Certainly an interesting read.
Although, it really makes me think of the words of the Big Lebowski: "That's just like, your opinion, man" which I think aligns with his ultimate conclusion.
Although, it really makes me think of the words of the Big Lebowski: "That's just like, your opinion, man" which I think aligns with his ultimate conclusion.
I wish more author instead of saying, this is where my bet would be, they would just say, ya there's no good information and this whole thing is up in the air, we just don't know and here are the next steps if we wanted to get closer to knowing.
Because otherwise it leads to a weird bias. For some reason, we have the tendency to believe that someone who's done the research would be more likely to be correct in their bet, but inconclusive research doesn't actually make this true. If the research is inconclusive, having done it doesn't help the prediction.
The rationalist movement is all about being able to accurately forecast the accuracy of your predictions. Saying we shouldn’t discuss low accuracy predictions at all seems odd - by making early/fuzzy predictions (and acknowledging them as such) we may ex find that we are more accurate than we realize.
> Saying we shouldn’t discuss low accuracy predictions at all seems odd
I don't think we're even talking low accuracy here, low accuracy still implies some accuracy, what I'm seeing here is random or potentially even worse than random prediction. The data points to things that are way to broad and general to reason about the cause.
I think knowing that is valuable, don't get me wrong, but my conclusion would be, don't bet on this, unless you like playing roulette.
I take your point, but he is one of a very few people on this planet who would reliably say he just didn't know if that was a more accurate statement than what he said. The whole thing is not up in the air, there is limited but useful information available now, and he's trying to correctly integrate that.
That said, you're right, but I was not focused on him, but on the bias that can be produced in other people when reading things like this.
Though to be honest, I even worry that I have this bias as well. Like because I researched something, yet pretty inconclusive, I feel somehow better equipped to bet on it, and yet I have no idea if at that point I'm doing better than random.
I thought it was well worth the read and he left no uncertainty about the uncertainty of his test results.
Maybe not the most 100% rigorous analysis that one could do, but certainly well beyond how self-accountable most people are.