JoshuaZ comments on What is missing from rationality? - Less Wrong

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 28 April 2010 04:53:34AM * 2 points [-]

I would like to argue based on the specific comment of mine that I linked to in the comment above.

Ok. There may be a minor miscomunication here. When I made my comment about why you were downvoted on some of your comments regarding 9/11 I was talking about the general history of comments not this specific comment. This made sense to me given that the context you seemed to be talking about was the general pattern of 9/11 comments you made being downvoted in the past.

Regarding eyewitness testimony, I believe that this has already been explained to you (although a click glance through doesn't find the relevant comments) but eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable. This is especially the case in extreme situations. (I'm actually surprised there isn't something in any of the sequences specifically devoted to this issue.) See This article for a short discussion of many of the issues in the context of criminal trials. Part of the point you seem to be possibly using a non-standard definition of suppression. Downvoting a comment doesn't suppress anything in the sense that we normally use that term for (destroying evidence, refusing to publish results you don't like etc.) . It simply sends a signal to the LessWrong readers that reading the statement is not likely to do anything useful and so that they will be less likely to click through to read the remarks. And given the unreliability of eye-witnesses testimony in crisis situations, most rationalists are going to give such evidence very low reliability. So in so far as this is a signal to the LW community, it is an accurate one.

To move to the flight example, flying didn't occur during a crisis situation. People were not claiming that the Wright Brothers flew once briefly during an earthquake or a volcanic eruption or the middle of a pitched firefight. They demonstrated it repeatedly to different people. So such evidence is in fact the more reliable sort of eye witness evidence. The evidence is not by itself at all convincing of flight (magicians can do some pretty neat stuff and even there's also the issue of the reliability of the witnesses), but it would make me stand up and take notice. That's a very different claim then that a single or even a large group of eyewitnesses reported hearing something which isn't even necessarily inconsistent with the standard hypothesis.

Edit: Also regarding the ad hominem issue. I think you should reread RobinZ linked remark about what an ad hominem is. Explaining to someone why their comments were historically downvoted isn't an ad hominem. It may make one feel uncomfortable, it may come across as condescending or patronizing. It may be deeply damaging to one's ego. But that's not an ad hominem attack. In this particular case, the response was an attempt at explaining why your comments have been downvoted. Interpreting that as an ad hominem attack requires some degree of abuse of the term "ad hominem."

Comment author: roland comment score below threshold [+] (73 children)

Comment author: Jack 28 April 2010 05:47:13AM * 4 points [-]

The real reason why it was downvoted was because it contradicts the prevailing view here.

Here is a comment that contradicts the prevailing view here. Seriously, there are maybe one or two other posters here who are sympathetic to your conspiracy mongering but no one agrees with Alicorn about ethics. It was at +6 (though of course it is by a woman so that's probably why people upvoted).

Here is why your comment was voted into oblivion:

You linked to evidence that wasn't anywhere close to the magnitude it needed to be given the extreme unlikelihood of the proposition it was marshaled to support. It is rather like linking to a video of someone recounting a religious experience or an alien abduction. It was clear from the context that you took yourself to be offering powerful evidence in favor the proposition that the 9/11 attacks were a government plot. The downvoters were telling you this wasn't good enough evidence to justify a link and to stop wasting their time with noise.
Your past forays into this topic and subsequent inability to update when people rebut your position left people with no patience for that crap.
It was off-topic and flame bait.
You kept drawing attention to it, making sure everyone on the site saw it ensuring even more downvotes.

(Incidentally, I never bothered to downvote that particular comment)

Comment author: mattnewport 28 April 2010 06:02:39AM * 1 point [-]

no one agrees with Alicorn about ethics.

I wouldn't say I agree with her exactly but I disagree with her less than I disagree with the utilitarians who seem to be so common around here. I'm not sure you're justified in your confidence about the absoluteness of disagreement with her ethics.

Comment author: Jack 28 April 2010 06:04:38AM 0 points [-]

It was a bit of hyperbole to make my point.

