I agree that “defer less” might not be viable advice for the median human, or even bad advice, but for the median EA I think it’s pretty good advice.
Deference should imo be explicitly temporary and provisional. “I will outsource to X until such time as I can develop my own opinion” is not always a bad move, and might well be a good one in some contexts, but you do actually need to develop your own takes on the things that matter if you want to make any useful contributions to anything ever.
I agree that “defer less” is good advice for EAs, but that’s because EAs are especially deferent, and also especially care about getting things right and might actually do something sane about it. I think part of doing something sane about it is to have a detailed model of deference.
I agree that “defer less” might not be viable advice for the median human, or even bad advice, but for the median EA I think it’s pretty good advice.
Deference should imo be explicitly temporary and provisional. “I will outsource to X until such time as I can develop my own opinion” is not always a bad move, and might well be a good one in some contexts, but you do actually need to develop your own takes on the things that matter if you want to make any useful contributions to anything ever.
I agree that “defer less” is good advice for EAs, but that’s because EAs are especially deferent, and also especially care about getting things right and might actually do something sane about it. I think part of doing something sane about it is to have a detailed model of deference.