Rosehip Mole asked, and Nib — askNib's tutor — drew the answer live at a whiteboard. This is the spoken transcript; enable JavaScript to watch it drawn.
Teach me this page — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line — "what is being conveyed here"
Eliezer Yudkowsky's essay imagines a detective's report: reasoning on top, then a line, then a verdict below it — 'Therefore, the defendant is guilty.'
Here's the twist: whether that final line carries any real weight depends entirely on which came first — the reasoning, or the verdict.
If the writer sat down knowing the verdict already — told to prove guilt — then the 'reasoning' was picked to fit. It would look the same whether the defendant was guilty or innocent.
But if the writer actually investigated first — followed clues, weighed facts — and only THEN wrote the verdict, the words on top really did cause the bottom line. That process carries evidence.
Yudkowsky's point: you can't judge an argument's strength just by reading its words — you must ask whether the writing process could produce that same conclusion no matter what was true.
A conclusion only means something if the process that wrote it could have come out differently — otherwise the 'reasoning' is just decoration on a verdict already decided.