Beware Those Who Know Too Much

They're probably bullshitting

A brief note: this article uses some pretty harsh language to describe Richard Carrier. I do this both because he’s a useful test case of how cranks operate and his main method of arguing is to call people liars, crackpots, and lunatics. Given the kind of language he uses standardly, even to describe polite and well-regarded interlocutors, I do not feel this is inappropriate. I generally think it’s appropriate to refer to people using the kind of language they use to describe other people.

There are three things that are certain: death, taxes, and that Richard Carrier is a crank.

Carrier, for those who don’t know, is a new-atheist blogger of the standard variety. He differs from the others only in his excessive use of adverbs and adjectives¹, even greater overconfidence than is typical, and firm insistence that Jesus never existed—a position rejected by roughly 100% of serious historians.

Now, there’s a lot about Carrier that should trigger your bullshit alarm. When people have positions rejected by about 100% of historians, you should be a bit suspicious, just as you should be suspicious of those who deny humans have any impact on climate change. He also has a bad habit of calling everyone who disagrees with him a crank—including, for instance, Luke Barnes, a respected cosmologist at a university. Carrier, on the other hand, is a blogger—not a serious profession. It would be somewhat surprising if Carrier, a blogger with no relevant training, knew more about the technical physics details of fine-tuning than a professor who is widely considered one of the world-leading experts on the argument.

But I think there’s one thing that’s particularly suspicious about Carrier, and this is true of a lot of cranks. If a person seems to know about too many things, odds are decent that they’re overconfident and ill-informed. Carrier confidently advocates:

• Contentious physics claims (for instance, Carrier seems to be very sure that the cosmological constant problem, widely regarded to be one of the most serious problems in physics, is trivially solved by resets produced by “inevitable Carroll-Chen states or He-Gao-Cai states or chaotic inflation or the like.” These are highly technical and speculative proposals in physics that are generally not taken that seriously (at least, that’s what the physicists I talked to about the subject told me).

• Contentious—and nearly-universally-rejected—claims about anthropics.

• Bayesian epistemology (where he’s totally lost).

• Jesus mythicism (where, despite being knowledgeable, he’s just completely out to lunch).

• Identity theory in philosophy of mind.

• That resources won’t run out.

The cosmological constant one is particularly ridiculous. Here’s what Carrier said about the cosmological constant problem:

Here Adelstein generally doesn’t know what he is talking about. And this failure kind of unravels the entire rest of his article.

For example, when describing the FTA, he still thinks “the cosmological constant” was “tuned” to a specificity of 1 in 10^120. This is so wrong it’s hard to decide where to begin. He has mistaken the cosmological constant with a completely different thing: a measured incongruity between quantum theory and observation that demonstrates there is something wrong about the theory (see my previous discussion here). It does not have anything to do with which values are life-producing; rather, that is solely a measure of theory error. The actual cosmological constant (Λ) is near zero and can vary by quite a lot and still produce viable universes (it is in fact not at an optimal setting for life; it’s just “within the range” for permitting life). Moreover, outside-values for Λ could lead to resets that tame the value, through big crunches or Penrose states (or inevitable Carroll-Chen states or He-Gao-Cai states or chaotic inflation or the like) producing new randomized Big Bangs (either over vast spans of time, or the dice get rolled again every time a black hole forms). So even inhospitable values will plausibly produce universes with hospitable values eventually anyway. Indeed, in black hole cosmology, an inhospitable value is impossible (because all universes then have tolerable expansion rates). And in coupling theory and void theory and other models, there is no cosmological constant to tune.

I’ll explain why this is wrong in a footnote.² But putting aside the details, I think this should be a pretty big red flag.

The cosmological constant problem is widely regarded as one of the biggest puzzles in all of physics. Martin Rees, an atheist who was the astronomer royale of great Britain, has cited it as among the most impressive examples of fine-tuning. Steven Weinberg, an atheist Nobel Prize winner, has said the same.

It would be rather surprising, therefore, if the problem was so ill-formed to not even be coherent, and its solution had been spotted by a blogger with no physics background employing motivated reasoning to try to take down the fine-tuning argument. It would be particularly surprising if someone who presumably couldn’t work out the math behind He-Gao-Cai states had correctly identified that they were the fatal flaw in fine-tuning.

Knowing stuff is hard! It’s hard to learn physics. It’s hard to get good at philosophy. It’s hard to learn about ancient history. If a person claims to know about a very large range of topics, at some point you should get suspicious. The odds are vastly higher that someone would be able to vaguely bullshit about many topics than that they’d have the detailed knowledge needed to grasp a wide range of topics in serious depth.

Now, there are some exceptions. Scott Alexander has done detailed deep-dives on lots of different subjects. Scott’s not bullshitting. Lots of empirical topics aren’t actually too difficult to get to the bottom of given enough research. So while this is a bit of a red flag, it’s not automatically disqualifying. Some people really have done deep reading on a range of subjects.

