A discussion about the merits of each of the views Eliezer holds on these issues would itself exemplify the immodest approach I’m here criticizing. What you would need to do to change my mind is to show me why Eliezer is justified in giving so little weight to the views of each of those expert communities, in a way that doesn’t itself take a position on the issue by relying primarily on the inside view.
This seems correct. I just noticed you could phrase this the other way—why in general should we presume groups of people with academic qualifications have their strongest incentives towards truth? I agree that this disagreement will come down to building detailed models of incentives in human organisations more than building inside views of each field (which is why I didn’t find Greg’s post particularly persuasive—this isn’t a matter of discussing rational bayesian agents, but of discussing the empirical incentive landscape we are in).
why in general should we presume groups of people with academic qualifications have their strongest incentives towards truth?
Maybe because these people have been surprisingly accurate? In addition, it’s not that Eliezer disputes that general presumption: he routinely relies on results in the natural and social sciences without feeling the need to justify in each case why we should trust e.g. computer scientists, economists, neuroscientists, game theorists, and so on.
This seems correct. I just noticed you could phrase this the other way—why in general should we presume groups of people with academic qualifications have their strongest incentives towards truth? I agree that this disagreement will come down to building detailed models of incentives in human organisations more than building inside views of each field (which is why I didn’t find Greg’s post particularly persuasive—this isn’t a matter of discussing rational bayesian agents, but of discussing the empirical incentive landscape we are in).
Maybe because these people have been surprisingly accurate? In addition, it’s not that Eliezer disputes that general presumption: he routinely relies on results in the natural and social sciences without feeling the need to justify in each case why we should trust e.g. computer scientists, economists, neuroscientists, game theorists, and so on.
Yeah, that’s the sort of discussion that seems to me most relevant.