EA reading list: cluelessness and epistemic modesty
Start here:
Simplifying cluelessness (Phil Trammell, 2019)
In defence of epistemic modesty (Greg Lewis)
Further reading:
Cluelessness (Hilary Greaves)
Consequentialism and Cluelessness (James Lenman, 2005)
What consequences? (Milan Griffes, 2017)
Maximal cluelessness (Morgensen, 2019)
Common sense as a prior (Nick Beckstead, 2013)
Inadequate equilibria (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Some thoughts on deference and inside-view models (Buck Shlegeris)
Peer disagreement (Thomas Blanchard and Alvin Goldman, 2015)
Why don’t we like arguments from authority? (Tom Adamczewskir, 2017)
On cluelessness, I would add
Tomasik, Charity cost-effectiveness in an uncertain world
Bostrom, Crucial Considerations and wise philanthropy
Christiano, We can probably influence the far future
On epistemic modesty:
Finney, Philosophical majoritarianism
Aaronson, Common knowledge and Aumann’s agreement theorem
Thanks for this, and for your other reading lists! Several of these links are new to me, and I expect to gradually work through these lists over a few weeks.
I also previously made a collection of discussions of epistemic modesty, “rationalist/EA exceptionalism”, and similar (but not cluelessness) on LessWrong. Here are the things from that list that aren’t here or in Pablo’s comment:
Epistemic learned helplessness—Scott Alexander, 2019
AI, global coordination, and epistemic humility—Jaan Tallinn, 2018
From memory, I think a decent amount of Rationality: A-Z by Eliezer Yudkowsky is relevant
Somewhat less relevant/substantial:
This comment/question—me, 2020
Naming Beliefs—Hal Finney, 2008
Likely relevant, but I’m not yet sure how relevant as I haven’t yet read it:
Are Disagreements Honest? - Cowen & Hanson, 2004
Uncommon Priors Require Origin Disputes—Robin Hanson, 2006
Aumann’s agreement theorem—Wikipedia
On cluelessness, I’d just note that I thought many of the comments on the EA Forum crosspost of Mogensen’s paper were interesting too.
Also relevant: Phil Trammell’s interesting, short post But have they engaged with the arguments?