People often parse information through an epistemic consensus filter. They do not ask "is this true", they ask "will others be OK with me thinking this is true". This makes them very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus; if every screen they look at says the same thing they will adopt that position because their brain interprets it as everyone in the tribe believing it.

- Anon, 4Chan, slightly edited

Ordinary people who haven't spent years of their lives thinking about rationality and epistemology don't form beliefs by impartially tallying up evidence like a Bayesian reasoner. Whilst there is a lot of variation, my impression is that the majority of humans we share this Earth with use a completely different algorithm for vetting potential beliefs: they just believe some average of what everyone and everything around them believes, especially what they see on screens, newspapers and "respectable", "mainstream" websites.

---

First published:
February 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMxhrrkJdEormCcLt/brute-force-manufactured-consensus-is-hiding-the-crime-of

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.