Any normally reasonable person would do a Bayesian check & conclude they probably misunderstood something. But these folks are so incorrigibly convinced of their own cosmic-brain brilliance this appears not to have crossed their minds.
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I agree with you, but perhaps their Bayesian prior is massively warped by watching FoxNews and hearing politicians constantly spout off about waste and fraud without ever getting into specifics?
It’s a major factor in why conspiracy theories are so rampant on the right: Arrogant mediocrities stumble on things they don’t understand and spin out some fantasy rather than thinking to maybe ask someone who understands it better.
As you rightly point out, you don't even need to ask someone, just stop and think if your numbers are remotely plausible. 1 in 3 social security recipients committing fraud? The same group of people disproportionately targeted for fraud? The efficient thing to do is dismiss this as lunacy.
I mean, presumably if they’re totally fraudulent claims they needn’t be elderly. It could be a handful of 30 years olds all filing massive numbers of false claims. Probably happens occasionally. The unbelievable part is that it could go undected at that scale for any length of time.
This sort of arrogance is implicit in most conspiracy thinking. It requires you to believe that, without any particular expertise, or much more digging than a little Google work, you’ve uncovered earth-shattering truths millions of other smart people somehow missed.
Or that millions of smart people that somehow you've never met or seen or known anyone who has ....are working together to *hide it* from you ...and you found it.
FWIW, I don’t even think it’s likely Musk is knowingly lying. If you were knowingly lying, you’d pick a plausible lie. This is the kind of claim you make when you’re too ignorant to even know how preposterous it sounds.
this is the time you ask each and every member of Congress: Are Social Security benefits too generous? Not generous enough? What percentage of SSI payments are lost to waste
fraud and abuse?
I’ve had otherwise intelligent, educated people buy this stuff at face value. When you think so little of your audience that you believe no one will else will check is also a motivator to such lies.
You think a rich mega-tycoon would be somewhat immune to the overstimulated-juvenile tic of slapping preposterously big numbers on things, but Musk is like, uh, a billion trillion times worse about this
Another aspect of this -- and we see it over and over -- is that his eager audience never seems to stop and think "hmmm." Countless times I have wondered about this phenomenon. For me, it would be a matter of self-respect.
Disagree. This is the kind of lie you tell because you think most people are only half paying attention and don’t know better and will probably take your word for it. Classic Elon got years.
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fraud and abuse?