I think it’s possible (and important) to analyze this phenomenon and see what’s going on. But the point is that this will involve analyzing a phenomenon—ie truth-seeking, ie epistemic rationality, ie the thing we’re good at and which is our comparative advantage—and not winning immediately.
I mostly agree with this, but want to point at something that your comment didn’t really cover, that “whether to go to the homeopath or the doctor” is a question that I expect epistemic rationality to be helpful for. (This is, in large part, a question that Inadequate Equilibria was pointed towards.) [This is sort of the fundamental question of self-help, once you’ve separated it into “what advice should I follow?” and “what advice is out there?”]
But this requires that the question of how to evaluate strategies be framed more in terms of “I used my judgment to weigh evidence” and less in terms of “I followed the prestige” or “I compared the lengths of their articulated justifications” or similar things. A layperson in 1820 who is using the latter will wrongly pick the doctors, and a confused layperson in 2000 will wrongly pick homeopathy, but ideally a rationalist would switch from homeopathy to doctors as the actual facts on the ground change.
This doesn’t mean a rationalist in 1820 should be satisfied with homeopathy; it should be known to them as a temporary plug to a hole in their map. But that also doesn’t mean it’s the most interesting or important hole in their map; probably then they’d be most interested in what’s up with electricity. [Similarly, today I’m somewhat confused about what’s going on with diet, and have some ‘reasonable’ guesses and some ‘woo’ guesses, but it’s clearly not the most interesting hole in my map.]
And so my sense is a rationalist in 2018 should know what they know, and what they don’t, and be scientific about things to the degree that they capture their curiosity (which relates both to ‘irregularities in the map’ and ‘practically useful’). Which is basically how I read your comment, except that you seem more worried about particular things than I am.
I mostly agree with this, but want to point at something that your comment didn’t really cover, that “whether to go to the homeopath or the doctor” is a question that I expect epistemic rationality to be helpful for. (This is, in large part, a question that Inadequate Equilibria was pointed towards.) [This is sort of the fundamental question of self-help, once you’ve separated it into “what advice should I follow?” and “what advice is out there?”]
But this requires that the question of how to evaluate strategies be framed more in terms of “I used my judgment to weigh evidence” and less in terms of “I followed the prestige” or “I compared the lengths of their articulated justifications” or similar things. A layperson in 1820 who is using the latter will wrongly pick the doctors, and a confused layperson in 2000 will wrongly pick homeopathy, but ideally a rationalist would switch from homeopathy to doctors as the actual facts on the ground change.
This doesn’t mean a rationalist in 1820 should be satisfied with homeopathy; it should be known to them as a temporary plug to a hole in their map. But that also doesn’t mean it’s the most interesting or important hole in their map; probably then they’d be most interested in what’s up with electricity. [Similarly, today I’m somewhat confused about what’s going on with diet, and have some ‘reasonable’ guesses and some ‘woo’ guesses, but it’s clearly not the most interesting hole in my map.]
And so my sense is a rationalist in 2018 should know what they know, and what they don’t, and be scientific about things to the degree that they capture their curiosity (which relates both to ‘irregularities in the map’ and ‘practically useful’). Which is basically how I read your comment, except that you seem more worried about particular things than I am.