Classic sign of someone who can’t think straight: you tell them something, and they ask, “is there any evidence for X”, as if science exists to confirm evidence instead of falsify hypotheses.
And then they will say “well since you can’t produce evidence for X, I shall believe in the inverse of X”
They’ve gone one full circle and invented the null hypothesis
Without, of course, the means or the desire to falsify said hypothesis
But with every desire to confirm it
I wonder why people develop such strange heuristics.
The heuristic to believe in the inverse of popular theories that haven’t yet been falsified might have to do with the desire to front-run scientific discoveries… without spending the necessary cognitive labor?
So when a theory is falsified, they can say, “oh, well, look, I told you so! I was right!”
It’s lazy skepticism.
And since science (and entrepreneurship) is a mechanism for falsifying theories that sound reasonable a priori, but doesn’t check out with evidence, things are constantly proven false
So lazy skepticism will always provide some kind of pleasure of being right
A happiness hack?
Anecdotally, I can say that lazy skeptics seem to be happier than reasonable skeptics (who always seem somewhat anxious).
I’ll let you know when I come across an anxious lazy skeptic.
There are also, some who are lazy believers. Unlike lazy skepticism, I can’t really understand the benefit of this strategy.
I’m not sure if reasonable believers exist, since you can’t be reasonable and believe, given the problem of induction.
On further thought…
The argument for lazy believer behavior, paraphrasing Kahneman, is as follows:
By the time you’re done reasoning about something, it’s too late to act, so you try to let instincts take over.
Naturalistic decision making fits decisions w short time horizons
Corollary: If you see someone exhibit “ape”-like behaviors (as in, the colloquial use of the term to refer to trend following trades), then they are playing short-term finite games
Which, if @naval is right, then they aren’t liable to get rich doing so
The oft-used refrain here is that if you don’t do so (i.e. trend follow), you are “not going to make it”, because those that have “made it” (i.e. rich people who gamble with house money) are doing so.
If they have made it, and they are aping, by so doing, you will also make it.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Works in nascent fields like crypto where going full 🦍 degen might lead to total ruin, but total cynicism will cause you to miss out on gains or sentiment shifts
The key is: Even if you don’t agree with the direction things are developing, you can bet against your beliefs
Be comfortable betting against your beliefs, because it’s almost impossible that society will converge on a Schelling Point that is optimal for you or even optimal for society.
Say anything critical about the externalities of a certain group’s actions, and you’ll be labeled an X-phobe, where X is said group.
Your reputation will be tarnished as an out-group heretic, as if that matters, since filter bubbles have splintered into ever-so-small pieces.
The irony is that the group doesn’t realize only an out-group member can comment on externalities.
If you “cancel” voices external to your filter bubble (well, filter them out), maybe you can feel psychologically safe 🙉 in thinking your actions are completely moral.
It’s worth noting that the group can be any group. I’ve seen this dynamic play out across various groups.
Name anything that exists in this world, and as long as a subreddit exists for it, you can bet someone’s been cancelled for voicing perfectly sane thoughts.
DAOs make it possible to coordinate globally, like an Internet-native limited-liability partnership.
But it seems to be incomplete: right now it depends on good faith & trust. What it’s lacking are legal concepts (liability, partnership, fiduciary duties, ownership)
If smart contracts execute on a “runtime”, legal contracts execute on a jurisdiction.
The key here is that the jurisdictions are *separate* from the contracts.
Aragon Courts are a good start.
I hear talk of DAOs replacing VC partnerships, or even firms.
But firms are not just a cap table and a governance structure (i.e. the board & shareholders), they exist in a larger context of a legal jurisdiction.
A fish needs water to swim in, a planet needs an atmosphere.
@benedictevans The governance problem with Facebook might not actually be a “problem”, to the extent that a problem only exists when the tech doesn’t fit the environment.
Facebook’s design is extremely fit for the current social/economic/technological environment.
@benedictevans We all know the Sovereign Individual thesis by now:
Centralized governance fits situations where the rewards of violence is higher than the cost. The higher the cost, the more centralized
Decentralized fits situations where the cost of violence is higher than the rewards
@benedictevans If nobody can articulate a thesis for why the environment has now shifted to one with a low cost/reward of violence, they can’t make the same argument they made with Bitcoin & monetary assets.
The logic of violence for money is not the same as the logic of violence for speech.