Who to ignore – bullshit filters

> Filter #1: Are they free to speak their minds?

> If they are in an institution – who funds it?

> If they are in a company - what are the incentives of the company?

> As an individual, what are their incentives?

This is great advice. In the case of this article, according to the "About" info, one of the authors works for a VC-funded tech company who's making an online game platform. Would they be incentivized to write about a BS filter that denigrated venture capital, tech, or online gaming specifically?

> Filter #2: Does their livelihood depend on being right?

From the "About" info, that doesn't appear to be the case here. But still, I tend to agree.

> Filter #3: Do they take cyberspace seriously?

This is where working for a VC-backed online gaming startup may activate filter #1, given the author lists examples that neatly support the industry they're in. I'm not convinced this filter belongs with #1 and #2, and because of #1 and #2, I'm skeptical of #3.

But I liked the article, thanks for sharing!

-- Are you phrasing your question or reaction in a way that the person could reasonably respond to?

Basically, if you are putting a question in front of someone such that their answer would get them in trouble or put them in some liability or embarrassment, don't expect them to respond. Or be angry or outraged when they don't. The most laughable example is when someone replies in a post to someone doing an AMA, saying, "please respond as your reply will be taken as the company's position on this matter".

-- Are you giving the person a way to answer concretely?

If you're asking someone to respond to you in a way that takes a lot of story telling, or high level judgement, or interpretation -- don't expect an answer. Most people have not thought about something at that level, or don't know enough to say. Or if they do, who knows whether that's what you want to hear or were specifically asking.

Most people are a little lazy. Ask yourself if you're asking them to do work and a lot of hard thought just in answering your question.

-- Is your question just as a spectator, or someone actually seeking to improve or help?

A lot of people can't resist the urge to ask questions. And the internet was a great democratizing factor for that at least.

But for what purpose are you asking? Even if you received the full information you wanted, are you going to do something about it? If not, are you just a spectator? Why are you qualified or deserving of an answer? It's like some sports fan wanting to ask their favorite team's GM a slew of questions why they made the starting lineup as they did. What difference does it make? To your fantasy football league?

If you make it clear that you have some concrete desire, or role, or outlet to help in the situation being discussed, people are more likely to want to give an answer. Rather than your question just consuming time of theirs that ends up not producing anything useful as an outcome.

Herman/Chomsky's "Five Filters" from Manufacturing Consent

https://chomsky.info/consent01/

Parenti's Inventing Reality

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/673719.Inventing_Reality

The optimistic prediction that "geeks will inherit the Earth" is likely to be wrong:

https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/

    Stammbach worked with a colony of longtailed macaques. In the paper cited
    above, the running header is "Responses to Specially Skilled Java
    Monkeys." Stammbach took the lowest-ranking macaque out of the society and
    taught him to operate a complex machine and obtain food. When the nerd
    monkey was reintroduced to the society, the higher ranking macaques
    stopped kicking him out of the way long enough for him to complete
    operation of the machine and obtain food for the community. I.e., society
    cooperated to create the conditions under which the nerd could toil for
    them. However, the monkey who acquired these special skills and provided
    for the society did not achieve any rise in his dominance status.

#5 how much marginal effort do they put into their appearance. For physical appearance I give women more leeway because of societal pressure, but in general the more effort someone puts into their clothes,hair,skin,etc every day. The less trustworthy of a source they are. The same thing holds true for appearance of digital information, the more tweaked and precise the formatting, the bigger the chance they're trying to take advantage of you. IE anyone who sends an html email where all the text is in a table to simulate margins.

#6 anyone who's primary job is to communicate on a regular basis. Politicians, Reporters, Executives, Salespeople, basically anywhere that "Soft Skills" are a top priority. These types of jobs tend to attract less trustworthy individuals.

#7. anyone who never admits when they're wrong, or don't know. This one is obvious, but conversly if someone says they're not sure but they think something. Then make sure you listen and remember that was just someones idea and not a fact.

#8 Everyone. Don't ever take anyones word for anything important, think for yourself. If something sounds suspicious it probably is. Everyone makes mistakes, and anyone could be dishonest. You're a human being, not a computer.

If someone has skin in the game (is an investor etc.), then you can dismiss them based on those incentives: Of course he will say cryptocurrencies are important, he has just invested in a startup in the area! (Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut!)

If they have no skin in the game, then dismiss them for this reason: well, if they believe crypto is so important, why are they just being an armchair smartass about it in the newspaper, why don't they put their money where their mouth is and invest in a crypto startup?

1. Be wary of views coming from people who are not free to speak their minds on the topic at hand, because of their existing incentives.

2. Favor views from those who get paid for being right, discount views from those who get paid for sounding right.

In order to get paid for being right, you have to place a bet. Once you've placed a bet, you have incentives and aren't free to speak your mind. Obviously these are both matters of degree and some compromise can be had, but the process of hashing out the compromise seems like the "secret compartment" into which these filters squeeze all of the original complexity.

