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Because he didnt lose just by a little, he lost by a lot and there if you try to do the "it was stolen" move - with that move you also undermine and render all of your previous 4 landslides (from 2010 - 2022) potentially illegitimate, because the implication is that even when the numbers says that a party won with a landslide (with a supermajority where you have so much power) even in those cases it can be rigged at a relevant enough scale. With a supermajority you can do stuff like: Amend or adopt a new Constitution (called the Fundamental Law in Hungary) Pass or modify cardinal laws (laws that require a two-thirds majority), such as: the electoral system rules of the judiciary Appoint key officials, for example: members of the Constitutional Court the Prosecutor General heads of media authorities Make major changes to how the state and its institutions function And now given all of that, imagine that you would need to somehow tell a story that even though you had supermajority for 16 years and you had the power to make elections more safe, you still left elections structurally vulnerable enough so that they can be rigged at this scale. Its also not a good move for other reasons, because there is evidence that fidesz did buy votes (and we are talking about handing out money to some voters in some cases, in other cases handing out bags with food and other stuff, in other cases just literally buying shots and alcohol to some people) and if you try to do big investigations now, you are going to expose your own corrupt bs - these kinds of moves worked well against mostly uneducated and really poor people in places, where usually less than 2k but in other cases less than 1k people live. And because even small towns and villages can play an important role (due to how mandates are allocated), they can sometimes determine whether a party achieves a supermajority or falls short of it.

They can be an epistemic failure, but this is why the talk should rather be about how to make sense of events better and how to distinguish real conspiracy theories from false ones. I wont do this, but my personal approach would be something like: 1) Lets take systematically all the conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be true and deeply analyze them structurally and try to extract common patterns from them. 2) After that, lets go back in time, and try to think about what better epistemic approach(es) could have been used to recognize that the given conspiracy theory is plausibly true and or worth deeper investigation (given all the avalaible info and tools and all the alternative hypotheses back then) 3) After that check how many false positives ( by false positive here I just mean - generating a conclusion that there is a conspiracy when there isn't one) would your updated epistemic approach generate about other known historical events that we already have a more plausible/better answer and or theory for. So develop an approach by which you can recognize and differentiate (hopefully in a reliable way) true conspiracies from false ones and integrate that approach within a higher order weighing system - where you compare, study and entertain a bunch of other alternative theories for any given event in question (by alternative theory here , I just mean theories that are not conspiracy theories). I understand your frustration (if you try to target people who are so naive and biased that they never ever entertain any conspiracy theory no matter how much evidence is presented), but on the other hand, you need to understand and acknowledge that dismissing most conspiracy theorists as a heruistic can be reasonable and understandable given some of the reasons you already layed down - limited resources, time, information and having negative priors about most conspiracy theorists (where most of their claims turn out to be false or unsubstantiated and most of them are generally uneducated about the subject they try to talk about) . This is not to say that there isn't any room for epistemic improvement (when it comes to how to approach conspiracy theories and people who bring up conspiracy theories) , but this is to say that you shouldnt have an unreasonable standard for people and for institutions. Because, just like we cant expect every single criminal case to be perfectly solved (given all of our limitations), we also cant expect people and institutions to recognize every single legit conspiracy theory when there is one. But I think its fine for you to push people to update their priors about conspiracy theories and about conspiracy theorists so that they dont just categorically reject all conspiracy theories.

@Ramasta9 Since you think that the covid vaccines (or "jabs" as you would label it) were really bad and were part of some big global scale malicious collaboration - what do you think about the promotion and the distribution of the Sputnik vaccine (and if you are categorically against all vaccines, since you have the habit of vaguely gesturing towards "unnatural" things being bad - what do you think about all the other vaccines that were created by Russia) ? And how do you navigate disagreements, when your organic nature disagrees with another vibes based politics organic nature? In those cases, why do you conclude that your vibes are more accurate compared to the the vibes that the other person has?

@Socrates This isnt to undermine the meat of your point, this is to ask a very specific question - do you think it is always irrational to outsource validation to others? For instance, after recognizing that you have basically 0 domain knowledge about a particular field, do you think its better to rely on your validation (even though you dont even know what standards you should even apply or how you should even conceptualize and create a hierarchy of evidence about that given field or what facts are even relevant) than to rely on the consensus of domain experts?

