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https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/13/evil-is-anti-inductive/

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A recent Cracked piece:\xa0Five Everyday Groups Society Says It\u2019s Okay To Mock. It begins:

There\u2019s a rule in comedy that says you shouldn\u2019t punch down. It\u2019s okay to make fun of someone rich and famous, because they\u2019re too busy molesting groupies with 100-dollar bills to notice, but if you make a joke at the expense of a homeless person, you\u2019re just an asshole. That said, we as a society have somehow decided on a few arbitrary exceptions to this rule.

\u201cSomehow decided on a few arbitrary exceptions\u201d isn\u2019t very technical. Let\u2019s see if we can do better.

Earlier this week, I wrote about\xa0things that are anti-inductive. Something is anti-inductive if it fights back against your attempts to understand it. The classic example is the stock market. If someone learns that the stock market is always low on Tuesdays, then they\u2019ll buy lots of stocks on Tuesdays to profit from the anomaly. But this raises the demand for stocks on Tuesdays, and therefore stocks won\u2019t be low on Tuesdays anymore. To detect a pattern is to destroy the pattern.