In the process, I will also make the case that modesty—the part of this process where you go into an agonizing fit of self-doubt—isn’t actually helpful for figuring out when you might outperform some aspect of the equilibrium.
I suspect that for Hal Finney and other advocates of modesty, it doesn’t usually feel like an agonizing fit of self doubt. And for any modest epistemology that does agonize, we can imagine another that just matter-of-factly adjusts their priors to match the outside view.
So if “agonizing fit of self-doubt” is more than just a figure of speech, I’m worried that this analysis may miss some of what’s going on.
Nevertheless, I’m very excited about this sequence and eagerly look forward to reading the rest of the argument.
I suspect that for Hal Finney and other advocates of modesty, it doesn’t usually feel like an agonizing fit of self doubt. And for any modest epistemology that does agonize, we can imagine another that just matter-of-factly adjusts their priors to match the outside view.
So if “agonizing fit of self-doubt” is more than just a figure of speech, I’m worried that this analysis may miss some of what’s going on.
Nevertheless, I’m very excited about this sequence and eagerly look forward to reading the rest of the argument.