@LastThursday Interesting, engaging talk, thanks. Also appreciate that you actually engaged with my points in good faith.

Well because of the reasons you layed down and because law is complicated and the definitions there even though are much more precise compared to other domains, they are still not defined with as much precision that would narrow down the possible interpretations to 1 (and thats probably good). its also the case that we cant exhaustively think through all possible combinations beforehand about how a given crime could occur and how it should be handled, so pragmatically there needs to be a jury who can navigate the messy cases within the bounds of reasonable interpretations and law. its also the case that law is extremely context sensitive and there are a bunch of issues with trying to capture that context in higher order rules (because there is necessary info loss about context and there are epistemic issues that we already talked about - in this case , issue about how you need to interpret and apply the higher order rules given a specific case) I agree that our minds are naturally messy (our pre-theoretic usage and understanding of logic is different from prop logic, but I would argue that rules of inference captures our pre theoretic notion of deduction quite well), but in any case, I dont see how what thing produced the given logic is relevant. I also dont think this is a prop logic issue, because no jury formally uses any kind of fuzzy logic or any non-conventional logic either. I think the issues surrounding this has to do more with how precisely defined a given proposition is (and thats gonna be an issue for all kinds of logics, although you might argue that the degree to which lack of precision is gonna be a problem will differ from logic to logic). Not sure what you mean by circularity issue or how that is a unique issue to prop logic.

That would be an equivocation on the term 'rape' though. Once it is layed down what is exactly meant by the term, after that the only hurdle is getting informed about the case and checking whether the defined conditions were met or not. I agree that it can be an issue, but once it is specified what was the intended meaning and interpretation when the sentence was used, then you can narrow down the possible interpretations. I take it that once you go with a different interpretation, you are not really engaging with the same proposition anymore, because the misinterpretation you go with creates new meaning for the exact same sentence and with that you tackle an entirely different proposition. I dont reject the the law of excluded middle, and I dont do fuzzly logic stuff (unless there is really a case that classical logic cant handle). What you describe there is what I would label again as just an epistemic problem - in this specific case related to not giving a precise enough definition and or not being informed enough about the case (but once those conditions are layed down and met I dont see why couldnt the proposition be handled in a binary way). I find the problem about "which logic should I use here" to be just a representation problem (in this case) , and not anything more significant than that. You can represent and express the exact same proposition under multiple different kind of logics, where you capture and maintain the exact same meaning. But in any case, I think we agree on the thing that I cared about and I wanted us to agree on - and that has to do with the fact that a propositions truth value will be univocally shared given the assumption that all the epistemic issues are resolved (agents are perfectly informed, have the exact same interpretation , use the exact same logic to assing truth value etc).

Matt has largely new atheist, science dicksucking views - One of his misconceptions is largely underestimating how much testimonial evidence is actually involved in science and how much trust it necessarily relies on (including social, judicial,financial, cultural pressures and incentives and institutions) for it to work on a global scale. Once you remove all the previously mentioned shit, you will either have to trust things on blind faith or you have to literally validate everything on your own (including every single occurence of a peer-review cause you cant just take an institution's or a scientist's word for it ; including every single past experiment that were done, because how do you actually know and can make sure that those were actually done; and every single fact that science books mention about physics , biology, chemistry etc). Yeah scientist do experiments and validate things and peer review things etc, but with the large set of caveats that I previously mentioned. If you take a single scientist, that scientist will necessarily need to take a large set of things for granted (involving experiments that were done in the past, including peer reviews that were allegedly done by other scientist and institutions, including the accuracy of the content in science books etc). A single scientist will only validate a fraction of a fraction of those things. And relying on those previously mentioned structures go much deeper. You cant even do experiments without them - for instance, if you are a scientist who wants to run an experiment on patients, even there you need to somewhat rely on the patients collectively not fucking you up and trolling you by taking some pills before the experiment (without you knowing about it) and other institutions providing accurate medical data about your patients etc. -- So then how can science work? Science works relatively well on a global scale, because of the checks and balances and because of the values and motivation that the previously mentioned social, judicial, financial, cultural structures and institutions provide - Those structures make and incentivise scientists to generally provide honest and accurate testimonials and feedback about the experiments they do, about the peer-reviews they do, and about the data they provide , about content that they write down in science books and about the way they teach next generations.

