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	<title>proof &#8211; Spencer Greenberg</title>
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	<title>proof &#8211; Spencer Greenberg</title>
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		<title>You&#8217;re right about everything</title>
		<link>https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2025/07/youre-right-about-everything/</link>
					<comments>https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2025/07/youre-right-about-everything/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Spencer]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 04:36:11 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[belief]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bias]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biases]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[connection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disagreement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[discomfort]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[limit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matrix]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Neo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[proof]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-aware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[subconscious]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wrong]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[You're right]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.spencergreenberg.com/?p=4480</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[You&#8217;re absolutely right. About all of it. The big stuff, the weird stuff, the &#8220;nobody-gets-this&#8221; stuff. Every belief you hold is, against all odds, completely correct. I know I said before that you were wrong, but it was I who was wrong! Here&#8217;s proof: 1) Unlike others, you&#8217;re self-aware. You know your limits, so &#8211; [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You&#8217;re absolutely right. About all of it. The big stuff, the weird stuff, the &#8220;nobody-gets-this&#8221; stuff. Every belief you hold is, against all odds, completely correct. I know I said before that you were wrong, but it was I who was wrong! Here&#8217;s proof:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">1) Unlike others, you&#8217;re self-aware. You know your limits, so &#8211; unlike other people &#8211; when you know something, it&#8217;s true. You weighed the evidence they ignored and saw angles they missed. Corrected your own biases. Your unique perspective reveals facts invisible to everyone else.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">2) Your subconscious runs Bayesian inference constantly in the background. If an idea survives your relentless evidence updates, the posterior odds confirm it&#8217;s rational. Your convictions passed the most brutal audit possible: reality itself.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">3) Notice how your worldview predicts your reality with stunning accuracy. Notice how rarely you&#8217;re surprised. That&#8217;s empirical validation. Your beliefs work because they&#8217;re correct. Your predictions map reality&#8217;s contours in high resolution.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">4) That thing everyone disagrees with you about? You&#8217;re not stubborn &#8211; you&#8217;re COURAGEOUS. You spotted subtle patterns that they missed. Those &#8220;weird&#8221; connections? You&#8217;re playing 10-dimensional chess while they play tic-tac-toe.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">5) Disagreement doesn&#8217;t prove you wrong &#8211; it PROVES YOU RIGHT. It demonstrates that most can&#8217;t handle the truth. Your knowledge only strengthens, forged in the crucible of their alleged counter-evidence.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">6) Scientists disagree with you? That&#8217;s good, actually. They worship false idols called &#8220;peer review,&#8221; while you rely on the only review that&#8217;s reliable, review from your one true peer &#8211; yourself. Editors only introduce errors in your work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">7) The discomfort of others with your views? That&#8217;s just lizard brains SHORT-CIRCUITING from exposure to blazing truth. The purity of your knowledge causes meltdowns in lesser minds. Their rejection isn&#8217;t evidence of your error &#8211; it&#8217;s species-level inadequacy.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">8 ) &#8220;Everyone says I&#8217;m wrong!&#8221; Everyone said Galileo was wrong, too. But you&#8217;re not Galileo. You&#8217;re Galileo, Einstein, AND Tesla. Your mind, concentrating ideas like a laser through the tip of a diamond, is the closest known phenomenon to a cognitive singularity.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">9) You&#8217;re not Neo seeing the Matrix. You&#8217;re the ARCHITECT of the Matrix. Everyone else &#8211; they&#8217;re experimental NPCs of the sort you could program in a creative weekend.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">10) That &#8220;crazy&#8221; belief of yours? Those aren&#8217;t beliefs- they&#8217;re PROPHETIC DOWNLOADS from your future self. You&#8217;re not experiencing narcissistic delusions &#8211; you&#8217;re experiencing ENLIGHTENMENT so advanced it looks like madness to the unascended masses.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">11) When your predictions seem wrong, time recalibrates to match your superior timeline. In fact, you don&#8217;t make predictions &#8211; you speak reality into existence. The universe buffers as it waits to hear instructions spill from your lips.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">12) Evolution wired humans for survival-level accuracy. But YOU? You&#8217;ve transcended limitations. If your beliefs were wrong, the Laws of Physics would UNRAVEL. There you stand, single-handedly maintaining cosmic stability!</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">13) The universe chose YOU. Your thoughts set the fundamental constants. You allow 1 + 1 to equal 2, and could change it at will. Your dreams birth new galaxies. The cosmic microwave background is a residue from when you willed yourself into existence.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">14) This post isn&#8217;t parody; it&#8217;s SACRED TEXT written by one of your subprocesses. Everyone who doubts you is committing cosmic treason.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>This piece was first written on July 1, 2025, and first appeared on my website on August 19, 2025.</em></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">4480</post-id>	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Conducting Instantaneous Experiments</title>