Comment author: roland comment score below threshold [+] (66 children)

Comment author: roland 28 April 2010 06:33:53AM -4 points [-]

Here is a comment that contradicts the prevailing view here

I'll admit that I just read a few words but I guess it is about philosophy and I think that people are much more willing to admit dissenting views, unlike in the realm of politics.

though of course it is by a woman so that's probably why people upvoted.

Is this another ad hominem?

You linked to evidence that wasn't anywhere close to the magnitude it needed to be given the extreme unlikelihood of the proposition it was marshaled to support.

The proposition was "Explosives were planted in the WTC." The probability that the proposition is true is fairly high given the fact that the buildings collapsed in a manner consistent with the use of explosives. There is of course much more evidence besides this one eye witness, but lets not start another 9/11 thread.

It was clear from the context that you took yourself to be offering powerful evidence in favor the proposition that the 9/11 attacks were a government plot.

Well, I'd rather you evaluate the comment by its contents, regardless of what other things I might believe or not. The comment was just addressing the question of explosives. Interestingly a lot of people, you included, seem to conflate the two issues, explosives implying government involvement. Why is this the case, and does it have something to do with the fact that there is so much resistance towards this proposition?

Your past forays into this topic and subsequent inability to update when people rebut your position left people with no patience for that crap.

I've yet to see a good rebuttal. Btw, I've read a lot about this subject so I think I know what I'm talking about.

It was off-topic and flame bait.

Eliezer wrote:

I don't believe there were explosives planted in the World Trade Center.

And I brought up evidence against it.

You kept drawing attention to it, making sure everyone on the site saw it ensuring even more downvotes.

Well, it's certainly not my fault if people want to downvote evidence.

Comment author: mattnewport 28 April 2010 06:42:40AM 0 points [-]

I still put a pretty low probability on 9/11 being some kind of conspiracy but I have to admit that seeing this linked to this recently did make my head spin a bit and raised my probability estimate a little.

Comment author: Jack 28 April 2010 06:48:27AM 0 points [-]

Whats the connection?

Comment author: mattnewport 28 April 2010 07:08:36AM * 0 points [-]

There have been a lot of reports recently of manipulation in the gold and silver markets and of a large gap between the notional gold that exists in the forms of various paper claims on futures markets and in the form of various kinds of unallocated deposits and in the actual physical bullion backing these claims. Most of this is still unproven but there is a fair amount of evidence that something fishy is going on. The first article is an eyewitness report of Scotiabank's bullion vault in Canada which appears to contain much less physical gold and silver than it should based on estimates of the outstanding claims supposedly backed by holdings in that vault.

So far this has nothing to do with 9/11. The 9/11 connection is that there has apparently been a long standing claim of 9/11 'truthers' that a large amount of gold and silver that was stored in a vault underneath WTC 4 (one of the buildings that collapsed without being hit by a plane) appears to be unaccounted for based on discrepancies between news reports before and after the event. I had never heard of this until a commenter on an article about the recent Scotiabank story linked to it. The bit that made me do a double take is the fact that one of the largest depositors in the WTC 4 vault was... Scotiabank.

Up to $1 billion of missing gold and silver suddenly suggests plausible motives for a conspiracy of some kind where I hadn't really seen one before.

Comment author: roland 28 April 2010 07:53:19AM -2 points [-]

WTC 4 (one of the buildings that collapsed without being hit by a plane)

Just a minor correction: WTC 4 didn't collapse, it was damaged beyond repair and demolished. The only buildings that did collapse where the twin towers and WTC 7.

Up to $1 billion of missing gold and silver suddenly suggests plausible motives for a conspiracy of some kind where I hadn't really seen one before.

You gotta be kidding me. I think the physical gold missing is not directly related to 9/11, remember the same happened in Canada, the same is happening in the London bullion market, some claim that even the gold in Fort Knox is long gone.

