishy, because anyone could understand that Poland did not have anything to gain by starting a war with Germany -- a Germany that by the way had annexed Austria and the Sudetenland the year before. Of course, nobody in the German political leadership actually cared what people believed, much like Russia today spreads misinformation about Ukraine that is borderline laughable. It's not always about the information being believable, it can also be a show of force: I'm lying to your face, we both know it, but what are you going to do about it?
  - akimball 4y ago
    > it's something that has happened and will continue to happen. That does not imply that it is not a conspiracy theory. It implies that it is a correct conspiracy theory.
    - hnarn 4y ago
      No it does not. It simply means that it’s far from impossible. Many things that are “far from impossible” are blatantly false.
  - harvey9 4y ago
    I'm not denying the historical reality of false flag operations, I'm saying they were individual events rather than a prolonged widespread campaign of (self-)destruction.
hammock 4y ago
Interesting question that illuminates why the position of the Overton window is important- it sets the boundaries of which claims are “extraordinary” and can therefore be attacked with this thought-terminating cliche
- hnarn 4y ago
  Which thought terminating cliche specifically are you referring to?
  - colordrops 4y ago
    "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
    - hnarn 4y ago
      Why are you answering a question that wasn't posed to you?

cpa 4y ago

Very smart people join cults all the time, and it's quite well understood that you don't get them to leave a cult by showing them how irrational it is.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MichaelZuo 4y ago
I think the parent is saying that ipso facto joining a cult means that they weren't actually 'very smart', only in appearance.
- hnarn 4y ago
  At least I think it might be a good idea to question what we individually mean by "intelligent" or "very smart" when we see people that we think harbor these traits behaving in a way that we strongly dislike. The definition of intelligence is not a completely uncontroversial subject.
- akimball 4y ago
  As is often said of GPT.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    That's an interesting way to put it.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Cults are like a confidence grift. Everyone has weaknesses, and the people running these things target and exploit them. Smart people often make dumb choices.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > I think the parent is saying that ipso facto joining a cult means that they weren't actually 'very smart', only in appearance. If by "intelligent" we mean the conventional thing -- learns new things easily, capable of reasoning through complex tasks, would do well in med school/law school/phd programs/finance/engineering, picks up creative disciplines quickly, etc -- then are we sure it's not exactly the other way around? People become invested in cults and conspiracies for emotional reasons, not rational reasons, and conventionally intelligent people are extraordinarily good at post hoc rationalization. More importantly, they're often better at mitigating or managing some of the downsides (eg, maintaining good-enough status in a cult, avoiding talking about the conspiracy in certain circumstances, etc.). At least, this has been my experience with some extended family who fell into a cult: the ones I could consider "smartest" were stuck in the cult the longest, because they could rationalize their way into an answer for everything.

himinlomax 4y ago

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (...) As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam. Most conspiracies theories are extremely implausible. However there is a conspiracy theory about Covid that is so extremely plausible that it's the claims that it's not that should require extraordinary evidence. That theory is that the perfectly pedestrian hypothesis that a lab studying dangerous pathogens could have experienced an industrial accident resulting in a pandemic was covered up by both a totalitarian government and other individuals with a personal interest in the matter. Where am I going with this? Well, I posit that years of throwing around accusations of "conspiracy theorism" and promoting dodgy "fact checking" that typically involves mere opinions rather than incontrovertible facts has made downright demented ideas like Ukraine bombing itself more palatable. In other words, "they lied to us about Wuhan, they must be lying about Ukraine" or something.

oneshtein 4y ago
This incident, which caused release of virus, was filmed and was available on YouTube, see https://web.archive.org/web/20200407175030/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w7SAeNcXA8 https://web.archive.org/web/20200407175030/https://www.youtu... (2019.09.16, explosion at Vector BioSafety Level 4 lab, Novosibirsk, RF). Observe the soldier in the background at the 01:05 timestamp who appears to have taken a water tube from the BSL4 lab. This is concrete proof rather than a mere speculation. It's worth considering why the Russians removed this video.
- hammock 4y ago
  For those who don’t speak Russian, can you tell us the content of the video?
  - oneshtein 4y ago
    See these articles in English for details: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosion-smallpox-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/17/health/russia-lab-explosi... https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/explosion-vector-hoping-best-while-preparing-worst https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/explosion-vector-hoping-be... Following an explosion, first responders and firefighters entered a building to inspect (break into) every room on every floor for signs of fire. It has been reported that some Russian firefighters have been known to steal items during these inspections, as they can deny responsibility after a door lock is broken. The video shows a soldier pouring out water from a stolen water bottle while the director of the BSL4 lab speaks. There were several investigations conducted by independent Russian reporters into this incident and the subsequent outbreak of an unknown virus in Siberia that occurred shortly after, but I am unable to locate them now.

pastacacioepepe 4y ago

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence Extraordinarity is subjective. For you those claims might be extraordinary, for others they may be logical. I can guarantee you a time will come when the positions will be reversed. Failing to understand this shows you're also having a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, as pretty much everyone else. The problem is that you seem more interested in attacking the intelligence of people who disagree with you than in understanding what makes their claim ordinary for them.

mistermann 4y ago
Watching casuals practice "epistemology" (as they perceive it) is a lot like the Gell Mann Amnesia Effect, or watching congresspeople discussing TikTok: in over their heads, and not aware of it (in large part because we live in a culture where what is "true" is by consensus/memorization, and any suggestion of serious epistemic practice is (often emotionally and insistently) dismissed because that "is" "pedantic" or "is" a "conspiracy theory"...both socially conditioned behaviors, in fact (as a boolean)). Easy way to trigger the phenomenon: introduce the notion of complex causality (as opposed to justification) into a Ukraine war discussion, and observe with fascination the highly probabilistic responses from humans (perform 100 experiments, aggregate the ensuing responses, and you will have a normal distribution, gee, a lot like how ChatGPT works). I have LOTS of practice doing this (on a variety of topics, religion is another easy one) on platforms where longer and finer grained arguments are socially acceptable (they tend not to be on more intellectual sites like HN). This very thread has numerous artifacts of various associated phenomena, but it's all normal so goes unnoticed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

tshaddox 4y ago

I think intelligence and interest in the truth are for the most part entirely independent. Someone may easily have the cognitive ability to discern the truth but no interest in doing so, especially when they’ve chosen a personal and group identity that would be threatened by recognition of the truth.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. “Extraordinary” is always judged in regard to the judging party’s priors, and people have wildly different priors (and people on both sides will say – with some accuracy on both sides, though very much not equal accuracy – that this is because the other side has priors that are influenced by disinformation spread as propaganda by the other side.)

adalacelove 4y ago

I like your reasoning but I think you are mixing intelligence with rationality, which usually correlate.