Aside from outrageousness, another piece of “somebody would have noticed” is the cost of noticing. It would be expensive for Wednesday to become an atheist. It would be more expensive to try to deal with the consequences if the US government turns out to be behind 9/11.
Any thoughts about how to get heard if you’re saying something superficially unlikely?
Aside from outrageousness, another piece of “somebody would have noticed” is the cost of noticing.
I tend to apply a slightly different metric of ‘how could I benefit if this were true and I believed it’. One reason I don’t put much effort into investigating 9/11 conspiracy theories is that I can’t see an obvious way to profit from knowing the truth. Other unlikely claims have more immediately obvious personal utility attached to holding / acting on them (if they are true) despite their lack of widespread acceptance.
I can’t speak for you because I don’t know what your values are, but if I knew that the U.S. government was secretly mass-murdering its citizens, I would decide that the best thing I could do would be to reform or overthrow that government. I’m sure if I thought for five minutes I could come up with a way to do this. If there is a 9/11 conspiracy then I really want to know that there is a 9/11 conspiracy.
A better reason for making the 9/11 conspiracy theory harder to notice would involve its sheer implausibility.
“Somebody would have noticed” if there were a way to reform or overthrow the US government that you could come up with after five minutes of thinking about it. If there were, someone would have not only thought of it, but done it too.
I’m not a US citizen and I don’t live in the US. I might feel differently if I did. Thinking the best thing to do is to reform or overthrow the government and actually having any reasonable possibility of achieving that goal through your individual actions are rather different things however. I prefer to prioritize establishing the truth of beliefs where there are things I can do as an individual that have high expected value if the belief is true and low expected value if the belief is false.
I would decide that the best thing I could do would be to reform or overthrow that government. I’m sure if I thought for five minutes I could come up with a way to do this.
Ah. It’s probably worth noting that US citizens are taught from a very young age that the revolutionaries are to be admired, and that our constitution says that we’re in charge of the country and we have the right to replace the government entirely if we need to. Also that the government can’t have a monopoly on firearms.
The rhetoric and the means are not hard to come by, and the movement would not be hard to start if the government were really mass-murdering its citizens.
“God forbid we go 10 years without a revolution!”—Sam Adams (a brewer and a patriot)
I’m aware of that and it’s a feature of American democracy that I think is admirable but I think we’re talking about slightly different questions. This ties back into the ‘but somebody would have noticed’ problem again. The fact that a small but passionate minority has been trying for years to convince everyone else that 9/11 is a conspiracy suggests that the currently available information isn’t sufficient to convince the broader public of their theories. In the absence of some game-changing new evidence there is little reason to suppose that I would be more convincing than the existing truthers. If I studied the evidence and became convinced the truthers were right there is no particular reason to suppose I would have any better luck convincing the rest of the population than they have. Overthrowing the government is possible with sufficient popular support but currently it appears that that support could only be obtained with dramatic new evidence.
I’m saying I prioritize things which I can take meaningful individual action over. Some contrarian truths can be useful to believe without needing to convince a majority or even significant minority of the population of them. In fact, some contrarian truths are most profitable when few other people believe them.
Nope, no joke. I just brainstormed for five minutes and came up with nine things I could do towards the goal of reforming or overthrowing the government in a 9/11 conspiracy scenario, and I believe that there would be a decent chance of success. Now almost none of those are things I could do by myself. I’d need to leverage my communication and leadership skills to find many like-minded activists to cooperate with. Does your idea of “individual actions” exclude such cooperation?
Regardless of what one’s values are, one should be wary of undervaluing epistemic rationality simply because some problems seem too hard to solve. It’s just too easy to throw up your hands and say, “There’s nothing worthwhile I can do to solve this problem” if you haven’t tried to find out if the problem actually exists.
Does your idea of “individual actions” exclude such cooperation?
Changing people’s minds is hard. If your plans involve convincing other people to believe the same things as you then you face a difficult problem. The more people you need to convince the harder the problem is. As I said in my reply to thomblake, if you plan to be more convincing using the same evidence as the people who have already been trying unsuccessfully to make the case then you have a difficult problem. We are not talking about a situation where some new incontrovertible evidence comes to light that makes you believe—in that case others are likely to be swayed by the new evidence as well. We are talking about situations where you are changing your mind based on researching information that already exists.
