Also, people who disagree with you about things you don’t have much evidence about have a reasonably good chance of being better informed than you on the subject, or at least having different evidence about the subject.
Moreover, the correct answer based on all the evidence may not even look anything like the “average” of the beliefs. In the trivial case, imagine two people see a coin and both observe different flipping events where a handful of heads come up. Both update in the direction of a biased coin, but aren’t certain. After sharing data each should be more certain than either was alone that the coin is biased towards heads.
In theory, seeking out people whose beliefs are different from your own, to ask them about their knowledge and experiences should make you better informed than doing the same with people with whom you already agree with about most things. They don’t even have to be “rationalists” for it to benefit you they only need to be honest about their experiences...
On the other hand, they might need to be rationalists to reciprocally benefit from talking with you.
Also, people who disagree with you about things you don’t have much evidence about have a reasonably good chance of being better informed than you on the subject, or at least having different evidence about the subject.
Moreover, the correct answer based on all the evidence may not even look anything like the “average” of the beliefs. In the trivial case, imagine two people see a coin and both observe different flipping events where a handful of heads come up. Both update in the direction of a biased coin, but aren’t certain. After sharing data each should be more certain than either was alone that the coin is biased towards heads.
In theory, seeking out people whose beliefs are different from your own, to ask them about their knowledge and experiences should make you better informed than doing the same with people with whom you already agree with about most things. They don’t even have to be “rationalists” for it to benefit you they only need to be honest about their experiences...
On the other hand, they might need to be rationalists to reciprocally benefit from talking with you.