
Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious - pavel_lishin
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/07/any-claim-without-a-uri-should-be-treated-as-suspicious/
======
btrettel
As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with
citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources
that don't say what was claimed.

Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather
than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would
be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_fragment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_fragment)

Chrome can be even more specific now with this extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-to-text-
fragm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-to-text-
fragment/pbcodcjpfjdpcineamnnmbkkmkdpajjg)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was
> claimed.

I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence.
Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the
contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence
for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general
topic as X, but that's not what Person 2 asked for.

~~~
hn_check
Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a
world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches).
Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly
linked in the footer of their post.

HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were
debunked.

Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally connected
nonsense [2] to add gravity to whatever else they were claiming as a
credibility multiplier. They were playing the crowd [3], knowing that
extraordinarily few will ever bother reading anything, and just want to browse
past and give passing judgments.

This plays out on HN daily, and is spectacularly effective.

\----CITATIONS-----

[1] -
[https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html](https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html)

[2] - [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-
of-t...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-
rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel)

[3] - [https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-
quote...](https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote-theres-
a-sucker-born-every-minute-1db9a7220d34)

~~~
vkou
Is it really so prevalent? I've followed up HN citations on topics I disagree
with, and I've rarely found them to be rubbish.

~~~
hn_check
I've seen it enough to chuckle when I see it now. In any scientific or medical
discussion it is rampant. People will cite things to support claims they are
making, but the things they cite don't concur at all. They might be related,
but the obligation is on the reader to go through and parse whether that giant
research paper supports what they're claiming which is a task that extremely
few will undertake.

------
duxup
I hate URL fights.

I give little extra value to people providing links with their clams.

I largely given up providing links to information when called out as well.
It's not worth the time.

Discussion on the internet is broken in most places (HN is less broken than
most). I find little value providing URLs. Much of the time I provide them,
few folks seem to read it, fewer actually want to read it in an intellectually
honest way and usually they respond with some bonkers links of their own that
don't say what they think they're saying.

Much (not all) of the time I've given up providing links to basic information
it doesn't change the conversation in any meaningful way. It's usually just an
argument where folks who feel like URLs are some sort of scoring device.

I get the idea put forward here, but I don't know if it makes sense in an age
where you can find an URL that says anything and discussion on the internet is
so bad that nobody is really reading them anyway.

~~~
johngalt
The challenge with the link fights is often about the difference between
_data_ and _conclusions_.

For example, if I claim that "marriage has a positive impact on men" then cite
a bunch of data showing that married men live longer and make more money on
average etc... Have I truly proven my _conclusion_ that marriage benefits men?
Or does the same data show that healthy men with jobs are more likely to get
married? Yet, I will stubbornly say that citation makes the conclusion
unequivocal.

9/10 times the disagreement isn't data/citations but conclusions or criteria.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _9 /10 times the disagreement isn't data/citations but conclusions or
> criteria._

Or assumptions behind the cited data, and effect size.

What I've seen very often (particularly around sketchy nutrition discussions
about "natural" things and "evil chemicals") is that quoted research seems to
support a given conclusion, but under assumptions that do not apply to the
argument at all, or significance is so low as to make the result useless.

Some study showing that a bunch of mice got cancer after getting injected with
more artificial sweetener than you'd drink in a year does not show that
artificial sweetener causes cancer in men. A study that says you get 0.003%
greater chance of cancer from eating red meat every day has an effect size so
small it's probably bullshit, but even if, 0.003% increase is not something
worth caring about _at all_.

------
dontcarethrow2
I would've agreed with this a bit more if we hadn't started banning content we
don't like from the internet. Here I am without a link, but chasing away
groups we don't agree with to the dark side of the web makes it very
convenient for the current political saints to shape our views. I take any
claim with URIs or without, try to think about who gains from such
perspectives, weigh it with past experiences. I'd hate to just see a URI and
go "OK, I am convinced ty" and automatically pick up the pitchforks against
those without. I doubt even newspapers did this. It sounds like a good idea
but only on an open internet and not what we have today.

~~~
Aerroon
> _I 'd hate to just see a URI and go "OK, I am convinced ty" and
> automatically pick up the pitchforks against those without._

Something to particularly consider are circular references. If you make the
reference graph large enough then it's easy to fool people into thinking that
there is a valid source for a claim when there actually isn't one. All you
have are references that refer to one another. It gets particularly bad when
some of those references end up as dead links, because then you can't even
find out whether the chain ended up at a valid source or not.

Related to this are long reference chains that end up on a shaky source. A
poorly done study (or simply a bought one) can end up being referenced in a
long chain. The links in the chain might end up giving more credibility to the
source.