I just brainstormed for five minutes and came up with nine things I could do towards the goal of reforming or overthrowing the government in a 9/11 conspiracy scenario, and I believe that there would be a decent chance of success.
At any given time there are many people working towards the goal of reforming or overthrowing governments. What makes you think you have come up with a better plan in 5 minutes of thinking than all of the people who are already dedicated to such goals?
It’s just too easy to throw up your hands and say, “There’s nothing worthwhile I can do to solve this problem” if you haven’t tried to find out if the problem actually exists.
I prefer problems whose solution does not require convincing large numbers of other people to change their minds. Maximizing the expected value of your actions requires considering both the value of the outcome and the probability of success.
What makes you think you have come up with a better plan in 5 minutes of thinking than all of the people who are already dedicated to such goals?
Presumably, I’d have the Truth on my side, as well as the Will of the American People, as soon as I’d convinced them. And in this counterfactual I still believe that most 9/11 Truthers are lunatics, or not very smart, so their failure to be taken seriously isn’t very discouraging.
Changing people’s beliefs is indeed hard, and so is getting people to do things; but it’s not impossible. The successful civil rights movements provide historical examples. Examples of problems we still face include stopping genocide, protecting human rights, preventing catastrophic climate change, and mitigating existential risks. Some of these problems are already hard enough without the necessity of having to convince lots of obstinate people that their beliefs are incorrect or that they need to take action. But it seems to me the payoffs are worth enough to do something about them.
You don’t have to agree. Maybe if you came to believe the 9/11 Truthers, you wouldn’t do anything differently. In that case, you have no motive to even have a belief on the matter. But if I learned about a crazy-huge problem that no one is doing anything about, I’d ask “What can we do to solve this problem?”
But if I learned about a crazy-huge problem that no one is doing anything about, I’d ask “What can we do to solve this problem?”
Perhaps the difference in attitude is our prior beliefs regarding governments and politicians. If I learned that 9/11 was a conspiracy I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that government / politicians are morally worse than I thought, I would be shocked to discover that they were more competent and more omnipotent than I thought. It sounds like you would interpret things differently.
I would be shocked to discover that they were more competent and more omnipotent than I thought.
Ah, we’re in agreement on this point. We are perhaps fortunate that our political leaders can’t help but make fools of themselves, individually and collectively, on a regular basis. A political entity that could actually fool everyone all of the time would be way too scary.
In most cases such claims imply different expectations about the future. For example, if I am certain I saw big foot I probably assign a higher probability to the discovery of physical evidence that would confirm its existence than you do. 9/11 truthers should be proposing wagers on the discovery of robust evidence, etc.
You’d probably need some neutral arbiter to adjudicate but that should be relatively easy. Making a wager will convince most people you aren’t joking or lying. They might still think you’re crazy… but if you aren’t you’ll make some nice money. Also, this makes the other person internalize the cost of not noticing.
Of course, if everyone thinks you’re crazy then all else being equal you probably are crazy. You have to have really good evidence before you can conclude that it’s everyone else who is out of their minds (which the contemporary atheist has done).
9/11 truthers should be proposing wagers on the discovery of robust evidence, etc.
There has been quite some robust evidence.
But, I’ll accept a wager. There is someone on LW who has openly bluffed regarding 9/11. This will be a simple issue to settle, all I have to do is to ask one simple question(specifically related to this bluff) to one person(edit: to the person who bluffed) and I wager that he won’t be able to give a convincing answer. Deal?
I will bet a $5 donation to SIAI that the person will be able to give a convincing answer, as judged by, say, Jack or JoshuaZ, provided that you give the person time to research 9/11 as necessary.
ETA: And provided that person is willing to spend the time answering.
There’s a slight problem there. Roland said that the individual in question was not Jack. It might be me. Also, I would not be at all surprised if Roland considers both Jack and myself to be people who are in the group with anti-Truther bias here.
Well, I’d accept anyone who was not a rabid Truther, because I don’t believe that Truthers will ever be convinced regardless of the evidence. But maybe Roland thinks anyone who isn’t a rabid Truther is too strongly biased.
