It’s fair to point out that the majority has been wrong historically many times. I’m not saying this should be our final decision procedure and to lock in those values. But we need some kind of decision procedure for things, and I find when I’m uncertain, that “asking the audience” or democracy seem like a good way to use the “wisdom of crowds” effect to get a relatively good prior.
I’m actually quite surprised by how quickly and how much that post has been upvoted. This definitely makes me update my priors positively about how receptive the forums are to contrarian viewpoints and civil debate. At least, I’m feeling less negativity than when I wrote that post.
Regarding the majority vote, I think “asking the audience” is not a good recipe when the audience is not very informed, which seems to be the case here (where would they get the information without much personal research?)
I understand trusting the wisdom of the crowds in situations where people reasonably understand the situation (to take a classic example, guessing the weight of a pig). However, most people here likely have little information about all the different ways animals are suffering, the scale, research about sentience, knowledge about scope insensitivity, and arguments in favour of things like speciesm. Which makes sense! Not everybody is looking at it deeply.
But this doesn’t provide a very good context for relying on the wisdom of the crowd.
One could also consider the general EA / EA-adjacent sentiment over time as a cross-check on the risk of current groupthink. Of course, later EAs could be responding to better evidence not available to earlier EAs. But I would also consider the possibility of changes in other factors (like perceived status, available funding for EAs, perceived lack of novel opportunities in a mature cause area that has strong interventions with near-limitless room for more funding) playing a major role.
It’s fair to point out that the majority has been wrong historically many times. I’m not saying this should be our final decision procedure and to lock in those values. But we need some kind of decision procedure for things, and I find when I’m uncertain, that “asking the audience” or democracy seem like a good way to use the “wisdom of crowds” effect to get a relatively good prior.
I’m actually quite surprised by how quickly and how much that post has been upvoted. This definitely makes me update my priors positively about how receptive the forums are to contrarian viewpoints and civil debate. At least, I’m feeling less negativity than when I wrote that post.
Regarding the majority vote, I think “asking the audience” is not a good recipe when the audience is not very informed, which seems to be the case here (where would they get the information without much personal research?)
I understand trusting the wisdom of the crowds in situations where people reasonably understand the situation (to take a classic example, guessing the weight of a pig). However, most people here likely have little information about all the different ways animals are suffering, the scale, research about sentience, knowledge about scope insensitivity, and arguments in favour of things like speciesm. Which makes sense! Not everybody is looking at it deeply.
But this doesn’t provide a very good context for relying on the wisdom of the crowd.
One could also consider the general EA / EA-adjacent sentiment over time as a cross-check on the risk of current groupthink. Of course, later EAs could be responding to better evidence not available to earlier EAs. But I would also consider the possibility of changes in other factors (like perceived status, available funding for EAs, perceived lack of novel opportunities in a mature cause area that has strong interventions with near-limitless room for more funding) playing a major role.