I realize you’re not exactly saying it outright, but some parts of your comment seem to be gesturing at the idea that smart people should adopt a “modesty norm” among themselves. I think this is a very bad idea for reasons EY already articulated, so I’d just like to clarify whether this is what you believe?
Thanks for making that question explicit! That’s not my position at all. I think many people who read Inadequate Equilibria are, in fact, among the top ∼ 0.1% of people when it comes to forming accurate beliefs. (If you buy into the rationality project at all, then this is much easier than being among the 0.1% most intelligent people.) As such, they can outperform most people and be justified in having reasonably confident beliefs.
This is also how I remember EY’s argument. He was saying that we shouldn’t apply modesty—because—it is possible to know better than the vast majority of people.
A very relevant observation here is that there is real convergence happening among those people. If I take the set of my ~8 favorite public intellectuals, they tend to agree with close to zero exceptions on many of [the issues that I consider not that hard even though tons of people disagree about them]. Even among LW surveys, we had answers that are very different from the population mean.
Anyway, I don’t think this is in any conflict with my original point. If you ask the average person with super confident beliefs, I’m pretty sure they are not likely to have an explicit belief of being among the top ∼ 0.1% when it comes to forming accurate beliefs (and of course, they aren’t), and there’s your inconsistency.
I realize you’re not exactly saying it outright, but some parts of your comment seem to be gesturing at the idea that smart people should adopt a “modesty norm” among themselves. I think this is a very bad idea for reasons EY already articulated, so I’d just like to clarify whether this is what you believe?
Thanks for making that question explicit! That’s not my position at all. I think many people who read Inadequate Equilibria are, in fact, among the top ∼ 0.1% of people when it comes to forming accurate beliefs. (If you buy into the rationality project at all, then this is much easier than being among the 0.1% most intelligent people.) As such, they can outperform most people and be justified in having reasonably confident beliefs.
This is also how I remember EY’s argument. He was saying that we shouldn’t apply modesty—because—it is possible to know better than the vast majority of people.
A very relevant observation here is that there is real convergence happening among those people. If I take the set of my ~8 favorite public intellectuals, they tend to agree with close to zero exceptions on many of [the issues that I consider not that hard even though tons of people disagree about them]. Even among LW surveys, we had answers that are very different from the population mean.
Anyway, I don’t think this is in any conflict with my original point. If you ask the average person with super confident beliefs, I’m pretty sure they are not likely to have an explicit belief of being among the top ∼ 0.1% when it comes to forming accurate beliefs (and of course, they aren’t), and there’s your inconsistency.