I’m an epistemically modest person, I guess. My main criticism is one that is already quoted in the text, albeit with more exclamation points than I would use:
You aren’t so specially blessed as your priors would have you believe; other academics already know what you know! Civilization isn’t so inadequate after all!
It’s not just academics. I recall having a similar opinion to Yudkowsky-2013. This wasn’t a question of careful analysis of econobloggers, I just read The Economist, the most mainstream magazine to cover this type of question, and I deferred to their judgment. I started reading The Economist because my school and university had subscriptions. The reporting is paywalled but I’ll cite Revolution in the Air (2013-04-13) and Odd men in (1999-05-13) for anyone with a subscription, or just search for Haruhiko Kuroda’s name.
Japan 2013 monetary policy is a win for epistemic modesty. Instead of reading econblogs and identifying which ones make the most sense, or deciding which Nobel laureates and prestigious economists have the best assessment of the situation, you can just upload conventional economic wisdom into your brain as an impressionable teenager and come to good conclusions.
Disclaimer: Yudkowsky argues this doesn’t impact his thesis about civilizational adequacy, defined later in this sequence. I’m not arguing that thesis here, better to take that up where it is defined and more robustly defended.
I’m an epistemically modest person, I guess. My main criticism is one that is already quoted in the text, albeit with more exclamation points than I would use:
It’s not just academics. I recall having a similar opinion to Yudkowsky-2013. This wasn’t a question of careful analysis of econobloggers, I just read The Economist, the most mainstream magazine to cover this type of question, and I deferred to their judgment. I started reading The Economist because my school and university had subscriptions. The reporting is paywalled but I’ll cite Revolution in the Air (2013-04-13) and Odd men in (1999-05-13) for anyone with a subscription, or just search for Haruhiko Kuroda’s name.
Japan 2013 monetary policy is a win for epistemic modesty. Instead of reading econblogs and identifying which ones make the most sense, or deciding which Nobel laureates and prestigious economists have the best assessment of the situation, you can just upload conventional economic wisdom into your brain as an impressionable teenager and come to good conclusions.
Disclaimer: Yudkowsky argues this doesn’t impact his thesis about civilizational adequacy, defined later in this sequence. I’m not arguing that thesis here, better to take that up where it is defined and more robustly defended.