You can also tell if someone is bullshitting by looking at their other views. Carrier’s views have a clear ideological slant. He thinks every single argument against atheism is an obvious failure, that on every subject, more detailed factual analysis reveals the case for God to be even weaker than expected. That’s a bit of a red flag. Just like you shouldn’t trust the studies Bernie Sanders cites showing left-wing policies work, or the studies Charlie Kirk cites showing conservative policies work, you should be doubtful of the empirical claims Carrier makes. You should be suspicious of partisans, especially if they universally conclude that facts fit their partisan narrative.

Bullshitters tend to be overconfident (I’m 99.999999999% sure). Careful understanding often tempers extreme confidence. If a person is 99.999% sure of a contested empirical claim, you should be suspicious of them. I’ve heard Carrier express uncertainty about Jesus mythicism, but he seems near certain in the rest of his views, including ones on controversial topics outside his area of expertise.

So in short, you should be suspicious of those who:

1. Are overconfident.

2. Express views on a wide range of issues.

3. Have consistently partisan views that usually favor one side.

All this gives rise to an important question: am I full of shit?

Certainly I express strong views on lots of topics. I’ve talked about fish pain, Trump, honey, climate change, in the last month alone. I constantly spout off about a very wide range of topics, often ones I have no special training in evaluating (e.g. fish pain). Should you think I’m a bullshitter?

I think that these things should raise your confidence in my being a bullshitter but overall you shouldn’t think I am one.

First of all, the views I express tend to be well within the mainstream consensus. I think fish feel pain, and that is the very substantial consensus view. I think climate change is bad but not existential, and once again, that is the substantial consensus view. I’ve talked about Trump’s bad foreign-aid policies a lot, but I think almost everyone who has seriously looked into the topic has agreed foreign aid cuts will likely kill a lot of people.

The only empirical topic on which I think I’m a bit outside the mainstream is that I’m pretty sure insects and shrimp feel pain, and I think their pain is probably pretty intense. The consensus view seems to be that we’re mostly in the dark—while I’d be at around 66% on insects feeling pain, I think most researchers would be nearer to 50%. But that’s a topic on which I have done a lot of research, I think there are clear cognitive biases that make us underestimate insects, and even there my views are solidly within the mainstream. There aren’t any empirical subjects where I have a view that is extremely fringe.

I do have philosophical views that are pretty unpopular, but so do most philosophers. And I have published some papers on philosophy, which should at least raise your credence that I’m not completely full of shit.

This is not to say that I’m perfect. I think I am prone to sometimes be overconfident without thoroughly investigating an issue. For instance, in my article on the Iranian nuclear deal, I think I spouted off on a topic without being adequately informed. While I still agree with my conclusions, I acted irresponsibly there.

But in general, when I talk about complex empirical topics, I tend to be pretty responsible. In my article on fish pain, for instance, I did many hours of reading before forming a view. Even then, despite my view being the pretty considerable majority, I was only 75 or 80% sure in my ultimate conclusion. I have a pretty good track record with admitting to mistakes. I often admit I don’t know about subjects.

So overall, I think you should be a bit suspicious of me, but I certainly do not set off Carrier-level alarm bells! You should especially be suspicious when I discuss topics outside my bailiwick, like the Iran nuclear deal.

One other reason to trust my views is that, after careful investigation by an impartial investigator (me), it turned out 100% of them were correct! What a coincidence.

Bullshit detection is a subtle and difficult art. It’s easy to be misled about whether someone it a serious and respectable person. Talking about lots of subjects isn’t automatically disqualifying. But it should make you at least a bit suspicious. If a person seems to know too much, odds are good that they don’t really.

1. For example, not content to merely title his article “The Destruction of the Fine-Tuning Argument,” Carrier titled it “The Utter Destruction of the Fine Tuning Argument.” Mere destruction, apparently, was not enough—he had to make it clear that he had done to fine-tuning what America did to Dresden, if not Hiroshima. Though I can’t criticize Carrier too much for this because, as my dear mother is constantly reminding me, I too tend to profoundly and extremely overuse adverbs and adjectives to such a blindingly massive degree that it borders on the infinite.

2. The cosmological constant value is affected by the value of lots of other things in physics. These things, despite being totally unconnected, almost exactly cancel out, leading to a slight positive value being left over. This would be a bit like if you took Bill Gates’s annual income, subtracted the GDP of Micronesia, and had 4 cents left over. Pretty big coincidence! The fact that the left-over is small doesn’t matter, because the surprisingness comes from very large things cancelling out with only a tiny amount left over. The rest is all speculative physics multiverse proposals that I don’t know much about but haven’t commanded general acceptance. There’s no agreement that they work.