Most people when faced with something they have not imagined complain about that.
But when you have multiple ways to do something, the it's different - it's hard for the way that you can do only once to be the most common.
No it's not. Do I really have to explain it with statistics?
Say everyone will experience event X once in their lifetime, which is 80 years in average, that means in a population of 1000 in every given year around 12.5 people will experience it for that reason in average. Now let's say there's another way they can experience X that also happens for everyone in their lifetime, so again it's 12.5. In this case the percentage of people who experience X for the first time every given year is 50%, so it's not the most common cause.
But, what if the other way doesn't happen for 100% of the people, they learn their lesson and it only happens to 50% of the people? In that case it's only 6.25 people and the percentage of people who experience X for the first time any given year is 67%, therefore it's the most common cause.
Your failure of imagination is not an argument.
Fraud in general is not new. This one in particular is.
No. All fraud relies on people trusting without good reason, or more specifically: not distrusting enough. This is no exception.
It remains to be proven that no intelligent ones with solid epistemology in fact did, and only dumb ones did.
Indeed, but it doesn't have to be proven because the hallmark of having a solid epistemology is not believing things without evidence, and in order to fall for the fraud you have to believe things without evidence. So if anyone with a solid epistemology fell for the fraud, they would have to be almost by definition a very rare exception.
All fraud relies on people trusting without good reason, or more specifically: not distrusting enough. This is no exception.
That's a useless statement, it's like saying all deaths are caused by not living long enough and presenting it as some ultimate discovery in medicine. Of course fraud relies on trust, that's by definition, and of course in the hindsight, that trust was misplaced. But one absolutely can not function in a society without trusting somebody with something. Even low-trust societies have some trust. You go to a store and you trust the owner not to murder you, feed your body to the pigs and take your money. You put your money in the bank and you trust the bank not to refuse to give it back, or the society to be on your side if they do. You get employed and you trust your employer to pay you and not to sell your data to the identity thieves and ghost you, etc. (Sidenote: before you say "I actually never trust anybody, I grow my own food on the top of remote mountain and never speak to another human being unless I see them through the sights of my rifle, and only to procure ammunition for the said rifle, and I demand it upfront" - good for you, it's not how human society works, please understand "you" as collective pronoun here). We trust somebody many times a day if we live in a society, and in the most of these cases the trust is reciprocated with cooperation. Sometimes, though, there are defectors. We recognize the pattern of defection and avoid trusting them - if somebody comes to you on the street and offers to sell you genuine Rolex watch for $5, you rightfully mistrust them - because you have prior experience that says in this context, trust is not warranted. However, absent such context, the cases of misplaced trust would always exist, because it is not possible to perfectly calibrate one's trust without decent knowledge of the matter at hand.
Indeed, but it doesn't have to be proven because the hallmark of having a solid epistemology is not believing things without evidence,
Again, this is a banality which on closer consideration comes apart as useless. You can not evaluate the quality of evidence without experience in evaluating the particular kind of evidence, and not many have experience with evaluating evidence in this particular area.
in order to fall for the fraud you have to believe things without evidence
No you don't. You just would believe the evidence that in the hindsight proves wrong or low quality. In most topics, you can not evaluate evidence by yourself - nobody can. Most people rely on authority of some sort for that - we're back to trust. The modern newspaper fashion of sanctifying "evidence" is a meaningless ritual - anything can be "evidence" or "not evidence", depending on how you evaluate it and relate it to the question at hand. How you know if some investment is good or a fraud? You check its description, its references, the opinion of other people, the data about similar investments, your knowledge about how financial system works, you knowledge about who particular person is - all this relies on myriads of sources which you can not check empirically - it's trust all the way down. There's no procedure that can guarantee you absence of possibility of being deceived here - only methods to reduce this possibility to the level you would find tolerable, but even these calculations again rely on some data which you'd have to take on trust. Sometimes the whole house of cards fails, and you find yourself defrauded. It may be because you personally misjudged the evidence, it may be because somebody who you trusted made a mistake, it may be because somebody somewhere in the web of trust defected. There's no "solid epistemology" that would provide you a guarantee against that. If you think there is - you are the one that is believing things without evidence.
