I don’t buy that truthful things should be, in general, difficult to distinguish from untruthful things. I’m not even sure of what that would mean, exactly, for truth-seeking to just be “difficult.”
We could ask whether we would expect that true claims would “sound better” to the one reading / hearing them than false claims. This would have important implications: For example, if they do sound better, then “persuasion” isn’t something anyone need to worry about, unless they were intentionally trying to persuade someone of something that was both false and sounded bad, which would be the case by assumption, here.
The idea that truth-seeking is inherently difficult is an idea that sounds bad. Thus, for me to believe it would require me to believe that bad-sounding things could be true and good-sounding things could be false. How often would this mismatch happen? There is no way a priori to tell how often we would expect this, and that in itself is a bad-sounding thing.
An individual who investigates stuff, but isn’t popular, has nowhere they can put their findings and expect others to find them. Sure, you can put up a blog or a Twitter thread, but that hardly means anyone will look at it.
I even more don’t buy the idea that false things monetize better than true things. But this is a complaint I sometimes hear, and I can’t help but sneer at it a bit. It’s one thing to think that false things and true things compete on an even playing-field, but it’s a wholly different thing to think that people are inherently hardwired to find false things more palatable and therefore spend more time looking for it / paying for it.
It sounds very similar to the arguments for fighting misinformation on social media platforms: Mainly, that it tends to spread more easily than “true but boring / unpleasant” things. During COVID-19, for example, the people that thought we ought to stem the spread of misinformation also typically believed that COVID-19 was more dangerous than the opposite group.
This seems like a very important crux, then, at least: The dichotomy between good-seeming / bad-seeming and true / false. I agree that we should get to the bottom of it.
I don’t understand why you say “should be difficult to distinguish” rather than “are difficult”, why you seem to think finding the truth isn’t difficult, or what you think truthseeking consists of.
For two paragraphs you reason about “what if true claims sound better”. But true claims don’t inherently “sound better”, so I don’t understand why you’re talking about it. How good a claim “sounds” varies from person to person, which implies “true claims sound better” is a false proposition (assuming a fact can be true or false independently of two people, one of whom thinks the claim “sounds good” and the other thinks it “sounds bad”, as is often the case). Moreover, the same facts can be phrased in a way that “sounds good” or “sounds bad”.
I didn’t say “false things monetize better than true things”. I would say that technically correct and broadly fair debunkings (or technically correct and broadly fair publications devoted to countering false narratives) don’t monetize well, certainly not to the tune of millions of dollars annually for a single pundit. Provide counterexamples if you have them.
people are inherently hardwired to find false things more palatable
I didn’t say or believe this either. For such a thing to even be possible, people would have to easily distinguish true and false (which I deny) to determine whether a proposition is “palatable”.
The dichotomy between good-seeming / bad-seeming and true / false.
I don’t know what you mean. Consider rephrasing this in the form of a sentence.
I don’t understand why you say “should be difficult to distinguish” rather than “are difficult”, why you seem to think finding the truth isn’t difficult, or what you think truthseeking consists of.
Because it feels like it’s a choice whether or not I want to consider truth-seeking to be difficult. You are trying to convince me that I should consider it difficult, so that means I have the option to or not. If it simply is difficult, you don’t need to try and convince me of that, it would be obvious on it’s own.
In addition to that, “should be” means that I think something ought to be a certain way. It certainly would be better if truth-seeking weren’t difficult, wouldn’t you agree?
I didn’t say “false things monetize better than true things”. I would say that technically correct and broadly fair debunkings (or technically correct and broadly fair publications devoted to countering false narratives) don’t monetize well, certainly not to the tune of millions of dollars annually for a single pundit. Provide counterexamples if you have them.
So you’re not saying that false things monetize better than true things, you’re saying that things which correctly state that other things are false monetize worse than that the things that they claim are false. I don’t think I misunderstood you here, but I may have interpreted your meaning more broadly than it was intended.
I would think that how well something monetizes depends on how much people want to hear it. So yes, that would mean that it depends on how good something sounds. Our disagreement is on whether or not how good something sounds has any relation whatsoever to how true it is.
But true claims don’t inherently “sound better”
To be clear, I’m saying that they do, and that this means that truth-seeking isn’t that difficult, and it is counterproductive to believe that it is difficult.
The proof I gave that this is false was convincing to me, and you didn’t rebut it. Here are some examples from my father:
ALL the test animals [in mRNA vaccine trials] died during Covid development.
The FDA [are] not following their own procedures.
There is not a single study that shows [masks] are of benefit.
[Studies] say the jab will result in sterility.
Vaccination usually results in the development of variants.
