A lot of things get ignored by scientists because you don’t get funding for studying the topic. Xrisk would be a good example. FHI finds it hard to raise money via the traditional way for the subject.
Science works
It works through empirical investigation. It doesn’t do much prior to empirical investigation.
As a heuristic, I suspect ignoring things ignored by most scientists will actually work pretty well for you. Its not an unreasonable assumption to say that “given no other information, the majority of scientists dismissing a subject lowers my probability that that subject has any grounding”. Thats a sensible thing to do, and does indeed use a simple Bayesian logic.
Note that we essentially do this for all science, in that we tend to accept the scientific consensus. We can’t be subject specialists in everything, so while we can do a bit of reading, its probably fine to just think: what most scientists think is probably the closest to correct I am capable of being without further study.
As a heuristic, I suspect ignoring things ignored by most scientists will actually work pretty well for you. Its not an unreasonable assumption to say that “given no other information, the majority of scientists dismissing a subject lowers my probability that that subject has any grounding”.
If you don’t have any information then that might be true. Usually you however do have some information.
Note that we essentially do this for all science, in that we tend to accept the scientific consensus.
That’s only true for fields that are studied enough for there to be an evidence based scientific consensus.
A lot of things get ignored by scientists because you don’t get funding for studying the topic. Xrisk would be a good example. FHI finds it hard to raise money via the traditional way for the subject.
It works through empirical investigation. It doesn’t do much prior to empirical investigation.
As a heuristic, I suspect ignoring things ignored by most scientists will actually work pretty well for you. Its not an unreasonable assumption to say that “given no other information, the majority of scientists dismissing a subject lowers my probability that that subject has any grounding”. Thats a sensible thing to do, and does indeed use a simple Bayesian logic.
Note that we essentially do this for all science, in that we tend to accept the scientific consensus. We can’t be subject specialists in everything, so while we can do a bit of reading, its probably fine to just think: what most scientists think is probably the closest to correct I am capable of being without further study.
If you don’t have any information then that might be true. Usually you however do have some information.
That’s only true for fields that are studied enough for there to be an evidence based scientific consensus.
There is an interesting exception—if you are scientist yourself.
Bayseian calculation doesn’t work on “a lot”, it works on the odds, and the odds are much lower for such things.