Hey folks, it’s Friday. If you want to hear me chatting with Julia Galef on her excellent “Rationally Speaking” podcast, our conversation is up now. I’m getting more interested in rationalism, and I thought it was a really great show.
I may not be chronically online (not on Twitter at least) but I saw the blowback to Epstein's death on the left as well as the right. "Epstein didn't kill himself" didn't seem like a right wing point to me. It seemed like a statement generally accepted as true, but also came with the acknowledgement that it would be fruitful due to it being very difficult to prove... If anything "Epstein didn't kill himself" seems to be a lefty meme about how "the rich" (including Trump) are getting away with it.
I'm glad to hear you're getting more interested in (capital R) Rationalism. There's a lot there. LessWrong is a fertile site, including on covid. As was the most popular blog in that world, Slate Star Codex, now also moved to Substack: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
The problem with paid subscriptions is that this model does not serve the mission to help foster a better informed public in the most efficient way. If the best content is behind a paywall, then the public misses out.
Although QAnon is generally unpopular, the belief base is different than traditional conspiracy theories (more female). I haven't seen enough people write about this aspect, but that MTG and Boebert are representative or the vanguard is not a one off.
This is not contrived probably and don't know if it can be replicated, but the pedophilia, child trafficking angle broadens the TAM (total addressable market in marketing slang).
An analogy would be video games whose TAM historically had been 10-30 year old males largely. After Facebook and the iPhone, different tactics and business models led to expanding video games to more women and marginal video game players: Farmville, Candy Crush, Words with Friends.
The pedophilia angle is expanding conspiracy theory into a new market which is problematic. Anti-Vaxx was a precursor, but historically women and normies just weren't that devoted to things like the Rothschilds, 9/11 truth, Loose Change and various monetary conspiracies, etc. That's all young dude energy.
Are there any data on how much percent of QAnon followers also believe the other conspiracies? They are probably different but I expect a large % of QAnon followers also believe that climate change is not real and that JFK was killed by a conspiracy?
I’m getting a little tired of Matt’s defensive / projection in deference to experts. I think Epstein probably killed himself, and I don’t know much about prison conditions. Certainly I don’t feel invested in having a socially appropriate viewpoint on prison conditions, which I assume are bad, but I know almost nothing about the topic.
This assertion on Matt’s part that it’s wokeness / expert deference is in direct contradiction with a conversation he had with Ezra Klein, who pointed out that many people who believe 9/11 was faked have an incredible wealth of knowledge on fuel temperatures and building specifications. His point was that average people are often better at judging these things, because they don’t trick themselves into making a problem much more complex than it is. They know the basics, and the basics are usually enough.
While Occam’s Razor is a little deceptive — “it was God’s will” is a simple explanation for everything — I tend to think of it in terms of what reasonable solution involves the fewest amount of people. Epstein committing suicide involves one person, and thus, I tend to believe that’s the most likely outcome. #2 would be bribing a guard, since that involves 2 people. Getting Barr involved hugely expands the number of people needed.
My experience is that conspiracy theories tend to be pretty equal opportunity. I know lots of very smart people who believe incredibly weird things (including Matty). And again, they may have exceptionally deep knowledge on the topic. My father is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he will happily talk for hours about how climate change isn’t caused by CO2.
Matt if you have some time I would really appreciate a post on your epistemology methodology. For example, I find Bryan Caplans general heuristic about never going against wide consensus on expert opinion to be of great help in guarding against false conspiracy theories. What other things would you recommend in fighting off echo chambers? Aside from subscribing to substacks of those one disagrees with and reading contrary opinions. Something of the average joe who still has to go to work and take care of his family. I find myself not even trusting NPR and mainstream media anymore. I get most of my info from substack and podcasts now.
