One way to employ Space Mom might be with how confidently you believe expert concensus, in particular given that experts rarely give their confidence levels. For instance:
A. Expert concensus says that horoscopes are bunk. I believe it! I have a tight confidence interval on that.
B. Expert concensus says that hospitals provide significant value. I believe that too! But thanks to Robin Hanson, I’m less confident in it. Maybe we’re mostly wasting our healthcare dollars? Probably not, but I’ll keep that door in my mind open.
----
Separately, I think the frustrating thing about Hanson’s piece was that he seemed to be making an isolated demand for rigor in that Eliezer prove in an absolute sense that he can know he is more rational than average before he gets his “disagreement license.”
“You could be deceiving yourself about having valid evidence or the ability to rationally consider it” is a fully general argument against anything, and that’s what it felt like Hanson was using. In particular because Eliezer specificially mentioned testing his calibration against the real world on a regular basis to test those assumptions.
One way to employ Space Mom might be with how confidently you believe expert concensus, in particular given that experts rarely give their confidence levels. For instance:
A. Expert concensus says that horoscopes are bunk. I believe it! I have a tight confidence interval on that.
B. Expert concensus says that hospitals provide significant value. I believe that too! But thanks to Robin Hanson, I’m less confident in it. Maybe we’re mostly wasting our healthcare dollars? Probably not, but I’ll keep that door in my mind open.
----
Separately, I think the frustrating thing about Hanson’s piece was that he seemed to be making an isolated demand for rigor in that Eliezer prove in an absolute sense that he can know he is more rational than average before he gets his “disagreement license.”
“You could be deceiving yourself about having valid evidence or the ability to rationally consider it” is a fully general argument against anything, and that’s what it felt like Hanson was using. In particular because Eliezer specificially mentioned testing his calibration against the real world on a regular basis to test those assumptions.