I don’t have any experience with actual situations where this could be relevant, but it does feel like you’re overly focusing on the failure case where everyone is borderline incompetent and doing arbitrary things (which of course happens on less wrong sometimes, since the variation here is quite large!).
There’s clearly a huge upside to being able to spot when you’re trying to do something that’s impossible for theoretical reasons, and being extra sceptical in these situations. (E.g. someone trying to construct a perpetual motion machine). I’m open to the argument that there’s a lot to be wished for in the way people in practice apply these things.
I don’t have any experience with actual situations where this could be relevant, but it does feel like you’re overly focusing on the failure case where everyone is borderline incompetent and doing arbitrary things (which of course happens on less wrong sometimes, since the variation here is quite large!). There’s clearly a huge upside to being able to spot when you’re trying to do something that’s impossible for theoretical reasons, and being extra sceptical in these situations. (E.g. someone trying to construct a perpetual motion machine). I’m open to the argument that there’s a lot to be wished for in the way people in practice apply these things.