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Do you believe false things?
You, high IQ, well educated, traveled and read motte denizen, you personally?
Not ordinary mistaken trivia knowledge, for example when you are unsure whether US has 50 or 51 states, or on what continent is New Guinea, but when facts about the world that serve as bedrock of your beliefs that happen to be totally delusionary, at catastrophical odds to reality. Can it happen to you?
It happens frequently. See the famous poll where about one in 20 of "very liberal people" believe that tens of thousands of unarmed blacks are annually killed by police.
For non-US example, see this poll among Palestinians, where one third of population of Gaza believe that Israel has less than 500k inhabitants.
"No, it cannot happen to me! I was trained in martial arts of rationalism by ancient master Yud the Yumongous! I am unstoppable!"
Well, it can happen not only to "brainwashed libtards" or "dumb Ayrabs".
It happened to credentialed rationalist and one of Yud's disciples.
The short xeet that went viral:
Until I was 38 I thought Men's World Cup team vs Women's World Cup team would be a fair match and couldn't figure out why they didn't just play each other
And the long essay where Eneasz Brodski at request of his readers and haters explains how it happened:
How To Believe False Things - by request, this is an explanation of how I got 38 years old believing a match of World Cup men's team vs World Cup women's would be fair.
TL;DR: EB learned about relative strength of men and women as we all learn all things we know. From his own experience, from media, from experts. EB trusted them all, without considering that his experiences could be extremely unrepresentative, media could be completely fictional and experts could just plain lie to his face.
All this person is describing is remaining forever a child. It's actually kind of amazing. He blames that on being neurodivergent? I can't really assess whether that's a valid defense of his willful ignorance or not.
Even in his own post, he repeatedly points out all the places he recoiled from any exposure to base reality.
I mean, on the one hand, I can't recall the last time I actually watched the Olympics either. On the other hand, you are rarely comparing similar numbers here either. If it's some track event, all the men's times will be clustered, and then all the women's times will be clustered say, 30% slower. You aren't comparing decimal places here. Even casual observers should notice.
I mean, did his school never do the Presidential fitness tests? He never noticed how different the standards were for even barely pubescent boys and girls?
Nothing about this entrenched ignorance seems accidental. Some seed was planted that caused him to recoil from any confounding evidence. And it's like after he got through childhood carefully selecting the reality he was exposed to so as to not challenge his pre existing views that were passed onto him, he just never gave it another thought ever again. Nor spent any time being physical with women, as even relatively sedentary man strength is often greater than female gym bunny strength.
I think his account is perfectly reasonable. I personally was not aware of the huge strength differences between men and women until around age 25, when I stumbled across this transcript of a Senate hearing on the topic of adding women to combat units in the US armed forces. I watched exactly zero sports on television.
I don't think my high school did.
I mean... I hate to out you but...
So like, age 25, you found out about physical strength differences between men and women from a senate transcript before you got any hands on experience?
I'll be out with it. It's really difficult for me to square total ignorance of the sex differences between men and women with first hand carnal knowledge of the opposite sex. So when I hear "I honestly had no idea and zero exposure to any physical reality that could possibly contradict that men and women are equally as physically capable" I just think "So.... you're a virgin?"
Although I suppose the bottom quintile and the top quintile could shack up from time to time. Just odd to think of that being someone's sole experience from which they extrapolate out to the entire human population. I mean, everyone has a type I suppose, but then again, if it's your type, you'd have to be aware of that fact, right? Which means there are lots of people out there outside your "type"?
Yes, lots of smart, shy men who spend time on the internet are virgins. I don't think anyone should find this surprising.
Well, as long as we're on the topic of innumeracy and poor estimation skills, I actually do still feel a moment of surprise when I realize I'm interacting with someone that's missing such a basic and core experience. It's one of those things that I know intellectually is some relevant percentage of the populace, but it's still surprising to encounter. This is a similar sort of thing to realizing that you might have been arguing with a 13-year-old about something.
Shrug. Despite being a virgin, I've always taken it as a given that women are just overall weaker than men. Training in martial arts just confirms it even further, to the point I almost feel bad about it.
Alot of it may just come down to living in radically different bubbles, some bordering on active, almost delusional isolation.
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