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I mean if ur theory is "well there's a mystical agent that'd purposefully messing up all our testing" I uhhh I guess this is technically possible but like, are we really gonna favor that theory over "the theory we're testing might be wrong"?

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sure but like, is the mystical agent knowable? if they're not knowable, then they're as good as not existing; if they're knowable, then there's reason to know them; maybe they spoke to you in a dream or something. And boom, now we have interaction with reality. And we can test it

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and so the poking should be done *at that*, right. like if u heard a voice in ur dream you could be like ok how often does it happen, when does it happen, does it correlate with anything, let's start keeping records

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I feel super down with poking at and testing weirdo insane things, as long as the poking and testing is happening in a way that wouldn't also validate an incorrect conclusion

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people believing dumb things can be really, really harmful, and if someone believes a very dumb thing in one area it means there's something systemically wrong with their thinking that might end up being harmful when a situation comes up that matters

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I agree very rational ppl can have dumb ideas, but im talkin in general? as in rationalists all mostly ended up on the same way of handling covid, which came out of prior knowledge of how to calculate and respond to risks. I agree this isn't foolproof but there's something there

5:44 PM · Apr 4, 2022

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as in if you go through life not double checking things you believe because it feels good to believe, you're much more likely to make harmful errors than if you did check

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