@LastThursday So lets check what we disagree on. Reading back some of the stuff that you said - you seem to agree with me on the distinction between what is propositionalized (Existence) and a proposition of Existence. When I said that proposition (X) is true about the rape case (independent from the jury's knowledge about it), there what I meant was that if the jury would have known all the info surrounding the case, then he/she would have realized that proposition(X) is true. This is also what I meant by there being a fact of the matter about proposition (X). It just means that assuming that you are perfectly informed about the rape case, you will say that proposition (X) is true. The question related to this issue given your paradigm is just this: Do you agree that all perfectly informed agents would give a univocal "its true" answer to the question "Is proposition (X) true or false?"

The difference between a thing and a description of a thing. The difference between a thing that is interpreted and an interpretation of said thing. The difference between the thing that is modelled and your model of said thing. The difference between the thing that is propositionalized and a proposition of said thing. -- Whatever you meant in your earlier statement by the structure of reality is what I meant by behavior of nature. All im saying is that prior to modelling or interpreting or propositionalizing or making a description of the structure of reality , there is the structure of reality.

Lets clear up what you actually mean by that and what that entails. There is an interpretation of that statement that is sensible to me , but there is another that isn't sensible at all. Given how you intended to mean that statement - does that mean that if I think I can fly, then that actually makes it so that I can fly? I also think there might be an equivocation and misinterpretation on the sentence "laws of physics" - I meant the behavior of nature and I didnt mean our modelling of nature. It has nothing to do with what my paradigm allows or doesnt allow and it has everything to do with that sentence not being intelligible to me. It might be a sensible and coherent statement and view, I just dont understand what 'propositions existing' mean.

No the content of the proposition can make it time relatively true or false. Getting back to the rape case, we can add and explicate time relative facts to the case and that way the truth value of said proposition can change if you change the content about time. I dont know what it means for a proposition to exist, but regardless I take it that it doesnt depend on that, what matters is the content that the proposition relates/corresponds to. The laws of physics exists before you become conscious of the laws of physics or before anyone utters any proposition about the laws of physics. There are facts of the matter about the laws of physics independent from your knowledge of it. It might be the case, that you dont know anything about the laws of physics , but thats just a statement about knowledge, but that doesnt change anything about the laws of physics. That is compatible with what I am saying. For instance, you can make propositions where the content of said proposition is something about the future, and those propositions doesnt have any truth value yet. Still disagree, thats an epistemic issue not a metaphysics issue . Gravity still works even if you are unconscious of it. Your epistemic limitation or your lack of knoweldge doesnt change any fact about gravity.

But relative propositions also have a fact of the matter about them once the additional relative context is provided in the proposition itself. (You can be wrong about relative propositions, once the context is added and they are not knowledge dependently true) The proposition (X) that "person A raped person B" won't change just because the jury doesnt know whats up with that rape case. Its just the case that the jury simply doesnt know what kind of truth value that relative proposition holds (whether it is true or false) , but its still a fact of the matter that the proposition is true. The relative facts surrounding the case is what makes proposition (X )true or false, not someone's knowledge about the case. (Person A raping person B is what makes proposition (X) true, not whether the jury has any knowledge about the case or not). I think you confuse where the proposition is located at with the content of the proposition. Even relative propositions' truth value are dependent on the content of the propositions and they are not dependent on where the propositions are located (it doesnt matter whether you are a platonist or non-platonist about propositions, that is a tangential question to this problem). The only way the location of the given proposition becomes relevant to the truth value of said proposition (whether the proposition is true or false) is if the content of the proposition is about the location itself.

But thats just an epistemic issue not an issue about metaphysics. There can be facts that we will never know about or prove given our epistemic issues, but from that doesnt follow that those facts arent true. Their truth value isn't dependent on our knowledge of them, unless you take it to be the case that all truths are knowledge dependently true. We can list here a large set of facts about physics that werent known by any person on Earth during the ice age, but from that doesnt follow that the laws of physics had to change or that the laws of physics were different back then. Or we can just go with a rape example, where one person rapes another - do you think there isn't any fact of the matter about one person raping another up until the point the jury becomes conscious of the evidence against the rapist? Or do you take it to be the case, that if there cant be sufficient evidence presented against the rapist, the rape just didnt happen?