Breaking character, if you want to see just how strongly people are biased toward misjudging their own track record, itâs instructive to have friends and family who do retail stock picking (essentially gambling). I have strongly advocated passive ETF investing based on the wealth of research and analysis that supports it. Even when theyâre well-informed about the case for passive ETF investing, people still think they can beat the market. And the thing about going up against the market is, your performance is absolutely quantifiable! In a way that vibes-y predictions about AI arenât. Yet, even being consummately quantifiable, people who pick stocks donât benchmark their performance, or do it selectively when their stocks are up (obviously giving a biased impression), or somehow justify or rationalize or explain away why theyâre actually winning.
I donât trust for a second that someone judging their own performance on informal, selectively remembered, largely subjective AI predictions is doing a fair job. Even when people like Dario Amodei or Ray Kurzweil have publicly made specific AI or technology predictions that turned out to be unambiguously dead wrong, they have subsequently twisted and contorted the truth in order to make themselves right â lied, essentially, or else fooled themselves. I do not trust people to grade their own homework and to have the result be scientific-quality evidence.
The high-impact/âlow-probability reasoning, on the other hand, is completely sound and demonstrates why deep-pocketed donors should give me $1 million/âyear.
Thank you so much for this.
Breaking character, if you want to see just how strongly people are biased toward misjudging their own track record, itâs instructive to have friends and family who do retail stock picking (essentially gambling). I have strongly advocated passive ETF investing based on the wealth of research and analysis that supports it. Even when theyâre well-informed about the case for passive ETF investing, people still think they can beat the market. And the thing about going up against the market is, your performance is absolutely quantifiable! In a way that vibes-y predictions about AI arenât. Yet, even being consummately quantifiable, people who pick stocks donât benchmark their performance, or do it selectively when their stocks are up (obviously giving a biased impression), or somehow justify or rationalize or explain away why theyâre actually winning.
I donât trust for a second that someone judging their own performance on informal, selectively remembered, largely subjective AI predictions is doing a fair job. Even when people like Dario Amodei or Ray Kurzweil have publicly made specific AI or technology predictions that turned out to be unambiguously dead wrong, they have subsequently twisted and contorted the truth in order to make themselves right â lied, essentially, or else fooled themselves. I do not trust people to grade their own homework and to have the result be scientific-quality evidence.
The high-impact/âlow-probability reasoning, on the other hand, is completely sound and demonstrates why deep-pocketed donors should give me $1 million/âyear.