I’m actually more interested in reverse salted pasta water fallacies! It’s an extension of Chesterton’s Fence, but with an added twist where the fence has a sign with an incorrect explanation of what the fence is for.
In the language of Bayes, we might think of it thus:
E = The purpose of the fence stated on the sign
H = The actual purpose of the fence is the stated one
The fallacy would simply be ascribing too high a prior value of P(H), at least within a certain reference class.
Potentially, that might be caused by rationalists tailoring their environment such that a high P(H) is a reasonable default assumption almost all the time in their lived experience. Think a bunch of SWE autistics who hang out with each other and form a culture centered on promoting literal precise statements. For them, P(H) is very high for the signs they’ll typically encounter.
The failure mode is not noticing when you’re outside the samples distribution of life circumstances—when you’re thinking about the world outside rationalist culture. It may not have a lower truth content, but it may have lower literalism. But there’s not always a clear division between them, and anyway, insisting on literalism and interrogating the false premises of mainstream culture is a way of expanding the boundaries of rationalist culture.
I’m actually more interested in reverse salted pasta water fallacies! It’s an extension of Chesterton’s Fence, but with an added twist where the fence has a sign with an incorrect explanation of what the fence is for.
In the language of Bayes, we might think of it thus:
E = The purpose of the fence stated on the sign H = The actual purpose of the fence is the stated one
The fallacy would simply be ascribing too high a prior value of P(H), at least within a certain reference class.
Potentially, that might be caused by rationalists tailoring their environment such that a high P(H) is a reasonable default assumption almost all the time in their lived experience. Think a bunch of SWE autistics who hang out with each other and form a culture centered on promoting literal precise statements. For them, P(H) is very high for the signs they’ll typically encounter.
The failure mode is not noticing when you’re outside the samples distribution of life circumstances—when you’re thinking about the world outside rationalist culture. It may not have a lower truth content, but it may have lower literalism. But there’s not always a clear division between them, and anyway, insisting on literalism and interrogating the false premises of mainstream culture is a way of expanding the boundaries of rationalist culture.