But if you want plausible motives for 9/11 I'll give you a short list:

Government needed a pretext to start a never-ending war on terror, to raise military spending(after the end of the cold war a new enemy had to be created) and to pass new legislation through congress(Patriot act, etc...)
Silverstein had just recently bought the WTC complex and AFAIK it was condemned, it would have to be demolished more sooner than later. How convenient that he also made an insurance against terrorist attacks, this guy made billions from 9/11.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 28 April 2010 05:43:00PM 5 points [-]

Silverstein had just recently bought the WTC complex and AFAIK it was condemned, it > would have to be demolished more sooner than later. How convenient that he also made an insurance against terrorist attacks, this guy made billions from 9/11.

Yes, how convenient that someone would have insurance against terrorist attacks when that person owned a set of buildings which had been subject to a terrorist attack in the past.

Comment author: roland 28 April 2010 06:09:36PM * -2 points [-]

Yes, how convenient that someone would have insurance against terrorist attacks when that person owned a set of buildings which had been subject to a terrorist attack in the past.

Point taken! Still you asked for plausible motives and there you have one, read more about Silverstein here:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/silverstein.html

Comment author: mattnewport 28 April 2010 08:04:30AM 1 point [-]

I still find it fairly implausible that the government would be directly involved in orchestrating the attack just because it has historically been quite difficult to keep something like that secret for a long period - the chances of someone involved or aware of what happened being sufficiently outraged to become a whistle-blower seems too high. I don't rule it out but I think it fairly unlikely.

I do however find it quite plausible that the government would go to some length to cover up the disappearance of a large amount of gold and silver as they could justify it to themselves as necessary for preserving financial stability and so national security. That seems like sufficient reason for a cover-up from their point of view even without their direct involvement.

I'm coming at this from a different direction to you I think - an interest in the financial crisis and the place that gold and silver have in the unfolding fallout from that rather than any previous knowledge of or interest in 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Comment author: roland 28 April 2010 05:56:09PM * 0 points [-]

I still find it fairly implausible that the government would be directly involved in orchestrating the attack just because it has historically been quite difficult to keep something like that secret for a long period - the chances of someone involved or aware of what happened being sufficiently outraged to become a whistle-blower seems too high. I don't rule it out but I think it fairly unlikely.

This argument comes up again and again but there is so much wrong with it:

What would you expect from a whistle-blower? If tomorrow someone steps forward claiming to be an ex-CIA agent who knows what happened, how could he prove his point, who would take him seriously, why should he risk his life for nothing? Most whistle-blowers only come forward if they can be assured that they will be protected from prosecution, so who will blow the whistle against the state?
There are lots of books and websites that expose similar conspiracies, some are from or with the participation of ex-government people.
There are some actual whistle-blowers, one is dead the other has fled to Argentina, that are at least two I know of.
The argument has a degree of circularity: if the government did it there would be more whistle-blowers, therefore the government didn't do it, therefore I can ignore all evidence in that direction and the few whistle-blowers that have come forward.
Regardless if there are whistle-blowers or not you can still evaluate all the evidence at hand and draw your own conclusions. The argument "there are not enough whistle-blowers" is not an excuse to discount all evidence for a government conspiracy.
Whistle-blowers are not taken seriously because what they write doesn't appear on the mainstream press but rather on some web page or maybe a book.
If you really knew history you should know that there has been a lot of exposition of conspiracies going on, its just neither taken seriously nor is it part of the mainstream knowledge of what you learn in school.

Just some examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger

The fact that the WMD in Iraq claim was complete bogus and the people in charge Bush et. al knew it. Tony Blair has made Millions in deals with Oil companies in relation to Iraq.

continue this thread »

Comment author: roland comment score below threshold [+] (1 child)

Comment author: roland comment score below threshold [+] (46 children)

Comment author: wnoise 30 April 2010 06:52:25PM 7 points [-]

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that the events behind 9/11 were insufficiently investigated, and that the full story is a bit more than the common narrative.

But I don't see

how many steel-frame buildings have collapsed due to fire previous to 9/11.

