The 18th century chess machine called The Mechanical Turk fooled humans for almost 84 years. It was a human secretly sitting inside the machine who was playing chess — no machine, no artificial intelligence.
If something like that came up today, would we find out the secret sooner? Absolutely not. At any moment in time now, there are millions of people being scammed — by software makers, by “experts” in various topics, by politicians — and human beings today have given up trying to look under the covers.
Epistemic learned helplessness
In Bentham’s Bulldog there was a recent post titled Beware Compelling Arguments: You can make a devastating case for anything in which the author argues how it is impossible for non-experts to discern between compelling arguments that are false and compelling arguments that are true.
It also links to a post on Slate Star Codex titled Epistemic Learned Helplessness where the author argues why it is a bad idea to change our minds based on “valid” arguments.
The post titled Why you can’t do your own research and work it out for yourself from Science for Hippies was recently shared with me and that argues against conspiracy theorists, using the Dunning-Kruger effect to say that things should be left to experts.
The general point being made by all of these is that it is too difficult to know the truth.
That should make us humble
The conclusion that most people draw from this is the right one — we should be humble. And by humility I don’t mean the fake humility that most Indians perform (infuriating me in the process). I mean the intellectual humility which requires one to be seated in an uncomfortable position of “I don’t know”.
Difficult truths should not be avoided
When confronted with a truth that is hard to understand, several people go into denial mode. “I’m technically challenged”, “I am too stupid to understand this”. Yet that doesn’t stop them from taking sides!
And that’s not going to help.
The world in 2025 is much more complex than 18th century. There are all kinds of questions floating around us which we cannot avoid from our life.
- Should we ask for stronger regulation of Indian drug manufacturers, or not?
- Does rotavirus vaccine cause higher rates of intussusception?
- Does it cost an entire household’s energy consumption to run an LLM query?
There are even more:
- Should I pay thousands of rupees for a proprietary data analysis tool?
- Should I pay lakhs to an agency to develop a website?
- Is the invite I received for an international conference legit?
- Is there any truth in the WhatsApp forward I’m forwarding?
If people would actually run away and not engage with these problems, I would be happy. But unfortunately a lot of people run away partially and choose a side. They’ll endorse statements condemning critics. They’ll promote apps that are harmful. They’ll forward fake news. They’ll believe half-baked arguments about traditional medicine. They’ll pick their favorite experts and parrot their views with no understanding. They’ll choose politics that they don’t practice, and practice politics that they don’t identify with.
People are getting fooled left, right, and center
People are being scammed. They’re believing marketing claims that hold no water. They believe “research” that’s full of flaws. They are stuck in falsehoods.
And the reason is a deliberate unwillingness to be a rationalist. An aversion to the scientific method. The laziness to get up and look under the hood.
Nobody can save them except themselves. They’ve to start asking questions. They’ve to yearn for understanding how things work. They’ve to build mental models about the world that help them be faster.
It is a lot of effort that they’ve to put in. But they’re too busy, doing I don’t know what. Maybe they’re watching reels and scrolling. They can’t even see they’re being scammed.
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