Also, consider the case where nothing in the newsletter ever becomes the subject of wide agreement: this suggests to me that either the field is not making enough progress to settle questions (which is very bad), or that the newsletter is by accident or design excluding ideas upon which the field might settle (which seems bad from the perspective of the newsletter).
Certainly when my opinions are right I would hope that they become widely agreed upon (and I probably don’t care too much if it happens via information cascade or via good epistemics). The question is about when I’m wrong.
That is to say, it is very clear that this is a newsletter, and that your opinion differs from that of the authors of the papers. This goes a long way to preventing the kind of uncritical agreement that typifies information cascades.
Journalism has the same property, but I do see uncritical agreement with things journalists write. Admittedly the uncritical agreement comes from non-experts, but with the newsletter I’m worried mostly about insufficiently critical agreement from researchers working on different areas, so the analogy kinda sorta holds.
Finally, I expect this field and the associated communities are unusually sensitive to information cascades as a problem, and therefore less likely to fall victim to them.
Agreed that this is very helpful (and breaks the analogy with journalism), and it’s the main reason I’m not too worried about information cascades right now. That said, I don’t feel confident that it’s enough.
I think overall I agree with you that they aren’t a major risk, and it’s good to get a bit of information that at least you treat the opinion as an opinion.
Certainly when my opinions are right I would hope that they become widely agreed upon (and I probably don’t care too much if it happens via information cascade or via good epistemics). The question is about when I’m wrong.
Journalism has the same property, but I do see uncritical agreement with things journalists write. Admittedly the uncritical agreement comes from non-experts, but with the newsletter I’m worried mostly about insufficiently critical agreement from researchers working on different areas, so the analogy kinda sorta holds.
Agreed that this is very helpful (and breaks the analogy with journalism), and it’s the main reason I’m not too worried about information cascades right now. That said, I don’t feel confident that it’s enough.
I think overall I agree with you that they aren’t a major risk, and it’s good to get a bit of information that at least you treat the opinion as an opinion.