“Of course, the real disaster would be if people start saying things like “Eliezer is always right”. Nobody is always right.
Posted by: George Weinberg | December 12, 2007 at 03:49 PM ”
George,
That understates the risk, since self-identified rationalists familiar with the literature would concoct much better rationalizations. For instance, someone might say that “Nick Bostrom is very intelligent, actively works to overcome biases, and seems to have been relatively successful at it. Since almost all top academics are not immersed in the heuristics and biases literature and committed to Overcoming Bias, in a sustained dispute between top academics and Nick Bostrom we should expect the latter to be right much more often than a random high quality academic dissenter,” but then treat this as license to accept Bostrom’s positions on an improbable number of independent disagreements.
“Of course, the real disaster would be if people start saying things like “Eliezer is always right”. Nobody is always right.
Posted by: George Weinberg | December 12, 2007 at 03:49 PM ”
George,
That understates the risk, since self-identified rationalists familiar with the literature would concoct much better rationalizations. For instance, someone might say that “Nick Bostrom is very intelligent, actively works to overcome biases, and seems to have been relatively successful at it. Since almost all top academics are not immersed in the heuristics and biases literature and committed to Overcoming Bias, in a sustained dispute between top academics and Nick Bostrom we should expect the latter to be right much more often than a random high quality academic dissenter,” but then treat this as license to accept Bostrom’s positions on an improbable number of independent disagreements.