I have an anti-Blueberry bias, and he is involved in the bet. If he will accept my adjudication regardless, then $5 for the SIAI and a chance to show off my mad adjudication skillz is worth the small amount of time I expect it would take to make the evaluation of whether the answer to “one simple question” is convincing. I don’t know who the answerer of this question would be, though, and if ey declines to participate the bet should be considered off.
Well, if I’m not the subject of the bet (or heck even if I am) I might be willing to take the bet under the same terms but I’d be curious who would be an acceptable judge for Roland.
Although I’m pretty sure that I would win this bet I have some issues, I really don’t want to expose anyone here and that’s what calling the Bluff would entail. So I’m not sure if I want to go on with this.
If that’s all that’s holding you back, you could send them a private message. But I don’t think you need to do even that; posting on a blog means accepting that people may publically rebut your arguments.
If you are right, then numerous people on this forum are likely to have been misinformed and would benefit from correction. If you are wrong, then you are unlikely to cause harm by naming the individual in question.
In addition, if you are thinking of me, I would like to be told so.
Alicorn, that sounds fair. Would you and the others agree on you being also a meta-adjudicator? In this case I would first expose my concerns to you in private and then we could decide if I should go public. What do you think?
I have to say, I would be pretty frustrated if, after all of this, the details of the bet weren’t public. Especially if this is going to be evidence for or against a LW “bias” against 9/11 truthers. And I see no reason why they shouldn’t be public. Especially, if you message the person in question and ask them if it is okay.
If that’s all that’s holding you back, you could send them a private message. But I don’t think you need to do even that; posting on a blog means accepting that people may publically rebut your arguments.
These terms are insanely vague and not even indicative of whether or not there is some conspiracy involving the 9/11 attacks. If you want to ask someone a question, fine. But I don’t really have strong beliefs about whether someone on LW has “bluffed”.
What probability would you assign to the claim “In the next 10 years documents will be leaked or released which implicate American government officials or businessmen as involved in the attacks. ”
Or: “By 2020 most Americans will believe American government officials were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.”
We can clarify terms later, I just want a sense of whether or not you think future revelations are likely enough for a bet to be worthwhile. If you think something will happen earlier, that would be even better.
ETA: Even if you think the probabilities are pretty low I’m willing to give you reasonable odds.
These terms are insanely vague and not even indicative of whether or not there is some conspiracy involving the 9/11 attacks.
Right. But it is some indication that there is a strong bias in LW regarding 9/11.
Btw, you don’t need to bet anything, all I need would be the necessary exposure here on LW so that said person(which is not you btw) could not omit an answer, therefore the bluff being exposed.
How does this even begin to hit Jack’s point? Jack hasn’t claimed that there might not be such bias on LW nor has anyone else. For that matter, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a small bit of bias against 9/11 Truthers here. I think it is quite clear that there are a lot of biases operating here. And I can supply strong evidence for a major bias on demand. But that in no way says anything useful about what happened on 9/11 unless you think that the biases here are because Eliezer and Robin are somehow involved in covering up the big nasty conspiracy and have deliberately cultivated an anti- 9/11 Truther attitude to assist the conspiracy in its cover up.
Jack gave possible wagers. Another possible example would be something based on public opinion. Something like “By time T, the consensus view will be that the current accepted view of what happened on 9/11 is wrong.” That wording could be made more precise but the basic idea would be clear. One could use it with a specific data point also such as the presence of explosives in WTC7.
Right, thats why I gave a long time horizon and offered him odds. I mean if the conspiracy is that strong maybe we won’t feel like it is worthwhile to bet. But I could give him 50:1 odds or better depending on the details of the wager and still come out ahead. (ETA: We can’t figure it out whether or not a bet is possible until we exchange probabilities)
That’s hideously ill-defined. What do you mean by bluffed? And to whom does the answer need to be convincing? Moreover, even if someone here has “bluffed” (whatever that means in this context) how does that say anything about Jack’s point?
I’ve never tried to. Two factors in how much time I give a speaker to explain a superficially unlikely claim are (a) how intelligent they have shown themselves to be in the past and (b) how much I value their acquaintance.
Aside from outrageousness, another piece of “somebody would have noticed” is the cost of noticing. It would be expensive for Wednesday to become an atheist. It would be more expensive to try to deal with the consequences if the US government turns out to be behind 9/11.