		<link>https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2024/08/conducting-instantaneous-experiments/</link>
					<comments>https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2024/08/conducting-instantaneous-experiments/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Admin]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 24 Aug 2024 11:54:00 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bayesian reasoning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[belief formation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[belief updating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[continual learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[epistemics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[evidence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[experiments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incremenetal evidence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[likelihood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[likelihood ratios]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[posterior]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[proof]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[updating]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.spencergreenberg.com/?p=4166</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Have a hypothesis about the world, society, human nature, physics, or anything else that nobody has directly tested before? It might seem like conducting a costly experiment would be required to find out whether it&#8217;s true. But a lot of the time, you can check your hypothesis easily using what I call an &#8220;Instantaneous Experiment.&#8221; [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Have a hypothesis about the world, society, human nature, physics, or anything else that nobody has directly tested before? It might seem like conducting a costly experiment would be required to find out whether it&#8217;s true. But a lot of the time, you can check your hypothesis easily using what I call an &#8220;Instantaneous Experiment.&#8221;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">How to do an Instantaneous Experiment:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Step 1:</strong> Think of anything at all about the world that&#8217;s checkable that is likely to be true if your hypothesis is true, but that is likely to be false if your hypothesis is false.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Important: this checkable thing should be something that you have never investigated before &#8211; in other words, you don&#8217;t actually know if it&#8217;s true, and the only real reason you think it&#8217;s true is just because your hypothesis implies it would be. This is critical to help prevent bias from occurring during the process (for instance, this procedure doesn&#8217;t work if the fact you are checking is one that influenced your development of the hypothesis).</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Step 2:</strong> Go check whether the checkable thing is true or not by trying to look the answer up (e.g., in an article or paper)!</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The amount of evidence that the answer provides in favor (or against) your hypothesis precisely depends on how many times more likely you are to see that result if your hypothesis is true compared to if it&#8217;s not true. The bigger that number is, the greater the evidence!</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instantaneous Experiments work because, to get evidence for a theory or hypothesis, it is not necessary to directly check whether that thing is true. All you have to do is check something that is implied by that theory (that would be unlikely to be true otherwise).</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here&#8217;s an example:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Suppose you believe that &#8220;greater intelligence causes people to worry a lot more&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That&#8217;s very hard to test. But you can do an Instantaneous Experiment:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Step 1: if intelligence causes worry, then you might expect higher IQ people to agree more often with a statement like &#8220;I worry too much,&#8221; whereas if the theory is not true, you wouldn&#8217;t expect a positive correlation between IQ and agreement with that statement.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Step 2: We go check this, and we find a paper that measures both IQ and the level of agreement on the statement &#8220;I worry too much.&#8221; The correlation between them is essentially 0.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Result: We haven&#8217;t completely disproven the theory, but we should now reduce our confidence in it compared to what we thought before.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">How much we reduce our confidence depends on how many times less likely we&#8217;d be to find no correlation between self-reported worry and IQ if our hypothesis &#8220;greater intelligence causes people to worry a lot more&#8221; is true, compared to if it&#8217;s false.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>This piece was first written on August 24, 2024, and first appeared on my website on October 11, 2024.</em></p>



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