~~~
jakelazaroff
I don't think you even need a large graph! People have observed this happening
with just two nodes, where one of the nodes is Wikipedia [1] — some website
states information they learned on (or copied from) Wikipedia, and then
Wikipedia cites that website as a primary source.

[1] [https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/wikipedia-
citogenesis-c...](https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/wikipedia-citogenesis-
circular-reporting-problem.html)

~~~
Can_Not
Then hundreds of websites cite the wikipedia article, some without revealing
their source, then become additional citations for the Wikipedia article.

------
raxxorrax
Judge me all you want, but I would have clicked on "dirty hippy vibes"...

Honestly, I don't really believe in ubiquitous misinformation being as a large
problem as it is made out to be. Everyone arguing for more content regulation
had their own motivations or was in some kind of panic.

There will always be people misinformed on the net. Doesn't mean I want a
babysitter cleaning everything up, even if I thought they wouldn't just want
to suppress dissidents.

I have no facebook account and people say it is really bad there, but I also
think major news networks spread bullshit in regular intervals. Doesn't mean
everything they report is bullshit, but the normal citizen would be cancelled
already.

~~~
edent
I'm not sure where you got the impression that I wanted people to clean up
misinformation from the web. That certainly wasn't my intent.

Perhaps you and I move in different social circles - but I get a lot of
forwarded "claims" on WhatsApp and Twitter. Well-meaning people who see an
image with some text on it and send it to their friends & family.

My blog post is mostly aimed at them - showing how easy it can be to check
sources.

~~~
dleslie
I find much of that sort of instant messaging communication is less about
informing others and is more about social signalling. The sender is asking for
emotional support and social solidarity.

~~~
anoraca
What are you basing that on?

~~~
dleslie
My understanding is that text messaging is rarely used for knowledge sharing,
and is primarily used for social bonding[0]. In my own experience, I never
receive such messages from individuals that aren't aware that I already agree
with their intended interpretation.

0:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221270858_A_large_s...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221270858_A_large_scale_study_of_text-
messaging_use)

------
Trufa
Completely tangential, I never understand why people use URI instead of URL.
He obviously means URL and goes an abstraction lower. You could also say
without the corresponding internet uniquely scheme or whatever.

Sorry for the rant. But I am missing something?

~~~
edent
I'm the author of the blog post. It's a good question but, yes, you are
missing something. Mostly me being an idiot.

[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/03/it-is-spelled-
url/](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/03/it-is-spelled-url/)

I usually spell it upper-u upper-r lower-L specifically to annoy both sides of
the argument.

(I'm not sure why the submitter substituted the l for I.)

~~~
klyrs
> (I'm not sure why the submitter substituted the l for I.)

Sounds like they fell victim to your deliberate trolling. Is that not an
expected outcome?

I, for one, am amused at the implication that we should trust an inaccessible
file:// link...

------
mapgrep
Any claim _with_ a URI should also be treated with suspicion.

There is plenty of reliable information locked away in offline books and
government documents and all kinds of other non Google-able locations. This is
true even for brand new information (which is why we continue to have
“leaks”). Meanwhile there is plenty of misinformation with URIs.

I would go so far as to say online status is almost orthogonal to accuracy,
except that in theory at least online information is more readily disproven.

(Never mind that the whole core example of the article is off. The sketchy
unsourced image also has a URI.)

~~~
ceejayoz
> Any claim with a URI should also be treated with suspicion.

