Right, since Cato Unbound is run by The Cato Institute (a political think tank), it would be reasonable to assign a high prior probability to it being full of mind-kill (therefore, not worth your time). On the other hand, there are several facts that are likely to cause you to update this probability downwards. Firstly, the author, Patri Friedman, is actually a fellow Less Wronger who diminished his participation in the the community for reasons of instrumental rationality. Secondly, two of our most respected members, Elieser Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson, have written multipleessays that have appeared in the very same publication. After updating on these facts, I think this particular article has a high enough probability of being worth our time to overcome the reasonable presumption against taking seriously essays from political think tanks in order to evaluate the actual arguments contained in the essay for ourselves.
Right, since Cato Unbound is run by The Cato Institute (a political think tank), it would be reasonable to assign a high prior probability to it being full of mind-kill (therefore, not worth your time). On the other hand, there are several facts that are likely to cause you to update this probability downwards. Firstly, the author, Patri Friedman, is actually a fellow Less Wronger who diminished his participation in the the community for reasons of instrumental rationality. Secondly, two of our most respected members, Elieser Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson, have written multiple essays that have appeared in the very same publication. After updating on these facts, I think this particular article has a high enough probability of being worth our time to overcome the reasonable presumption against taking seriously essays from political think tanks in order to evaluate the actual arguments contained in the essay for ourselves.