I’m told that soldiers act a lot more confident and brave when they are far from battle, relative to when it looms immediate in front of them. When presented with descriptions of how most citizens of Nazi Germany didn’t resist or oppose the regime much, most people claim they would have done different. Which of course is pretty unlikely for most of them. But there’s an obvious explanation of this “social desirability bias”. Their subconscious expects a larger positive payoff from presenting an admirable view of themselves to associates, relative to the smaller negative payoff from making themselves more likely to actually do what they said, should they actually find themselves in a Nazi regime.
If resisting travel bans at the start of the pandemic was about signaling pro inclusiveness blobal citizen values why did NZ and Australia - two of the most immigrant friendly global citizen oriented countries in the world - start restricting travel in Jan 2019 and then quickly got more strict over the following months?
I think it's more likely that most countries just weren't alert enough from a testing point of view early on, and once it became clear how much virus was present everyone thought "well it's already here so what good is a travel ban".
I rememder you arguing against pretty much every restriction anyone thought of back then. And now you're criticising the same people you were critizing back then for thinking of restriction, but now it's for not promoting some other restriction. Yes, tag the article with "hypocrisy".
"Which let them express their pro-inclusiveness global-citizen liberal attitudes." ---RH
Oooooh. I wish I had written that. I am going to steal this line at the first opportunity.
Almost certainly intelligent aliens exist. Surely some are way more intelligent than humans. Or developed robot probes. Maybe some aliens have long life spans, like tortoises, or can hibernate.
How about mandatory webcams, or other optical devices, on military jets?
For that matter, cameras are cheap. Why not in cockpits and tails of all commercial airliners?
I didn't at all say it is IMPOSSIBLE that aliens are egalitarian eco-freaks etc. I've instead suggested that most people today claim this to project their values, not because they've carefully considered the evidence for that possibility.
You seem unable to distinguish my conditional claim about our changed attitudes to aliens *IF* we thought them likely from the claim on which you overwhelming focus, that UFOs are aliens. This post of mine is just not on that topic.
If you're saying that aliens are nearby and yet keep hidden, they are clearly holding back for some reason. The easiest and safest thing for them to do would be to wipe us out. I can't think of a good prudential reason for them to be nearby and yet hide, so maybe they have a moral reason for sparing us? This doesn't mean that we'd agree with their "politics" across the board, but we would certainly recognize our moral priorities in how they treat their inferiors.
You said "nearby": "...if they were actually confronted with unknown but very real alien powers nearby.
This predictable hypocrisy could be exposed if people would back these beliefs with bets."
But maybe the paragraph break here is stronger than I perceived. In that case, betting on the attitudes of hypothetical distant aliens would really just be betting on human attitudes about alien attitudes, i.e. a Keynesian beauty contest. The market price might change over time, but the bet would be very unlikely to resolve with actual data about alien attitudes. Hard to expose hypocrisy that way, but not impossible.
Different betting markets would have different advertised polices for how they hold/invest wagered money. Caveat emptor.
I don't quite follow Robin's logic how betting markets would expose this particular hypocrisy about alien status. Maybe the idea is that a betting market would show uncomfortably high probability that aliens are here but are not behaving as elites/experts claim aliens would?
I don't see any good betting market for aliens already visiting Earth, but I'd love to get in on one. Motivated bettors makes for easy money. I earned 230% ROI on PredictIt in just the few weeks around the last election. June 25 would be another potential payday.
Supporting one’s assertions with bets is usually quite impractical. Example: “I would not have cooperated with a Nazi-type regime.” Defining ‘cooperate’ and ‘Nazi-type’ in fully operational terms would be very hard, and (even if this were done) very likely the case will never come up. Meanwhile what is to be done with the money being bet? Obviously it cannot be used to buy consumption; nor can it be invested at risk: it must be available with certainty to pay off the bet, should it be lost. Similarly for the prediction about the nature of the aliens we first encountered. It is so unlikely that aliens will be encountered in our lifetimes that betting on their nature would be a waste of time and a useless encumbrance on the funds bet.
