Here we’re also talking about capabilities rather than harm. If you want to find out how fast cars will be in 5 years, asking the auto industry seems like a reasonable move.
Is it? Wouldn’t you expect the auto industry to have incentives to exaggerate their possible future accomplishments in developing faster cars because it has a direct influence on how much governments will prioritise it as a means of transport, subsidise R&D, etc.?
I wouldn’t totally defer to them, but I wouldn’t totally ignore them either. (And this is mostly besides the point since I’m overall I’m critical of using their forecasts and my argument doesn’t rest on this.)
I wouldn’t consider car company CEOs a serious data point here for the same reasons. I agree it seems a reasonable move but I don’t think it actually is.
Asking workers and technicians within companies, especially off the record though I would consider a useful data point, although still biased of course.
I would have thought there might even be data on the accuracy of industry head predictions, because there would be a lot of news sources to look back on which could now be checked for accuracy. Might have a look.
We don’t listen to … Tobacco CEOs on the safety of tobacco
Tbf we might have done if Tobacco CEOs had said that tobacco products were very harmful.
That’s true. If CEOs doubled down on things that were against the interest of their company I would listen to them intently
Here we’re also talking about capabilities rather than harm. If you want to find out how fast cars will be in 5 years, asking the auto industry seems like a reasonable move.
Is it? Wouldn’t you expect the auto industry to have incentives to exaggerate their possible future accomplishments in developing faster cars because it has a direct influence on how much governments will prioritise it as a means of transport, subsidise R&D, etc.?
I wouldn’t totally defer to them, but I wouldn’t totally ignore them either. (And this is mostly besides the point since I’m overall I’m critical of using their forecasts and my argument doesn’t rest on this.)
I wouldn’t consider car company CEOs a serious data point here for the same reasons. I agree it seems a reasonable move but I don’t think it actually is.
Asking workers and technicians within companies, especially off the record though I would consider a useful data point, although still biased of course.
I would have thought there might even be data on the accuracy of industry head predictions, because there would be a lot of news sources to look back on which could now be checked for accuracy. Might have a look.