Do any world leaders do either of those things? I guess tweeting is technically telling a computer what to do. Seems like his prediction ignores the higher end power structures. It's right for a lot of jobs, but not the ones that actually inherit the earth and run things. You might inherit some of it as a geek, but you won't be a landlord.

That one is a tricky one, because pretty much every single activist organization and non-profit cannot exist unless they are correct. And even if they 'win' it's very hard for them to admit it and dissolve their organizations.

The author also references a quote from Nassim Taleb and his claim to fame is that he predicted the 2008 crash - but I never got a sense if he just got a lucky guess or there was actually something to his model.

edit: after looking at the headlines more closely, it seems that it's commentary on early media reports of coronavirus being no more deadly than the flu. Not sure if that is clear-cut bullshit, rather than just uninformed reporting... or maybe they're the same thing :)

I lack the epistemological certitude to propose a "filter", but I'd say a strong "red flag" in evaluating thinkpieces about whose predictions you should take seriously would be "anybody who elevates technology workers above others because computers are eating the world".

So I always had people on social media who were very much not like me. Not all of them were clever or articulate etc, but they remind me of other human realities out there, lives which went in a totally different direction than my own probably since before their birth.

The only people I really tend to block are malicious actors, spambots and vampiristic people who obsess with you.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/08/03/108-...

I have a personal bullshit filter: Are the authors open to criticism and allow others to speak their minds? If an article does not have a comments section, I am very skeptical of it. I find myself scrolling to the bottom looking for a comment section. If the article doesn't have one, I'll likely skip it.

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

Be wary of views coming from people who are not free to speak their minds on the topic at hand, because of their existing incentives.

2. Favour views from those who get paid for being right, discount views from those who get paid for sounding right."

So, I would add one more rule. The George Carlin rule:

-- Are they part of any group?

That actually covers the first and second rule of the author.

But to hate the government is suicide because we are the government. Same with society, and same with groups.

My logical conclusion with regards to speech: Learn to observe, think, form your own opinions, always speak your mind, and be no part of group think or group speech. Which is exactly what George Carlin did.

In an ideal world, no one would be part of any group. But since we all are, here is the Carlin rule revised:

-- Are they openly critical of their groups?

But again, most groups do not tolerate external or internal criticism. They're the disloyal traitors and whistle-blowers. So most of us have to chalk this up as doing our job, so we can all have one. Not everyone get's paid to speak like George.

But wherever and whenever we can, we should promote and protect the groups that embrace and advocate free speech against themselves. They are the only groups sustaining free speech.

A telling sign of this group is that they often shy away from providing testable predictions, which could be unambiguously disproven later....

By definition, we know that Krugman was wrong, because he made testable predictions.

I'm a scientist, and the first thing you learn from doing science is getting used to being wrong about things. If you fire everybody who is ever wrong, you'll have nobody left worth listening to.

Ignores the larger structural issues. Again.

- Share you data.

- Cite your sources.

- Sign your work.

Maybe call these three simple rules pre-filters.

1. Are they competent?

2. Are they acting in good faith?

These can then be further subdivided into things to check.

I'm not sure that "we listened to the experts" is how we got to anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.

I see a lot of reversion to abusive language in situations where there is obvious hypocrisy or an attempt to hide your desires (which is a major component of discussion in NVC). It is typical to see name dismissive name calling and condescension, which is different from group labelling... which is still probably categorization error.

Some examples of dismissive name calling in our current climate can be "You are just a (liberal/conservate/whatever)."; "That's just (stupid/silly/dumb)."; "Group X is (evil/brainwashed/sheep/etc.)". Anti-LGBT or Anti-any-category or group is basically abuse in the first place as well, as you should be able to directly attack their policy positions, rather than the group themselves. Labeling is just generally wrong, unless that label is based on an action: for example, "Biden voters" and "Trump voters" are categories based on action, rather than an attempt to apply a dismissive label.

By avoiding writers and commentary that use abusive language, I have rapidly found myself more informed. Further, I have discovered why I don't care for the works of Stephen Pinker. One example was when he tied the entire concept of environmentalism to anti-nuclear groups, and used the argument to deny all environmentalism in "Enlightenment Now".

I remember hearing, living in abuse will lead to abuse. It is a cycle. But what happens when verbal abuse is pervasive in a society, and it's part of the standard news cycle? Well, you get an abusive society.

Learn to spot abuse, and don't read those who use it in their writings and discussions.

On a more serious note, I've basically come to the same conclusions: no skin in the game -> ignore, organization and not a person -> ignore. I do follow a few individual journalists such as Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald who explicitly staked their reputation on their journalistic integrity, and ignore everything else as fake news.

I see this as a reputation question, and one fundamentally of whether the source has any concern with being seen credible on the basis of their pronouncements.

By reputation, an assessment of typical reliability, which need not be accurate in all cases, but should be useful in most. There's also the principle that false, misleading, or distracting information is worse than no information, and should be rejected as rapidly and cheaply (with minimum effort, burden, or deliberation) as possible.

