Most truthiness isn’t outrageous bullshit. It’s just regular truth with scope qualifications and caveats and doubts removed, and confidence rounded up to 100%.
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Lowers cognitive burden of maintaining possible worlds where an idea is not true. It’s almost the definition of “believing”. Truth can only be held in a contingent, unsatisfying way. To get to fulfilling belief you have to drop doubt and possible worlds based on doubt.
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So truthiness is about turning ◇ into □ via degeneracy
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Modal degeneracy. “X is true in all possible worlds because I have managed to render myself unconscious to ones in which it might not be” In case it isn’t obvious I approve of this procedure. So long as you extend to others the courtesy of recognizing their right to do the same.
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If you can learn to be genuinely surprised at something happening that you actually knew could happen, but managed to forget you knew, you’ve learned how to believe. Black belt: being stunned and blindsided by utterly predictable stuff playing out in utterly predictable ways.
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I recall my 9th grade biology teacher told us a joke/paradox about surprise that illustrates the process. On Saturday, warden tells prisoner: “you will be executed between now and Friday, on a day that will surprise you.” ...
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Prisoner smugly infers he’s safe from execution, why? Well, he can’t be executed on Friday because then he’d know by Thursday night and it wouldn’t be surprising. But then he can’t be executed on Thursday either, and so on recursively through to Sunday. Yay, he’s safe!
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On Tuesday, warden executes the prisoner, who is very surprised.
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I still haven’t come up with a satisfying account of this paradox. It’s a bit like the Monty hall problem in time
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Does this paradox have a well-known name?
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Mr. Eli W. Jones
Ah sounds like it’s called the unexpected hanging paradox in the literature. I’d like a less contrived example. Like people being genuinely surprised when Trump won, even though it was a formal possibility all along. I think that maps here somehow. https://twitter.com/mreliwjones/status/1216891689660489729?s=21 …https://twitter.com/mreliwjones/status/1216891689660489729 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Replying to @vgr
Hitting snake eyes is probably the canonical. 3% chance, loses the bet and breaks the streak.
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