But by saying that, you are making the exact same sort of error in question: taking low probability hypotheses and assigning them so much weight that you say you don’t have sufficient knowledge when in fact you do: the correct conclusion is that the claimed explanations are extremely unlikely.
It is worth noting more generally that while on occasion, hidden government conspiracies do come to light, they are almost never any of the conspiracies that anyone in public is claiming are real.
I think my chain falls of on the idea that we can assign reliable probabilities to various hypotheses, prior to our own thorough investigation of the available scientific material.
For the case of UFOs, wouldn’t we have to have scientific reports explaining all unexplained observations of aerial phenomena that have occured in history, before we could reasonably claim that the probability is very low?
I think my chain falls of on the idea that we can assign reliable probabilities to various hypotheses, prior to our own thorough investigation of the available scientific material.
Yep! We do it all the time! How likely do you think it is that the city of New York has just been destroyed by a nuclear blast? That your parents are actually undercover agents sent by Thailand? That there is a scorpion in the sandwich you’re about to eat? Most people would consider those extremely unlikely without a second thought, and would not feel any need for a “thorough investigation of the available scientific material”. And that’s a perfectly sensible thing to do!
Knowledge in what sense? In the sense of “justified true belief” as some philosophers like to define knowledge? No, but that’s a really bad notion of knowledge because pretty much nothing can be justified in the sense that such would insist upon. Can you assign really high degrees of certainty to the conclusions? Yes. If that’s what knowledge is then yes, it is knowledge.
It may help to note that Bayesianism (the form of epistemology most popular at LW) rejects the entire idea of justified true belief or anything similar to it, and only talks about degrees of certainty, but I think you already know that.
No, it is the one making the assertion who has the burden of proof; the one who questions the assertion is not obliged to prove a negative.
scientific reports explaining all unexplained observations [...] before we could reasonably claim that the probability is very low
You’re privileging the UFO hypothesis without justification. It’s like insisting we must identify which specific neurons produce consciousness before we can reasonably claim God didn’t create it.
Even observing “This is only believed by a fringe group of of low-status people not taken seriously by society at large” is sufficient to assign it an extremely low prior probability(single-digit percentages?) without even attempting to consider direct evidence for or against the proposition.
You may be right. But is there no better methology for estimating priors than to say “surely this prior must be in the single digit percentages”. It seems very method-less.
The method is “set your prior probability equal to society’s judgement of its probability”. For anything where society as a whole has an opinion at all, it’s a better approximation than any other one-piece-of-evidence method around, and is thus a great way to set your priors.
For the case of UFOs, wouldn’t we have to have scientific reports explaining all unexplained observations of aerial phenomena that have occured in history, before we could reasonably claim that the probability is very low?
No. There no reason to expect every observation to be explained. Tracking down causes of things is hard work and it’s not reasonable that in every case someone did the hard work.
Using the word “scientific” in this context also illustrates a misunderstanding of what it means. You can’t run scientific trials to find the meaning of a single event that happened in the past.
For the case of UFOs, wouldn’t we have to have scientific reports explaining all unexplained observations of aerial phenomena that have occured in history, before we could reasonably claim that the probability is very low?
No. One needs to simply ask which is more likely- that unexplained aerial phenomena fall into well known categories (weather events, optical illusions, airplanes, meteors, space debris, etc.) than any hypothesis which requires us to be extremely wrong about basic aspects of reality (e.g. speed of light barrier among other issues). Note that in this regard, the prior that there are even some weather events that we don’t understand should still be much higher than anything involving aliens.
To use an example, if I link you to here do you think one needs a thorough investigation of what appears there? If not, how is it different?
Wow, that link truly is a grim case. There were no references to further, proper, investigations.
If all conspiracy theories were just as ill founded, obviously there wouldn’t be a case.
But what has surprised me is that the quality of investigative material is actually rather good, for several conspiracy theories (not that it leads me to draw any conclusion. I really like aporia. Probably some sort of defence mechanism), with 9/11 being the most clear example.
