Venkatesh Rao

Axe-grinder here, hi It’s not that crackpots are “almost always” right But on “almost every” topic, *some* crackpot is right-er than institutions Crackpot truth high watermark always higher+faster than inst For best results, survey crackpots for best, not institutions for avghttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1346324137409581057 …

This is a fairly weak claim. About as strong as the law of large numbers. Like how somebody will guess the lottery numbers right. If you can’t a priori identify the one right-er crackpot, you’re basically saying nothing.

If.https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1230625868206104577 …

My point exactly. That’s just your guess from 2/20 that appears prescient in hindsight. But there was no way to tell *then* that you were the crackpot to back. The thing about institutions is that they give you a priori cause for greater trust via their average better hit rate.

In theory, greater hit rates are good But it seems like whatever accuracy institutions accumulate on is literally “spent” on big lies at important moments Iraq War Epstein didn’t kill himself COVID “Russiagate” etc Literally every important thing utterly wrong

Now you just sound randomly conspiratorial. Institutions aren’t monolithic actors. You can still pick up a random paper from Nature and follow the argument and decide how much to trust it. You just can’t do that for random red-strong Twitter thread of vague accusations.

Some people get some important things wrong, sometimes on purpose. That’s it. If you throw away everything on the strength of that, you’re left with nothing but a pile of red string.

You’re using Twitter, which is a service resting on dozens of technical standards tediously worked out by expert committees etc. Running on equipment much of which is the result of tedious institutional work. Yes, Epstein didn’t kill himself. No, you’re not vaulting things right.