> Not at all. There was no judgment here in that sense: Fox looked at the circumstances and instead of offering truth as an affirmative defense, refrained from doing so and settled the case.

This is certainly a possibility (I'd say even the most likely, by far), but in law it is not that uncommon to realize one doesn't have a great case and going for innocence can backfire. Plea deals with not well educated inner city people are alleged to be a common abuse of this inherent complexity.

> You may not have been claiming a vast conspiracy, but the people claiming election rigging definitely are.

There is a lot of nuance in this space, please acknowledge it (perhaps conceptualizing it as billions of rows of survey answers across millions of people would help....say, like the extensive analytics that are captured at runtime in a video game?).

> Look how many states they tried to sue in. That implied a vast multi-state conspiracy.

I think it's fair enough to say that that's what they were representing. It's funny, all humans do this, but generally disapprove when [certain] others do the same. I wonder if humanity has received any guidance on these matters....

> I don't know we'll have a productive discussion if epistemology is actually what you want to discuss.

Based on extensive experience: we won't! :)

> and I've answered based on my epistemology

You have expressed your opinion on the matter.

> I don't have nearly enough drugs to discuss "But how do you, like, know that you know" right now.

Framing epistemology as drug-addled "woo woo" is typically a very effective approach for persuasion, it works well in all communities I've experienced, even The Rationalists.

> Unsupported conjecture.

Is the irony intentional?

Is what's good for the goose not good for the gander?

> T of three years is plenty of time for something to have stuck and nothing has.

Have there been zero legal cases in the past where the truth took longer than 3 years to emerge?

> You can flip that script and say it's been a long time for Trump to not have had criminal charges brought. It's true. It's entirely possible he did nothing criminally wrong. Burden of proof is on the other side to prove he did.

Yep! But then, hardly anyone cares about burden of proof these days, or proof in general. The mainstream ideology of this era has many similarities to the hippies of the sixties, except without the good vibes lol

> But the parties claiming an election-theft fantasy have not provided concrete evidence to dissuade that belief; what they have put together doesn't hold up under simple scrutiny.

I sometimes wonder if these people, and the people who subscribe to their dumb stories, are fucking idiots tbh. But then there go I if not for the Grace of God!

> My default belief will be "they're lying or blowing smoke" because that's the skeptical position

If one thinks in binary, which seems to be the rather convenient (for some, less so for others) evolutionary/cultural default. Wouldn't it be wild if people could be taught not only what to think, but how to think?? Holy mackarel, you could control the world!

> absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

There's a good paper out there poking holes in this theory, that's why I always use "absence of evidence is not proof of absence".

> and lacking evidence, the likeliest scenario is "things were basically on the up-and-up" because they tend to be

And the best part: this requires literally zero probabilistic calculations....it's just "the way it is"!

>> but on an absolute scale

> What does that even mean.

What is possible vs what is actually done. Think of it in terms of efficiency at extracting energy from fuel: humans have gotten much better over time. What's interesting is that we seem intuitively aware that the physical world can be improved, but the metaphysical world seems beyond our ability to perceive (at least with the same quality of thinking we use in science). I wonder if people will ever figure this out, the parallels to religion vs science in the first enlightenment are uncanny imho, but its like people have switched teams!

Many thanks for the excellent conversation btw!