I've started trying something that may look irritating, but is testing a hypothesis. Namely:
If a tweet, with minimal modifications, can become a perfectly coherent reply to itself, then the original is vacuous meta-commentary that can be discarded without further consideration.
I've been noticing quite a few of these on-high "pretending to be wise" kind of quips that sound wise until one realizes that they are entirely free-floating and cannot be distinguished from their negatives, which also sound just as wise.
It's perfectly possible that I myself have written stuff like this in the past, though I usually try to write with reference to facts, such that a simple reversal wouldn't work. I'll continue to investigate and refine the hypothesis.
If something like it can be clearly shown to be correct, we'll have a straightforward tool to eliminate vacuous truisms and deepities from our conversations, failure modes that the Very Smart People tend to fall for constantly.
I want to make very clear that it is still possible that my argument proves too much. If so, it will be possible for it to be used successfully against meaningful content, which is not the intent. If there's a practical sensemaking project I'm on these last few months, it's to...
...build weapons of mass sensemaking that only work to neutralize bad ideas, but don't work on good ideas. This one here is a promising candidate, but it's still under development. Tell me what you think, or try it and see what happens.
Ooh! I think I have identified a pre-existing real-world example of this technique. The "evil god challenge" takes the problem of evil and turns it into an intuitive contradiction. Whether it works or not is another story, but the approach is the same, and for the same reason.
Upon request of @april_harding I will attempt to list some off-the-cuff principles for how my 🧵s come together.
I'm sure others do it differently, this is about how I do it.
That's right. It's a 🧵 about 🧵s.
1. Understanding the medium is important. A thread is not a blogpost. As much as possible make each tweet stand out as a stand-alone idea. The best part about threads is that each tweet can reach different people and generate different conversations.
2. The characters are limited, but you have attachments, QTs, links, etc. Try as much as possible to cite your sources and give people a path to learn more about each of your claims.
A partially effective measure will not only select for the subset of the problem it doesn't address, but the very existence of the measure can worsen the problem by creating the impression it's under control, encouraging people to let their guard down.
1. ADE:
A partially effective vaccine will not only select for the subset of the variants it doesn't kill, but the very presence of antibodies can worsen the infection by giving the virus the body's own signature, encouraging cells to let their guard down.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-…
2. Journalistic best practices not only select for the subset of disinformation they don't address, but their very existence can worsen the problem by creating the impression journalistic outlets have disinformation under control, encouraging people to let their guard down.
I think I know why I was uncomfortable about this one. Her tweet is built on a false fact claim. The evidence is not being hidden, it's right there. So in this case inversion is not making a symmetric tweet. The response is genuinely superior, since it's actually true. Huh.
... And I think this may be the first #tweetInversion that will exceed the original in likes, and it's going to do it in less than an hour. This is somewhat confirmatory of my suspicion above.
So, our friend "will", is one of the most stubborn, dishonest arguers around. Peruse his tweets if you like: @su3su2u1. If you hear him tell it, he's here to find arguments to convince his family to get vaccinated.
What really attracted my attention though, is that he didn't seem to want my help in that regard. Very, very strange.
The paper in the Lancet by the ex-FDA official had a fascinating figure in it. The reason it's fascinating is that it showed how vicious Gamma really is (chart B).
The reason this is of interest is that the TOGETHER trial took place in Brazil, during a period of very high prevalence of the Gamma variant. bmj.com/content/374/bm…
As such, attempting to compare results from that trial, with other studies elsewhere is bound to show worse results. Vaccines show 10-20% worse performance against gamma than alpha.