I don't mean this to be condescending or paternalistic, but this post is surprisingly thoughtful and mature. For anyone, especially someone so young.
Just FYI, Scott is right about population. I know you are in the thrall of straight utilitarianism, like you were libertarianism before. It took me until my 50s to get out completely: https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
I've never really read Scott and expected him to be "right" 100% or even most of the time. But while I don't expect him to be able to tell me what to think, what is more impressive is how he thinks. He consistently approaches topics with the humble attitude of a truth seeker, and is upfront about his own opinions and biases when he does have them. He is also just a great writer -- that is why I read his blog. When I read his recent blogpost on the effects of prisons I never thought it was the be all end all, but it is still a good article.
> And yet… anyone who knows about population ethics, should recognize that this is an utter nonstarter implying. It implies tons of heinous nonsense—it’s just the person affecting view, which MacAskill tears to pieces.
You can't be wrong about a moral position or a preference. You can only be wrong about facts.
For whom does the summed utility of a larger population matter? Average utility matters for those experiencing it. Antinatalist population ethics is far more sophisticated than you give it justice for being. Better Never to Have Been/ The Human Predicament are not easily dismissed.
You're egregiously wrong about the effectiveness of rationalistic and intuition based approaches to philosophy. I don't spread my interests and studies as widely as people like Scott. I stick to a few core areas. And on this front you're mistaken.
I worry you cultivate friendships and appraise as smartest mostly those people you find agreeable and tend to downplay the perspectives of those more critical of your takes and that this will insulate you from a greater degree of self correction.
As a lawyer, I know SO much now about the law and how it works than a layperson. I also know that the top minds of the field---people you'd implicitly trust if you heard their credentials when they were explaining some legal thing to you as a cable news guest---are often in diametric opposition to each other, such that half of them are dead wrong (one way or the other) on any given issue. I could trust one of them, or I could do my own reasoning---either way seems like a coin flip. (Of course, if I get it right as a layperson, it's probably for the wrong reasons anyway.) All this to say, the optimal amount to defer to experts is really a head-scratcher for me. Though I'm sure it depends on the topic and the nature of the claims at issue.
I think the meta question becomes how good you are at judging who to trust. Ironically one of my big disagreements with Scott is that he often gives credibility and benefit of the doubt to people I would not consider at all credible.
Regarding critical thinking, even if you choose to forego your own thinking and defer to experts, isn't that because you have critically thought about your own powers of thinking and research and come to the conclusion that it's best not to rely on them?
If that is a successful conclusion one reaches via critical thinking, who is to say there aren't others? So all these arguments against critical thinking seem to be self-undermining the way certain skeptical positions tend to be.
Also, doesn't Huemer hold views at odds with expert-consensus regarding global warming and climate change?
"If Scott will make sufficiently huge errors—and he’s the smartest person on the internet—then how many errors are being regularly made by media sources or books or journalists? The answer is a lot."
I'm not so sure about this. Sufficiently well-constructed intellectual environments should have some effect on limiting the type of errors Scott made in the article you referenced. e.g., presumably using the wrong statistical test, misspelling a name, and incorrectly claiming an article was retracted are errors that would likely be quickly found and fixed (as Scott himself did) in most good journals or newspapers. Although many of the individual people may be more prone to making these errors (because maybe they're not as smart as SA), the institutions they make up probably limit this quite a bit. Just a thought (obviously need to do the empirical research to see if this is right and how big this "institutional effect" might be on limiting mistakes like SA made)
So true. I considered writing a similar article myself. You are mostly making the point about pundits and authors, but I especially agree with you when it comes to experts. In the internet age it's very easy to find every single mistake that experts and institutions have made and point them out. This leads to declining trust in experts and institutions. But it's still obviously true that you will be healthier if you listen to the CDC's advice than if you listen to the advice of some random podcast. The CDC will get some things wrong, obviously. But they will get fewer things wrong than the influencer who has no real incentive (and likely is dis-incentivized) to put out accurate information. No one ever got fired from a podcast for making a bad prediction. Alex Jones shows us that telling really big lies can be incredibly lucrative.
I think another important piece of this puzzle has to do with probability and learning bad lessons from right actions. Say that you are playing blackjack and have 18. Obviously you should not hit. But if you choose not to hit and lose then people will point out that you lost so you must have made the wrong decision. Another person has 20 while the dealer also has 20. Clearly the right move is to accept the draw, but say you decide to hit and get an ace? Then everyone will praise your genius even though you made the worst possible choice and simply got lucky. This kind of thing happens a lot in life. We make decisions based on imperfect information and since we can't perform the same action thousands of times to see the probability of success, we learn the wrong lessons from good and bad outcomes. If you choose not to take expert advice and experience a good outcome you will assume that the experts are bullshit, even if you just got incredibly lucky.
Absolutely loved this article, thank you for being a voice of reason.
The Smartest Person In History was often egregiously wrong, about really flagship beliefs of his. The Theory of Forms is rubbish, there's no way of rescuing it from the third man problem (as Plato himself realised). Intellectual life is not best conducted as a sort of online league table according to who has, like, totally pwned whom on twitter. Also, I approve on personal grounds on exaggerated reverence for the holders of doctorates, but "x says in his PhD" adds nothing to "x says."
I agree with everything you say here, and think it all means that subject-matter experts should try to do more communication aimed at general-but-educated audiences.
Amusingly, Scott has an old blog post about exactly this issue: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-out/
I don't mean this to be condescending or paternalistic, but this post is surprisingly thoughtful and mature. For anyone, especially someone so young.
Just FYI, Scott is right about population. I know you are in the thrall of straight utilitarianism, like you were libertarianism before. It took me until my 50s to get out completely: https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
My submission for the smartest person on the internet:
Terry Tao [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/]
My submission for the smartest person on the internet...no, modesty prevents me from continuing.