To your point about the Lower 9th Ward flooding, I will also remind folks while the Garden District was spared, Lakeview (a middle to upper class neighborhood) also flooded during Katrina in addition to the 9th Ward, which doesn't really help the conspiratorial takes and is often left out of the main narratives. My uncle lived in Lakeview and I helped remove silted garbage from his home and walked down to the area where the levee broke to see it for myself.
On the subject of new Left Wing conspiracy, I don't think it's acknowledged just how many there are out there this day and age.
My favorite to follow has been the "Bolivian Coup" narratives which somehow evolved to include Elon Musk trying to steal Bolivia's lithium.
It's even more fascinating because of the role Bolivia played in American political discourse in the run up to 2020 (Venezuela constantly being tossed in DSA faces, and Bolivia was an easy counter example for a lot of naive folks as a "good" implementation of Socialism in Latin America.
Of course, if folks had paid more attention to recent Bolivian history it was already well documented that Evo was angling for a power grab (he lost a referendum on term limits he helped install in Bolivia's newest Constitution, later challenged it in Court, and had it ruled "unconstitutional" by a high court he had essentially packed with loyalist who said term limits violated Evo's "human rights").
At the time, it was very easy for me to see the parallels to America's situation with Trump and the upcoming election and the role his court might play in validating decisions... But lots of Progressives and Leftist took the opposite view.
When the Bolivian election results were mired in controversy and the result very close (keeping in mind Evo and MAS had lost almost 20% popular support since the last election due to his challenge to the referendum and other things), folks like Greenwald and Max Blumenthal at Grayzone jumped in to say it was a CIA coup and rushed to pressure Sanders and other Americans to go on record saying so.
Part of that effort involved haphazardly developing conspiracies about Bolivia's Lithium being "nationalized" and Corporate America and Elon Musk being mad. This resulted in Leftist always getting in Musk's mentions about Bolivia and eventually he trolled the, by saying "we'll coup who we want to coup!"... despite the fact that Tesla's whole business model around batteries is not set up around the specific type of lithium that Bolivian mines (or most lithium mines!) don't produce, and despite announcing buying Tesla's own mines in Nevada before the subsequent Bolivian elections.
It really irks me that most journalist frame Q as a "theory" rather than Just being mostly "bullshit" fan fictioning lark that most people are in on, but a few people ultimately get wrapped up in....
Reply All did the best story on Q's origins and how countless people had access to the accounts log in details and posted as Q through the years and that there really is no throughline so much as folks think there is. It's basically just a catch-all pretext for whatever bullshit (in the technical sense) people want to do (like overturn an election), that a lot of folks LARPed and a few others (anti-government / militias / white supremacists) took advantage of. What few throughline of the narrative coalesced and stuck (Deep State, RFK Jr, Child Abuse) are few / far between the rest of the stuff that's been ignored.
To talk about it as this coherent thing necessary of debunking is just incorrect.
Thank you for linking to the wiki page about waving the bloody shirt. I think I do reasonably well with American sayings, but that one was beyond me. I opened the link when reading, and just came back to the tab, and it was helpful to add this to my store of knowledge :-)
Another way is to look at it like this: Q is fun LARP. If you search around you'll find some good discussions of this even among some of the Q fanatics themselves. Some went down the rabbit hole, yes. Others were involved in the same way teens in my day got waaay too into D&D (remember that?). The same is true with JFK conspiracies. We all know people who "know!" the CIA was involved, I know a very leftist priest and a very rightist soldier who believe this, but when pressed probably don't really care in the end that they might be wrong. Believing in this conspiracy fits their view of themselves as someone in the know. I lived in Bangui for two years, my neighbor "knew!" I was a spy. I kept telling him I wasn't but that only proved it. After two years, he sort of figured out that I really was too boring and ordinary to be a spy, I could see it actually deflated him and he stopped coming around. He wasn't important enough to be living somewhere that spies went. He would have been happier if I had winked the first time he raised it, and said, "yeah, but, shhhhh." I was on a tour in Stratford on Avon, and the guide went on and on about how Shakespeare really didn't write anything, it was the 17th Earl of Oxford. When I confronted him and explained why 17EofO didn't actually add up, he sort of shrugged, "yeah, maybe not" but wasn't really phased by the evidence, he just liked his story better. Why? It was part of who he was. He was role playing for tourists and getting a rush out of the controversy he was inspiring that he "knew" something others didn't.
