i actually looked into the whole expert consensus against travel bans for pandemics thing because that was the vivid, counterintuitive takeaway from my recollection of the ebola scare in the obama era, and basically it's a meta-level rather than an object-level strategy. the thinking is that if the first country to detect a potentially pandemic pathogen is reflexively subject to something tantamount to crippling sanctions, this disincentivizes early reporting and encourages covering things up. which i do think makes a certain amount of sense.
The problem is as always a trust issue. The larger meta-problem is that there are dividends to trust, which also accrue through the breaking of trust. This is true even in deleterious cases, because all you have to do is effectively outrun the effect.
It has felt my whole life like authorities of all kinds have abused trust, but the replacement authorities mostly leverage the dividends of trust-breaking while carrying a bomb with a timer on it, which they hope will be long enough to get out of the building before we notice.
I've been reading you for a while, and I thought you were at least a few years older than that. (I was in 11th grade when COVID hit.)
I believe there's an old Slate star codex post titled "beware the man of one study". I know you're a reader of SSC/ACX, but I'm not sure if that post was before your time.
Even representative samples of economists can often be wrong. For example, most economists predicted we would be in a recession by now but were pretty clearly wrong about that. And in general predictions about the macroeconomy are pretty inaccurate.
Not sure why you are dismissive of the view that MAGA is informed mainly by misinformation. There are dozens of studies that show that Trump supporters are highly misinformed on most important issues - from COVID, to trans issues (remember a very famous conservative figure estimating there currently are "millions" of trans kids in the US?) to immigration... to the legitimacy of the 2020 election. When 70% of Republicans think an election which was obviously legitimate was in fact not legitimate (they don't just say this on X to posture to their followers but also in anonymous polls!), it's a pretty safe bet to say that them being misinformed is one of the main reasons why they vote Republican.
Seems like a schizopost. Not a good characterization of what the principle of sufficient reason is or what it's typically used for, he thinks he derives a contradiction but doesn't really, and the part about experts giving normative guidance seems like it's trying to make a point but it's too muddled for me to understand. If you want to oppose arguments from expertise you can just point out they're typically self undermining because you would need a higher order of expertise in order to verify whether a lower order of so-called experts are in fact experts.
This feels rather like skeptical acid that is kinda like the blood of the Alien, in that it never stops burning through things. The basic attitude of "experts are wrong" will not reveal the truth, it will only burn some nasty holes in you.
i actually looked into the whole expert consensus against travel bans for pandemics thing because that was the vivid, counterintuitive takeaway from my recollection of the ebola scare in the obama era, and basically it's a meta-level rather than an object-level strategy. the thinking is that if the first country to detect a potentially pandemic pathogen is reflexively subject to something tantamount to crippling sanctions, this disincentivizes early reporting and encourages covering things up. which i do think makes a certain amount of sense.
The problem is as always a trust issue. The larger meta-problem is that there are dividends to trust, which also accrue through the breaking of trust. This is true even in deleterious cases, because all you have to do is effectively outrun the effect.
It has felt my whole life like authorities of all kinds have abused trust, but the replacement authorities mostly leverage the dividends of trust-breaking while carrying a bomb with a timer on it, which they hope will be long enough to get out of the building before we notice.
I've been reading you for a while, and I thought you were at least a few years older than that. (I was in 11th grade when COVID hit.)
I believe there's an old Slate star codex post titled "beware the man of one study". I know you're a reader of SSC/ACX, but I'm not sure if that post was before your time.
Yeah I just finished my second year of college. Covid hit end of my second year of high school! This post was a reference to Scott's post.
I see you linked to that post.
I guess I'm not the only one who's been through Scott's back catalog.
I've read all the old Scott articles!
Even representative samples of economists can often be wrong. For example, most economists predicted we would be in a recession by now but were pretty clearly wrong about that. And in general predictions about the macroeconomy are pretty inaccurate.
His representation of principal of sufficient reason is accurate.
if any Statement can bea true without sufficient reason then it's nigation will also bea true without sufficient reason.
This leads to contradiction.
Not sure why you are dismissive of the view that MAGA is informed mainly by misinformation. There are dozens of studies that show that Trump supporters are highly misinformed on most important issues - from COVID, to trans issues (remember a very famous conservative figure estimating there currently are "millions" of trans kids in the US?) to immigration... to the legitimacy of the 2020 election. When 70% of Republicans think an election which was obviously legitimate was in fact not legitimate (they don't just say this on X to posture to their followers but also in anonymous polls!), it's a pretty safe bet to say that them being misinformed is one of the main reasons why they vote Republican.
As a nitpick, I think Bryan Caplan has a good critique of Tetlock. Namely, Tetlock deliberately chose difficult questions for his expert forecasters.
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2005/12/tackling_tetloc_1.html
What do you think about this?
https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelkowalik/p/is-it-rational-to-trust-the-experts?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=d8r4q
Seems like a schizopost. Not a good characterization of what the principle of sufficient reason is or what it's typically used for, he thinks he derives a contradiction but doesn't really, and the part about experts giving normative guidance seems like it's trying to make a point but it's too muddled for me to understand. If you want to oppose arguments from expertise you can just point out they're typically self undermining because you would need a higher order of expertise in order to verify whether a lower order of so-called experts are in fact experts.
This feels rather like skeptical acid that is kinda like the blood of the Alien, in that it never stops burning through things. The basic attitude of "experts are wrong" will not reveal the truth, it will only burn some nasty holes in you.
It goes to show that, to our mutual benefit, rhetorical skills are not age-dependent.