I appreciate the points here. I think I might be slightly less pessimistic than you about the ability to evaluate arguments in foreign domains, but the thrust of why I was making that point was because: I think for pushing out the boundaries of collective knowledge it’s roughly correct to adopt the idealistic stance I was recommending; & I think that Vaden is engaging in earnest and noticing enough important things that there’s a nontrivial chance they could contribute to pushing such boundaries (and that this is valuable enough to be encouraged rather than just encouraging activity that is likely to lead to the most-correct beliefs among the convex hull of things people already understand).
Ah, gotcha. I agree that the process of scientific enquiry/discovery works best when people do as you said.
I think it’s worth distinguishing between that case where taking the less accurate path in the short-term has longer-term benefits, and more typical decisions like ‘what should I work on’, or even just truth-seeking that doesn’t have a decision directly attached but you want to get the right answer. There are definitely people who still believe what you wrote literally in those cases and ironically I think it’s a good example of an argument that sounds compelling but is largely incorrect, for reasons above.
Just wanted to quickly hop in to say that I think this little sub-thread contains interesting points on both sides, and that people who stumble upon it later may also be interested in Forum posts tagged “epistemic humility”.
I appreciate the points here. I think I might be slightly less pessimistic than you about the ability to evaluate arguments in foreign domains, but the thrust of why I was making that point was because: I think for pushing out the boundaries of collective knowledge it’s roughly correct to adopt the idealistic stance I was recommending; & I think that Vaden is engaging in earnest and noticing enough important things that there’s a nontrivial chance they could contribute to pushing such boundaries (and that this is valuable enough to be encouraged rather than just encouraging activity that is likely to lead to the most-correct beliefs among the convex hull of things people already understand).
Ah, gotcha. I agree that the process of scientific enquiry/discovery works best when people do as you said.
I think it’s worth distinguishing between that case where taking the less accurate path in the short-term has longer-term benefits, and more typical decisions like ‘what should I work on’, or even just truth-seeking that doesn’t have a decision directly attached but you want to get the right answer. There are definitely people who still believe what you wrote literally in those cases and ironically I think it’s a good example of an argument that sounds compelling but is largely incorrect, for reasons above.
Just wanted to quickly hop in to say that I think this little sub-thread contains interesting points on both sides, and that people who stumble upon it later may also be interested in Forum posts tagged “epistemic humility”.