Agreed. I've noticed a huge uptick of "here is a random YouTuber's 45 minute
rant about X" used as "evidence" in discussions. Opting to not watch it in its
entirety is then dismissed as being unwilling to discuss; watching it and
picking it apart leads to "oh, but you haven't seen his OTHER videos".

~~~
saagarjha
Sounds like run-of-the-mill bad faith discussion :/

------
crazygringo
Not a URI -- a citation, which may or may not include a URI.

Not all academic literature has been digitized, you know. (As someone who
hunts down a lot of citations, you can trust me on that.)

Also URI's break, while citations include enough information (publisher,
title, author, etc.) that the source can be found regardless.

------
tegiddrone
I begin to think about how to build a linter/scorecard for this sort of stuff.

Example linter rules:

    
    
      This article does not have a source.
      This article has no sources from a known resource [this community] find reputable.  
      This article has a source from a source known to this community to be non-reputable.
      This article has a "shallow" source such as a blog (tumblr, medium, blogspot, youtube)
    

Probably would need a mechanism to build/aggregate/crowdsource reputable
source lists.

edit: formatting

------
DavidVoid
I can really recommend having a look through the blog _Yesterday 's Print_
that's mentioned in the post [1]. It's an excellent collection of some
interesting, relatable, and humorous snippets from ca. a hundred years ago.

This one they posted about a year ago stuck with me [2].

 _The saying, "Life is just one damn thing after another," is a gross
understatement. The damn things overlap._ \-- The Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio,
February 21, 1947.

[1] [https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/](https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/)

[2] [https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/post/176557878119/the-
cin...](https://yesterdaysprint.tumblr.com/post/176557878119/the-cincinnati-
enquirer-ohio-february-21-1947)

------
carapace
Can we "pin" this to HN front page in perpetuity?

I'm joking but I'm also serious. It's (IMO) basic hygiene at this point.

The Internet used to be like Burning Man, today it's more like Bangkok.

Flipping it around what this really means is that taking _any_ particular
assertion made online seriously _without_ some "certificate" (same root as
"certain") as to who stands by it, is wildly, childishly, naive. (Including
that one, and this one.)

The real question (as alluded to in TFA) is, "Whom do you trust?"

------
dom96
> The whole investigation took me 5 minutes. A Web search, a few clicks, and
> some ctrl+f’ing.

Yes, it took you, a person with a blog and the technical know how. I bet you
that 99.99% of people that have access to the internet have a very basic
understanding of how to use a search engine, in particular the trick of
quoting a phrase to match it exactly is not something I would expect the
mainstream to be aware of.

What we need is a better education so that it is effortless to the majority,
just like it is for you or me.

------
lysium
While I agree, what does the URl in this particular case tell us? Is it a true
quote? Does the new context change its meaning? Can someone please elaborate,
I don’t get it.

------
ardy42
> Treat any claim without a URl as suspicious.

This assumes that the web is the only information source you should be using
as a reference. You definitely should cite your sources if you can, but saying
they have to be web soruces is a pretty limiting requirement.

The tumblr page that gave the print citation did just fine.

------
cochne
I'll start of by saying the author has provided some nice research. However,
this particular example is the kind of thing where it doesn't even really
matter wether its legitimate or not. The fact that it _doesn 't_ attribute it
to any particular source makes it almost meaningless. It's basically just
saying that some person 100 years ago said "X".

Does it really matter if I have a source for that? This content is clearly not
meant to convince, only entertain.

~~~
edent
The claim is "even a hundred years ago we had prats who didn't want to wear
masks because they were embarrassed."

