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I feel like the Toupee Fallacy is lurking around in this conversation. We know how many cover-ups are successful, and the ones we know about are nearly universa

I feel like the Toupee Fallacy is lurking around in this conversation. We know how many cover-ups are successful, and the ones we know about are nearly universally unsuccessful.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Not disagreeing. Just pushing back on cover-ups being rational. In many cases, the cover-up wasn't worth it. "Full revelation of the underlying bad act" would have been utterly survivable, even taking into account the odds of getting away with no consequence.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Yeah, my feel is that the underlying act was often enough survivable, but it didn't feel like it at the time. A cover-up attempt in state of panic is opposite of rational (except maybe in terms of calming your own nerves).
  - usefulcat 3y ago
    Even in cases where the perpetrator believes that the underlying act is survivable, they'd probably still rather not get caught at all.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    And it takes a steely set of nerves to calmly wait for the dice to finish rolling. Panic tends to bias towards action.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      Depends on the person. Panic has always biased me towards inaction: this is helpful in urgent circumstances (where waiting and thinking for a few minutes feels really bad, but is usually the right move unless someone's bleeding to death), but harmful in non-urgent circumstances (where there's only a few minutes' worth of thoughts to think about the situation, so waiting and thinking for a few months is completely counterproductive).
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  Guess some people like to play the odds. Rather than take 50% damage, they choose to gamble between 0% damage (cover up successful) and 100% damage (cover up failed and isn’t survivable) - they are equivalent in terms of expected value.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    But they're not necessarily equivalent. If option a (0% damage) is equiprobable with option b (100% damage), then yeah, the expectation value is 50% damage. But if option b is 4 times more likely than option a, then the expectation value is 80% (1/5 *0 + 4/5*100 = 80). It's that misapprehension of the probabilities that is the error of the person failing to coverup a crime. Just because there are only two possible outcomes doesn't mean that they are equiprobable. Not all coin tosses use a "fair" coin.
    - zztop44 3y ago
      There are three outcomes in this hypothetical: don’t bother with the cover up (50% damage); successful cover up (0% damage); and failed cover up (100% damage). So the calculation is a bit more complicated.
      - petsfed 3y ago
        "don't bother with the cover up" doesn't contribute to the probabilistic model. If I flip a coin, it can't come up "I didn't flip the coin".
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        You're right. To expand: don't bother is the null. Deciding to cover-up leads to one of two outcomes, the good one (you get away) and the bad (you get boned). You don't know which of those outcomes you'll get. The percentages the comment you're responding to provides aren't probabilities, but damage fractions; 50% isn't a 50/50 likelihood, but 50% damage of the 100% case.
vGPU 3y ago
Simple. Look at what was a conspiracy theory in the 80’s and turned into a “yeah we did that, so what” in the 2000’s re: the government? The Dalai Lama literally pulled down a six figure paycheck from the CIA, for example. The government was, is, and will continue to spy on you. The difference is that if something is successfully covered up for 10-20-30 years, by the time the public finds out about it nobody really cares.
selcuka 3y ago
> We know how many cover-ups are successful Did you mean "we don't know"?
- belter 3y ago
  https://fairing.co/assets/images/blog/known-unknowns-matrix-ecommerce/known-unknowns-matrix-ecommerce-image-1.png https://fairing.co/assets/images/blog/known-unknowns-matrix-...

I feel like the Toupee Fallacy is lurking around in this conversation. We know how many cover-ups are successful, and the ones we know about are nearly universally unsuccessful.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Not disagreeing. Just pushing back on cover-ups being rational. In many cases, the cover-up wasn't worth it. "Full revelation of the underlying bad act" would have been utterly survivable, even taking into account the odds of getting away with no consequence.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 3y ago
Yeah, my feel is that the underlying act was often enough survivable, but it didn't feel like it at the time. A cover-up attempt in state of panic is opposite of rational (except maybe in terms of calming your own nerves).
- usefulcat 3y ago
  Even in cases where the perpetrator believes that the underlying act is survivable, they'd probably still rather not get caught at all.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  And it takes a steely set of nerves to calmly wait for the dice to finish rolling. Panic tends to bias towards action.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Depends on the person. Panic has always biased me towards inaction: this is helpful in urgent circumstances (where waiting and thinking for a few minutes feels really bad, but is usually the right move unless someone's bleeding to death), but harmful in non-urgent circumstances (where there's only a few minutes' worth of thoughts to think about the situation, so waiting and thinking for a few months is completely counterproductive).
TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
Guess some people like to play the odds. Rather than take 50% damage, they choose to gamble between 0% damage (cover up successful) and 100% damage (cover up failed and isn’t survivable) - they are equivalent in terms of expected value.
- petsfed 3y ago
  But they're not necessarily equivalent. If option a (0% damage) is equiprobable with option b (100% damage), then yeah, the expectation value is 50% damage. But if option b is 4 times more likely than option a, then the expectation value is 80% (1/5 *0 + 4/5*100 = 80). It's that misapprehension of the probabilities that is the error of the person failing to coverup a crime. Just because there are only two possible outcomes doesn't mean that they are equiprobable. Not all coin tosses use a "fair" coin.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    There are three outcomes in this hypothetical: don’t bother with the cover up (50% damage); successful cover up (0% damage); and failed cover up (100% damage). So the calculation is a bit more complicated.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      "don't bother with the cover up" doesn't contribute to the probabilistic model. If I flip a coin, it can't come up "I didn't flip the coin".
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        You're right. To expand: don't bother is the null. Deciding to cover-up leads to one of two outcomes, the good one (you get away) and the bad (you get boned). You don't know which of those outcomes you'll get. The percentages the comment you're responding to provides aren't probabilities, but damage fractions; 50% isn't a 50/50 likelihood, but 50% damage of the 100% case.

vGPU 3y ago

Simple. Look at what was a conspiracy theory in the 80’s and turned into a “yeah we did that, so what” in the 2000’s re: the government? The Dalai Lama literally pulled down a six figure paycheck from the CIA, for example. The government was, is, and will continue to spy on you. The difference is that if something is successfully covered up for 10-20-30 years, by the time the public finds out about it nobody really cares.

selcuka 3y ago

> We know how many cover-ups are successful Did you mean "we don't know"?

belter 3y ago
https://fairing.co/assets/images/blog/known-unknowns-matrix-ecommerce/known-unknowns-matrix-ecommerce-image-1.png https://fairing.co/assets/images/blog/known-unknowns-matrix-...