What is the empirical track record of your suggested epistemological strategy, relative to Bayesian rationalism? Where does your confidence come from that it would work any better? Every time I see suggestions of epistemological humility, I think to myself stuff like this:
What predictions would this strategy have made about future technologies, like an 1890 or 1900 prediction of the airplane (vs. first controlled flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903), or a 1930 or 1937 prediction of nuclear bombs? Doesn’t your strategy just say that all these weird-sounding technologies don’t exist yet and are probably impossible?
Can this epistemological strategy correctly predict that present-day huge complex machines like airplanes can exist? They consist of millions of parts and require contributions of thousands or tens of thousand of people. Each part has a chance of being defective, and each person has a chance of making a mistake. Without the benefit of knowing that airplanes do indeed exist, doesn’t it sound overconfident to predict that parts have an error rate of <1 in a million, or that people have an error rate of <1 in a thousand? But then the math says that airplanes can’t exist, or should immediately crash.
Or to rephrase point 2 to reply to this part: “That will push P(doom) lower because most frames from most disciplines, and most styles of reasoning, don’t predict doom.” — Can your epistemological strategy even correctly make any predictions of near 100% certainty? I concur with habryka that most frames don’t make any predictions on most things. And yet this doesn’t mean that some events aren’t ~100% certain.
What is the empirical track record of your suggested epistemological strategy, relative to Bayesian rationalism? Where does your confidence come from that it would work any better? Every time I see suggestions of epistemological humility, I think to myself stuff like this:
What predictions would this strategy have made about future technologies, like an 1890 or 1900 prediction of the airplane (vs. first controlled flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903), or a 1930 or 1937 prediction of nuclear bombs? Doesn’t your strategy just say that all these weird-sounding technologies don’t exist yet and are probably impossible?
Can this epistemological strategy correctly predict that present-day huge complex machines like airplanes can exist? They consist of millions of parts and require contributions of thousands or tens of thousand of people. Each part has a chance of being defective, and each person has a chance of making a mistake. Without the benefit of knowing that airplanes do indeed exist, doesn’t it sound overconfident to predict that parts have an error rate of <1 in a million, or that people have an error rate of <1 in a thousand? But then the math says that airplanes can’t exist, or should immediately crash.
Or to rephrase point 2 to reply to this part: “That will push P(doom) lower because most frames from most disciplines, and most styles of reasoning, don’t predict doom.” — Can your epistemological strategy even correctly make any predictions of near 100% certainty? I concur with habryka that most frames don’t make any predictions on most things. And yet this doesn’t mean that some events aren’t ~100% certain.