Truth-tracking—having an impact is hard! It’s really important to have true beliefs, and the best way to find them is by trying hard to form your own views and ensuring they correlate with truth. It’s easy to get deferring wrong if you trust the wrong people.
There’s another interpretation of “truth-tracking” where forming an inside view is important: It’s easier to notice when you are wrong. In other words, even if you defer to the right person, it might be hard to notice when they are wrong (unless you have a very deep understanding of their views).
This seems like a more important reason than the “deferring to the wrong people” issue: new progress in AI and on the theoretical side call for continuously updating models, so you want to reduce friction on that.
There’s another interpretation of “truth-tracking” where forming an inside view is important: It’s easier to notice when you are wrong. In other words, even if you defer to the right person, it might be hard to notice when they are wrong (unless you have a very deep understanding of their views).
This seems like a more important reason than the “deferring to the wrong people” issue: new progress in AI and on the theoretical side call for continuously updating models, so you want to reduce friction on that.