I just mean to say, in a world where the ratio of lizards (literally the animal) to humans is 1,000,000,000:1, you should very easily be able to find out which one you are, even though the prior is (let’s say) that you are a lizard.
If a lizardman is one who is combative about an unpopular opinion which they hold, and the world is 99.9% lizardman, then that means that only 700 million people in the world are not combative about any of their unpopular views. I suppose that you could recognize that you’re just a generally chilled out person who doesn’t get into arguments or complain, and has a common-sense worldview that most people agree with. After all, lizardman doesn’t have to have all unpopular views—just one that they’re combative about. They could still be calm and conformist in most areas of life.
You could use things like being able to outperform the market, being consistently ahead of the Overton window, finding a reception for your less objectively verifiable ideas among (a small group of) other high-performing individuals. This doesn’t guarantee that you’re not still a lizardman among the 99.9%+ lizardmen, just in a high-performing contrarian cluster (hence my rule #1), but at least rules out being a crazy person living in a normal world (unless you’re just hallucinating all of the evidence, but there’s no point worrying about that).
The prior is that in a seemingly “99.9+% lizardman world” you are the lizardman. How would one tell the difference?
Ah, that’s just a 1,000:1 odds ratio update. Strong evidence is common. It’s quite straightforward to get the evidence that you are not a lizardman.
I… can’t tell if this is sarcasm :(
I just mean to say, in a world where the ratio of lizards (literally the animal) to humans is 1,000,000,000:1, you should very easily be able to find out which one you are, even though the prior is (let’s say) that you are a lizard.
Sadly the Special Snowflake Syndrome is all too common and often invisible to the afflicted.
If a lizardman is one who is combative about an unpopular opinion which they hold, and the world is 99.9% lizardman, then that means that only 700 million people in the world are not combative about any of their unpopular views. I suppose that you could recognize that you’re just a generally chilled out person who doesn’t get into arguments or complain, and has a common-sense worldview that most people agree with. After all, lizardman doesn’t have to have all unpopular views—just one that they’re combative about. They could still be calm and conformist in most areas of life.
You could use things like being able to outperform the market, being consistently ahead of the Overton window, finding a reception for your less objectively verifiable ideas among (a small group of) other high-performing individuals. This doesn’t guarantee that you’re not still a lizardman among the 99.9%+ lizardmen, just in a high-performing contrarian cluster (hence my rule #1), but at least rules out being a crazy person living in a normal world (unless you’re just hallucinating all of the evidence, but there’s no point worrying about that).