Does anyone know what the base rate is for estranged family members making accusations against celebrity relatives? That’s a pretty important factor here e.g. it’s possible that journalists at reputable outlets are willing to write misleading stories about AI safety university groups because they have true statistics that they can cite (or use clever linguistic tricks and other tools of the trade to straight-up lie about those statistics in plausibly deniable ways, which sadly also still happens even at the most reputable outlets), but can’t write honest stories about accusations from estranged family members because of journalistic ethics.
Or maybe editors at news outlets and other varieties of corporate executives all have estranged family members so there’s a norm against it, which sometimes holds and sometimes doesn’t. All of it centers around what the base rate is, a single number, which I don’t know. But it’s impossible to investigate this topic in a truthseeking way and simultaneously not attempt to find the number that all the other calculations indisputably revolve around. The base rate of false rape accusations for normal people is incredibly low, likely because the victim loses social status in an extreme way (some right-wingers claim that accusers gain social status and this claim has been thoroughly researched and discredited) and the base rate of non-reporting is very high, and both of those numbers are absolutely critical for even beginning to understand the problem. The same goes here.
it’s possible that journalists at reputable outlets are willing to write misleading stories about AI safety university groups because they have true statistics that they can cite
My guess would be that student groups accused of being “apocalyptic” are much less likely to sue you for libel than billionaires accused of child sex abuse. That seems more important than base rates.
Most journalists trying to investigate this story would attempt to interview Annie Altman. The base rate (converted to whatever heuristic the journalist used) would be influenced by whether she agreed to the interview and if she did how she came across. The reference class wouldn’t just be “estranged family members making accusations against celebrity relatives”.
She also makes claims that can be factually checked. When it comes to the money from her dad’s there are going to be legal documents that describe what happened in that process.
Does anyone know what the base rate is for estranged family members making accusations against celebrity relatives? That’s a pretty important factor here e.g. it’s possible that journalists at reputable outlets are willing to write misleading stories about AI safety university groups because they have true statistics that they can cite (or use clever linguistic tricks and other tools of the trade to straight-up lie about those statistics in plausibly deniable ways, which sadly also still happens even at the most reputable outlets), but can’t write honest stories about accusations from estranged family members because of journalistic ethics.
Or maybe editors at news outlets and other varieties of corporate executives all have estranged family members so there’s a norm against it, which sometimes holds and sometimes doesn’t. All of it centers around what the base rate is, a single number, which I don’t know. But it’s impossible to investigate this topic in a truthseeking way and simultaneously not attempt to find the number that all the other calculations indisputably revolve around. The base rate of false rape accusations for normal people is incredibly low, likely because the victim loses social status in an extreme way (some right-wingers claim that accusers gain social status and this claim has been thoroughly researched and discredited) and the base rate of non-reporting is very high, and both of those numbers are absolutely critical for even beginning to understand the problem. The same goes here.
My guess would be that student groups accused of being “apocalyptic” are much less likely to sue you for libel than billionaires accused of child sex abuse. That seems more important than base rates.
Most journalists trying to investigate this story would attempt to interview Annie Altman. The base rate (converted to whatever heuristic the journalist used) would be influenced by whether she agreed to the interview and if she did how she came across. The reference class wouldn’t just be “estranged family members making accusations against celebrity relatives”.
She also makes claims that can be factually checked. When it comes to the money from her dad’s there are going to be legal documents that describe what happened in that process.
Good point. I don’t currently know that rate, but agree that it would be helpful in analyzing this matter.