This citation shows that, yes, this was a trope even back then.

~~~
mensetmanusman
It’s strange, because a mask can mask identity, so why would you be
embarrassed if few can recognize you?

------
rrauenza
I ranted about one of these on facebook yesterday. Attached to a stock photo
of an Amish lumber worker:

> I had a conversation with an Amish gentleman yesterday while I was loading
> at a mill, and at the end of the conversation he asked me one question that
> should really get one thinking. He asked "Do you know why this virus hasn't
> affected us yet?" no "well because we don't have television"

The good friend who posted this was like, "this really got me thinking!"

(I presumed the subtext was that this virus is just blown out of proportion.)

My response was -- WHY? Why do we even assume this quote is TRUE? And why
would you let fake things like this give you something to think about?

These are no better than the junk faxes people used to pass around claiming
Proctor & Gamble worshiped the devil. I was kind of glad I stopped getting
them in email from relatives because they moved to facebook instead, but ...
so much of our society's ... gestalt? mindset? ... is formed by these junk
memes being passed around as truth. (And this isn't unique to one political
persuasion.)

The best evidence that Facebook and Twitter are drugs I think is that for some
reason brains turn off when consuming media on them.

Where has our critical thinking gone? We’re hopeless as a society without it.

------
drewda
On a somewhat related note, here's an enjoyable read about how citations in
scholarly papers can sometimes mask shoddy thinking and spread "Academic urban
legends":

> Many of the messages presented in respectable scientific publications are,
> in fact, based on various forms of rumors. Some of these rumors appear so
> frequently, and in such complex, colorful, and entertaining ways that we can
> think of them as academic urban legends. The explanation for this phenomenon
> is usually that authors have lazily, sloppily, or fraudulently employed
> sources, and peer reviewers and editors have not discovered these weaknesses
> in the manuscripts during evaluation. To illustrate this phenomenon, I draw
> upon a remarkable case in which a decimal point error appears to have misled
> millions into believing that spinach is a good nutritional source of iron.
> Through this example, I demonstrate how an academic urban legend can be
> conceived and born, and can continue to grow and reproduce within academia
> and beyond.

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127145356...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312714535679)

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I agree, but even that isn't any kind of guarantee.

I have noticed that many sites simply repost single-origin garbage, so it can
easily look like it's multi-sourced.

Scammers and politrolls use this all the time. Marketers work really hard to
get talking points pushed out to as many outlets as possible, so the "origin"
may be different, but the text all came from one place.

 _" Don't believe everything you read on the Internet."_ -Benjamin Franklin

------
k_sze
I believe that there are two things at play here: 1. epistemology (a.k.a. ToK
- Theory of Knowledge) and 2. emotion vs rationality.

What the author says should be completely natural to a person who is has
studied ToK and who is in a rather rational state of mind.

A person who doesn't understand the problem of ToK would simply be oblivious.

A person who is under the influence of emotion, well, would be unable to help
themself from believing whatever fits their emotion.

The ultimate evidence of truthfulness need not be a URL, depending on the
claim. Nor is a URL necessarily sufficient. After all, how do you know the
ultimate URL of origin is trustworthy? All you can do is to recursively ask
yourself "how do you know?", either until you accumulate enough doubt or until
the question sounds absurd.

------
xenocyon
A lot of the comments here focus on claims made in bad faith. But the biggest
value of citations is when one is trying to make or check a claim in _good_
faith. Many times I find that my own long-held beliefs turn out to be
incorrect or partially incorrect or misunderstandings when I fact-check them
with a reliable expert source.

As for claims made in bad faith? Don't trust these whether they have citations
or not. Because there are a variety of primary sources on every topic and most
things in life are uncertain, it is frequently possible to cherry pick an
expert opinion that aligns with yours if you look hard enough. This makes fact
the servant of opinion rather than the other way around.

------
staycoolboy
How are citations not the fallacy of "appeal to authority"?

Citations are basically an attempt at X.509 or Certificate Authority "root of
trust": follow the certs until you find one we all agree is "trustyworthy".

Except in this case, that "someone" may or may not be provable, because the
root of trust could potentially go back centuries.

I'm not impugning the work of historians, I realize this is part of what they
do: follow the citations, cross-correlate, and seek "the truth" through
painstaking research.

But outside of extensive historical effort, it seems like a pretty flimsy
strategy for contentious topics.

~~~
mcnamaratw
If the citation contains data then using a citation is not an appeal to
authority.

------
black_puppydog
This really connects with the "Cool URIs don't change" mantra.

------
jmchuster
If you're curious about what a forum would look like if it required URL
citations, you can take a look at
[http://old.reddit.com/r/neutralnews](http://old.reddit.com/r/neutralnews). It
has pretty strict modding e.g. rule #2

> 2) Source your facts. If you're claiming something to be true, you need to
> back it up by linking to a qualified and relevant source. There is no
> "common knowledge" exception, and anecdotal evidence is not allowed.

------
danso
I wish this sentiment were even stronger when it comes to screenshots, e.g.
screenshots of purportedly deleted tweets/articles. As we get closer to
deepfake-video-on-demand becoming a thing, I'm still astonished at how the
vast majority of people don't understand how trivial it is to create pixel-
perfect fake web content. My default response to a screenshot is to assume
it's faked unless there's an accompanying Wayback Machine/archive.today URL.

------
mcculley
For a few years, I was looking forward to newspapers embedding navigable links
to the sources of their reporting. I figured that we just had to wait for the
pre-Internet generation of journalists to retire and the next generation would
cite better.

But now it is apparent that newspapers have no interest in doing this as it
would encourage readers to go to another site and deprive them of
advertisement revenue.

I would really love to subscribe to a newspaper that prioritized
readers/subscribers.

