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AllanCrossman comments on Is Santa Real? - Less Wrong
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Comments (71)
This seems to me like "status quo bias" at work.
If there were no "Santa Claus" meme, you surely wouldn't try to invent new things to lie to your children about, would you?
I'm not going to assume that outright. If we take the 'rationalist origin stories' at face value, then it seems like it might be better for children to be lied to about seemingly important things, so that they have the epiphany that it's important to care about the truth. In the absence of Santa, maybe theism would be the only option? Or pastafarianism?
The prosecutor's fallacy seems to be in play here -- Pr(rationalist | lied to as a child) is not necesarily equal to Pr(lied to as a child | rationalist). (And that's not even getting into the swamp of causality...)