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by AnimalMuppet 291 days ago
I sometimes look at this in Bayesian terms. If I have an endless stream of lies coming at me, and I update my priors at all, then eventually the lies will overwhelm me and I will believe them.

The only way I can avoid this is to refuse to update my priors at all. But that means that I cannot learn.

1 comments

Wow, what an excellent and concise way of describing the conundrum!

Indeed, if we are surrounded by only supposed "information" that is false, it is technically the same as having zero new information!

So it is the situation preventing us from learning. The key difference is the disinformation tempts us to falsely learn, when the right move is to hold onto our priors until we can find verifiable new information.