Comment by klabb3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klabb3 | Hacker News Reader

Due to paywall, I couldn’t read the whole article. But that doesn’t stop me from summarizing it:

How you should think

The astute follower of mainstream media will sometimes notice rifts in the global narrative continuum. What was confidently touted for a year no longer seems to be true, and instead the ideas that we ridiculed endlessly seems likelier by the day. Is this an indication that we got it wrong? Of course not. Let us assure you that this is merely a temporary disruption and total consensus will be restored promptly. In particular, don’t be tempted to take this moment as an opportunity to exercise critical thinking. Remember: truths are always wrapped in complicated packaging, such as spooky “confidence levels”, which isn’t designed for layman consumption. Our most credentialed experts are working day and night to integrate these new discoveries into the narrative you all love and care for. Stay tuned.

Still, you may wonder how to make sense of such a world, with seemingly contradictory truths? Well, the only permanent cure is to not focus too much on truths and factoids, but rather subscribe to the narrative at large. It’s a lot easier than thinking for yourself, and much safer. Don’t let this wear you down though. Remember, the current truth is no more than a click away, for only $9.99/mo.

Unsurprisingly, this is not at all what the article speaks to; it may well be true that, epistemically, some of the things you're worried about are going on. But just like this is not an article about whether trace BPA in the food supply has hormone regulation effects, or whether replacing your current car with an EV is carbon positive or negative, it's also not an article about what you just said it was about.

Rather, it introduces two basic concepts in how intelligence organizations qualify their intelligence gathering: (1) estimative language: a concept that maps numerical probabilities into specific language (e.g. in the UK, "highly likely" means 80-90%); (2) analytic confidence: a concept that speaks to the verifiability of an individual source or conclusion, typically based on the mode of intelligence gathering.

Having done this, it then suggests that most individual pieces of intelligence have low analytic confidence, but that depending on the opportunity cost (loss function) of (in)action, this may be sufficient to proceed; likewise agglomerations of low confidence intelligence may form a high confidence conclusion (as in an ensemble learner).

By way of examples, it discusses the following examples: (1) whether Russia was using T-62 tanks -> whether better sights would help night vision; (2) the DOE COVID WSJ reporting; (3) whether Iraq had WMD; (4) whether Germany sabotaged Nordstream; (5) whether Russia would invade Ukraine in 2022; (6) the NIE Havana Syndrome reporting. I assume the thing that made you write the fan fiction you wrote was #2.

Honestly, it's a 13 paragraph article and a link around the paywall was posted hours before you posted your thing, so maybe just read the article?

Not the OP, but all I see is a ham-fisted attempt by some writer at The Economist to try and whitewash the "credibility" of his ideological colleagues working for the Anglo intelligence agencies (there's a very high probability that both the writer and many of the people working for those intelligence agencies have attended the same schools and hold the same ideological views).

It's a reversion to the mean of "ackchyually, they didn't really want to say that, and this is why". The percentage thing is just the scientist cherry on top.

It is likely with low confidence that the source you were most certainly replying to is referring to the front of shaping "Public Opinion" in which intelligence agencies highly likely with low confidence took part in [0] and with still many reports with low confidence most likely still are.

It is certainly interesting to learn about the Anglo-American intelligence jargon, however without detailed historical/geopolitical/technical/operational context it is nearly impossible to adequately weigh their content. The article even goes into the intricacies of communication (the assessment itself taking influence on the situation) but does not mention one of the main operational goals of publicly communicated intelligence: managing the narrative.

[0]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UwerBZG83YM

This is the 1983 interview with Frank Snepp about manipulating the media.

Somehow missed the link at first, just read it now. That’s a good factual summary. And yes my “fan fiction” would have been better suited against many other articles. Mostly the title “how to make sense of X” reminded me of the actual CNN headlines on the format “how to think about X”.

But, and this is somewhat speculative, I do find the timing of releasing these barrages of articles with the general sentiment of “intel is less trustworthy than you think” only now, at a time when recent data marks a stark narrative rift. Yes it’s low confidence (in the lab leak case) but that can be summarized in a sentence and then we can talk about the implications of that possibly a man made pathogen leaked and killed millions? There’s perhaps no room for that after all technicalities are covered?

OTOH, if one should assume the best possible intent, I’m sure there are a lot of people who truly missed the point and think eg the lab leak is proven true. Even so, I find it strange that media so eagerly volunteers as educators.

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