Wittgenstein's Ruler
When you know the source less than the claim, the claim measures the source
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 74%
Wittgenstein's ruler is a decision rule for evaluating information: the less you know of the measurer compared to the thing being measured, the less the measure tells you about the thing and the more it tells you about the measurer. Practically, treat a claim and its source as two rulers when you are unsure which is accurate. Whichever you have more information about becomes the trusted ruler you use to measure the other. If a man says everyone he meets is an asshole, the asshole is probably him. If a news outlet's stories reliably outrage you, that may say more about the outlet's incentives than about a worsening world. The habit is to always ask what a piece of information implies about its source, because that context is the other half of the message you would otherwise miss.
Origin
Drawn from Nassim Taleb's rendering of a Wittgenstein idea. Gurwinder Bhogal applies it as a media-literacy tool for the misinformation age.
Core principles
- 01Never take information at face value
- 02Every piece of information from a human carries an agenda that is half the message
- 03The instrument you trust more should measure the one you trust less
- 04What a source says can reveal more about the source than about the world
How to run it
- 1
Refuse face value
Treat any human-delivered claim as carrying an agenda. Ask why this information is being shown to you and what the source gains.
- 2
Compare your knowledge of source vs claim
Ask whether you know more about the source or more about the content of the claim itself.
- 3
Pick the trusted ruler
Use whichever you understand better as the measuring instrument for the other, as you would trust a known-accurate ruler over an unknown one.
Pro tip If you know the info better than the source, the info measures the source; if you know the source better, the source measures the info.
- 4
Investigate the measurer
Research the author's or outlet's known positions before interpreting their claim; background on the source reframes the article.
Pro tip Reading a columnist's stated views on a topic transforms how you read their piece on it.
- 5
Temper your reaction
If a source reliably produces one emotional response in you, treat that pattern as data about the source's intent and adjust accordingly.
Watch out A source deliberately trying to outrage you is not evidence the world is more outrageous.
In the wild
If a news outlet's stories frequently outrage you, instead of taking it as evidence the world is becoming more outrageous, you consider that the outlet may be deliberately engineered to outrage you and you temper your reactions. Reading who authored a Guardian economics piece and their known economic views reveals as much as the article itself.
→ You extract the missing half of the message and are less manipulable by the source's agenda.
If a man says everyone he meets is an asshole, you know little about all those people but a lot about him from the pattern of his complaint. The claim, being the thing you understand better, becomes the ruler that measures the speaker.
→ Correctly attributes the trait to the measurer rather than the measured.
Common mistakes
Accepting claims like ChatGPT output
People often absorb human-sourced claims as if there were no motive behind them, receiving only half the information and none of the context.
Using the less-known ruler to measure
Judging a well-understood claim by a poorly-understood source, or vice versa, inverts the rule and produces worse conclusions.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone consuming news, social media, or any human-sourced claim in an age of misinformation.
Not ideal for
Evaluating raw non-agentic outputs where no motive exists, though even those have limits.
From the transcript
“The less you know of the measurer compared to the thing being measured, the less the measurer's measure measures the thing being measured, and the…”
“there's always an agenda there. There's always some reason why you're being showed that information... that is half of the information you're being given.”
From the episode
14 Shocking Lessons About Human Nature - Gurwinder Bhogal - #602
Gurwinder Bhogal