------
jgalt212
16 + 26 = 42 [1] [2]

[1]
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+%2B+26](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+%2B+26)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)#The_Hitchhiker's_G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_\(number\)#The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

------
jpswade
Surely "don't trust everything you read on the Internet" is just a given at
this point, especially if it originates on Twitter.

~~~
donarb
That was such a great, prescient quote by Abraham Lincoln.

------
CM30
This is something more online media outlets should taken into consideration,
especially for their own articles. Too many think linking out to potential
'competitors' is a bad thing, or make it too difficult to find the source for
their data/conclusions.

Newspapers and magazines are especially bad for this, as are YouTube channels
and other video format content creators.

------
snowwrestler
I think the key lesson in this story is the author's willingness to do the
work. IMO it's not enough to be skeptical; you also should have a set of
criteria by which you'll be satisfied, and be willing to go try to satisfy
those criteria yourself. I don't think that merely pointing out a lack of
citation is sufficient as a counterargument.

------
jakear
In general I do agree citations are a good thing. But in this case and ones
like it, does it really matter? Someone is making a humorous statement, it’s
not of particular importance to me if it was made 100 years ago first or not,
so why should I care to look it up?

Rephrased: what would change if you found the image was “fake”?

------
kens
A timely quip from the same 1918 newspaper page:

"Why don't you wear your influenza mask?"

"I'm afraid I might look funny."

"Suppose you do. Wouldn't you rather introduce a little comedy into your
household than subject it to tragedy?"

------
njsubedi
>The whole investigation took me 5 minutes. A Web search, a few clicks, and
some ctrl+f’ing.

Am I the only one who thinks the last phrase sounds weird? I might be used to
reading lots of articles that sensor words, but couldn't help reading it as
"control-fucking". (Edit: uncensored)

~~~
Zhyl
I think Ctrl+F seems to be more popular than 'grepping' these days, although I
would very much be in favour of bringing 'grepping' back.

~~~
black_puppydog
there's just so few people who still grep through website code directly. :P

~~~
ben509
In Firefox the / key is bound to quick find, so it's there in spirit.

~~~
_Microft
Firefox also allows to search without bringing up the search bar first by
setting "accessibility.typeaheadfind" in "about:config" to true. Reducing the
timeout for the search bar to disappear after the last keypress is very useful
as well. This is hidden behind "accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout".

Caveat: is messes with pages that use normal letters as keyboard inputs, like
WASD as movement keys. One might need to disable it temporarily if that
happens.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I use Firefox developer edition - I assume that's set up by default. Though
I've learned to work around it, it has driven me mad for so long - I didn't
know you could turn it off! Finally, it's fixed! Thank you!

~~~
_Microft
Everyday a good deed - I'm glad I could help ;)

------
anjc
Even source data itself is not free from contexts and biases. Just treat
everything with suspicion. And treat people with extra suspicion if they
always provide a URL, especially if the URL is to somebody's interpretation of
an interpretation etc.

------
kiplkipl
This should go for almost everything written in a newspaper. We all know about
the the intentional spin and unintentional failure to understand technical
topics but, when written in a newspaper, hearsay is treated as factual
secondary source.

------
keithalewis
And any claim with one, doubly so. \-- Abe Lincoln abe@I-chopped-the-cherry-
tree.gov

------
dublin
Or perhaps, any claim _with_ a URI and _without_ a physical card in a library
card catalog should be treated as suspicious... Just sayin'...

------
londons_explore
Site down... Shows ReCAPTCHA in an infinite loop...

~~~
vezycash
>Site down... Shows ReCAPTCHA

I suppose this is cloudflare + their new captcha provider. This behavior is
annoying / suspicious. They know the site is down, yet make people solve
captcha repeatedly before finally telling them that the site is down.

~~~
wizzwizz4
They're incentivised to do this. hCAPTCHA pays them for it.

------
jermier
Very soon everything will exist cryptographically on some uncensorable
blockchain, and websites & files will exist on the Interplanetary
Filesystem[0] and will be impossible to take down. And 'things' will all be
categorized and have their own QR code which when scanned, will reveal the
context (or even price!) of the item.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System)

~~~
dsun179
I do not think so. Most of my ipfs bookmarks from 2 years ago are offline now,
everything gone because no peer has the content.

~~~
noman-land
FileCoin just recently launched and it aims to fix this exact problem.

~~~
gruez
How does adding crypto fix this problem? I presume it's to incentivize peers
into retaining and serving the content, but who's going to pay? The author?
The viewer? How is either going to work for long tail content that's been
abandoned by the author?

