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Insub5mo93

If you're getting comments like that from friends and family, it's possible that you havent been epistemically transparent with them? E.g. do you think your friends who made those comments would be able to say why you believe what you do? Do you tell them about your reaearch process and what kinds of evidence you look for, or do you just make contrarian factual assertions?

There's a big difference between telling someone "the WHO is wrong about salt, their recommendations are potentially deadly" versus "Ive read a bunch of studies on salt, and from what Ive found, the WHOs recommendations don't seem to agree with the latest research. Their recs are based on [studies x,y] and say to do [a], but [other newer/better studies] indicate [b]."

TropicalFruit4mo10

Do you think it's worth actually memorizing a few actual references? I.e. - Study by X done in X year, instead of just "other studies."

It often seems like "other studies disagree" is only one small step above just asserting it.

This is coming from someone who (as you know) makes this assert-contrarian-without-sources faux pas all the time.

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by Joulebit
1 min read27th Feb 202325 comments

12

Rationality
Personal Blog

I see myself, and is often described by others, as a logical person and high in the openness trait. I am in university and have the last 2 years done some various amateur litterature review reasearch on different topics, especially on health and nutrition. 

On many topics i find my research agreeing with conventional wisdom, such as for: 

  • Sleeping hygiene
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Drugs like heroin and methamphetamine
  • Benefits of training
  • Dangers of obesity

 

But on a worrying fast increasing list i find my reasearch contradict common wisdom in huge ways:

 

I don't have any problem trusting data and research more than authorities and common wisdom. But when friends and family significantly express their concern for my well being it makes feel like i am one of those conspiracy theorists that believe every stupid thing they find online. It may be that I am not having a strong enough prior, before updating it with new evidence.

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[-]ryan_b5mo169

Do not be troubled - this is the default experience of learning about virtually anything. Consider this: if common wisdom agreed with the most current findings in research, what would the point of research be? Everyone would know it already.

You should brace yourself especially strongly on this point if you ever do any serious reading in history, because this is true of almost everything. It happens to be a general pattern that the reasons the public will know about history virtually guarantees that it will be warped and summarized in predictable ways, with the net result being that almost everyone is totally wrong about almost everything.

Addendum: welcome to LessWrong!

[-]localdeity5mo62

I probably mostly agree, but, about this:

Consider this: if common wisdom agreed with the most current findings in research, what would the point of research be? Everyone would know it already.

There are plenty of "known unknowns" where learning the unknown doesn't challenge existing beliefs.  You can always work on nailing down more decimal places in physical constants, or finding which specific chemical is used in xyz biological process, or taking more detailed pictures of all kinds of stuff.  (Some of these could turn up new discoveries that challenge existing beliefs, but the people funding the research to do it might not expect that.)  It would be interesting to know what fraction of existing research is of this type.

[-]ryan_b5mo20

I agree. The distinction I am trying to draw here is keeping the perspective of the layperson moving from zero to moderate understanding; I expect the researchers themselves to. . . sort of maintain the 'direction' of their understanding but deepen or broaden it along the way, if that makes sense.

But furthering your point, there are also a bunch of cases where common wisdom has a belief, which is basically correct, about which research is totally silent (or was until pretty recently). I have in mind here mundane findings like the physics of tying your shoes. This is mostly because researchers did not think it worth their time to investigate.

[-]M. Y. Zuo5mo2-1

So, the more popular, the more false?

[-]ryan_b5mo20

In the matter of history, I say yes.

[-]TropicalFruit4mo10

No that's expressly NOT what he's saying. For example - obesity is dangerous. Everybody thinks obesity is dangerous, and they're correct.

He's just saying that some of the public wisdom seems totally wrong. That [everybody thinks it] has turned out to be much weaker evidence than he originally thought, though still evidence in favor, and certainly not evidence against.

[-]Caridorc Tergilti5mo1410

The most important thing is approaching other points of view with an open mind, with epistemic humility , that is, knowing that something of what you think can be wrong, even if, from the inside, everything feels right.