If the investigative material is actually rather good, and way better than I initially guessed at, then I wonder where the discrepancy between my initial judgment versus my later investigation came from. (obviously one could suggest some psycological liability on my part. Feel free).
Were I the victim of some sort of bias before I started to investigate more thoroughly? Why were I so quick to judge, emotionally, at a point in time where I didn’t have any knowledge about whether high quality studies existed on the topic or not?
I really have become more cautious about drawing quick conclusions, and I think it’s a good thing.
If the investigative material is actually rather good, and way better than I initially guessed at, then I wonder where the discrepancy between my initial judgment versus my later investigation came from.
It’s quite easy to convince a person that’s ignorant of something that isn’t true. Your argument that you were ignorant before you looked at one-sided investigative material doesn’t make you a trustworthy source.
Were I the victim of some sort of bias before I started to investigate more thoroughly? Why were I so quick to judge, emotionally, at a point in time where I didn’t have any knowledge about whether high quality studies existed on the topic or not?
You didn’t reason clearly about the subject. If you think there a case with good evidence and you instead used “Je Suis Charlie”, that’s a major blunder.
Not putting in your best effort to make your case protects you from falsifying your belief.
Wow, that link truly is a grim case. There were no references to further, proper, investigations.
Did you try hitting refresh?
But what has surprised me is that the quality of investigative material is actually rather good, for several conspiracy theories
It isn’t hard to make material that looks like it is of high quality. Humans are really good at motivated cognition. The vast majority of the time, the standard explanation is correct.
I, and so many others, may be completely bullocks on evaluating investigations, but how will this single out the investigations of conspiracy theories?
It basically states that I can never acquire knowledge of (any) scientific findings.
Again, what are you calling knowledge? It seems like you are using a notion of knowledge which insists on extremely high certainty. Maybe taboo the word knowledge?
But as a general heuristic, something if it is commonly accepted by the scientific establishment it is much more likely to be true than a fringe position.
If a position is a position that isn’t in mainstream journals and is described as fringe by the mainstream press then it is an issue. If the subject needs its own journal to specifically push a position then it is in that category. If the position relies on assuming unknown technology exists (e.g. faster than light travel, plane sized holograms, nanothermite) then it is in that category.
Yes, that was clumsy of me. I don’t have sufficient knowledge to state anything about the nature of UFOs
But by saying that, you are making the exact same sort of error in question: taking low probability hypotheses and assigning them so much weight that you say you don’t have sufficient knowledge when in fact you do: the correct conclusion is that the claimed explanations are extremely unlikely.
It is worth noting more generally that while on occasion, hidden government conspiracies do come to light, they are almost never any of the conspiracies that anyone in public is claiming are real.
I think my chain falls of on the idea that we can assign reliable probabilities to various hypotheses, prior to our own thorough investigation of the available scientific material.
For the case of UFOs, wouldn’t we have to have scientific reports explaining all unexplained observations of aerial phenomena that have occured in history, before we could reasonably claim that the probability is very low?
Yep! We do it all the time! How likely do you think it is that the city of New York has just been destroyed by a nuclear blast? That your parents are actually undercover agents sent by Thailand? That there is a scorpion in the sandwich you’re about to eat? Most people would consider those extremely unlikely without a second thought, and would not feel any need for a “thorough investigation of the available scientific material”. And that’s a perfectly sensible thing to do!
Indeed it is perfectly sensible from a pragmatic point of view.
But is it actual knowledge?
Knowledge in what sense? In the sense of “justified true belief” as some philosophers like to define knowledge? No, but that’s a really bad notion of knowledge because pretty much nothing can be justified in the sense that such would insist upon. Can you assign really high degrees of certainty to the conclusions? Yes. If that’s what knowledge is then yes, it is knowledge.
This is an interesting “rebuttal” to the goal of defining “true knowledge”. I’ll have to think more about this.
It may help to note that Bayesianism (the form of epistemology most popular at LW) rejects the entire idea of justified true belief or anything similar to it, and only talks about degrees of certainty, but I think you already know that.
