(I am pretty unsure I understood this correctly, so this comment might be a mistake, posting anyway as it might be clarifying for others as well if so)
It seems to me that there are two dimensions here:
(a) whether or not a statement is comparative (b) whether or not a statement is confounded by an unobservable
Comparative statements can be confounded when the comparison standard is not made explict, which seems to be your main critique. If I understand you correctly, you see the main response in non-comparative first order evaluations.
But shouldn’t, in many cases, the solution to that be better explicated and precise comparative statements (e.g. “I think forecasting is X times better than commonly assumed where my assumption of commonly assumed is based on Y?”) rather than a non-comparative first-order evaluation of how good forecasting is in objective standards?
It seems to me that a big advantage of comparative statements is that (i) usually decisions require comparative statements and, if those are not available, non-comparative estimates willl then often be compared (introducing confounding in terms of whether different estimates were made with roughly comparable methods and standards) and also that (ii) many situations only allow for comparative statements and allow for more robustness on comparative grounds rather than trying to get to accurate first-order evaluations.
E.g. it seems to me that almost all credible knowledge in longtermism comes from comparative statements where there are vast uncertainties on the absolute first-order goodness of many things, but—relatively speaking—much more certainty on the relative priority and, luckily, that is also what matters most when making decisions. E.g. it seems pretty impossible to estimate the absolute goodness of reducing existential risk from source X and source Y, but we can say relatively meaningful things about the priority of working on X or Y. Would getting to more precise comparisons on the level of comparative statements also be part of your suggested project here?
(I am pretty unsure I understood this correctly, so this comment might be a mistake, posting anyway as it might be clarifying for others as well if so)
It seems to me that there are two dimensions here:
(a) whether or not a statement is comparative (b) whether or not a statement is confounded by an unobservable
Comparative statements can be confounded when the comparison standard is not made explict, which seems to be your main critique. If I understand you correctly, you see the main response in non-comparative first order evaluations.
But shouldn’t, in many cases, the solution to that be better explicated and precise comparative statements (e.g. “I think forecasting is X times better than commonly assumed where my assumption of commonly assumed is based on Y?”) rather than a non-comparative first-order evaluation of how good forecasting is in objective standards?
It seems to me that a big advantage of comparative statements is that (i) usually decisions require comparative statements and, if those are not available, non-comparative estimates willl then often be compared (introducing confounding in terms of whether different estimates were made with roughly comparable methods and standards) and also that (ii) many situations only allow for comparative statements and allow for more robustness on comparative grounds rather than trying to get to accurate first-order evaluations.
E.g. it seems to me that almost all credible knowledge in longtermism comes from comparative statements where there are vast uncertainties on the absolute first-order goodness of many things, but—relatively speaking—much more certainty on the relative priority and, luckily, that is also what matters most when making decisions. E.g. it seems pretty impossible to estimate the absolute goodness of reducing existential risk from source X and source Y, but we can say relatively meaningful things about the priority of working on X or Y. Would getting to more precise comparisons on the level of comparative statements also be part of your suggested project here?