As terribly relevant without the corresponding "how many steel-frame buildings were sprayed with massive amounts of aerosolized jet fuel and then ignited?"

Comment author: roland comment score below threshold [+] (43 children)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 30 April 2010 08:13:14PM 2 points [-]

While your point here is superficially valid, the debris that hit WTC7 damaged 10-12 floors so badly that the gash was visible (according to the NIST report on WTC7). Large amounts of damage occurred to other floors. The fact that you more or less had large sections of another building dropped onto WTC7 massively damaged the structural stability such that the fires resulted in complete collapse. So for the Twin Towers you had less direct damage but lots of jet fuel, and for WTC7 you had large segments of a building fall onto it.

I'm also somewhat puzzled by how 9/11 Truthers like to point to the collapse of WTC7 so much. I would think that one would want to argue that the destruction of WTC7 was inadvertent. If not, you need to explain why the conspiracy bothered bringing down a much smaller, not very well-known building. Thus for example, the standard conspiratorial explanation of the government creating 9/11 fails massively to explain this. The only conspiracy explanation I've seen that remotely explain this tries to claim that the entire plot was designed to get rid of WTC7 since it had the SEC offices investigating Worldcom and ENRON. I don't think I need to explain in detail why that seems unlikely.

There seems to be a problem going on here similar to the standard problem with creationists. They argue in the form "Anomaly -> Evolution wrong -> creationism." There's both a false dichotomy here and a general failure to properly apply Bayes' theorem.

Comment author: Jack 30 April 2010 08:26:54PM 3 points [-]

There were also fires in WTC7 that the Fire Department didn't even attempt combat. They pretty much just let them burn for like six hours.

Also, the fire department knew building 7 was going to collapse. They pulled all their people away from building to protect them after they noticed signs of structural failure and there are a bunch of accounts from firefighters to this effect.

As usual, this is all accessible by google.

Comment author: roland 30 April 2010 08:53:49PM -1 points [-]

The fact that you more or less had large sections of another building dropped onto WTC7 massively damaged the structural stability such that the fires resulted in complete collapse.

Incorrect. There were damages, but none to the central supporting columns. Even after accounting for the fires they were not enough to explain the free fall speed collapse.

If not, you need to explain why the conspiracy bothered bringing down a much smaller, not very well-known building.

Slow down here. I'm trying to work forwards from the evidence and for all that I know it points to controlled demolition as the only plausible explanation and falsifies the theory of collapse by fire and structural damage. You again are conflating two or more separate questions: how did it collapse and who did it and for what reason.

If you want more science about the subject here is a good link: http://www.journalof911studies.com/

continue this thread »

Comment author: RobinZ 30 April 2010 08:25:28PM 1 point [-]

WTC7 was not, yet it collapsed. It wasn't hit by any plane. Why is this always conveniently not mentioned?

Two reasons:

The natural assumption is that the collapses are related. (Obligatory xkcd reference to amuse the lurkers.)
The iconic building collapses of 9/11 were the twin towers.

As for the point about buildings collapsing by fire, there were even at the time historical cases of fires damaging fireproofed structural members: in the One Meridian Plaza fire of 1991, significant but non-total damage to structural members was observed. That One Meridian Plaza did not collapse when 7 World Trade Center did reflects the differences in the designs and in the parts of the buildings affected.

Comment author: Jack 30 April 2010 08:30:49PM * 0 points [-]

3. I don't know about you but I'm on Silverstein's payroll.

Comment author: mattnewport 28 April 2010 07:33:39AM * 2 points [-]

Since 9/11 was discussed the first time on OB I keep hearing this "the prior probability of a conspiracy is very low" or variations thereof. This is a totally meaningless statement, unless you can produce some actual numbers but no one made an effort to do so.

I didn't actually say anything about my prior probability. I just said I went from a 'pretty low' probability of some kind of conspiracy to a slightly higher probability based on this new information.