Related articles:
How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
Infinite Certainty
0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities
tl;dr: 100% probability = ∞ evidence; you really don’t have it
No, it is the one making the assertion who has the burden of proof; the one who questions the assertion is not obliged to prove a negative.
You’re privileging the UFO hypothesis without justification. It’s like insisting we must identify which specific neurons produce consciousness before we can reasonably claim God didn’t create it.
Even observing “This is only believed by a fringe group of of low-status people not taken seriously by society at large” is sufficient to assign it an extremely low prior probability(single-digit percentages?) without even attempting to consider direct evidence for or against the proposition.
You may be right. But is there no better methology for estimating priors than to say “surely this prior must be in the single digit percentages”. It seems very method-less.
The method is “set your prior probability equal to society’s judgement of its probability”. For anything where society as a whole has an opinion at all, it’s a better approximation than any other one-piece-of-evidence method around, and is thus a great way to set your priors.
As a general statement, this doesn’t seem to be true. I am also not quite sure what—in real life—is a “one-piece-of-evidence method”.
No. There no reason to expect every observation to be explained. Tracking down causes of things is hard work and it’s not reasonable that in every case someone did the hard work.
Using the word “scientific” in this context also illustrates a misunderstanding of what it means. You can’t run scientific trials to find the meaning of a single event that happened in the past.
No. One needs to simply ask which is more likely- that unexplained aerial phenomena fall into well known categories (weather events, optical illusions, airplanes, meteors, space debris, etc.) than any hypothesis which requires us to be extremely wrong about basic aspects of reality (e.g. speed of light barrier among other issues). Note that in this regard, the prior that there are even some weather events that we don’t understand should still be much higher than anything involving aliens.
To use an example, if I link you to here do you think one needs a thorough investigation of what appears there? If not, how is it different?
Wow, that link truly is a grim case. There were no references to further, proper, investigations.
If all conspiracy theories were just as ill founded, obviously there wouldn’t be a case.
But what has surprised me is that the quality of investigative material is actually rather good, for several conspiracy theories (not that it leads me to draw any conclusion. I really like aporia. Probably some sort of defence mechanism), with 9/11 being the most clear example.
If the investigative material is actually rather good, and way better than I initially guessed at, then I wonder where the discrepancy between my initial judgment versus my later investigation came from. (obviously one could suggest some psycological liability on my part. Feel free).
Were I the victim of some sort of bias before I started to investigate more thoroughly? Why were I so quick to judge, emotionally, at a point in time where I didn’t have any knowledge about whether high quality studies existed on the topic or not?
I really have become more cautious about drawing quick conclusions, and I think it’s a good thing.
It’s quite easy to convince a person that’s ignorant of something that isn’t true. Your argument that you were ignorant before you looked at one-sided investigative material doesn’t make you a trustworthy source.
You didn’t reason clearly about the subject. If you think there a case with good evidence and you instead used “Je Suis Charlie”, that’s a major blunder.
Not putting in your best effort to make your case protects you from falsifying your belief.
Did you try hitting refresh?
It isn’t hard to make material that looks like it is of high quality. Humans are really good at motivated cognition. The vast majority of the time, the standard explanation is correct.
I, and so many others, may be completely bullocks on evaluating investigations, but how will this single out the investigations of conspiracy theories? It basically states that I can never acquire knowledge of (any) scientific findings.
Again, what are you calling knowledge? It seems like you are using a notion of knowledge which insists on extremely high certainty. Maybe taboo the word knowledge?
But as a general heuristic, something if it is commonly accepted by the scientific establishment it is much more likely to be true than a fringe position.
I am curious about your answer to my question ”.. but how will this single out the investigations of conspiracy theories?”.
If a position is a position that isn’t in mainstream journals and is described as fringe by the mainstream press then it is an issue. If the subject needs its own journal to specifically push a position then it is in that category. If the position relies on assuming unknown technology exists (e.g. faster than light travel, plane sized holograms, nanothermite) then it is in that category.