All those experimental results on people doing well by using the outside view are results on people drawing a new sample from the same bag as previous samples. Not “arguably the same bag” or “well it’s the same bag if you look at this way”, really actually the same bag: how late you’ll be getting Christmas presents this year, based on how late you were in previous years
Hmm, I’m not convinced that this is meaningfully different in kind rather than degree. You aren’t predicting a randomly chosen holdout year, so saying that 2021 is from the same distribution as 2011-2020 is still a take. “X thing I do in the future is from the same distribution of all my attempts in past years*” is still a judgement call, albeit a much easier one than AI timelines.
I agree with (part of) your broader point that incareful applications of the outside view and similar vibes is very susceptible to motivated reasoning (including but not limited to the absurdity heuristic), but I guess my take here is that we should just be more careful individually and more willing to point out bad epistemic moves in others (as you’ve often done a good job of!) as a community.
All our tools are limited and corruptible, and I don’t think on balance reference class forecasting is more susceptible to motivated reasoning than other techniques.
*are you using your last 10 years? since you’ve been an adult? all the years you’ve been alive?
Hmm, I’m not convinced that this is meaningfully different in kind rather than degree. You aren’t predicting a randomly chosen holdout year, so saying that 2021 is from the same distribution as 2011-2020 is still a take. “X thing I do in the future is from the same distribution of all my attempts in past years*” is still a judgement call, albeit a much easier one than AI timelines.
I agree with (part of) your broader point that incareful applications of the outside view and similar vibes is very susceptible to motivated reasoning (including but not limited to the absurdity heuristic), but I guess my take here is that we should just be more careful individually and more willing to point out bad epistemic moves in others (as you’ve often done a good job of!) as a community.
All our tools are limited and corruptible, and I don’t think on balance reference class forecasting is more susceptible to motivated reasoning than other techniques.
*are you using your last 10 years? since you’ve been an adult? all the years you’ve been alive?