 

On the object level:

  • Carbohydrates can be: fruit/whole grains/normal bread/normal pasta or North American crazy industrial snacks and "sugar-cereals" and "sugar-bread". The first one is good, the second one is bad.
  • No idea about optimal salt levels, just a note on your language: "potentially deadly" is too vague to have a useful discussion. Crossing the road is "potentially deadly" for some definitions of "potentially deadly". Try to quantify the risk instead, at least approximately. 
  • For facemasks, a surgical mask that you re-use for several day, without cutting your beard (beard makes it impossible to have a perfect fit), with a random size, removing it constantly to eat and drink, of course it is going to work badly. If you wear a serious P100 masks, of appropriate shape and size, with no beard (cut down to zero with a high quality manual razor) and never remove it, of course it is going to work, it is basic physics at that point. If it is a good idea to wear it, considering costs and benefits, is another discussion.
  • Please be really careful about psychoactive substances, they might have long term effects that are little known because they are little studied. (This last statement is based on random stuff read on the internet, take with a grain of salt).
[-]tailcalled5mo115

Are you sure you got the carbs thing right? I was under the impression that total energy intake is a better proxy than either carbs or fats alone. Also under the impression that this is the general wisdom, so you might literally just be a conspiracy theorist wrt carbs/fat.

[-]Seth Herd4mo20

My impression after a little research is this: simple carbs that are not encased in fiber tend to cause more hunger sooner than other sources of calories. Therefore, even though all calories are roughly equal in directly causing weight gain, carbs indirectly cause more weight gain. And more discomfort, in fighting hunger.

[-]Evan R. Murphy5mo20

For weight loss or general eating?

I feel like a lot of these framings obscure the massive benefits of veggies, fruits, legumes etc. Evidence favors and I've always felt really good/healthy trying to hit the Daily Dozen (https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen/) and then there just isn't much room for junk.

[-]TropicalFruit4mo10

Conspiracy =/= wrong + contrarian. That's an issue with the current Overton window. Conspiracy used to mean people conspiring.

So there's a difference between "carbs bad" - which is probably just wrong and contrarian, and "cereal companies colluded to convince you meat and fat are unhealthy, so you'd eat their sugar cereal," which is a conspiracy theory.

The reason conspiracy theories are typically (rightly) ridiculed is that they tack on a whole bunch of non Occam's Razor propositions to a theory, without the accompanying evidence. The conspiracy from cereal companies is one possible explanation for why meat/fat were incorrectly demonized, but it requires more evidence to assert than just "fat and meat have been incorrectly demonized."

All this is to say - he's not a conspiracy theorist, even with the carbs/fat thing. He might be wrong and contrarian (I also believe carbs are fine, so I believe he is), but to call it "conspiracy" is incorrect.

[-]Insub5mo93

If you're getting comments like that from friends and family, it's possible that you havent been epistemically transparent with them? E.g. do you think your friends who made those comments would be able to say why you believe what you do? Do you tell them about your reaearch process and what kinds of evidence you look for, or do you just make contrarian factual assertions?

There's a big difference between telling someone "the WHO is wrong about salt, their recommendations are potentially deadly" versus "Ive read a bunch of studies on salt, and from what Ive found, the WHOs recommendations don't seem to agree with the latest research. Their recs are based on [studies x,y] and say to do [a], but [other newer/better studies] indicate [b]."

[-]TropicalFruit4mo10

Do you think it's worth actually memorizing a few actual references? I.e. - Study by X done in X year, instead of just "other studies."

It often seems like "other studies disagree" is only one small step above just asserting it.

This is coming from someone who (as you know) makes this assert-contrarian-without-sources faux pas all the time.

[-]ChristianKl5mo60

There are cases where data and the authorities disagree. From the side of the authorities, it's a good strategy to call those people who disagree conspiracy theorists. 

Russiagate was essentially a conspiracy theory but given that it was endorsed by authorities most people don't use that label for it. 