It's also very much like sports fans who refuse to ever admit to a foul on their team, and instead "undo" every loss with calls of "bullshit" and revised histories about how they were "screwed" by refs....most are just saying it to make themselves feel better and not give folks the satisfaction of having anything over on them, etc.
So true and good examples are plentiful and I agree with your troll message board comment below. Of course everyone "knows!" that Big XII refs are paid off by Oklahoma, right?! And don't get me started on what's going in the SEC and Bama! Dynasties all have their conspiracy theories. BTW. A friend of a friend knows an engineer who saw the blueprints and Tom Brady was actually built by Boston Dynamics. Not sayin' I believe it myself, but y'know, sort of explains some things??? (And you always have to end with a question mark in your posts so you can backtrack later, right?")
Q was definitely started on message boards which are majority run by active trolls. The whole point of the game is to play along in hopes of attacking someone who actually genuinely believes the bullshit you've stated and then repeats it elsewhere, thus allowing you to laugh at them...of course, it's often hard to tell good faith and bad faith posting...but it seems pretty clear to many that Q posts are largely shitposts...and if that's the bulk of the movement, basically a giant albeit lame pretext to say or do whatever you want...we should probably try harder to treat it as such...
I don't have anything intelligent to add, but there's something weird about the map in this post, like its a projection that I'm not familiar with, and its freaking me out.
I feel like the traditional way to resolve the tension between systemic and personal is to punish people who did bad things while also addressing the systemic issues. I’m not sure why people seem to have abandoned this solution.
I may not be chronically online (not on Twitter at least) but I saw the blowback to Epstein's death on the left as well as the right. "Epstein didn't kill himself" didn't seem like a right wing point to me. It seemed like a statement generally accepted as true, but also came with the acknowledgement that it would be fruitful due to it being very difficult to prove... If anything "Epstein didn't kill himself" seems to be a lefty meme about how "the rich" (including Trump) are getting away with it.
I'm glad to hear you're getting more interested in (capital R) Rationalism. There's a lot there. LessWrong is a fertile site, including on covid. As was the most popular blog in that world, Slate Star Codex, now also moved to Substack: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
The problem with paid subscriptions is that this model does not serve the mission to help foster a better informed public in the most efficient way. If the best content is behind a paywall, then the public misses out.
Although QAnon is generally unpopular, the belief base is different than traditional conspiracy theories (more female). I haven't seen enough people write about this aspect, but that MTG and Boebert are representative or the vanguard is not a one off.
This is not contrived probably and don't know if it can be replicated, but the pedophilia, child trafficking angle broadens the TAM (total addressable market in marketing slang).
An analogy would be video games whose TAM historically had been 10-30 year old males largely. After Facebook and the iPhone, different tactics and business models led to expanding video games to more women and marginal video game players: Farmville, Candy Crush, Words with Friends.
The pedophilia angle is expanding conspiracy theory into a new market which is problematic. Anti-Vaxx was a precursor, but historically women and normies just weren't that devoted to things like the Rothschilds, 9/11 truth, Loose Change and various monetary conspiracies, etc. That's all young dude energy.
Are there any data on how much percent of QAnon followers also believe the other conspiracies? They are probably different but I expect a large % of QAnon followers also believe that climate change is not real and that JFK was killed by a conspiracy?
I’m getting a little tired of Matt’s defensive / projection in deference to experts. I think Epstein probably killed himself, and I don’t know much about prison conditions. Certainly I don’t feel invested in having a socially appropriate viewpoint on prison conditions, which I assume are bad, but I know almost nothing about the topic.