But one absolutely can not function in a society without trusting somebody with something.
You are patently wrong. I don't trust anybody.
You go to a store and you trust the owner not to murder you, feed your body to the pigs and take your money.
No, I don't.
You put your money in the bank and you trust the bank not to refuse to give it back, or the society to be on your side if they do.
No, I don't.
You get employed and you trust your employer to pay you and not to sell your data to the identity thieves and ghost you, etc.
No. I don't.
Sidenote: before you say "I actually never trust anybody, I grow my own food on the top of remote mountain and never speak to another human being unless I see them through the sights of my rifle, and only to procure ammunition for the said rifle, and I demand it upfront" - good for you
I don't say that.
We trust somebody many times a day if we live in a society, and in the most of these cases the trust is reciprocated with cooperation.
I don't think you have the slightest idea of what trust means and how society actually works.
Answer this: I ask a woman out for a date, do I trust that she is going to say yes?
Effectively, you just did. You said "I don't trust anybody" (which is BS btw, you do, you are just not aware of it, and seem to deeply misunderstand how society works) just as I predicted you would, and ignored my warning that it's not about you personally.
I don't think you have the slightest idea of what trust means and how society actually works.
Well, you think wrong, but of course I don't have any means to convince you in that because you'd just contradict every argument without even bother with counter-argument, so we're at impasse here. I guess you will remain at the idea that only fools can be ever deceived and defections only happen to bad people (or stupid people?) - right until the day where your trust goes wrong (and it happens with every person once in a while) and you'd have one of two ways - either recognize yourself as a complete failure, for failing to uphold your own high standards, or recognize that things work not entirely like you thought they are, and come out of it more grown up and enriched with knowledge. I am very curious which way you will choose.
I ask a woman out for a date, do I trust that she is going to say yes?
Of course not. But you trust her, for example, not to call the police and accuse you of rape, when you show up, or not to drug you, take out your organs while you're unconscious and sell it on the black market. Sorry, I'm afraid I spoiled dating for you.
No, I did not. You are committing a converse error fallacy.
I guess you will remain at the idea that only fools can be ever deceived
You have no idea what I believe, because you refuse to listen when I tell you directly: "I did not say that". I know what I said, and only I know what I meant, and I know that you don't know what I meant, and when I tell you directly, you completely ignore me and keep believing I said what I most definitely did not.
I ask a woman out for a date, do I trust that she is going to say yes?
Of course not.
Then why did I ask her out?
p: I trust a woman will say yes
q: I ask her out
p ⇒ q
If I did trust a woman will say yes, then I would ask her out, but if I ask her out, you do see how that would be a fallacy to conclude that I trust she was going to say yes (converse error fallacy), yes?
Therefore you cannot assume I did trust some outcome based on some action. By the exact same token if I go to the store you cannot assume that I trusted any outcome, including me not being murdered. I am rolling the die.
If p I trust I'll roll a 7, then q I roll the die, but q me rolling the die doesn't imply p I trust I'll roll a 7. There are obviously other reasons why I would roll the die, including me hoping--not trusting--that I'll get a 7.
You assume that me engaging in some activity necessarily imples trust, you are 100% wrong.
Therefore you cannot assume I did trust some outcome based on some action
No but I can assume you trust the things would happen according to certain model. E.g. if you ask the woman out, you would expect her either agree, or politely decline. You do not expect her to call the police or her relatives to murder you on the spot for assaulting her honor. Because if you admitted there's a certain non-negligible probability of that, you wouldn't try to ask such a woman out. That's what I am trying to explain to you. Your model of what could happen is the trust that is inherent in all your actions. It is necessary because nobody can account for the infinity of all possible outcomes and accurately predict them. So you trust (or "hope", same thing here) that the model for the situation you use, while inevitably incomplete and inaccurate, is accurate enough for your purposes. Ans yes, that does mean engaging in any activity where you have to model the outcomes implies trust. In yourself, and in others.
