This has not been my experience from 9 years of academia in physics and material science. Opinions published in scientific papers must be backed up with reference to actual evidence, not merely opinion. When deferral happens behind the scenes, it’s usually justified by the person in question being an actual expert that knows their shit.
EA is far worse: I sometimes see people defer to random blog posters who have zero expertise in the subject they are talking about.
As in my other comment, I am mixing deference to orthodoxy and leaders. I have similar experience duration in academia. I think questioning things like political left positions and the value of education is more discouraged in academia than questioning the common beliefs in EA. I think it also depends on the field. In some academic fields, there are specific camps with a lot of tribal behavior. There’s a quote that science advances one funeral at a time. I think that EAs are more open to changing their opinions. There is also a lot of tribal behavior between fields in academia—I think there is significantly more bias towards one’s strand of academia than towards one’s strand of EA. Maybe that’s not deference to leaders, but the questioning of the value of one’s field in academia is uncommon. Whereas in EA, there is lots of questioning whether different strands are net negative.
However, I do agree that some EAs like taking contrary opinions and might defer to a random blogger against scientific consensus. Those EAs often have a low opinion of peer review, and are probably more often wrong than the scientific consensus.
This has not been my experience from 9 years of academia in physics and material science. Opinions published in scientific papers must be backed up with reference to actual evidence, not merely opinion. When deferral happens behind the scenes, it’s usually justified by the person in question being an actual expert that knows their shit.
EA is far worse: I sometimes see people defer to random blog posters who have zero expertise in the subject they are talking about.
As in my other comment, I am mixing deference to orthodoxy and leaders. I have similar experience duration in academia. I think questioning things like political left positions and the value of education is more discouraged in academia than questioning the common beliefs in EA. I think it also depends on the field. In some academic fields, there are specific camps with a lot of tribal behavior. There’s a quote that science advances one funeral at a time. I think that EAs are more open to changing their opinions. There is also a lot of tribal behavior between fields in academia—I think there is significantly more bias towards one’s strand of academia than towards one’s strand of EA. Maybe that’s not deference to leaders, but the questioning of the value of one’s field in academia is uncommon. Whereas in EA, there is lots of questioning whether different strands are net negative.
However, I do agree that some EAs like taking contrary opinions and might defer to a random blogger against scientific consensus. Those EAs often have a low opinion of peer review, and are probably more often wrong than the scientific consensus.