~~~
bottled_poe
Wait, hmm... maybe if we use the blockchain here we can solve those problems
too?

~~~
dsun179
Or machine learning?

------
pacija
A great number of people, even smart ones, have been tricked into believing
the Truth can be found on the Internet. It can't.

------
6510
To quote a friend of mine: But then I would have to doubt and question
everything.

It kept me laughing for many years.

------
arpa
Hmmm, I don't see any URI supporting the original claim. I find it suspicious.

------
amelius
Every viral social media fake news story spreads from URI to URI ...

------
newen
We're going to need to issue some Verrit cards for this link.

------
taytus
I thought this was about all those gpt-3 gifs demos on twitter...

------
ScottWRobinson
Maybe GPT-3 can just do our fact-checking for us...

------
reiichiroh
Why isn’t the L in uppercase for the URL acronym?

~~~
uniqueid
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier)

------
tomp
Isn't this just a submarine post to put a quote about masks and people who
don't wear them on top of HN?

------
agustif
CitationLint is needed.

------
alextheparrot
> The whole investigation took me 5 minutes. A Web search, a few clicks, and
> some ctrl+f‘ing

I think this is the core issue with this post. There is an intersection
between how much this new claim would update my mental model and how much time
it will take to prove. The idea of "how much time it will take to prove" is
important, because we all have a limited amount of intellectual bandwidth that
we use to receive and integrate new information.

Intellectual bandwidth means we need prioritization. Without prioritization we
have two suboptimal states that are available. The first is where we are being
DDOS'd in bad-faith by low-value claims, that have some amount of work to
prove. The second is that whichever claims we do resolve are likely not the
set of claims which result in optimal utility; updating our mental model
results in utility, assuming that our update function only accepts "good"
updates.

One strategy, that I think I use, is to break things into four categories: (1)
A claim close to my current mental model (2) A claim not far but not close to
my mental model (3) A claim far from my mental model (4) A claim unrelated to
my mental model.

If a claim is close to my mental model (1), I'd probably just accept it out of
hand. This newspaper clipping is one example, because proving that the
clipping is real does not update my mental model (Nor does disproving it,
honestly), so it is low value. This is the cheap filter that reduces
redundancy.

If a claim is far from my mental model (3), I'll probably just dismiss it out
of hand. I'm not going to go to the work to prove or disprove something,
insofar. There are exceptions here, wherein the statement is so orthogonal to
the mental model that it might have high value and is therefore still with
looking into. In my experience, claims of high value that are completely
orthogonal from my mental model tend to be rarer than claims of low value. One
case I can think of is an article on oil prices I read, where there was a
claim that the breakeven oil price was ~$200 a barrel as support for Iran
having a broken economy. This didn't make sense, as it would mean Iran is not
a viable economy even with oil, but then why are western nations wasting
political capital embargoing an unviable product? So I spent time
investigating it (Investing intellectual bandwidth). In the end, it seemed
like a bad-faith argument as it assumed that the oil price would be the only
thing to balance the Iranian national budget and didn't speak to the fact that
Iran is subject to artificial export constraints via embargoes. Engaging with
claims in this category seems to result in finding a lot of gravel and maybe a
piece of gold from time to time.

The medium category (2) is where I think most of us should be spending our
time, the frontiers of our mental model where things are both foreign as well
as familiar. When you can take different parts of evidence and see that some
of it makes sense and some of it doesn't. I think this area is ripe for bad-
faith disruption, as I'm much more willing to engage with this type of
premise. I remember reading and putting down a book lately because it proposed
an interesting question, around what has changed in the America of my parent's
and of today. It was asserting, without even worrying about supporting
evidence, that traditional family values were the cause.

The last category (4) is not an unimportant one, which is just the area where
you might say "I don't know" or "Why does that matter". If someone claims
Charles II was born in 1629, I also wouldn't derive much value by looking it
up and saying "No, he was actually born in 1630". In that sense, it is low-
value information because it doesn't intersect with meaning for me.

Overall, I think the problem with the line of thinking I quoted is that it
puts a lot of burden on the individual for what usually has zero or negative
value to that individual. That work exists whether or not a URI is included,
and is possible exacerbated by there now being "evidence" provided even
insofar as the linked context provides no value.

Aside: The phrase "ctrl+f'ing" written out is a bit humorous.

------
fit2rule
We can no longer really know what the truth is, honestly. This is why the
political foo-ha about "facts having a liberal bias" and all that was so
poignant - it was an admission that the Internet had won.

