Post #1362074
2026-04-04 17:42 UTC
Suppose a bullshitter brings up a number of distinct Boolean claims and some tangled pile of connections between them, such that they hope to convince you that at least one connection is plausible. Without loss of generality, we can reduce this to [3-satisfiability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem) in polynomial time: we can quickly produce a list of subconnections where each subconnection relates exactly three claims. Then, assuming the bullshitter is uniformly random, the probability that any particular subconnection is satisfied is 7/8. Therefore, if a bullshitter tries to overwhelm you with any pile of claims which sounds plausible, the threshold for plausibility has to be at least 7/8 in order to distinguish from random noise.
Replies (1)
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@flaviat@awful.systems 2026-04-05 09:49
Bravo. The farthest i could get is 2/3 assuming the following model: x₁ is a random number between 0 and 1, x₂ between x₁ and 1, and so on. If the service breaks at x₁, gets fixed at x₂, breaks again at x₃, etc. availability is 2/3.