He loves to say things like this (he can go on and on saying such things; I assume he has it all memorized) and he believes they are true. They must sound good to him. They don’t sound good to me (especially in context). How does this not contradict your view?
it feels like it’s a choice whether or not I want to consider truth-seeking to be difficult.
We should be able to mutually agree on what sounds better. For example, “vaccines work” probably sounds better to us both. People say things that don’t sound good all the time, just because they say it doesn’t mean they also think it sounds good.
Things like “we should be able to figure out the truth as it is relevant to our situation with the capabilities we have” have to sound good to everyone, I would think. That means there’s basis for alignment, here.
I don’t buy that truthful things should be, in general, difficult to distinguish from untruthful things. I’m not even sure of what that would mean, exactly, for truth-seeking to just be “difficult.”
We could ask whether we would expect that true claims would “sound better” to the one reading / hearing them than false claims. This would have important implications: For example, if they do sound better, then “persuasion” isn’t something anyone need to worry about, unless they were intentionally trying to persuade someone of something that was both false and sounded bad, which would be the case by assumption, here.
The idea that truth-seeking is inherently difficult is an idea that sounds bad. Thus, for me to believe it would require me to believe that bad-sounding things could be true and good-sounding things could be false. How often would this mismatch happen? There is no way a priori to tell how often we would expect this, and that in itself is a bad-sounding thing.
I even more don’t buy the idea that false things monetize better than true things. But this is a complaint I sometimes hear, and I can’t help but sneer at it a bit. It’s one thing to think that false things and true things compete on an even playing-field, but it’s a wholly different thing to think that people are inherently hardwired to find false things more palatable and therefore spend more time looking for it / paying for it.
It sounds very similar to the arguments for fighting misinformation on social media platforms: Mainly, that it tends to spread more easily than “true but boring / unpleasant” things. During COVID-19, for example, the people that thought we ought to stem the spread of misinformation also typically believed that COVID-19 was more dangerous than the opposite group.
This seems like a very important crux, then, at least: The dichotomy between good-seeming / bad-seeming and true / false. I agree that we should get to the bottom of it.
I don’t understand why you say “should be difficult to distinguish” rather than “are difficult”, why you seem to think finding the truth isn’t difficult, or what you think truthseeking consists of.
For two paragraphs you reason about “what if true claims sound better”. But true claims don’t inherently “sound better”, so I don’t understand why you’re talking about it. How good a claim “sounds” varies from person to person, which implies “true claims sound better” is a false proposition (assuming a fact can be true or false independently of two people, one of whom thinks the claim “sounds good” and the other thinks it “sounds bad”, as is often the case). Moreover, the same facts can be phrased in a way that “sounds good” or “sounds bad”.
I didn’t say “false things monetize better than true things”. I would say that technically correct and broadly fair debunkings (or technically correct and broadly fair publications devoted to countering false narratives) don’t monetize well, certainly not to the tune of millions of dollars annually for a single pundit. Provide counterexamples if you have them.
I didn’t say or believe this either. For such a thing to even be possible, people would have to easily distinguish true and false (which I deny) to determine whether a proposition is “palatable”.
I don’t know what you mean. Consider rephrasing this in the form of a sentence.
Because it feels like it’s a choice whether or not I want to consider truth-seeking to be difficult. You are trying to convince me that I should consider it difficult, so that means I have the option to or not. If it simply is difficult, you don’t need to try and convince me of that, it would be obvious on it’s own.
In addition to that, “should be” means that I think something ought to be a certain way. It certainly would be better if truth-seeking weren’t difficult, wouldn’t you agree?
So you’re not saying that false things monetize better than true things, you’re saying that things which correctly state that other things are false monetize worse than that the things that they claim are false. I don’t think I misunderstood you here, but I may have interpreted your meaning more broadly than it was intended.
I would think that how well something monetizes depends on how much people want to hear it. So yes, that would mean that it depends on how good something sounds. Our disagreement is on whether or not how good something sounds has any relation whatsoever to how true it is.
To be clear, I’m saying that they do, and that this means that truth-seeking isn’t that difficult, and it is counterproductive to believe that it is difficult.
The proof I gave that this is false was convincing to me, and you didn’t rebut it. Here are some examples from my father:
He loves to say things like this (he can go on and on saying such things; I assume he has it all memorized) and he believes they are true. They must sound good to him. They don’t sound good to me (especially in context). How does this not contradict your view?
Agreed, it is.
We should be able to mutually agree on what sounds better. For example, “vaccines work” probably sounds better to us both. People say things that don’t sound good all the time, just because they say it doesn’t mean they also think it sounds good.
Things like “we should be able to figure out the truth as it is relevant to our situation with the capabilities we have” have to sound good to everyone, I would think. That means there’s basis for alignment, here.