“against that one rationalist mashal about japanese fifth-columnists” by Fraser

The following is a nitpick on an 18 year old blog post.

This fable is retold a lot. The progenitor of it as a rationalist mashal is probably Yudkowsky's classic sequence article. To adversarially summarize:

1. It's the beginning of the second world war. The evil governor of California wishes to imprison all Japanese-Americans - suspecting they'll sabotage the war effort or commit espionage.
2. It is brought to his attention that there is zero evidence of any subversion of any kind by Japanese-Americans.
3. He argues, rather than exonerating the Japanese-Americans, the lack of evidence convinceshim that there is a well organized fifth-column conspiracy that has been strategically avoiding subversion to lull the population and government into a false sense of security, before striking at the right moment.
4. However, if evidence of sabotage would update him towards believing in the presence of opposition among Japanese Americans, then a lack of [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 13th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6BBRtduhH3q4kpmAD/against-that-one-rationalist-mashal-about-japanese-fifth

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.