This assertion on Matt’s part that it’s wokeness / expert deference is in direct contradiction with a conversation he had with Ezra Klein, who pointed out that many people who believe 9/11 was faked have an incredible wealth of knowledge on fuel temperatures and building specifications. His point was that average people are often better at judging these things, because they don’t trick themselves into making a problem much more complex than it is. They know the basics, and the basics are usually enough.
While Occam’s Razor is a little deceptive — “it was God’s will” is a simple explanation for everything — I tend to think of it in terms of what reasonable solution involves the fewest amount of people. Epstein committing suicide involves one person, and thus, I tend to believe that’s the most likely outcome. #2 would be bribing a guard, since that involves 2 people. Getting Barr involved hugely expands the number of people needed.
My experience is that conspiracy theories tend to be pretty equal opportunity. I know lots of very smart people who believe incredibly weird things (including Matty). And again, they may have exceptionally deep knowledge on the topic. My father is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he will happily talk for hours about how climate change isn’t caused by CO2.
Matt if you have some time I would really appreciate a post on your epistemology methodology. For example, I find Bryan Caplans general heuristic about never going against wide consensus on expert opinion to be of great help in guarding against false conspiracy theories. What other things would you recommend in fighting off echo chambers? Aside from subscribing to substacks of those one disagrees with and reading contrary opinions. Something of the average joe who still has to go to work and take care of his family. I find myself not even trusting NPR and mainstream media anymore. I get most of my info from substack and podcasts now.
What's this about a coterie of rogue FBI agents being responsible for Hillary's loss?
To your point about the Lower 9th Ward flooding, I will also remind folks while the Garden District was spared, Lakeview (a middle to upper class neighborhood) also flooded during Katrina in addition to the 9th Ward, which doesn't really help the conspiratorial takes and is often left out of the main narratives. My uncle lived in Lakeview and I helped remove silted garbage from his home and walked down to the area where the levee broke to see it for myself.
On the subject of new Left Wing conspiracy, I don't think it's acknowledged just how many there are out there this day and age.
My favorite to follow has been the "Bolivian Coup" narratives which somehow evolved to include Elon Musk trying to steal Bolivia's lithium.
It's even more fascinating because of the role Bolivia played in American political discourse in the run up to 2020 (Venezuela constantly being tossed in DSA faces, and Bolivia was an easy counter example for a lot of naive folks as a "good" implementation of Socialism in Latin America.
Of course, if folks had paid more attention to recent Bolivian history it was already well documented that Evo was angling for a power grab (he lost a referendum on term limits he helped install in Bolivia's newest Constitution, later challenged it in Court, and had it ruled "unconstitutional" by a high court he had essentially packed with loyalist who said term limits violated Evo's "human rights").
At the time, it was very easy for me to see the parallels to America's situation with Trump and the upcoming election and the role his court might play in validating decisions... But lots of Progressives and Leftist took the opposite view.
When the Bolivian election results were mired in controversy and the result very close (keeping in mind Evo and MAS had lost almost 20% popular support since the last election due to his challenge to the referendum and other things), folks like Greenwald and Max Blumenthal at Grayzone jumped in to say it was a CIA coup and rushed to pressure Sanders and other Americans to go on record saying so.
Part of that effort involved haphazardly developing conspiracies about Bolivia's Lithium being "nationalized" and Corporate America and Elon Musk being mad. This resulted in Leftist always getting in Musk's mentions about Bolivia and eventually he trolled the, by saying "we'll coup who we want to coup!"... despite the fact that Tesla's whole business model around batteries is not set up around the specific type of lithium that Bolivian mines (or most lithium mines!) don't produce, and despite announcing buying Tesla's own mines in Nevada before the subsequent Bolivian elections.
It really irks me that most journalist frame Q as a "theory" rather than Just being mostly "bullshit" fan fictioning lark that most people are in on, but a few people ultimately get wrapped up in....
