I don’t think “He was pretending to be vegan” adds any more complexity to the “He was a conman” explanation than “He was genuinely a vegan” adds to the “He was a naive/cartoon-villain utilitarian” explanation?
Huh, didn’t expect the different intuitions here (yay disagreement voting!). I do think pretending to be vegan adds substantial complexity; making such a big lifestyle adjustment for questionable benefit is implausible in my model. But I may just not have a good theory of mind for “sociapaths” as lc puts it.
I do agree that it adds complexity. But so does “He was actually a vegan”. Of course the “He was actually a vegan” complexity is paid for in evidence of him endorsing veganism and never being seen eating meat. But this evidence also pays for the complexity of adding “He was pretending to be a vegan” to the “He was thoroughly a conman” hypothesis.
But didn’t he project a highly idealistic image in general? Committing to donating to charity, giving off a luxury-avoiding vibe, etc.. This gives evidence to narrow the conman hypothesis down from common conmen to conmen who pretend to be highly idealistic. And I’m not sure P(vegan|highly idealistic) exceeds P(claims to be vegan|conman who pretends to be highly idealistic).
Possible, but adds additional complexity to the competing explanation.
I don’t think “He was pretending to be vegan” adds any more complexity to the “He was a conman” explanation than “He was genuinely a vegan” adds to the “He was a naive/cartoon-villain utilitarian” explanation?
Huh, didn’t expect the different intuitions here (yay disagreement voting!). I do think pretending to be vegan adds substantial complexity; making such a big lifestyle adjustment for questionable benefit is implausible in my model. But I may just not have a good theory of mind for “sociapaths” as lc puts it.
I do agree that it adds complexity. But so does “He was actually a vegan”. Of course the “He was actually a vegan” complexity is paid for in evidence of him endorsing veganism and never being seen eating meat. But this evidence also pays for the complexity of adding “He was pretending to be a vegan” to the “He was thoroughly a conman” hypothesis.
But not a lot since highly idealistic people tend to be vegan. I think P(vegan|highly idealistic)>P(claims vegan|conman)
But didn’t he project a highly idealistic image in general? Committing to donating to charity, giving off a luxury-avoiding vibe, etc.. This gives evidence to narrow the conman hypothesis down from common conmen to conmen who pretend to be highly idealistic. And I’m not sure P(vegan|highly idealistic) exceeds P(claims to be vegan|conman who pretends to be highly idealistic).