[-]Alex Flint5mo50

friends and family significantly express their concern for my well being

What exact concerns do they have?

[-]Mitchell_Porter5mo82

Thinking that psychedelics are safe, or that masks are useless against Covid, seem like the beliefs most likely to trigger concern... 

[-]Charlie Sanders4mo31

I'm a firm believer in avoiding the popular narrative, and so here's my advice - you are becoming a conspiracy theorist. You just linked to a literal conspiracy theory with regards to face masks, one that has been torn apart as misleading and riddled with factual errors. As just one example, Cochrane's review specifically did not evaluate "facemasks", it evaluated "policies related to the request to wear face masks". Compliance to the stated rule was not evaluated, and it is therefore a conspiracy theory to go from an information source that says "this policy doesn't work" and end up with the takeaway "masks don't work". As other commenters have pointed out, it is physically implausible for facemasks to not work if they are used correctly.

The definitionally correct term to use for you is "conspiracy theorist" so long as this is a thing that you, after conducting your own research, have come to believe. Take your belief in the facemask thing as concrete evidence that your friends and family are correct and that you are indeed straying down the path of believing more and more improbable and conspiratorial things. 

[-]TropicalFruit4mo10

How are these the same thing?

  • believing data which turns out to be wrong
  • asserting that people are conspiring to cause some bad outcome

Some studies say masks work, some don't. If you incorrectly evaluate the evidence and believe that they don't work... how is that related to accusing people of conspiring? You've just analyzed the evidence wrong, but you haven't made any claims relating to any people, or plans, or schemes.

[-]ztzuliios5mo30

Imagine what it was like for those of us who were talking about transhumanism, AI alignment, morphological freedom, cryonics, nootropics, keto diets, kettlebells, etc., in 2010, not 2023. 

Welcome to the bleeding edge. It's not an easy life. 

The most important thing to do is to learn to trust your research and the truth over what the tribe says. This can be very hard. I eventually sold most of my bitcoin after all my friends and family spent the summer of 2012 or so screaming at me that it was a bubble, a scam, etc., which seemed confirmed when the price crashed from $35 down to $5 -- don't make that mistake. 

Learn to isolate yourself from people that are reliably harmful. Don't be a crab in the bucket. Get out of the bucket. Deal with helping out the people you care about later.

[-]SomeoneYouOnceKnew5mo21

If you find yourself leaning into conspiracy theories, one should consider whether they're stuck in a particular genre and need to artificially inject more variety into their intellectual, media, and audio diets.

Confirmation bias leads to one feeling like every song has the same melody, but there are many other modes of thought, and, imo, sliding into a slot that checks more boxes with <ingroup> is an indicator our information feeds/sensors are bad more than that we are stumbling on truth.

[-]Gerald Monroe5mo20

Probably actual p100 masks do stop COVID. This is because the filtering is far stricter, blocking all but a fraction of a percent of particulates. With such a mask you lose all sense of smell, an indication thst it is filtering everything.

I used one pre vaccine and didn't ever contract it, but that is just an anecdote.

[-]Seth Herd4mo10

Confirmation bias is an enormous factor in conspiracy theories. If you want accurate beliefs, including accurate uncertainties about your beliefs, you want to do some serious research on confirmation bias and .motivated reasoning. After studying cognitive biases for my job for four years, I believe those two carry the bulk of the practical effect.

Between the lines, I'm guessing your family is accusing you of sounding like a conspiracy theorist because you're overconfident of your certainty in your new beliefs, based on confirmation bias in your research. I approximately share each of the beliefs you mention, after a modest amount of research on each. But I'm much less certain than you seem to be about exactly where the truth on each subject lies.

[-]Drake Morrison5mo10

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gBma88LH3CLQsqyfS/cultish-countercultishness

Cult or Not-Cult aren't two separate categories. They are a spectrum that all human groups live on. 

[-]MSRayne5mo10

All of these seem pretty obvious to me, so maybe I don't see the point. Or I'm a conspiracy theorist. :P

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