Any thoughts about how to get heard if you’re saying something superficially unlikely?
I tend to apply a slightly different metric of ‘how could I benefit if this were true and I believed it’. One reason I don’t put much effort into investigating 9/11 conspiracy theories is that I can’t see an obvious way to profit from knowing the truth. Other unlikely claims have more immediately obvious personal utility attached to holding / acting on them (if they are true) despite their lack of widespread acceptance.
I can’t speak for you because I don’t know what your values are, but if I knew that the U.S. government was secretly mass-murdering its citizens, I would decide that the best thing I could do would be to reform or overthrow that government. I’m sure if I thought for five minutes I could come up with a way to do this. If there is a 9/11 conspiracy then I really want to know that there is a 9/11 conspiracy.
A better reason for making the 9/11 conspiracy theory harder to notice would involve its sheer implausibility.
“Somebody would have noticed” if there were a way to reform or overthrow the US government that you could come up with after five minutes of thinking about it. If there were, someone would have not only thought of it, but done it too.
You’re right. Someone would have done something.
I’m not a US citizen and I don’t live in the US. I might feel differently if I did. Thinking the best thing to do is to reform or overthrow the government and actually having any reasonable possibility of achieving that goal through your individual actions are rather different things however. I prefer to prioritize establishing the truth of beliefs where there are things I can do as an individual that have high expected value if the belief is true and low expected value if the belief is false.
That’s a joke right?
Ah. It’s probably worth noting that US citizens are taught from a very young age that the revolutionaries are to be admired, and that our constitution says that we’re in charge of the country and we have the right to replace the government entirely if we need to. Also that the government can’t have a monopoly on firearms.
The rhetoric and the means are not hard to come by, and the movement would not be hard to start if the government were really mass-murdering its citizens.
“God forbid we go 10 years without a revolution!”—Sam Adams (a brewer and a patriot)
I’m aware of that and it’s a feature of American democracy that I think is admirable but I think we’re talking about slightly different questions. This ties back into the ‘but somebody would have noticed’ problem again. The fact that a small but passionate minority has been trying for years to convince everyone else that 9/11 is a conspiracy suggests that the currently available information isn’t sufficient to convince the broader public of their theories. In the absence of some game-changing new evidence there is little reason to suppose that I would be more convincing than the existing truthers. If I studied the evidence and became convinced the truthers were right there is no particular reason to suppose I would have any better luck convincing the rest of the population than they have. Overthrowing the government is possible with sufficient popular support but currently it appears that that support could only be obtained with dramatic new evidence.
I’m saying I prioritize things which I can take meaningful individual action over. Some contrarian truths can be useful to believe without needing to convince a majority or even significant minority of the population of them. In fact, some contrarian truths are most profitable when few other people believe them.
Nope, no joke. I just brainstormed for five minutes and came up with nine things I could do towards the goal of reforming or overthrowing the government in a 9/11 conspiracy scenario, and I believe that there would be a decent chance of success. Now almost none of those are things I could do by myself. I’d need to leverage my communication and leadership skills to find many like-minded activists to cooperate with. Does your idea of “individual actions” exclude such cooperation?
Regardless of what one’s values are, one should be wary of undervaluing epistemic rationality simply because some problems seem too hard to solve. It’s just too easy to throw up your hands and say, “There’s nothing worthwhile I can do to solve this problem” if you haven’t tried to find out if the problem actually exists.
Changing people’s minds is hard. If your plans involve convincing other people to believe the same things as you then you face a difficult problem. The more people you need to convince the harder the problem is. As I said in my reply to thomblake, if you plan to be more convincing using the same evidence as the people who have already been trying unsuccessfully to make the case then you have a difficult problem. We are not talking about a situation where some new incontrovertible evidence comes to light that makes you believe—in that case others are likely to be swayed by the new evidence as well. We are talking about situations where you are changing your mind based on researching information that already exists.
At any given time there are many people working towards the goal of reforming or overthrowing governments. What makes you think you have come up with a better plan in 5 minutes of thinking than all of the people who are already dedicated to such goals?
I prefer problems whose solution does not require convincing large numbers of other people to change their minds. Maximizing the expected value of your actions requires considering both the value of the outcome and the probability of success.
