I suspect I’ve obfuscated it, actually. The popularity of various positions is not intrinsically important to me—in fact, I give professions of believe about as little credit as I can get away with. This specific case is such that every form of evidence I find stronger (reasoning through the argument logically for flaws; statistical evidence about its danger) is not available. With a dearth of stronger evidence, I have to rely on weak evidence—but “the evidence is weak” is not an argument for privileging my own unsubstantiated position.
I don’t feel the need to collect weak evidence … I should, in this case. I was following a heuristic of not collecting weak evidence (waste of effort) without noticing that there was no stronger evidence.
Why are people’s beliefs of any value? Everyone has the ability to reason. All (non-perfect) reasoners fail in some way or another; if I look at many (controlling for biased reasoning) it gives me more of a chance to spot the biases—I have a control to compare it to.
This case is a special case; some people do have evidence. They’ve read the basilisk, applied their reasoning and logic, and deduced that it is / is not dangerous. These peoples’ beliefs are to be privileged over people who have not read the basilisk. I can’t access private signals like that—I don’t want to read a potential basilisk. So I make a guess at how strong their private signal is (this is why I care about their rationality) and use that as weak evidence for or against.
If seeking harder evidence wasn’t dangerous (and it usually isn’t) I would have done that instead.
I suspect I’ve obfuscated it, actually. The popularity of various positions is not intrinsically important to me—in fact, I give professions of believe about as little credit as I can get away with. This specific case is such that every form of evidence I find stronger (reasoning through the argument logically for flaws; statistical evidence about its danger) is not available. With a dearth of stronger evidence, I have to rely on weak evidence—but “the evidence is weak” is not an argument for privileging my own unsubstantiated position.
I don’t feel the need to collect weak evidence … I should, in this case. I was following a heuristic of not collecting weak evidence (waste of effort) without noticing that there was no stronger evidence.
Why are people’s beliefs of any value? Everyone has the ability to reason. All (non-perfect) reasoners fail in some way or another; if I look at many (controlling for biased reasoning) it gives me more of a chance to spot the biases—I have a control to compare it to.
This case is a special case; some people do have evidence. They’ve read the basilisk, applied their reasoning and logic, and deduced that it is / is not dangerous. These peoples’ beliefs are to be privileged over people who have not read the basilisk. I can’t access private signals like that—I don’t want to read a potential basilisk. So I make a guess at how strong their private signal is (this is why I care about their rationality) and use that as weak evidence for or against.
If seeking harder evidence wasn’t dangerous (and it usually isn’t) I would have done that instead.