man, i’m kinda mad about something going on with this “knowledge” word. i’d really like to insert some space in here between “lots of people believe a thing” and “lots of people know a thing”.
i believed most of the bullet points in a low-confidence, easy-to-change-my-mind kind of way. the real thing is that all the bullet points have been widely rumored. it’s not the case that all those rumoring people had justified true belief that everyone else had justified true belief about the bullet points, or whatever. if you announce a bunch of rumors with the word “knowledge” attached, it increases people’s confidence and a bunch of switches in their mind flip from “here’s a hypothesis i’m holding lightly because it came from the rumor mill” over to “yeah i wasn’t surprised to hear those things, yet now i’m even more sure of them”.
and like, i do recognize that in the vernacular, “common knowledge” (everyone knows everyone knows) isn’t really distinguished from a weaker thing that might be called “common belief” (everyone at-least-somewhat-believes everyone at-least-somewhat-believes). but that doesn’t mean we should go around conflating such things all to hell like normal people do.
ugh blerg grump. i am kind of exasperated. i guess i really want the top level post to own a bunch more of its shit, epistemically.
and i didn’t really mean to direct all of that right at you, Malcolm, your comment just helped the blergness snap into place in my head enough that i ended up typing things.
Thanks for this. I think these distinctions are important.
Let me clarify: In this post when I say “Common knowledge among people who spent time socially adjacent to Leverage”, what I mean is:
I heard these directly from multiple different Leverage members.
When I said these to others, they shared they had also heard the same things directly from other Leverage members, including members other than the ones I had spoken to.
I was in groups of people where we all discussed that we had all heard these things directly from Leverage members. Some of these discussions included Leverage members who affirmed these things.
I believe there are several dozen people in the set of people this is true of.
So I did mean “People in my circles all know that we all know these things”, and by “know” I meant “believe, with sourcing to multiple independent first-hand witnesses”.
I do not count you as being in the “common knowledge” set, as your self-report is that you lightly believed these based on third-hand information that was “widely rumored”. Rather than having been directly told it by a member; witnessing others being directly told it by members; and having people tell you they were directly told it by members.
It also seems that yet further additional other Leverage members, quite possibly separate from the ones we all spoke to, are publicly claiming some of these things aren’t true to their own experience.
My current understanding is that members’ experiences differed by subgroup they were part of, at particular points in time. (See e.g. in another comment “(Hedge: there were two smaller training groups where I believe it was a norm for members of the group to train each other. I wasn’t part of those groups and can’t speak to them.)”). So, it’s likely that the social circle I’m speaking about had an understanding that was specific to a particular time period, based on reports from members involved in a particular slice of the organization.
Now that Zoe’s Medium post is public, there exists for the first time a public first-hand report of many of these statements. So the indirection required to make the claims in this post is no longer quite as necessary. But in the absence of any member yet willing to attest publicly to these first-hand, making the most {defensible x useful} second-hand claims I was able to seemed like a productive step.
Glad to have helped your blergness snap into place—not taking it personally. I share your concerns here in the specific case and in the general case re the word “knowledge”! And that people understanding the difference between “common knowledge” and other things is important.
More accurately maybe I could say “this matches what I understand to be the widespread model of Leverage known by dozens of people to be held among those dozens”
Some of it I observed directly or was told it by Leverage folks myself though, so “rumor” doesn’t feel like an adequate descriptor from my vantage point.
man, i’m kinda mad about something going on with this “knowledge” word. i’d really like to insert some space in here between “lots of people believe a thing” and “lots of people know a thing”.
i believed most of the bullet points in a low-confidence, easy-to-change-my-mind kind of way. the real thing is that all the bullet points have been widely rumored. it’s not the case that all those rumoring people had justified true belief that everyone else had justified true belief about the bullet points, or whatever. if you announce a bunch of rumors with the word “knowledge” attached, it increases people’s confidence and a bunch of switches in their mind flip from “here’s a hypothesis i’m holding lightly because it came from the rumor mill” over to “yeah i wasn’t surprised to hear those things, yet now i’m even more sure of them”.
and like, i do recognize that in the vernacular, “common knowledge” (everyone knows everyone knows) isn’t really distinguished from a weaker thing that might be called “common belief” (everyone at-least-somewhat-believes everyone at-least-somewhat-believes). but that doesn’t mean we should go around conflating such things all to hell like normal people do.
ugh blerg grump. i am kind of exasperated. i guess i really want the top level post to own a bunch more of its shit, epistemically.
and i didn’t really mean to direct all of that right at you, Malcolm, your comment just helped the blergness snap into place in my head enough that i ended up typing things.
Thanks for this. I think these distinctions are important.
Let me clarify: In this post when I say “Common knowledge among people who spent time socially adjacent to Leverage”, what I mean is:
I heard these directly from multiple different Leverage members.
When I said these to others, they shared they had also heard the same things directly from other Leverage members, including members other than the ones I had spoken to.
I was in groups of people where we all discussed that we had all heard these things directly from Leverage members. Some of these discussions included Leverage members who affirmed these things.
I believe there are several dozen people in the set of people this is true of.
So I did mean “People in my circles all know that we all know these things”, and by “know” I meant “believe, with sourcing to multiple independent first-hand witnesses”.
I do not count you as being in the “common knowledge” set, as your self-report is that you lightly believed these based on third-hand information that was “widely rumored”. Rather than having been directly told it by a member; witnessing others being directly told it by members; and having people tell you they were directly told it by members.
It also seems that yet further additional other Leverage members, quite possibly separate from the ones we all spoke to, are publicly claiming some of these things aren’t true to their own experience.
My current understanding is that members’ experiences differed by subgroup they were part of, at particular points in time. (See e.g. in another comment “(Hedge: there were two smaller training groups where I believe it was a norm for members of the group to train each other. I wasn’t part of those groups and can’t speak to them.)”). So, it’s likely that the social circle I’m speaking about had an understanding that was specific to a particular time period, based on reports from members involved in a particular slice of the organization.
Now that Zoe’s Medium post is public, there exists for the first time a public first-hand report of many of these statements. So the indirection required to make the claims in this post is no longer quite as necessary. But in the absence of any member yet willing to attest publicly to these first-hand, making the most {defensible x useful} second-hand claims I was able to seemed like a productive step.
Glad to have helped your blergness snap into place—not taking it personally. I share your concerns here in the specific case and in the general case re the word “knowledge”! And that people understanding the difference between “common knowledge” and other things is important.
More accurately maybe I could say “this matches what I understand to be the widespread model of Leverage known by dozens of people to be held among those dozens”
Some of it I observed directly or was told it by Leverage folks myself though, so “rumor” doesn’t feel like an adequate descriptor from my vantage point.