I’m not super sure what the division between weapons and armor is supposed to be here.
One option is:
Weapons ~= ability to argue persuasively for something you believe
Armor ~= ability to find out what is true
But in this case, it’s not obvious to me that “intellect” should be placed so squarely in the former category. I’d guesss that g correlates with both of these, and it’s not obvious (to me) that it correlates much more with the former than the latter.
Another option is:
Weapons ~= raw intellect as in g
Armor ~= epistemics modulo raw intellect; something like good epistemic habits
In this case, it seems like the central example of someone high-armor low-weapon shouldn’t be “soft-spoken people who are poor at arguing”. Instead, maybe it should be someone who is extremely unbiased, and who is quite resistant to bad-faith arguments, but who still isn’t great at identifying truths in complicated areas, because they fail to understand or generate the right arguments. (Probably they are aware of this and are very unconfident in these areas.)
The latter option is more of what I was going for.
I’d agree that the armor/epistemics people often aren’t great at coming up with new truths in complicated areas. I’d also agree that they are extremely unbiased and resistant to both poor faith arguments, and good faith, but systematically misleading arguments (these are many of the demons the armor protects against, if that wasn’t clear).
When I said that they were soft-spoken and poor at arguing, I’m assuming that they have great calibration and are likely arguing against people who are very overconfident, so in comparison they seem meager. I think of a lot of superforecasters in this way; they’re quite thoughtful and reasonable, but not often bold enough to sell a lot of books. Other people with too epistemics sometimes recognize their skills (especially when f they have empirical track records like in forecasting systems), but that’s right now a meager minority.
I’m not super sure what the division between weapons and armor is supposed to be here.
One option is:
Weapons ~= ability to argue persuasively for something you believe
Armor ~= ability to find out what is true
But in this case, it’s not obvious to me that “intellect” should be placed so squarely in the former category. I’d guesss that g correlates with both of these, and it’s not obvious (to me) that it correlates much more with the former than the latter.
Another option is:
Weapons ~= raw intellect as in g
Armor ~= epistemics modulo raw intellect; something like good epistemic habits
In this case, it seems like the central example of someone high-armor low-weapon shouldn’t be “soft-spoken people who are poor at arguing”. Instead, maybe it should be someone who is extremely unbiased, and who is quite resistant to bad-faith arguments, but who still isn’t great at identifying truths in complicated areas, because they fail to understand or generate the right arguments. (Probably they are aware of this and are very unconfident in these areas.)
The latter option is more of what I was going for.
I’d agree that the armor/epistemics people often aren’t great at coming up with new truths in complicated areas. I’d also agree that they are extremely unbiased and resistant to both poor faith arguments, and good faith, but systematically misleading arguments (these are many of the demons the armor protects against, if that wasn’t clear).
When I said that they were soft-spoken and poor at arguing, I’m assuming that they have great calibration and are likely arguing against people who are very overconfident, so in comparison they seem meager. I think of a lot of superforecasters in this way; they’re quite thoughtful and reasonable, but not often bold enough to sell a lot of books. Other people with too epistemics sometimes recognize their skills (especially when f they have empirical track records like in forecasting systems), but that’s right now a meager minority.