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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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But why is this not enough to conclude "This is Bobulinski's revenge tour" in the same way he concluded about Cassidy?

He didn't conclude that, read his post again. He explicitly calls this a "hypothesis".

To your broader point though, of course our biases will inform how much credibility we give someone. To some extent I think this is actually mathematically correct. If someone tells me they went outside and saw a bird I'll believe them without question, if they tell me they went outside and saw an alien I'll start looking for reasons why they might be lying or mistaken. This is in line with bayesian reasoning because my prior probability for someone seeing a bird is much higher than my prior for them lying about seeing a bird whereas the opposite of true for aliens.

The place where it gets tricky is when we start adjusting our credence not based upon how likely the claim is but instead based upon how much we want it to be true. There are things I don't want to be true that are unfortunately still quite likely and things I want to be true that are very unlikely. It's tempting but mathematically invalid to interpret evidence in line with my desires rather than my unbiased assessments.

He didn't conclude that, read his post again. He explicitly calls this a "hypothesis".

To the extent that post was a pure hypothesis, this is a fair point. But I also assume that if he's posting a hypothesis it's because he finds it at least somewhat persuasive which is why I framed my mirror attempt as "one possible explanation" and asked if he found any of what I wrote convincing. The idea was to see how motteposting reacts to motteposting's hypothesis.