I am sure even Terry has made mistakes on his blog!
I've never really read Scott and expected him to be "right" 100% or even most of the time. But while I don't expect him to be able to tell me what to think, what is more impressive is how he thinks. He consistently approaches topics with the humble attitude of a truth seeker, and is upfront about his own opinions and biases when he does have them. He is also just a great writer -- that is why I read his blog. When I read his recent blogpost on the effects of prisons I never thought it was the be all end all, but it is still a good article.
> And yet… anyone who knows about population ethics, should recognize that this is an utter nonstarter implying. It implies tons of heinous nonsense—it’s just the person affecting view, which MacAskill tears to pieces.
You can't be wrong about a moral position or a preference. You can only be wrong about facts.
(But who does Scott Alexander defer to?)
If the people we defer to are as humble as you are here, it undermines their authority.
"Here's how it is. Oh but I could aways be wrong." Gives with one hand, takes with the other.
For whom does the summed utility of a larger population matter? Average utility matters for those experiencing it. Antinatalist population ethics is far more sophisticated than you give it justice for being. Better Never to Have Been/ The Human Predicament are not easily dismissed.
It matters for the people experiencing it. It matters for them when they experience it. If you want a deeper dive, see here. https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-worlds-most-dangerous-population
Even Chalmers did not bite the bullet in either direction.
You're egregiously wrong about the effectiveness of rationalistic and intuition based approaches to philosophy. I don't spread my interests and studies as widely as people like Scott. I stick to a few core areas. And on this front you're mistaken.
I worry you cultivate friendships and appraise as smartest mostly those people you find agreeable and tend to downplay the perspectives of those more critical of your takes and that this will insulate you from a greater degree of self correction.
As a lawyer, I know SO much now about the law and how it works than a layperson. I also know that the top minds of the field---people you'd implicitly trust if you heard their credentials when they were explaining some legal thing to you as a cable news guest---are often in diametric opposition to each other, such that half of them are dead wrong (one way or the other) on any given issue. I could trust one of them, or I could do my own reasoning---either way seems like a coin flip. (Of course, if I get it right as a layperson, it's probably for the wrong reasons anyway.) All this to say, the optimal amount to defer to experts is really a head-scratcher for me. Though I'm sure it depends on the topic and the nature of the claims at issue.
I think the meta question becomes how good you are at judging who to trust. Ironically one of my big disagreements with Scott is that he often gives credibility and benefit of the doubt to people I would not consider at all credible.
Regarding critical thinking, even if you choose to forego your own thinking and defer to experts, isn't that because you have critically thought about your own powers of thinking and research and come to the conclusion that it's best not to rely on them?
If that is a successful conclusion one reaches via critical thinking, who is to say there aren't others? So all these arguments against critical thinking seem to be self-undermining the way certain skeptical positions tend to be.
Also, doesn't Huemer hold views at odds with expert-consensus regarding global warming and climate change?
"If Scott will make sufficiently huge errors—and he’s the smartest person on the internet—then how many errors are being regularly made by media sources or books or journalists? The answer is a lot."
I'm not so sure about this. Sufficiently well-constructed intellectual environments should have some effect on limiting the type of errors Scott made in the article you referenced. e.g., presumably using the wrong statistical test, misspelling a name, and incorrectly claiming an article was retracted are errors that would likely be quickly found and fixed (as Scott himself did) in most good journals or newspapers. Although many of the individual people may be more prone to making these errors (because maybe they're not as smart as SA), the institutions they make up probably limit this quite a bit. Just a thought (obviously need to do the empirical research to see if this is right and how big this "institutional effect" might be on limiting mistakes like SA made)
So true. I considered writing a similar article myself. You are mostly making the point about pundits and authors, but I especially agree with you when it comes to experts. In the internet age it's very easy to find every single mistake that experts and institutions have made and point them out. This leads to declining trust in experts and institutions. But it's still obviously true that you will be healthier if you listen to the CDC's advice than if you listen to the advice of some random podcast. The CDC will get some things wrong, obviously. But they will get fewer things wrong than the influencer who has no real incentive (and likely is dis-incentivized) to put out accurate information. No one ever got fired from a podcast for making a bad prediction. Alex Jones shows us that telling really big lies can be incredibly lucrative.
I think another important piece of this puzzle has to do with probability and learning bad lessons from right actions. Say that you are playing blackjack and have 18. Obviously you should not hit. But if you choose not to hit and lose then people will point out that you lost so you must have made the wrong decision. Another person has 20 while the dealer also has 20. Clearly the right move is to accept the draw, but say you decide to hit and get an ace? Then everyone will praise your genius even though you made the worst possible choice and simply got lucky. This kind of thing happens a lot in life. We make decisions based on imperfect information and since we can't perform the same action thousands of times to see the probability of success, we learn the wrong lessons from good and bad outcomes. If you choose not to take expert advice and experience a good outcome you will assume that the experts are bullshit, even if you just got incredibly lucky.
Absolutely loved this article, thank you for being a voice of reason.
The Smartest Person In History was often egregiously wrong, about really flagship beliefs of his. The Theory of Forms is rubbish, there's no way of rescuing it from the third man problem (as Plato himself realised). Intellectual life is not best conducted as a sort of online league table according to who has, like, totally pwned whom on twitter. Also, I approve on personal grounds on exaggerated reverence for the holders of doctorates, but "x says in his PhD" adds nothing to "x says."
Parrhesia link doesn't work.
I agree with everything you say here, and think it all means that subject-matter experts should try to do more communication aimed at general-but-educated audiences.
This post is about as a GOAT as Scott Alexander.