The clearest description that Eliezer gave of this part of his process looks to be:
when I read some econbloggers who I’d seen being right about empirical predictions before saying that Japan was being grotesquely silly, and the economic logic seemed to me to check out, as best I could follow it, I wasn’t particularly reluctant to believe them.
So it wasn’t just that he trusted Scott Sumner’s judgment, it was the combination of I think Sumner has good judgment about things like this (outside view) and the parts of his argument that I can evaluate all look solid (inside view). I wouldn’t call that “deferring.”
The clearest description that Eliezer gave of this part of his process looks to be:
So it wasn’t just that he trusted Scott Sumner’s judgment, it was the combination of I think Sumner has good judgment about things like this (outside view) and the parts of his argument that I can evaluate all look solid (inside view). I wouldn’t call that “deferring.”