Nonetheless, I think you are wrong to say this is a meaningless statement. I think there is a real phenomenon of 'conspiracy theories' which share certain features and which in my opinion tend to lead people to place unduly high probabilities on certain types of explanations for events by playing into natural biases in human thought. Because I believe in this pattern of poorly calibrated estimates, when I see a theory that fits the pattern I apply a discount factor to the arguments of people proposing it.

It is also difficult to organize and maintain a conspiracy so even independent of the effect I describe above an explanation that involves an elaborate conspiracy has a lower prior than an explanation that does not, all else being equal. It is not necessary for this to be quantified for it to be meaningful, a qualitative use of priors is still a useful aid to reasoning.

One reason the new information I mentioned above raised my estimate is that it overcame one major problem I have with the conspiracy theory explanations which is lack of a motive that I could understand. Given my broader understanding of geo-politics the disappearance of a large quantity of physical gold seems like a strong motive for some kind of government cover-up and a clearer motive for co-conspirators (government or otherwise) in the attack.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 28 April 2010 05:35:52AM 2 points [-]

No. I was very specific on purpose pinpointing exactly one comment.

I really am not inclined to argue about intended communication issues because that simply isn't a productive (or even amusing use of time) so I'm going to only address this issue once. You wrote:

Hahahahahaha. Ok I'll bite. Yes, I was thinking about 9/11 related posts. But the fact that I couldn't convince anyone doesn't bother me that much. What bothers me > is that just pointing to evidence that contradicts the established view on 9/11 here > is downvoted. See the following comment:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ww/undiscriminating_skepticism/1r5v

You used the phrase "9/11 related posts" and then made a generalization about posts with "evidence." In standard discourse this would likely have been read as talking about a general problem and giving a specific example of that. This seems further supported by the fact that your previous comment had the remark that

I've also witnessed a certain disrespect for dissenters, comments that contradicted certain established views where downvoted

There may be a communication issue here. Let me ask then, are you only arguing that this single post in question was downvoted when it should not have been?

if you listened to the eye-witness testimony in question, the guy was trapped inside the building because the stairs were blown away and the electricity was turned off(so he couldn't use the elevator). If you claim that his testimony is wrong > you would have to explain why he was trapped inside the building and btw this happened before any of the main towers collapsed so you can't say "he was in shock" or what not.

I'm a bit confused by this claim. Trapped inside the building works perfectly well after the airplane crash without any explosion from a pre-planted device. Regarding your last remark, do you mean to imply that someone trapped without electricity in a burning building isn't going to have any shock issues or issues contributing to reliability simply because the building hasn't collapsed?

Ohhhh, please, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppressing here is a > whole list of definitions. If a comment gets downvoted to -3 it no longer appears on > the comment page(you have to specifically click to make it appear again). If that is > not supression we are speaking a different language here.

Well, it seems empirically that a lot of people click through on this thread (most obviously one can look at the karma scores within this subthread to verify that people are clicking through). We may in this case be speaking different languages in that I have trouble seeing how requiring an extra click constitutes suppression. The linked to dictionary seems to agree with me (with the usual caveats about dictionaries being descriptive not proscriptive objects).

The definitions listed are:

1 : to put down by authority or force : subdue <suppress a riot>

Doesn't seem relevant.

2 : to keep from public knowledge: as a : to keep secret b : to stop or prohibit the publication or revelation of <suppress the test results>

2b could very weakly maybe apply if you stretched it (is requiring an extra click prohibiting publication? I'd think not).

3 a : to exclude from consciousness b : to keep from giving vent to

Irrelevant. 4,5,6 are also irrelevant.

Finally yes, eye-witness testimonies are unreliable but this doesn't mean that you can discard them, that they are not evidence. So my point still stands.

No it really doesn't. You don't seem to have actually responded to any of my points about why we have a downvoting system. If evidence is sufficiently weak (such as this evidence where it isn't even obvious that it actually favors an alternative hypothesis over the currently judged as most likely hypothesis) then downgrading lets LW readers know that the comment is likely to not be useful for improving the correspondence between their map and the territory.

The remainder of your remark is contentless repetition of what you've already said.

