people could dissent
But I don’t think this is how normies work. They don’t first believe the truth, then strategically decide to lie about it to keep in good standing with the high-status people, then when you ask them anonymously revert to their true belief.
No, they don’t look for truth at all. They look for what the high-status tribal belief is, then they go and believe that honestly and earnestly.
This is why we needed a 500k+ word sequence of blog posts to teach people what truth even is.
https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/1636155765185564680
“Peter Daszak @PeterDaszak Exactly. In fact the DEFUSE grant proposal was based on 10+ yrs of research on CoVs in the lab & in nature, which is why it accurately targeted the viral groups most likely to emerge. But conspiracists should also remember that this was a ‘proposal’, not a ‘grant’.”
I shifted to the view that there’s probably no persisting identity over time anyway and in some sense I probably die and get reborn all the time in any case.
I think this is just wrong; there is personal identity in the form of preserved information that links your brain at time t to your brain at time t+1 as the only other physical system that has extremely similar information content (memories, personality, etc).
The simplest hypothesis that explains all this evidence is that Annie Altman is suffering from psychosis, and this would be obvious if we weren’t all caught up in the metoo world order.
E.g. the belief that all her devices, and her wifi were hacked, and that she has been shadowbanned from all internet platforms seems like the kind of thing that someone suffering from psychosis would believe. It’s not a rational belief. It’s called a persecutory delusion.
The idea that her mental health problems were caused by a sexual assault early in her life is topsy turvy; actually, she’s mentally ill which has caused her to have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction and make the accusation, and irresponsible D-tier amateur journos are taking advantage of the situation.
This post is basically a perfect exemplar of how a psychotic person behaves. E.g.
Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year.
The base rate for psychosis is about 1-3% and she’s at the most common age for it too.
This 1-3% is much higher than the probability that the abuse happened, and the total internet shadowbanning happened, that multiple family members are conspiring against her, and the part where she was illegally written out of the will happened, etc. OF course if there was hard evidence it would be different, but given what we have I think the psychosis hypothesis is favored.
Zoloft also seems to have some relation with psychosis, with a number of people saying it causes it, exacerbate it, etc. This is somewhat weaker evidence but it is interesting that it came up.
I rest my case, may Bayes judge me.
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/understanding-psychosis
Can I just state categorically that this “ways to increase existential risks” thing is stupid and completely over the top.
We should be able to discuss things, sometimes even continuing discussion in private. We should not stoop to playing silly games of brinksmanship.
Geez, if we can’t eve avoid existential brinksmanship on the goddamn LW forum when the technology is hypothetical and the stakes are low, what hope in hell do we have when real politicians get wind of real progress in AGI?
There is a risk that such a survey includes Peter Daszak and his friends and collaborators, who may have been the ones responsible for the covid-19 lab leak.
Or, that it includes people who have been influenced by Daszak via spreading false information and so on, or are collaborators or are otherwise incentivized to lie for personal and career advancement. The field is small enough that personal relationships are essential to getting funded, hired, published and so on.
Plus, there are effects like information cascades and respectability cascades; everyone updates towards the more respectable opinion rather than the true one. And surveys like this are part of that effect.
I personally think that the chance that covid-19 was created in a lab in Wuhan is exceptionally high, perhaps 93%, and there are various skeptical experts who think it is now beyond reasonable doubt that the Wuhan Lab created covid-19.
As such I would label this entire exercise as mistake, akin to asking a sample of organized criminals whether organized crime is a problem in their area, and having 90% of them saying it isn’t.