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Replying to
You want to take a 1 in 10 shot. You only have enough courage for a 1 in 2 risk. So you talk confidently, get others betting with you, misrepresent the risks both to actually reduce it for yourself and gain some courage from social proof kool-aid. You’re socializing your risks.
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How often do you see people say openly, “this is a wild outlier bet, but I’m making it anyway because I’m tempted by the upside; don’t follow me unless you want to be as crazy as me”
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Adults don’t tell adults lies about how certain the world is unless they want to exploit them. It’s a form of dehumanizing contempt that unfortunately works as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell a captive audience of adults “Santa is real” long enough, they’ll turn into children.
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I didn’t enjoy that attempted recent takedown of Taleb. I think it was a tedious misfire. Taleb’s real corruption lies in his posture of confident halo-effect certainty which goes against every actual cogent point he’s made, which would recommend a humble, no-Santa-lies posture.
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Basically, the Golden Rule for a complex, uncertain world is this: perform the actual uncertainty you feel about the world. Don’t knowingly act more certain than you feel. Unless you’re talking to children or mentally/physically injured adults who need some temporary kindness.
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(the converse risk also exists: sandbagging, or acting *less* certain than you feel, but is IMO less of a catalyst for corruption because it is self correcting — the first time you sandbag, people learn to see through your bluff)
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Footnote: irony and humor are the most enriching ways to alloy apparently self-certain assertions with enough uncertainty to make them not-corrupt. You will notice that corrupt people tend to use humor backwards: to inflate certainty. The laughs come easier but truths get harder.
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Footnote 2: If you can’t/don’t do humor and irony, at least do those “epistemic status” nutritional labels like the earnest rationalists do. Footnote 3: Sarcasm, mockery, amirite humor are all backwards-humor genres (inflate certainty rather than moderate it). Avoid.
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Replying to
How is this different from typical Pump and Dump schemes? Hype the shit out of a security and sell when hype machine is at its frothiest.Classic Wolf of Wall Street grift. So Trumpies have been hyped. Chaos reigns. What's the exit game - when they dump, what do they get?
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So they keep up the theater of the con as a slow burn campaign strategy? Playing the role of ferocious minoritarian / standing up to the majoritarian body no matter what has some effect, I guess. Kinda leaves the libertarians in a weird place.