Your model of what could happen is the trust that is inherent in all your actions.
You are wrong. The word trust means to "rely on", I don't rely on her not calling the police, that's something you assume, but you don't know my mental state, only I know that, and I'm telling you emphatically that I do not rely on that. You think you can read my mind, but you can't.
I don't have to - I know about human behavior enough to know that a person who thinks asking a woman out would end up with him murdered or in jail, would not ask a woman out (unless he's suicidal or wants to end up in jail as part of his plan to become the next Count of Monte Cristo, but I trust/hope/assume that's not what you are).
You think you can read my mind, but you can't.
I don't need to, if I can observe your behavior and if I can assume you not entirely unlike a typical human. Of course, if you are an alien sent to Earth with the specific purpose to troll me, I'd be wrong every time.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Most people when faced with something they have not imagined complain about that.
No it's not. Do I really have to explain it with statistics?
Say everyone will experience event
Xonce in their lifetime, which is 80 years in average, that means in a population of 1000 in every given year around 12.5 people will experience it for that reason in average. Now let's say there's another way they can experienceXthat also happens for everyone in their lifetime, so again it's 12.5. In this case the percentage of people who experienceXfor the first time every given year is 50%, so it's not the most common cause.But, what if the other way doesn't happen for 100% of the people, they learn their lesson and it only happens to 50% of the people? In that case it's only 6.25 people and the percentage of people who experience
Xfor the first time any given year is 67%, therefore it's the most common cause.Your failure of imagination is not an argument.
No. All fraud relies on people trusting without good reason, or more specifically: not distrusting enough. This is no exception.
Indeed, but it doesn't have to be proven because the hallmark of having a solid epistemology is not believing things without evidence, and in order to fall for the fraud you have to believe things without evidence. So if anyone with a solid epistemology fell for the fraud, they would have to be almost by definition a very rare exception.
That's a useless statement, it's like saying all deaths are caused by not living long enough and presenting it as some ultimate discovery in medicine. Of course fraud relies on trust, that's by definition, and of course in the hindsight, that trust was misplaced. But one absolutely can not function in a society without trusting somebody with something. Even low-trust societies have some trust. You go to a store and you trust the owner not to murder you, feed your body to the pigs and take your money. You put your money in the bank and you trust the bank not to refuse to give it back, or the society to be on your side if they do. You get employed and you trust your employer to pay you and not to sell your data to the identity thieves and ghost you, etc. (Sidenote: before you say "I actually never trust anybody, I grow my own food on the top of remote mountain and never speak to another human being unless I see them through the sights of my rifle, and only to procure ammunition for the said rifle, and I demand it upfront" - good for you, it's not how human society works, please understand "you" as collective pronoun here). We trust somebody many times a day if we live in a society, and in the most of these cases the trust is reciprocated with cooperation. Sometimes, though, there are defectors. We recognize the pattern of defection and avoid trusting them - if somebody comes to you on the street and offers to sell you genuine Rolex watch for $5, you rightfully mistrust them - because you have prior experience that says in this context, trust is not warranted. However, absent such context, the cases of misplaced trust would always exist, because it is not possible to perfectly calibrate one's trust without decent knowledge of the matter at hand.
Again, this is a banality which on closer consideration comes apart as useless. You can not evaluate the quality of evidence without experience in evaluating the particular kind of evidence, and not many have experience with evaluating evidence in this particular area.
No you don't. You just would believe the evidence that in the hindsight proves wrong or low quality. In most topics, you can not evaluate evidence by yourself - nobody can. Most people rely on authority of some sort for that - we're back to trust. The modern newspaper fashion of sanctifying "evidence" is a meaningless ritual - anything can be "evidence" or "not evidence", depending on how you evaluate it and relate it to the question at hand. How you know if some investment is good or a fraud? You check its description, its references, the opinion of other people, the data about similar investments, your knowledge about how financial system works, you knowledge about who particular person is - all this relies on myriads of sources which you can not check empirically - it's trust all the way down. There's no procedure that can guarantee you absence of possibility of being deceived here - only methods to reduce this possibility to the level you would find tolerable, but even these calculations again rely on some data which you'd have to take on trust. Sometimes the whole house of cards fails, and you find yourself defrauded. It may be because you personally misjudged the evidence, it may be because somebody who you trusted made a mistake, it may be because somebody somewhere in the web of trust defected. There's no "solid epistemology" that would provide you a guarantee against that. If you think there is - you are the one that is believing things without evidence.
