Before I started reading, if someone forced me to guess, maybe I would’ve assigned a ~10% probability to some sort of conspiracy. Now, though, I’d place the JFK conspiracy hypothesis firmly in Moon-landings-were-faked, Twin-Towers-collapsed-from-the-inside territory. Or to put it differently, “Oswald as lone, crazed assassin” has been added to my large class of “sanity-complete” propositions: propositions defined by the property that if I doubt any one of them, then there’s scarcely any part of the historical record that I shouldn’t doubt.
Huh, I didn’t know Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan & John Kerry were JFK truthers (for want of a more precise term). That’s kind of interesting. (I don’t mean to imply that’s particularly good evidence for a JFK assassination conspiracy. Scientists, philosophers & politicians are about as good as the rest of us at getting things outside their speciality wrong. I really do just mean that it’s mildly interesting.)
That post nicely demonstrates some useful heuristics. Point 11 = “Hug the Query”. Point 12 = “Proving Too Much”. Point 14 = “Burdensome Details”. Point 18 = “cock-up before conspiracy”. Point 20 uses a rule of thumb I recognize but haven’t seen named anywhere yet: beware of rejecting a reasonably complete, orthodox theory in favour of a contrarian theory merely because contrarians claim to have piled up an assortment of anomalous “details that don’t add up in the official account”.
Working with a top secret clearance has made me much more aware of how different hardball power reality is than it is presented. Just as one might consider a predilection towards conspiracies a bias, I think I came in to that job with a bias AGAINST conspiracies. I liked believing the world is a fair place where all sorts of tricky evil secret stuff “just wouldn’t be done.”
I now think (> 50% probability) that the bulk of society is coddled in a belief that things are fair and the world works in a warmish fuzzish way, but that the interactions especially between states and non-state power organizations (terrorists in common usage) is essentially without rules. If you can concieve of a way to get an advantage, it will be R&D’d and if it is workable it will be used.
I figure with just above 50% probability JFK was lone-assasinated purely on the basis that in 50 years with so much attention something would have broken, probably, if there was more to break. It would not matter to me much if it turned out to be a conspiracy of some sort, even if it was covered up, it would be par for the course in my current world view, either way.
Meaning I would be careful imputing too much superiority to myself over Russel, Sagan and/or Kerry purely on the basis of thinking JFK was lone-assasinated.
Both Sagan and Russell were despite their general bastions of rationality, both heavily influenced by their left-wing political environments. I find it surprising still despite that, but not very surprising.
...added to my large class of “sanity-complete” propositions: propositions defined by the property that if I doubt any one of them, then there’s scarcely any part of the historical record that I shouldn’t doubt.
Maybe nothing, but it’s strange that Aaronson identifies “sanity” primarily or significantly with buying into the bulk of the historical record. Does sanity really require being approximately right about history?
It’s not clear from your comment if you’re just replying to the quoted bit, or if you read the entire original post and its comments (where Aaronson engages with commenters).
No—but it does require that you recognize that “There is a very thorough conspiracy that has convinced the entire known world of falsehoods about events as recent as 50 years ago” is significantly less likely than “The majority of the historical record is true.”
Scott Aaronson after looking into the JFK assassination conspiracy evidence:
Huh, I didn’t know Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan & John Kerry were JFK truthers (for want of a more precise term). That’s kind of interesting. (I don’t mean to imply that’s particularly good evidence for a JFK assassination conspiracy. Scientists, philosophers & politicians are about as good as the rest of us at getting things outside their speciality wrong. I really do just mean that it’s mildly interesting.)
That post nicely demonstrates some useful heuristics. Point 11 = “Hug the Query”. Point 12 = “Proving Too Much”. Point 14 = “Burdensome Details”. Point 18 = “cock-up before conspiracy”. Point 20 uses a rule of thumb I recognize but haven’t seen named anywhere yet: beware of rejecting a reasonably complete, orthodox theory in favour of a contrarian theory merely because contrarians claim to have piled up an assortment of anomalous “details that don’t add up in the official account”.
Working with a top secret clearance has made me much more aware of how different hardball power reality is than it is presented. Just as one might consider a predilection towards conspiracies a bias, I think I came in to that job with a bias AGAINST conspiracies. I liked believing the world is a fair place where all sorts of tricky evil secret stuff “just wouldn’t be done.”
I now think (> 50% probability) that the bulk of society is coddled in a belief that things are fair and the world works in a warmish fuzzish way, but that the interactions especially between states and non-state power organizations (terrorists in common usage) is essentially without rules. If you can concieve of a way to get an advantage, it will be R&D’d and if it is workable it will be used.
I figure with just above 50% probability JFK was lone-assasinated purely on the basis that in 50 years with so much attention something would have broken, probably, if there was more to break. It would not matter to me much if it turned out to be a conspiracy of some sort, even if it was covered up, it would be par for the course in my current world view, either way.
Meaning I would be careful imputing too much superiority to myself over Russel, Sagan and/or Kerry purely on the basis of thinking JFK was lone-assasinated.
Yes, of course. Russell & Sagan’s intellectual achievements tower over mine, whether or not they called the JFK assassination wrongly.
That’s a real bias too, I reckon. I think of it sometimes when I see someone putting too much weight on a weak anti-conspiracy theory heuristic.
Both Sagan and Russell were despite their general bastions of rationality, both heavily influenced by their left-wing political environments. I find it surprising still despite that, but not very surprising.
Maybe nothing, but it’s strange that Aaronson identifies “sanity” primarily or significantly with buying into the bulk of the historical record. Does sanity really require being approximately right about history?
It’s not clear from your comment if you’re just replying to the quoted bit, or if you read the entire original post and its comments (where Aaronson engages with commenters).
No—but it does require that you recognize that “There is a very thorough conspiracy that has convinced the entire known world of falsehoods about events as recent as 50 years ago” is significantly less likely than “The majority of the historical record is true.”