Reply All did the best story on Q's origins and how countless people had access to the accounts log in details and posted as Q through the years and that there really is no throughline so much as folks think there is. It's basically just a catch-all pretext for whatever bullshit (in the technical sense) people want to do (like overturn an election), that a lot of folks LARPed and a few others (anti-government / militias / white supremacists) took advantage of. What few throughline of the narrative coalesced and stuck (Deep State, RFK Jr, Child Abuse) are few / far between the rest of the stuff that's been ignored.
To talk about it as this coherent thing necessary of debunking is just incorrect.
Thank you for linking to the wiki page about waving the bloody shirt. I think I do reasonably well with American sayings, but that one was beyond me. I opened the link when reading, and just came back to the tab, and it was helpful to add this to my store of knowledge :-)
Another way is to look at it like this: Q is fun LARP. If you search around you'll find some good discussions of this even among some of the Q fanatics themselves. Some went down the rabbit hole, yes. Others were involved in the same way teens in my day got waaay too into D&D (remember that?). The same is true with JFK conspiracies. We all know people who "know!" the CIA was involved, I know a very leftist priest and a very rightist soldier who believe this, but when pressed probably don't really care in the end that they might be wrong. Believing in this conspiracy fits their view of themselves as someone in the know. I lived in Bangui for two years, my neighbor "knew!" I was a spy. I kept telling him I wasn't but that only proved it. After two years, he sort of figured out that I really was too boring and ordinary to be a spy, I could see it actually deflated him and he stopped coming around. He wasn't important enough to be living somewhere that spies went. He would have been happier if I had winked the first time he raised it, and said, "yeah, but, shhhhh." I was on a tour in Stratford on Avon, and the guide went on and on about how Shakespeare really didn't write anything, it was the 17th Earl of Oxford. When I confronted him and explained why 17EofO didn't actually add up, he sort of shrugged, "yeah, maybe not" but wasn't really phased by the evidence, he just liked his story better. Why? It was part of who he was. He was role playing for tourists and getting a rush out of the controversy he was inspiring that he "knew" something others didn't.
Off topic, but I'd love to hear what you were doing in Bangui and what it was like there.
I was a spy. ;-)
And my neighbor just saw that and went "Aha!" Seriously, Peace Corps. Since I post with my real name, no need to dox me.
It's also very much like sports fans who refuse to ever admit to a foul on their team, and instead "undo" every loss with calls of "bullshit" and revised histories about how they were "screwed" by refs....most are just saying it to make themselves feel better and not give folks the satisfaction of having anything over on them, etc.
So true and good examples are plentiful and I agree with your troll message board comment below. Of course everyone "knows!" that Big XII refs are paid off by Oklahoma, right?! And don't get me started on what's going in the SEC and Bama! Dynasties all have their conspiracy theories. BTW. A friend of a friend knows an engineer who saw the blueprints and Tom Brady was actually built by Boston Dynamics. Not sayin' I believe it myself, but y'know, sort of explains some things??? (And you always have to end with a question mark in your posts so you can backtrack later, right?")
Q was definitely started on message boards which are majority run by active trolls. The whole point of the game is to play along in hopes of attacking someone who actually genuinely believes the bullshit you've stated and then repeats it elsewhere, thus allowing you to laugh at them...of course, it's often hard to tell good faith and bad faith posting...but it seems pretty clear to many that Q posts are largely shitposts...and if that's the bulk of the movement, basically a giant albeit lame pretext to say or do whatever you want...we should probably try harder to treat it as such...
I don't have anything intelligent to add, but there's something weird about the map in this post, like its a projection that I'm not familiar with, and its freaking me out.
I still can't get past the "coincidence" that Oswald landed a job that put him on the motorcade route.
Regarding JFK, maybe no one ever confirmed a fire, but there was plenty of smoke.
I feel like the traditional way to resolve the tension between systemic and personal is to punish people who did bad things while also addressing the systemic issues. I’m not sure why people seem to have abandoned this solution.