Some airliners already do have tail cameras: https://simpleflying.com/ai...
If resisting travel bans at the start of the pandemic was about signaling pro inclusiveness blobal citizen values why did NZ and Australia - two of the most immigrant friendly global citizen oriented countries in the world - start restricting travel in Jan 2019 and then quickly got more strict over the following months?
I think it's more likely that most countries just weren't alert enough from a testing point of view early on, and once it became clear how much virus was present everyone thought "well it's already here so what good is a travel ban".
I rememder you arguing against pretty much every restriction anyone thought of back then. And now you're criticising the same people you were critizing back then for thinking of restriction, but now it's for not promoting some other restriction. Yes, tag the article with "hypocrisy".
PS: I agree - have more betting.
I am all in favor of making lots of stuff legal, including betting. But: I do not have the power to cancel laws, though I consider them bad.
Why not indeed? Alas, lawyers would veto it, to avoid potential liability.
"Which let them express their pro-inclusiveness global-citizen liberal attitudes." ---RH
Oooooh. I wish I had written that. I am going to steal this line at the first opportunity.
Almost certainly intelligent aliens exist. Surely some are way more intelligent than humans. Or developed robot probes. Maybe some aliens have long life spans, like tortoises, or can hibernate.
How about mandatory webcams, or other optical devices, on military jets?
For that matter, cameras are cheap. Why not in cockpits and tails of all commercial airliners?
I didn't at all say it is IMPOSSIBLE that aliens are egalitarian eco-freaks etc. I've instead suggested that most people today claim this to project their values, not because they've carefully considered the evidence for that possibility.
You seem unable to distinguish my conditional claim about our changed attitudes to aliens *IF* we thought them likely from the claim on which you overwhelming focus, that UFOs are aliens. This post of mine is just not on that topic.
If you're saying that aliens are nearby and yet keep hidden, they are clearly holding back for some reason. The easiest and safest thing for them to do would be to wipe us out. I can't think of a good prudential reason for them to be nearby and yet hide, so maybe they have a moral reason for sparing us? This doesn't mean that we'd agree with their "politics" across the board, but we would certainly recognize our moral priorities in how they treat their inferiors.
You said "nearby": "...if they were actually confronted with unknown but very real alien powers nearby.
This predictable hypocrisy could be exposed if people would back these beliefs with bets."
But maybe the paragraph break here is stronger than I perceived. In that case, betting on the attitudes of hypothetical distant aliens would really just be betting on human attitudes about alien attitudes, i.e. a Keynesian beauty contest. The market price might change over time, but the bet would be very unlikely to resolve with actual data about alien attitudes. Hard to expose hypocrisy that way, but not impossible.
In this post I discuss alien attitudes if they exist, not the chance they exist in any particular place.
Different betting markets would have different advertised polices for how they hold/invest wagered money. Caveat emptor.
I don't quite follow Robin's logic how betting markets would expose this particular hypocrisy about alien status. Maybe the idea is that a betting market would show uncomfortably high probability that aliens are here but are not behaving as elites/experts claim aliens would?
I don't see any good betting market for aliens already visiting Earth, but I'd love to get in on one. Motivated bettors makes for easy money. I earned 230% ROI on PredictIt in just the few weeks around the last election. June 25 would be another potential payday.
If you think it is too hard to do, why not make it legal then?
Supporting one’s assertions with bets is usually quite impractical. Example: “I would not have cooperated with a Nazi-type regime.” Defining ‘cooperate’ and ‘Nazi-type’ in fully operational terms would be very hard, and (even if this were done) very likely the case will never come up. Meanwhile what is to be done with the money being bet? Obviously it cannot be used to buy consumption; nor can it be invested at risk: it must be available with certainty to pay off the bet, should it be lost. Similarly for the prediction about the nature of the aliens we first encountered. It is so unlikely that aliens will be encountered in our lifetimes that betting on their nature would be a waste of time and a useless encumbrance on the funds bet.