In the survey, good judgement was defined as “weighing complex information and reaching calibrated conclusions”, which is the same rough definition I was using in my post.
I’m not sure how many people absorbed this definition and used their own definition instead. From talking to people, my impression is that most use ‘judgement’ in a narrower sense than the dictionary definitions, but maybe still broader than my definition.
It’s maybe also worth saying that my impression that judgement is highly valued isn’t just based on the survey—I highlighted that because it’s especially easy to communicate. I also have the impression that people often talk about how it might be improved, how to assess it, as a trait to look for in hiring etc., and it seems to come up more in EA than in most other areas (with certain types of investing maybe the exception).
I’m actually confused about what you mean by your definition. I have an impression about what you mean from your post, but if I try to just go off the wording in your definition I get thrown by “calibrated”. I naturally want to interpret this as something like “assigns confidence levels to their claims that are calibrated”, but that seems ~orthogonal to having the right answer more often, which means it isn’t that large a share of what I care about in this space (and I suspect is not all of what you’re trying to point to).
Now I’m wondering: does your notion of judgement roughly line up with my notion of meta-level judgement? Or is it broader than that?
Hi Alex,
In the survey, good judgement was defined as “weighing complex information and reaching calibrated conclusions”, which is the same rough definition I was using in my post.
I’m not sure how many people absorbed this definition and used their own definition instead. From talking to people, my impression is that most use ‘judgement’ in a narrower sense than the dictionary definitions, but maybe still broader than my definition.
It’s maybe also worth saying that my impression that judgement is highly valued isn’t just based on the survey—I highlighted that because it’s especially easy to communicate. I also have the impression that people often talk about how it might be improved, how to assess it, as a trait to look for in hiring etc., and it seems to come up more in EA than in most other areas (with certain types of investing maybe the exception).
I’m actually confused about what you mean by your definition. I have an impression about what you mean from your post, but if I try to just go off the wording in your definition I get thrown by “calibrated”. I naturally want to interpret this as something like “assigns confidence levels to their claims that are calibrated”, but that seems ~orthogonal to having the right answer more often, which means it isn’t that large a share of what I care about in this space (and I suspect is not all of what you’re trying to point to).
Now I’m wondering: does your notion of judgement roughly line up with my notion of meta-level judgement? Or is it broader than that?