Early EA was not a productive environment for sociopaths or conmen. I don’t buy that story. Faking vegan for example will be hard over such long time with low expected reward. I think a more plausible story is that he changed. Many people change over time esp. if their peer group changes or if they acquire power.
I don’t think “He was pretending to be vegan” adds any more complexity to the “He was a conman” explanation than “He was genuinely a vegan” adds to the “He was a naive/cartoon-villain utilitarian” explanation?
Huh, didn’t expect the different intuitions here (yay disagreement voting!). I do think pretending to be vegan adds substantial complexity; making such a big lifestyle adjustment for questionable benefit is implausible in my model. But I may just not have a good theory of mind for “sociapaths” as lc puts it.
I do agree that it adds complexity. But so does “He was actually a vegan”. Of course the “He was actually a vegan” complexity is paid for in evidence of him endorsing veganism and never being seen eating meat. But this evidence also pays for the complexity of adding “He was pretending to be a vegan” to the “He was thoroughly a conman” hypothesis.
But didn’t he project a highly idealistic image in general? Committing to donating to charity, giving off a luxury-avoiding vibe, etc.. This gives evidence to narrow the conman hypothesis down from common conmen to conmen who pretend to be highly idealistic. And I’m not sure P(vegan|highly idealistic) exceeds P(claims to be vegan|conman who pretends to be highly idealistic).
How do you know he is vegan? A sociopath would have no problem eating vegan in public and privately eating meat in order to keep a narrative.
Early EA was not a productive environment for sociopaths or conmen. I don’t buy that story. Faking vegan for example will be hard over such long time with low expected reward. I think a more plausible story is that he changed. Many people change over time esp. if their peer group changes or if they acquire power.
Possible, but adds additional complexity to the competing explanation.
I don’t think “He was pretending to be vegan” adds any more complexity to the “He was a conman” explanation than “He was genuinely a vegan” adds to the “He was a naive/cartoon-villain utilitarian” explanation?
Huh, didn’t expect the different intuitions here (yay disagreement voting!). I do think pretending to be vegan adds substantial complexity; making such a big lifestyle adjustment for questionable benefit is implausible in my model. But I may just not have a good theory of mind for “sociapaths” as lc puts it.
I do agree that it adds complexity. But so does “He was actually a vegan”. Of course the “He was actually a vegan” complexity is paid for in evidence of him endorsing veganism and never being seen eating meat. But this evidence also pays for the complexity of adding “He was pretending to be a vegan” to the “He was thoroughly a conman” hypothesis.
But not a lot since highly idealistic people tend to be vegan. I think P(vegan|highly idealistic)>P(claims vegan|conman)
But didn’t he project a highly idealistic image in general? Committing to donating to charity, giving off a luxury-avoiding vibe, etc.. This gives evidence to narrow the conman hypothesis down from common conmen to conmen who pretend to be highly idealistic. And I’m not sure P(vegan|highly idealistic) exceeds P(claims to be vegan|conman who pretends to be highly idealistic).