Comment author: roland 28 April 2010 07:06:02AM -2 points [-]

There may be a communication issue here. Let me ask then, are you only arguing that this single post in question was downvoted when it should not have been?

No. I'm arguing that this is a general problem. However in order to make my point I chose one specific comment which hopefully portrays the problem very clearly. What could be better than a comment whose only content is a link to outside evidence? If the comment contained personal arguments I would have a much harder time defending it.

I'm a bit confused by this claim. Trapped inside the building works perfectly well after the airplane crash without any explosion from a pre-planted device. Regarding your last remark, do you mean to imply that someone trapped without electricity in a burning building isn't going to have any shock issues or issues contributing to reliability simply because the building hasn't collapsed?

Ohhh, sorry, I think that I get your point now. The eye witness in question was trapped inside WTC 7 which was not hit by any plane(it is not one of the twin towers). All this happened before the collapse of either twin tower and according to the official version there was no damage to WTC7 before their collapse, only afterwards did WTC7 catch fire that lead to a later collapse of itself. I guess that was the origin of the confusion, I hope this makes it clearer. Btw, if that really was the origin of the confusion and you weren't aware of the facts that I just cited shouldn't this ring an alarm bell, that maybe you know less about this particular testimony than you thought you knew?

As for the definition of suppress: the original meaning was "to press down" and a synonym is "to check" which among other things means: "to restrain or diminish the action or force of ". Other than that I don't think it makes much sense to fight over definitions.

If evidence is sufficiently weak (such as this evidence where it isn't even obvious that it actually favors an alternative hypothesis over the currently judged as most likely hypothesis)

I've shortly addressed this in the following comment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/218/what_is_missing_from_rationality/1xnz

then downgrading lets LW readers know that the comment is likely to not be useful for improving the correspondence between their map and the territory.

Sure, there are cases where downvoting is justified. But when isn't it, and how do you distinguish between these cases? That's the hard question. And if you are downvoting evidence as opposed to normal comments you better be very sure about what you are doing.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 28 April 2010 05:34:16PM 1 point [-]

Ok. If you are arguing about a general problem, then my remarks clearly stand even if a single other comment was poorly voted on. But, I've already explained why even in that individual case the voting was reasonable.

Ohhh, sorry, I think that I get your point now. The eye witness in question was trapped inside WTC 7 which was not hit by any plane(it is not one of the twin towers). All this happened before the collapse of either twin tower and according to the official version there was no damage to WTC7 before their collapse, only afterwards did WTC7 catch fire that lead to a later collapse of itself. I guess that was the origin of the confusion, I hope this makes it clearer. Btw, if that really was > the origin of the confusion and you weren't aware of the facts that I just cited shouldn't this ring an alarm bell, that maybe you know less about this particular testimony than you thought you knew?

You have a valid point. I saw this testimony a while ago and must not have remembered it as well as I thought. If the witnesses testimony is accurate it presents problems with the standard account of events. The notion however that someone in that situation would be keeping very good track of timelines and the like isn't at all obvious(yes less traumatic than being in one of the two towers but that's not saying that much). Also, structural damage to WTC 7 is not by itself fatal to the standard account nor for that matter is it terribly strong evidence for conspiracy. So this doesn't change the situation a lot.

Sure, there are cases where downvoting is justified. But when isn't it, and how do > you distinguish between these cases? That's the hard question. And if you are downvoting evidence as opposed to normal comments you better be very sure about what you are doing.

I don't share your conviction that comments that claim to have evidence should somehow be privileged over comments that are more analytical. Moreover, even if I don't have a perfect method for deciding when to downvote or upvote, that's not an argument against any specific downvote or upvote. The general rule of thumb that comments with extremely weak evidentiary issues should be downvoted is not an unreasonable standard. Moreover, given how little this matters, the notion that I must "better be very sure" simply doesn't hold. People can easily click through to read a comment if they want to. You seem to be taking the karma system much more seriously than necessary.

JoshuaZ comments on What is missing from rationality? - Less Wrong

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