What lessons can be drawn from these events for how much to trust governments, mainstream experts, news sources, EAs, rationalists, mathematical modelling by people without domain-specific expertise, etc.? What lessons can be drawn for debates about inside vs outside views, epistemic modesty, etc.?
E.g., I think these events should probably update me somewhat further towards:
expecting governments to think and/or communicate quite poorly about low-probability, high-stakes events.
trusting inside-views that seem clever even if they’re from non-experts and I lack the expertise to evaluate them
But I’m still wary of extreme versions of those conclusions. And I also worry about something like a “stopped clock is right twice a day” situation—perhaps this was something like a “fluke”, and “early warnings” from the EA/rationalist community would typically not turn out to seem so prescient.
(I believe there’s been a decent amount discussion of this sort of thing on LessWrong.)
What lessons can be drawn from these events for how much to trust governments, mainstream experts, news sources, EAs, rationalists, mathematical modelling by people without domain-specific expertise, etc.? What lessons can be drawn for debates about inside vs outside views, epistemic modesty, etc.?
E.g., I think these events should probably update me somewhat further towards:
expecting governments to think and/or communicate quite poorly about low-probability, high-stakes events.
believing in something like, or a moderate form of, “Rationalist/EA exceptionalism”
trusting inside-views that seem clever even if they’re from non-experts and I lack the expertise to evaluate them
But I’m still wary of extreme versions of those conclusions. And I also worry about something like a “stopped clock is right twice a day” situation—perhaps this was something like a “fluke”, and “early warnings” from the EA/rationalist community would typically not turn out to seem so prescient.
(I believe there’s been a decent amount discussion of this sort of thing on LessWrong.)