Given that prediction is hard, especially about the future, errors will occur. A critical question is how does the source address this?

In the case of one cited example, Paul Krugman, he frequently admits errors, even significant ones. I'd noted some years ago his mea culpa regarding his 1970s outlook on energy.[1] This is only one of numerous instances, some large, some small.[2] Krugman also offers his advice on how to regard errors in predictions:

My view, however, is that you don’t just want to look at whether people have been wrong; you want to ask how they respond when events don’t go the way they predicted.[3]

And he states his own principles on the matter along with numerous examples of his own errors, contrasting with others who are "completely unwilling to admit mistakes":

I try hard not to behave that way. If I make a mistake — like my extreme pessimism about the short-term survival of the euro, or my warnings back in 2003 about a US debt crisis — I do try to admit it, and figure out where I was wrong (I underestimated both Europe’s political cohesion and the extent to which ECB intervention could short-circuit the financial panic; back when, I made a false analogy with countries that borrow in someone else’s currency.) No doubt there have been times when I rewrote history to make myself look better, but I try to avoid that — it’s a major intellectual and moral sin.[4]

That's not to say Krugman practices this perfectly, and by his own admission he allows exceptions, though he seems to give the notion an earnest effort and be self-aware. This contrasts with numerous others, including several of recent conversations I've seen on HN in which refutation after refutation draws nary a note of acknowledgement. Makes for tedious discussion.

If prediction is a speculative venture,[5] then errors will be made. Failure to be wrong is failure to try: "predictions" are simply obvious statements, tautologies, unfalsifiable, or cold readings which will be interpreted as accurate regardless of future outcomes. Occasionally they're made by an entity which has the sole power to determine outcome, whether by controlling events (discretion of action) or judgement ("It's not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes," as Stalin is claimed to have said). See also rigged courts and selection committees.

Which affords another principle: be wary those who determine both decisions and the assessment of outcomes. A recent exchange on HN saw the claim that the US Federal Reserve had changed its definition of inflation. A response correctly noted that whilst the Fed's Dual Mandate is to manage both inflation and unemployment, both are measured by a different entity: the U.S. Department of Labour.

Rather than penalise error, we should instead look to its causes and responses. Is the source systematically biased? Was there poor data? Was analysis flawed? Did the source simply have a bad model or poor conceptual grasp, arguably the case for Krugman's Internet blunder. Or were they simply careless, and the prediction itself a trivial non-serious cherry-picked element of their work? That's Krugman's own admission along with, again, his admission of error:

I must have tossed it off quickly (at the time I was mainly focused on the Asian financial crisis!), then later conflated it in my memory with the NYT piece. Anyway, I was clearly trying to be provocative, and got it wrong, which happens to all of us sometimes.[6]

Worse than those who ignore or fail to correct errors are those who become defensive, engage in projection, invoke tu quoque and whatabboutism, who become hostile and abusive, who deny, and/or hide their past, often through secrecy classifications, assertions of privilage, NDAs, nondisparagement contracts, gag orders, outright threats, or unhealthful tea.

There's one worse level yet: Those who are openly and flagrantly indifferent to the truth.

Such actors are very nearly always dangerous of themselves, whether through presumed or actual immunity or impunity. The dynamic is well-described in Adam Curtis's documentary HyperNormalisation.[7]

Any circumstance in which factual statements are rewarded for anything other than truth valence is ultimately perversely selecting. This may be punishing bad news, favouring good, or rewarding (usually short-term) profit (or audience) over truth value. This last makes any advertising-supported medium inherently suspect.

There are four fallacies associated with smart people being stupid:

- Egocentrism: overly self-centered, stop caring about outcomes for others.

- Omniscience: surround themselves with sycophants.

- Omnipotence: believe they can do anything.

- Invulnerability: believe they can get away with anything.

There's a large literature on truth detection. Science and the scientific method (literally: the process of acquiring knowledge), and the philosophical field of epistemology. The distinction between dialectic and rhetoric, the philosophers and the sophists, the one seeking wisdom, the other promulgating dogma, predates Plato.

I've collected a few earlier references, aimed largely at specific claims or works, though somewhat applicable to sources as well, drawing on Reason Stick, Rory Coker, Derek Muller (Veritasium), Tim Minchin, Harry Frankfurt, Craig Ferguson, Carl Sagan, Alberto Brandolini, Doglas Adams, Nate Silver, Dunning-Kruger, and others:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28ge14/on_nons...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be a good addition:

https://religiousgrounds.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/bonhoeffer...

________________________________

Notes:

1. https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/energy-futures-...

2. A DDG search returns numerous instances, and a few false hits. But the case seems made; Krugman will admit error. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=krugman+"i+was+wrong"+site%3Anytim...

3. https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/what-to-do-when...

4. https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/knaves-fools-an...

5. And for most of you it is. Fellow Timelords, you know who you are, and that the situation is even worse for us.

6. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff...

7. Celine's Second Law is a partial expression of this. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wpaud/linus_t...

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation