You are being overly cryptic (obvious predictions?). Judgments like this are not relative. I don’t think I’m currently in anywhere close to that much of a trouble, and haven’t been since about summer 2010 (2009 was so-so, since I regarded some known-to-be-confused hypotheses I entertained then at unjustified level of confidence, and was too quick to make cryptic statements that weren’t justified by much more detailed thoughts). I’m currently confused about some important questions in decision theory, but that’s the state of my research, and I understand the scope of my confusion well enough.
My implicit point was this: Nesov2006 probably did not realize that Nesov2006 was a fool and Nesov2008 probably did not judge himself to be a crackpot. Therefore, a naive extrapolation (“obvious prediction”) suggests that Nesov2011 has some cognitive flaws which he doesn’t yet recognize; he will recognize this, though, in a few years.
JoshuaZ, as I understood him, was suggesting that one improves ones tolerance by enlarging ones prior for the hypothesis that one is currently flawed oneself. He suggests the time-machine thought experiment as a way of doing so.
You, as I understood you, claimed that JoshuaZ’s self-hack doesn’t work on you. I’m still puzzled as to why not.
My implicit point was this: Nesov2006 probably did not realize that Nesov2006 was a fool and Nesov2008 probably did not judge himself to be a crackpot.
To a significant extent, both would agree with my judgment. The problem was not so much inability to see the presence of a problem, they just didn’t know its nature in enough detail to figure out how to get better. So the situation is not symmetric in the way you thought.
See The Modesty Argument for a discussion of why I won’t believe myself crazy just because there are all those crazy people around who don’t believe themselves crazy.
You are being overly cryptic (obvious predictions?). Judgments like this are not relative. I don’t think I’m currently in anywhere close to that much of a trouble, and haven’t been since about summer 2010 (2009 was so-so, since I regarded some known-to-be-confused hypotheses I entertained then at unjustified level of confidence, and was too quick to make cryptic statements that weren’t justified by much more detailed thoughts). I’m currently confused about some important questions in decision theory, but that’s the state of my research, and I understand the scope of my confusion well enough.
My implicit point was this: Nesov2006 probably did not realize that Nesov2006 was a fool and Nesov2008 probably did not judge himself to be a crackpot. Therefore, a naive extrapolation (“obvious prediction”) suggests that Nesov2011 has some cognitive flaws which he doesn’t yet recognize; he will recognize this, though, in a few years.
JoshuaZ, as I understood him, was suggesting that one improves ones tolerance by enlarging ones prior for the hypothesis that one is currently flawed oneself. He suggests the time-machine thought experiment as a way of doing so.
You, as I understood you, claimed that JoshuaZ’s self-hack doesn’t work on you. I’m still puzzled as to why not.
To a significant extent, both would agree with my judgment. The problem was not so much inability to see the presence of a problem, they just didn’t know its nature in enough detail to figure out how to get better. So the situation is not symmetric in the way you thought.
See The Modesty Argument for a discussion of why I won’t believe myself crazy just because there are all those crazy people around who don’t believe themselves crazy.