For point one, I agree that for reputation discussions, infohazards are probably overused, and I used it that way here. I should probably have been clearer about this in my own head, as I was incorrectly lumping infohazards together. In retrospect I regret bringing this up, rather than focusing on the fact that I think the post was misleading in a variety of ways on the object level.
For point two, I also think you are correct that there is not much consensus in some domains—when I say they are clearly not trusting enough, I should have explicitly (instead of implicitly) made my claim about public health. So in economics, governance, legislation, and other places, people are arguably too trusting overall—not obviously, but at least arguably. The other side is that most people who aren’t trusting of government in those areas are far too overconfident in crazy pet theories (gold standard, monarchy, restructuring courts, etc.) compared to what government espouses—just as they are in public health. So I’m skeptical of the argument that lower trust in general, or more assumptions that the government is generically probably screwing up in a given domain, would actually be helpful.
Cool, then I think we mostly agree on these points.
I do want to say that I am very grateful about your object-level contributions to this thread. I think we can probably get to a stage where we have a version of the top-level post that we are both happy with, at least in terms of its object-level claims.
For point one, I agree that for reputation discussions, infohazards are probably overused, and I used it that way here. I should probably have been clearer about this in my own head, as I was incorrectly lumping infohazards together. In retrospect I regret bringing this up, rather than focusing on the fact that I think the post was misleading in a variety of ways on the object level.
For point two, I also think you are correct that there is not much consensus in some domains—when I say they are clearly not trusting enough, I should have explicitly (instead of implicitly) made my claim about public health. So in economics, governance, legislation, and other places, people are arguably too trusting overall—not obviously, but at least arguably. The other side is that most people who aren’t trusting of government in those areas are far too overconfident in crazy pet theories (gold standard, monarchy, restructuring courts, etc.) compared to what government espouses—just as they are in public health. So I’m skeptical of the argument that lower trust in general, or more assumptions that the government is generically probably screwing up in a given domain, would actually be helpful.
Cool, then I think we mostly agree on these points.
I do want to say that I am very grateful about your object-level contributions to this thread. I think we can probably get to a stage where we have a version of the top-level post that we are both happy with, at least in terms of its object-level claims.