You are patently wrong. I don't trust anybody.
No, I don't.
No, I don't.
No. I don't.
I don't say that.
I don't think you have the slightest idea of what trust means and how society actually works.
Answer this: I ask a woman out for a date, do I trust that she is going to say yes?
Effectively, you just did. You said "I don't trust anybody" (which is BS btw, you do, you are just not aware of it, and seem to deeply misunderstand how society works) just as I predicted you would, and ignored my warning that it's not about you personally.
Well, you think wrong, but of course I don't have any means to convince you in that because you'd just contradict every argument without even bother with counter-argument, so we're at impasse here. I guess you will remain at the idea that only fools can be ever deceived and defections only happen to bad people (or stupid people?) - right until the day where your trust goes wrong (and it happens with every person once in a while) and you'd have one of two ways - either recognize yourself as a complete failure, for failing to uphold your own high standards, or recognize that things work not entirely like you thought they are, and come out of it more grown up and enriched with knowledge. I am very curious which way you will choose.
Of course not. But you trust her, for example, not to call the police and accuse you of rape, when you show up, or not to drug you, take out your organs while you're unconscious and sell it on the black market. Sorry, I'm afraid I spoiled dating for you.
No, I did not. You are committing a converse error fallacy.
You have no idea what I believe, because you refuse to listen when I tell you directly: "I did not say that". I know what I said, and only I know what I meant, and I know that you don't know what I meant, and when I tell you directly, you completely ignore me and keep believing I said what I most definitely did not.
Then why did I ask her out?
p: I trust a woman will say yesq: I ask her outp ⇒ qIf I did trust a woman will say yes, then I would ask her out, but if I ask her out, you do see how that would be a fallacy to conclude that I trust she was going to say yes (converse error fallacy), yes?
Therefore you cannot assume I did trust some outcome based on some action. By the exact same token if I go to the store you cannot assume that I trusted any outcome, including me not being murdered. I am rolling the die.
If
pI trust I'll roll a 7, thenqI roll the die, butqme rolling the die doesn't implypI trust I'll roll a 7. There are obviously other reasons why I would roll the die, including me hoping--not trusting--that I'll get a 7.You assume that me engaging in some activity necessarily imples trust, you are 100% wrong.
No but I can assume you trust the things would happen according to certain model. E.g. if you ask the woman out, you would expect her either agree, or politely decline. You do not expect her to call the police or her relatives to murder you on the spot for assaulting her honor. Because if you admitted there's a certain non-negligible probability of that, you wouldn't try to ask such a woman out. That's what I am trying to explain to you. Your model of what could happen is the trust that is inherent in all your actions. It is necessary because nobody can account for the infinity of all possible outcomes and accurately predict them. So you trust (or "hope", same thing here) that the model for the situation you use, while inevitably incomplete and inaccurate, is accurate enough for your purposes. Ans yes, that does mean engaging in any activity where you have to model the outcomes implies trust. In yourself, and in others.
You are wrong. The word trust means to "rely on", I don't rely on her not calling the police, that's something you assume, but you don't know my mental state, only I know that, and I'm telling you emphatically that I do not rely on that. You think you can read my mind, but you can't.
I don't have to - I know about human behavior enough to know that a person who thinks asking a woman out would end up with him murdered or in jail, would not ask a woman out (unless he's suicidal or wants to end up in jail as part of his plan to become the next Count of Monte Cristo, but I trust/hope/assume that's not what you are).
I don't need to, if I can observe your behavior and if I can assume you not entirely unlike a typical human. Of course, if you are an alien sent to Earth with the specific purpose to troll me, I'd be wrong every time.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with what I think.
Converse error fallacy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link