The Seductions of Clarity | Hacker News Reader

The Seductions of Clarity

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Wittgenstein said "you can't have a clear picture of a stormy sea".

(At least I read or heard that he did. I forgot where. If anyone knows, I'd love it if you could point me to it.)

If you squint a bit, something like it is kinda sorta in Philosophical Investigations 77.

http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Wittgens...

search for 77. in page

Thanks! It's much the same point, so that could be the ancestor of the snappy quote.

Excellent discussion between the author and Sean Carroll on the subject.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/10/18/169-...

To give due credit, that is where I learned of this paper.

I'll take this opportunity to shill for Sean Carroll's Mindscape.

The time I have spent listening to Mindscape episodes, and each monthly 3+ hour AMA, are the most calming and enlightening moments for me in the last decade.

I was not formally educated, so I really appreciate these long chats with someone like Sean Carroll. The experience has truly reconfigured some lazy algos in my mind. I highly recommend it. Also, the ability to ask him questions for $1/month has to be one of the best deals in education.

For those who prefer to read, each episode and AMA have transcripts on his site.

Related to the author's second example:

[1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...

[2]: Seeing like a state, by James Scott

https://twitter.com/ManojDoss/status/1491458789354393600

And then there's normal consciousness, and Normies in general. Funny how these always escape scrutiny, and then we're surprised things are so screwed up. Look in the mirror people, thats where the problem is.

“A student asked, ‘is enlightenment a complete remedy?’

Suzuki Roshi replied ‘no’”

Sounds like what a lot of crypto project white papers try to do.

sounds like we need to put disclaimers with every piece of knowledge.

The meaning in the abstract doesn't appear to change signficantly when you substitute the word "clarity," with "complexity." However, the paper does talk about some mechanisms for persuasion and manipulation that have a patina of accuracy. I think an "epistemic bubble," is just a fancy way of patronizing people who are vulnerable to that, and what they call it when they want to convince you you're losing and should give up.

I'm also not sure whether people who use this term have self awareness about it or not, but the culture is at the point where someone using the phrase conspiracy theory is effectively guaranteed to be using it to troll on behalf of their ingroup, and to flatter what they percieve to be an actual conspiracy of people who will reward them for scoring points against their outgroup and toeing the line. I have started to see it as an epithet, and attribute it to a malicious litigation of narrative and not an appeal to truth.

However, I'm optimistic about people I don't think anyone is reliably as dumb as we often sound, so an elaborate theory of how to prevent misinformation and conspiracy theories is just middling concern by the aspirants and pretenders to an increasingly illigitimate establishment. That doesn't say much for the author, but on the topic of cognitive tools for resisting manipulation, conspiracy theories are a lot like jokes, where they slide off sincerity like teflon, but stick to failures of leadership like napalm. It's not our fault they're funny. I think it would be worth looking more closely at why these theories stick and get traction, not by blaming skeptics, but by holding power to account.

So let's compare two statements:

"Conspiracy theories and other sorts of misinformation are stickier now because leadership and institutions are increasingly illegitimate/incompetent/whatever".

"Conspiracy theories and other sorts of misinformation are more widespread now because changes in technology have allowed them to be spread far faster than ever before."

What sort of research or data would one need to support one take over the other?

Well put. Who hasn't had both of those thoughts over the past decade? You can't measure them independently, or support one over the other, because to the degree that either of those statements is true it would be amplified by the effects of the other statement.

To some extent, though, you're just giving a concise framing to the question of misinformation vs. disinformation. Use "disinformation" in the first statement, and they're no longer at odds; they're mutually reinforcing.

While I hadn't considered it from a scholarly research perspective, a psychometric and demographic analysis of change in leaders over time would yield information about their legitimacy and competence.

Technology change doesn't really describe it as well either, as pre-internet, 60's counterculture (hippies) was predicated on a conspiracy theory, as was the reaction to it (birch society), the entire cold war was a conspiracy theory about infiltration and subversion, and up until the 90s, conspiracy movies were some of the biggest pop culture influences, and investigative journalism that challenged the integrity of institutions was considered the highest form of the art. Using the internet as the source for "technological change," is probably the most coarse selection bias one could create.

Pre 9/11, much of the world mobilized and was in more dangerous riots than anything today as part of the anti-globalization movement of the 90s when the internet wasn't as big of a thing, which was a reaction to a conspiracy by the same people (WEF) pulling this stuff today.

All counter culture is a reaction and a conspiracy theory, so the author is really just writing a manual for suppressing counterculture. Viewed this way, I probably shouldn't have been as kind. I'd suggest it should be on the author to deflect assertions of malice.

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