Presumably, I’d have the Truth on my side, as well as the Will of the American People, as soon as I’d convinced them. And in this counterfactual I still believe that most 9/11 Truthers are lunatics, or not very smart, so their failure to be taken seriously isn’t very discouraging.
Changing people’s beliefs is indeed hard, and so is getting people to do things; but it’s not impossible. The successful civil rights movements provide historical examples. Examples of problems we still face include stopping genocide, protecting human rights, preventing catastrophic climate change, and mitigating existential risks. Some of these problems are already hard enough without the necessity of having to convince lots of obstinate people that their beliefs are incorrect or that they need to take action. But it seems to me the payoffs are worth enough to do something about them.
You don’t have to agree. Maybe if you came to believe the 9/11 Truthers, you wouldn’t do anything differently. In that case, you have no motive to even have a belief on the matter. But if I learned about a crazy-huge problem that no one is doing anything about, I’d ask “What can we do to solve this problem?”
Perhaps the difference in attitude is our prior beliefs regarding governments and politicians. If I learned that 9/11 was a conspiracy I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that government / politicians are morally worse than I thought, I would be shocked to discover that they were more competent and more omnipotent than I thought. It sounds like you would interpret things differently.
Ah, we’re in agreement on this point. We are perhaps fortunate that our political leaders can’t help but make fools of themselves, individually and collectively, on a regular basis. A political entity that could actually fool everyone all of the time would be way too scary.
In most cases such claims imply different expectations about the future. For example, if I am certain I saw big foot I probably assign a higher probability to the discovery of physical evidence that would confirm its existence than you do. 9/11 truthers should be proposing wagers on the discovery of robust evidence, etc.
You’d probably need some neutral arbiter to adjudicate but that should be relatively easy. Making a wager will convince most people you aren’t joking or lying. They might still think you’re crazy… but if you aren’t you’ll make some nice money. Also, this makes the other person internalize the cost of not noticing.
Of course, if everyone thinks you’re crazy then all else being equal you probably are crazy. You have to have really good evidence before you can conclude that it’s everyone else who is out of their minds (which the contemporary atheist has done).
There has been quite some robust evidence.
But, I’ll accept a wager. There is someone on LW who has openly bluffed regarding 9/11. This will be a simple issue to settle, all I have to do is to ask one simple question(specifically related to this bluff) to one person(edit: to the person who bluffed) and I wager that he won’t be able to give a convincing answer. Deal?
I will bet a $5 donation to SIAI that the person will be able to give a convincing answer, as judged by, say, Jack or JoshuaZ, provided that you give the person time to research 9/11 as necessary.
ETA: And provided that person is willing to spend the time answering.
There’s a slight problem there. Roland said that the individual in question was not Jack. It might be me. Also, I would not be at all surprised if Roland considers both Jack and myself to be people who are in the group with anti-Truther bias here.
Well, I’d accept anyone who was not a rabid Truther, because I don’t believe that Truthers will ever be convinced regardless of the evidence. But maybe Roland thinks anyone who isn’t a rabid Truther is too strongly biased.
Alicorn would be a good choice, if she is still logged in.
Yeah, I was thinking of Alicorn, too.
I have an anti-Blueberry bias, and he is involved in the bet. If he will accept my adjudication regardless, then $5 for the SIAI and a chance to show off my mad adjudication skillz is worth the small amount of time I expect it would take to make the evaluation of whether the answer to “one simple question” is convincing. I don’t know who the answerer of this question would be, though, and if ey declines to participate the bet should be considered off.
Well, if I’m not the subject of the bet (or heck even if I am) I might be willing to take the bet under the same terms but I’d be curious who would be an acceptable judge for Roland.
Although I’m pretty sure that I would win this bet I have some issues, I really don’t want to expose anyone here and that’s what calling the Bluff would entail. So I’m not sure if I want to go on with this.
If that’s all that’s holding you back, you could send them a private message. But I don’t think you need to do even that; posting on a blog means accepting that people may publically rebut your arguments.
Everyone here is here ostensibly to have their false beliefs exposed. If they are deceiving people here that is even worse.
Roland, just to be sure, why don’t you instant message the person and see if they don’t mind?
If you are right, then numerous people on this forum are likely to have been misinformed and would benefit from correction. If you are wrong, then you are unlikely to cause harm by naming the individual in question.
In addition, if you are thinking of me, I would like to be told so.
If I’m the selected adjudicator I’m willing to do it in private and keep the details secret.
Alicorn, that sounds fair. Would you and the others agree on you being also a meta-adjudicator? In this case I would first expose my concerns to you in private and then we could decide if I should go public. What do you think?
I have to say, I would be pretty frustrated if, after all of this, the details of the bet weren’t public. Especially if this is going to be evidence for or against a LW “bias” against 9/11 truthers. And I see no reason why they shouldn’t be public. Especially, if you message the person in question and ask them if it is okay.
If Alicorn agrees to be a meta-adjudicator I will write her my concerns in private.
I reserve the right to unilaterally publicize if I consider it appropriate, but will field the concerns privately first if you like.
so… what happened?
I counseled letting the matter lie upon receiving further details. It’s not very interesting.
Darn… the build-up made it sound so intriguing :) ah well.
If that’s all that’s holding you back, you could send them a private message. But I don’t think you need to do even that; posting on a blog means accepting that people may publically rebut your arguments.
These terms are insanely vague and not even indicative of whether or not there is some conspiracy involving the 9/11 attacks. If you want to ask someone a question, fine. But I don’t really have strong beliefs about whether someone on LW has “bluffed”.
What probability would you assign to the claim “In the next 10 years documents will be leaked or released which implicate American government officials or businessmen as involved in the attacks. ”
Or: “By 2020 most Americans will believe American government officials were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.”
We can clarify terms later, I just want a sense of whether or not you think future revelations are likely enough for a bet to be worthwhile. If you think something will happen earlier, that would be even better.
ETA: Even if you think the probabilities are pretty low I’m willing to give you reasonable odds.
Right. But it is some indication that there is a strong bias in LW regarding 9/11.
Btw, you don’t need to bet anything, all I need would be the necessary exposure here on LW so that said person(which is not you btw) could not omit an answer, therefore the bluff being exposed.
How does this even begin to hit Jack’s point? Jack hasn’t claimed that there might not be such bias on LW nor has anyone else. For that matter, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a small bit of bias against 9/11 Truthers here. I think it is quite clear that there are a lot of biases operating here. And I can supply strong evidence for a major bias on demand. But that in no way says anything useful about what happened on 9/11 unless you think that the biases here are because Eliezer and Robin are somehow involved in covering up the big nasty conspiracy and have deliberately cultivated an anti- 9/11 Truther attitude to assist the conspiracy in its cover up.
I’ll let Blueberry take this bet since he(?) wants it.
Does this mean you’re not interested in a wager regarding 9/11 itself though?
I don’t see any sensible way in formulating or adjudicating such a wager.
Jack gave possible wagers. Another possible example would be something based on public opinion. Something like “By time T, the consensus view will be that the current accepted view of what happened on 9/11 is wrong.” That wording could be made more precise but the basic idea would be clear. One could use it with a specific data point also such as the presence of explosives in WTC7.
Hows that? I gave two possibilities above. There are surely more events that you must think are more likely than I do, given your beliefs.
There may not be any such events that he thinks will happen in the near future if he thinks the conspiracy is powerful or competent enough.
Right, thats why I gave a long time horizon and offered him odds. I mean if the conspiracy is that strong maybe we won’t feel like it is worthwhile to bet. But I could give him 50:1 odds or better depending on the details of the wager and still come out ahead. (ETA: We can’t figure it out whether or not a bet is possible until we exchange probabilities)
That’s hideously ill-defined. What do you mean by bluffed? And to whom does the answer need to be convincing? Moreover, even if someone here has “bluffed” (whatever that means in this context) how does that say anything about Jack’s point?
By bluffed I mean: “A person said something that he/she cannot back up.”
That’s a good question. Who would adjudicate this?
For the other point read my answer here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/27e/but_somebody_would_have_noticed/1yu8
I’ve never tried to. Two factors in how much time I give a speaker to explain a superficially unlikely claim are (a) how intelligent they have shown themselves to be in the past and (b) how much I value their acquaintance.