(Apologies if this is already included, I have checked the post a few times but possible that I missed where it’s mentioned.)
Edit: I think you mention this in social defering (point 2).
One dynamic that I’m particularly worried about is belief double counting due to deference. You can imagine the following scenario:
Jemima: “People who’s name starts with J are generally super smart.”
Mark: [is a bit confused, but defers because Jemima has more experience with having a name that starts with J] “hmm, that seems right”
[Mary joins conversation]
Mary: [hmm, seems odd but 2 people think and I’m just 1 person so I should update towards their position] “hmm, I can believe that”
Bill: [hmm, seems odd but 3 people think and I’m just 1 person so I should update towards their position] “hmm, I can believe that”
From Bill’s perspective it looks like there are 3 pieces of evidence pointing in the direction of a hypothesis but really there was just one piece (Jemima’s experience) and a bunch of parroting.
I don’t think we often have these literal conversations, but sometimes I feel confused and I find myself doing belief aggregation type things in conversations to make progress on some question. I think it’s helpful to stop and be careful when making moves like “hmm most people here seem to think x therefore I should update in that direction” before seeing how much people at an individual level are themselves deferring to each other (or someone upstream of them) both to form better beliefs myself and not pollute the epistemic environment for others.
Distinguishing between your ’impression” and”all considered view” is helpful for this too.
Another way of saying this is is it can be hard to distinguish “great minds think alike” from “highly correlated error sources”.
Yeah I briefly alluded to this but your explanation is much more readable (maybe I’m being too terse throughout?).
My take is “this dynamic is worrying, but seems overall less damaging than deferral interfering with belief formation, or than conflation between epistemic deferring and deferring to authority”.
I think I roughly agree althought I haven’t thought much about the epistemic vs authority deferring thing before.
Idk if you were too terse, it seemed fine to me. That said, I would have predicted this would be around 70 karma by now, so I may be poorly calibrated on what is appealing to other people.
Thanks for writing this, I thought it was great.
(Apologies if this is already included, I have checked the post a few times but possible that I missed where it’s mentioned.)
Edit: I think you mention this in social defering (point 2).
One dynamic that I’m particularly worried about is belief double counting due to deference. You can imagine the following scenario:
Jemima: “People who’s name starts with J are generally super smart.”
Mark: [is a bit confused, but defers because Jemima has more experience with having a name that starts with J] “hmm, that seems right”
[Mary joins conversation]
Mary: [hmm, seems odd but 2 people think and I’m just 1 person so I should update towards their position] “hmm, I can believe that”
Bill: [hmm, seems odd but 3 people think and I’m just 1 person so I should update towards their position] “hmm, I can believe that”
From Bill’s perspective it looks like there are 3 pieces of evidence pointing in the direction of a hypothesis but really there was just one piece (Jemima’s experience) and a bunch of parroting.
I don’t think we often have these literal conversations, but sometimes I feel confused and I find myself doing belief aggregation type things in conversations to make progress on some question. I think it’s helpful to stop and be careful when making moves like “hmm most people here seem to think x therefore I should update in that direction” before seeing how much people at an individual level are themselves deferring to each other (or someone upstream of them) both to form better beliefs myself and not pollute the epistemic environment for others.
Distinguishing between your ’impression” and”all considered view” is helpful for this too.
Another way of saying this is is it can be hard to distinguish “great minds think alike” from “highly correlated error sources”.
Yeah I briefly alluded to this but your explanation is much more readable (maybe I’m being too terse throughout?).
My take is “this dynamic is worrying, but seems overall less damaging than deferral interfering with belief formation, or than conflation between epistemic deferring and deferring to authority”.
I think I roughly agree althought I haven’t thought much about the epistemic vs authority deferring thing before.
Idk if you were too terse, it seemed fine to me. That said, I would have predicted this would be around 70 karma by now, so I may be poorly calibrated on what is appealing to other people.