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Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
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22 Mar, 9 tweets, 2 min read
I'm not sure how true this in real life, but I wonder if it might end up a good heuristic: "Any organization too powerful to lower itself to explain the arguments and evidence it used to reach its conclusion, is also too social-reality-driven for its conclusions to be trusted."
If the CDC issues a pronouncement about fomites, say, but they don't include any traceback to a paper describing the evidence they used to know that... there *might* be a paper like that somewhere. Or it could be like that time they announced that masks didn't help with Covid-19.
Could government pronouncements about vaccines be correct? Totally! But the way you *know*, if so, is that you separately heard from a source citing a particular study that showed 95% reduction in symptomatic C19. Only that part is part of a process where words mean things.
I'd give some credit to both of those statements, actually. The thing to be wary of is an organization that issues Pronouncements, such that for it to actually defend its statements or try to prove them would be a loss of status in the status game.
A blogger has to give reasons for their statements, else why would you believe them? The WHO issues statements that you're supposed to believe because it's the WHO and they have declared social reality. If they gave citations and links, they'd look like some blogger.
Remember, novices: I'm not talking about whether the organization explained itself *to your satisfaction*, or said "this part here is complicated" and you felt all offended by that. I'm talking about media that Issue Prounouncements, vs those that have to explain at all.
I'm not saying that doing this is Wrong, nor that anybody who does it can't be trusted ever, nor that it can't serve a key function in a world where social realities happen! Just: the places that sound like they have to explain themselves, are the places where words mean things.
Also: Having some things you say "no comment" to, is not at *all* the same phenomenon as being an organization that issues Pronouncements. There are a *lot* of good reasons to have "no comments" about things. Anybody who tells you otherwise has no life experience, or is lying.

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More from @ESYudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
20 Mar
@paulg There once was a startup that had no business plan. "Why worry?" they said. "You can't predict the future. Who, in 2018, expected Covid-19? Our future business difficulties are impossible to correctly imagine. Why pretend we can?"

"A business plan is not *the* future," 1/
@paulg ...replies Paul Graham. "A business plan checks model consistency: is there a plausible world where success is possible? And a business plan writes out your assumptions; which matters, not because every assumption will be true, but so you notice if one is turning out false." 2/
@paulg (Of course, in real life, you've already decided not to fund the startup at this point. They're obviously quite doomed. It's not like you've got no choice but to bet the fortunes of your entire extended family on repairing this particular startup. But still, let's continue.) 3/
Read 26 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
2 Mar
I am trying to wrap my head around "this small tax would generate at least $3 trillion". Like. If you generate $3 trillion then it's not a small tax. It's a $3 trillion tax. You can't. Just. Stick the word "small" next to "$3 trillion" to cancel it.
Read 4 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
28 Feb
Cade Metz's byline is on the NYT hit piece to absorb blame, but the blameworthy one is more likely to be Metz's editor. The higher aristocrat is usually closer to being "the" source of the problem. Who was Metz's boss on this piece? Who'd they report to? Who ordered the hit?
Seeing a nice big name of an non-management employee, that was put out by the BigCo to take the blame, and then heaping blame on that first name you saw - trying to make *that* name infamous - seems like mental laxness to the point of being the NYTrash's willing tool, ya know?
You think Pui-Wing Tam (NYT tech editor) or Mark Thompson (CEO) give two shits if you ruin Metz's life? Tam and Thompson have a thousand eager guys with journalism degrees desperate to take Metz's place, per job opening. Metz is a very replaceable cog to them.
Read 12 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
28 Feb
Complicated rules always advantage the rich over the poor and the big over the little. The modern era of increasing Gini and bigco dominance has such an obvious cause in increasing regulatory complexity, that to the econoliterate it seems pointless to discuss littler causes.
(Two exceptions that I've heard taken seriously by econoliterates are software-world good-duplication yielding winner-take-all, and "trade decreases global inequality but increases local inequality" though I don't see why latter is necessary true absent rules complexity.
That is, those two are taken seriously as plausibly having an effect large enough that it plays in the same park as the incredibly vast increase in richadvantagers, or "regulations" as the naive call them.
Read 5 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
26 Feb
What on Earth is up with the "even after being vaccinated, you can't change your behavior" thing? Insane, yes, much of society is insane, but this insanity has some root that I don't understand. It's not the equilibrium of anything obvious-to-me.
So far, something like 1 rings truest to me, maybe with side doses of 2 & 3. People are performing virtuous compliance and there's no controlling legal authority, not even science or a vaccine, that can say it's okay to dial the performance down?
Requiring public mask-wearing for everyone, because you don't want to check vaccine certifications each time - that would make sense, sure. But in this case you would then add, "That said, go ahead and visit and hug your also-vaccinated friends in private."
Read 6 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
14 Feb
Real journalism serves an important function in society. I've just subscribed to @TheEconomist to do my part and underscore this point: my call to bury the rotting corpse of the NYT is not meant as an attack on the very few real journalist institutions remaining. We need more.
Clarification: I think having Big Buildings Containing People With Press Passes, that do at least some real journalism, is still horrifyingly vital to modern society. If you just want one more honest blogger, sure, support them directly via Substack.
"Why?" you ask. (A): Because some investigations work better when you show up with an Official Press Pass that places you in the recognized social role of an Investigator to the bureaucrat, and announces you have a non-dismissable moderately powerful institution behind you...
Read 7 tweets

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