Before the data comes in, the conspiracy theorist may not have a lot of predictions, or may have a lot of wrong predictions.
After the data comes in, though, the conspiracy theorist will have all sorts of stories about why the data fits perfectly with their theory.
My intention in what you quote was to consider the conspiracy theory in its fulness, after it’s been all fleshed out. This is usually the version of conspiracy theories I see.
That second version of the theory will be very likely, but have a very low prior probability. And when someone finds a conspiracy theory like that convincing, part of what’s going on may be that they confuse likelihood and probability. “It all makes sense! All the details fit!”
Whereas the original conspiracy theorist is making a very different kind of mistake.
Ah, yeah, I agree with your story.
Before the data comes in, the conspiracy theorist may not have a lot of predictions, or may have a lot of wrong predictions.
After the data comes in, though, the conspiracy theorist will have all sorts of stories about why the data fits perfectly with their theory.
My intention in what you quote was to consider the conspiracy theory in its fulness, after it’s been all fleshed out. This is usually the version of conspiracy theories I see.
That second version of the theory will be very likely, but have a very low prior probability. And when someone finds a conspiracy theory like that convincing, part of what’s going on may be that they confuse likelihood and probability. “It all makes sense! All the details fit!”
Whereas the original conspiracy theorist is making a very different kind of mistake.
Ah ok, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!