Yeah. I’d guess the key difference between religion-on-LW and economics-on-LW is a more boring one: opinion homogeneity. As of a year ago we had something like consensus on atheism (92.3% atheist & agnostic vs. 6.3% deist/pantheist/theist) but a more even split on politics, a proxy for economic opinions (32.3% libertarian, 27.1% socialist & communist, 34.5% liberal, and 2.8% conservative).
Were 92% of us libertarian, but >25% theist, we might regard economics as a basically solved issue that rarely caused arguments, while repeatedly bickering about theism and wondering why theism was relatively mindkilling.
Yeah. I’d guess the key difference between religion-on-LW and economics-on-LW is a more boring one: opinion homogeneity.
This is because of selection effects more than anything else.
Were 92% of us libertarian, but >25% theist, we might regard economics as a basically solved issue that rarely caused arguments
I would advise you to be careful about deciding whether an issue is solved on the basis of whether the people on the other side of it happen to hang out in the same place you do.
I would advise you to be careful about deciding whether an issue is solved on the basis of whether the people on the other side of it happen to hang out in the same place you do.
I’m describing what could happen on a counterfactual LW, not what should happen.
I don’t intend to decide whether an issue’s solved on the basis of whether people I hang out with agree with me. But I recognize that I’m human (as are you), with the accompanying cognitive biases, and the reference class forecast isn’t a sunny one.
Yeah. I’d guess the key difference between religion-on-LW and economics-on-LW is a more boring one: opinion homogeneity. As of a year ago we had something like consensus on atheism (92.3% atheist & agnostic vs. 6.3% deist/pantheist/theist) but a more even split on politics, a proxy for economic opinions (32.3% libertarian, 27.1% socialist & communist, 34.5% liberal, and 2.8% conservative).
Were 92% of us libertarian, but >25% theist, we might regard economics as a basically solved issue that rarely caused arguments, while repeatedly bickering about theism and wondering why theism was relatively mindkilling.
This is because of selection effects more than anything else.
I would advise you to be careful about deciding whether an issue is solved on the basis of whether the people on the other side of it happen to hang out in the same place you do.
I’m describing what could happen on a counterfactual LW, not what should happen.
I don’t intend to decide whether an issue’s solved on the basis of whether people I hang out with agree with me. But I recognize that I’m human (as are you), with the accompanying cognitive biases, and the reference class forecast isn’t a sunny one.