According to me, when someone asks you a question about an area where I don’t direct empirical data, the proper response is to first say “I don’t know”, and then to offer speculations and intuitions.
Failing to engage with one’s intuitions it rejecting often huge swaths of relevant information. Failing to tag those intuitive models as speculation is shooting yourself in the foot, because if you belive the first thought that came to you, you’re very unlikely to actually check.
For what its worth I consider “saying ‘I Don’t Know’ ” to be a crucial rationality skill (which I think I learned from the Freakonmics guys before, or around the time I read the sequences). Related to “do not make stuff up, especially when you are very confused”.
According to me, when someone asks you a question about an area where I don’t direct empirical data, the proper response is to first say “I don’t know”, and then to offer speculations and intuitions.
Failing to engage with one’s intuitions it rejecting often huge swaths of relevant information. Failing to tag those intuitive models as speculation is shooting yourself in the foot, because if you belive the first thought that came to you, you’re very unlikely to actually check.