I’ve seen EA writing (particularly about AI safety) that goes something like:
I know X and Y thought leaders in AI safety, they’re exceptionally smart people with opinion A, so even though I personally think opinion B is more defensible, I also think I should be updating my natural independent opinion in the direction of A, because they’re way smarter and more knowledgeable than me.
I’m struggling to see how this update strategy makes sense. It seems to have merit when X and Y know/understand things that literally no other expert knows, but aside from that, in all other scenarios that come to mind, it seems neutral at best, otherwise a worse strategy than totally disregarding the “thought leader status” of X and Y.
Am I missing something?
An example of invested but not attached: I’m investing time/money/energy into taking classes about subject X. I chose subject X because it could help me generate more value Y that I care about. But I’m not attached to getting good at X, I’m invested in the process of learning it.
I feel more confused after reading your other points. What is your definition of rationality? Is this definition also what EA/LW people usually mean? (If so, who introduces this definition?)
When you say rationally is “what gets you good performance”, that seems like it could lead to arbitrary circular reasoning about what is and isn’t rational. If I exaggerate this concern and define rationality as “what gets you the best life possible”, that’s not a helpful definition because it leads to the unfalsifiable claim that rationality is optimal while providing no practical insight.