Imagine a hundred well-intentioned people look into whether there are dragons. They look in different places, make different errors, and there are a lot of things that could be confused for dragons or things dragons could be confused for, so this is a noisy process. Unless the evidence is overwhelming in one direction or another, some will come to believe that there are dragons, while others will believe that there are not.
While humanity is not perfect at uncovering the truth in confusing situations, our approach that best approaches the truth is for people to report back what they’ve found, and have open discussion of the evidence. Perhaps some evidence A finds is very convincing to them, but then B shows how they’ve been misinterpreting it.
This is a bit discourteous here.
I am not claiming that A is convincing to me in isolation. I am claiming that after a hundred similarly smart people fit different evidence together, there’s so much model uncertainty that I’m conservatively downgrading A from “overwhelmingly obvious” to “pretty sure”. I am claiming that if we could somehow make a prediction market that would resolve on the actual truth of the matter, I might bet only half my savings on A, just in case I missed something drastic.
You’re free to dismiss this as overconfidence of course. But this isn’t amateur hour, I understand the implications of what I’m saying and intend my words to be meaningful.
Many sensible people have (what I interpret as) @NickLaing’s perspective, and people with that perspective will only participate in the public evidence reconciliation process if they failed to find dragons. I don’t know, for example, whether this is your perspective.
You wrote essentially the opposite… and I agree some people will think this way, but I think this is many fewer people than are willing to publicly argue for generally-accepted-as-good positions but not generally-accepted-as-evil ones
I think this largely depends on whether a given forum is anonymous or not. In an alternate universe where the dragon scenario was true, I think I’d end up arguing for it anonymously at some point, though likely not on this forum.
I was not particularly tracking my named-ness as a point of evidence, except insofar as it could be used to determine my engagement with EA & rationality and make updates about my epistemics & good faith.
Good faith participation in a serious debate on the existence of dragons risks your reputation and jeopardizes your ability to contribute in many places.
Sure. I understand it’s epistemically rude to take debate pot-shots when an opposing team would be so disadvantaged, and there’s a reason to ignore one-sided information. There’s no obligation to update or engage if this comes across as adversarial.
But I really am approaching this as cooperatively communicating information. I found I had nonzero stress about the perceived possibility of dragons here, and I expect others do as well. I think a principled refusal to look does have nonzero reputational harm. There will be situations where that’s the best we can manage, but there’s also such a thing as a p(dragon) low enough that it’s no longer a good strategy. If it is the case that there are obviously no dragons somewhere, it’d be a good idea for a high-trust group to have a way to call “all clear”.
So this is my best shot. Hey, anyone reading this? I know this is unilateral and all, but I think we’re good.
This is a bit discourteous here.
I am not claiming that A is convincing to me in isolation. I am claiming that after a hundred similarly smart people fit different evidence together, there’s so much model uncertainty that I’m conservatively downgrading A from “overwhelmingly obvious” to “pretty sure”. I am claiming that if we could somehow make a prediction market that would resolve on the actual truth of the matter, I might bet only half my savings on A, just in case I missed something drastic.
You’re free to dismiss this as overconfidence of course. But this isn’t amateur hour, I understand the implications of what I’m saying and intend my words to be meaningful.
I think this largely depends on whether a given forum is anonymous or not. In an alternate universe where the dragon scenario was true, I think I’d end up arguing for it anonymously at some point, though likely not on this forum.
I was not particularly tracking my named-ness as a point of evidence, except insofar as it could be used to determine my engagement with EA & rationality and make updates about my epistemics & good faith.
Sure. I understand it’s epistemically rude to take debate pot-shots when an opposing team would be so disadvantaged, and there’s a reason to ignore one-sided information. There’s no obligation to update or engage if this comes across as adversarial.
But I really am approaching this as cooperatively communicating information. I found I had nonzero stress about the perceived possibility of dragons here, and I expect others do as well. I think a principled refusal to look does have nonzero reputational harm. There will be situations where that’s the best we can manage, but there’s also such a thing as a p(dragon) low enough that it’s no longer a good strategy. If it is the case that there are obviously no dragons somewhere, it’d be a good idea for a high-trust group to have a way to call “all clear”.
So this is my best shot. Hey, anyone reading this? I know this is unilateral and all, but I think we’re good.