Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: On Investigating Conspiracy Theories, published by Zvi on February 20, 2023 on LessWrong.

Scott Alexander wrote yet more words defending his decision to write two posts totaling 25,000 words about Ivermectin. Then he wrote a second post trying again.

More centrally, his first post, of which I very much approve, is defending the most important idea of all: Think for yourself, shmuck!

I want to make clear my violent agreement with all of the following.

Think for yourself, shmuck!

When it seems worthwhile, do your own research.

The ones telling you not to ‘do your own research’ are probably the baddies.

Also applies to the ones telling you to ‘trust us and Trust the Science’ and calling you an idiot or racist or calling for you to be censored if you disagree.

Baddies or not, those people still are more likely to be more right about any given point than those saying they are wrong or lying to you, unless you have seen them lying or being wrong a lot about closely related things previously. And your own research will often not seem worthwhile if you consider opportunity costs.

When people draw wrong conclusions like Ivermectin being effective or that Atlantis used to exist or whatever, telling people that they are idiots or racists for drawing that conclusion is not going to be super effective.

Pointing out ‘the other side are conspiracy theorists’ or ‘the people who believe this also believe these other terrible things’ does not prove the other side is wrong, nor is it going to convince anyone on the other side that they are wrong.

If you instead explain and work through the evidence, there is a chance someone might be convinced, that is God’s work, you are providing a public service.

There are not ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ places to Do Science. You can virtuously Do Science to It, for all values of It and of You.

No, we cannot assume that the medical establishment, or any other establishment, will always get such questions right. That is not how any of this works. Even the best possible version of the medical (or other) establishment will sometimes get it wrong, if no one points it out without being dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or racist then the establishment will keep getting it wrong and so will you, and criticism is the only known antidote to error in such situations.

I would also add, from Kavanagh’s response to Scott in a comment, my disagreement with this particular thing, regarding scuba diving to purported Atlantean ruins:

I also don’t think I would have the same intuition you have that personally exploring the ruins would be informative. I think that would actually be likely to skew my perspective as it feels like it would deliver potentially inaccurate intuitions and that it would require already having the expertise to properly assess what you are seeing.

Actually getting the skills, running experiments, seeing the evidence for yourself? That’s all great stuff in my book. It’s not cheap to do, but if you care enough to learn to scuba dive, by all means scuba dive and see the primary evidence with your own eyes. It seems crazy to me to think this would not be a helpful thing to do – to me it is the most virtuous thing to do, if you care a lot.

Alas, Scott then backtracks a bunch in this second post.

He is afraid others will see him saying not to ‘trust the experts’ so he wants to reiterate to trust the experts, that reasoning is hard and you probably shouldn’t try doing it yourself. Then he says this:

To a first approximation, trust experts over your own judgment. If people are trying to confuse you about who the experts are, then to a second approximation trust prestigious people and big institutions, including professors at top colleges, journalists at major newspapers, professional groups with names like the American ______ Association, and the...