Fwiw I’m not aware of using or understanding ‘outside view’ to mean something other than basically reference class forecasting (or trend extrapolation, which I’d say is the same). In your initial example, it seems like the other person is using it fine—yes, if you had more examples of an AGI takeoff, you could do better reference class forecasting, but their point is that in the absence of any examples of the specific thing, you also lack other non-reference-class-forecasting methods (e.g. a model), and you lack them even more than you lack relevant reference classes. They might be wrong, but it seems like a valid use. I assume you’re right that some people do use the term for other stuff, because they say so in the comments, but is it actually that common?
I don’t follow your critique of doing an intuitively-weighted average of outside view and some inside view. In particular, you say ‘This is not Tetlock’s advice, nor is it the lesson from the forecasting tournaments...‘. But in the blog post section that you point to, you say ‘Tetlock’s advice is to start with the outside view, and then adjust using the inside view.’, which sounds like he is endorsing something very similar, or a superset of the thing you’re citing him as disagreeing with?
To check I have this: in the two-level adaptive system, one level is the program adjusting its plan toward the target configuration of being a good plan, and the other level is the car (for instance) adjusting its behavior (due to following the plan) toward getting to a particular place without crashing?