Santa Claus is a Rationalist Nightmare

Uncovering the truth about this so called "jolly" man

Santa Claus is not real.

If you’re 5 or 6 years old, this fact may come as a shock to you. There’s definitive proof that Santa Claus is real! The cookies on the nightstand left out on Christmas Eve were there at night, but only crumbs were left the next morning. Surely I’m not insinuating there’s another coincidental force that also happens to eat cookies exactly one day of that year? That’s ridiculous! Alas, dear reader, this is a conspiracy that has less than innocuous intentions behind it. Your parents, whom have raised you from birth and love you dearly, have been lying to you the entire time.

The cookies? Your parents went down the stairs after you went to bed and ate them, purposely leaving crumbs behind like a crime scene. You may point at the presents that miraculously appear under the tree as another bit of proof, but your parents placed them there as well. Preposterous, you say. The gifts say “From Santa” on them right there on the box! Well, I regret to inform you your parents are committing identity theft and forging his signature. Despicable.

Alright then, you say, it’s possible my parents had the opportunity to fake the presents under the tree. My bedtime is quite early. But I’m skeptical of their motives. I’ve had the opportunity to observe my parents for a long time, they help me with my math homework, they seem knowledgeable about lots of different things, and they gave me a band-aid when I skinned my knee at preschool. Why would they lie about this one specific thing?

See, lying is something you can do with good intentions. People tell white lies all the time. People lie for virtue, or justice, or because the truth is too cruel to say. You wouldn’t want someone to tell you you’re ugly, even if they thought it was true, right? Well, your parents are lying to you because they look down on you! When they were kids they were deceived with this lie just the same, and continue the tradition simply because they see no reason not to. Kind of like circumcision.

As a good rationalist, you object. My parents may be in on it, true, you say. But there’s no way my parents coordinated my preschool to lie and give me a gift bag from Santa. There’s no way that the magic of Santa captured in movies is a lie. I’ve met Santa! I went to the mall with my mom, sat on his lap, and told him I wanted a stuffed teddy bear for Christmas! And I got that teddy bear! Sure, my parents were also there to hear what I wanted, but that’s little consolation from the fact that I was in his lap speaking to him! Was this secretly a hologram? Did someone break into the mall and pretend to be Santa? The mall certainly didn’t seem to be alarmed by this fake. Occam’s Razor; the man simply was Santa.

Ah, you don’t understand the scope. This conspiracy goes all the way to the top.

That man is not Santa! The mall accepts that lying to children is a good thing to do in this circumstance, and is perpetuating the conspiracy. Your preschool is in on the conspiracy. They’re taking advantage of your poor epistemic tools as a result of your age to try to convince you there’s more wonder in the world than there is. That man is a fake, with a fake beard and fake hat (but likely a real belly). You’ve been duped! This conspiracy is weaved into the fabric of society!

And the movies, oh the movies. They’re Big Santa’s most devious trick. When perpetuating a conspiracy, there may be benevolent actors in a system that would prefer to spread the truth. They want to convince you, with proof and evidence and spreadsheets, that Santa couldn’t have visited all of the billions of people on earth without going faster than the speed of sound, which would plausibly wake you up. They want to convince you that Santa giving poor kids worse gifts than rich kids is merely a misunderstanding, not evidence of the grander scheme. So the movies pull a grand trick: they tell you that belief in Santa in the face of doubt is a virtue, and they show you that those who believe are the correct ones!

In the Polar Express, those who believe just for its own sake are the special ones who can hear the magic bells. In Miracle on 34th Street, Santa must prove his identity from those seeking to tear him down. In The Santa Clause, something something skeptical father something something spirit of Christmas. If you’re doubting yourself, it sure must be reassuring that there’s 100 movies about how the doubters were wrong and turned back into believers after discovering Santa is very real.

So there it is: go to your parents right now and tell them you’ve been on LessWrong and started reading Scott Alexander,

Joe James

and

Silas Abrahamsen

(all great guys), and tell your mother and father you’re tired of their lies. Re-evaluate the court case in Miracle on 34th Street and identify all the fallacies they so callously use.

Having accepted all this, it may seem that the only rational fallback is to fall into a state of epistemic doubt. What else could my parents be lying about? What else are the media and elites lying about? Is the Easter Bunny real? The Tooth Fairy? Is Jesus? At least tell me I can trust the free market to allocate resources efficiently!

Well, perhaps I’ll leave those posts for another time.

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