Yeah, I should have known I’d get called out for not citing any sources. I’m honestly not sure I’d particularly believe most studies on this no matter what side they came out on; too many ways they could fail to generalize. I am pretty sure I’ve seen LW and SSC posts get cited as more authoritative than their epistemic-status disclaimers suggested, and that’s most of why I believe this; generalizability isn’t a concern here since we’re talking about basically the same context. Ironically, though, I can’t remember which posts. I’ll keep looking for examples.
Another thought is that even if the original post had a weak epistemic status, if the original post becomes popular and gets the chance to receive widespread scrutiny, which it survives, it could be reasonable to believe its “de facto” epistemic status is higher than what’s posted at the top. But yes, I guess in that case there’s the risk that none of the people who scrutinized it had familiarity with relevant literature that contradicted the post.
Maybe the solution is to hire someone to do lit reviews to carefully examine posts with epistemic status disclaimers that nonetheless became popular and seem decision relevant.
Yeah, I should have known I’d get called out for not citing any sources. I’m honestly not sure I’d particularly believe most studies on this no matter what side they came out on; too many ways they could fail to generalize. I am pretty sure I’ve seen LW and SSC posts get cited as more authoritative than their epistemic-status disclaimers suggested, and that’s most of why I believe this; generalizability isn’t a concern here since we’re talking about basically the same context. Ironically, though, I can’t remember which posts. I’ll keep looking for examples.
Another thought is that even if the original post had a weak epistemic status, if the original post becomes popular and gets the chance to receive widespread scrutiny, which it survives, it could be reasonable to believe its “de facto” epistemic status is higher than what’s posted at the top. But yes, I guess in that case there’s the risk that none of the people who scrutinized it had familiarity with relevant literature that contradicted the post.
Maybe the solution is to hire someone to do lit reviews to carefully examine posts with epistemic status disclaimers that nonetheless became popular and seem decision relevant.