You should practice strong epistemic modesty: On a given issue, adopt the view experts generally hold, instead of the view you personally like.
What if the general view of experts (specifically, experts in the field of epistemics) have the view that at least some people, and perhaps me personally, should not always practice strong epistemic modesty?
Even if you believe that deferring to the specific people above as experts is pathological, suppose we show this post (or the original) to a wider and more diverse group of experts and get their consensus, weighted by our belief about each expert’s epistemic virtue. Suppose the (virtue-weighted) consensus view among a wider class of experts is that strong epistemic modesty is sometimes or generally a bad idea, or misguided in some way. Should we then (under epistemic modesty) be pretty skeptical of epistemic modesty itself?
Note, this is a distinct issue from deciding which experts to trust: I’m assuming there is widespread consensus on how to determine the “all things considered” outside view on the validity /usefulness of epistemic modesty, and then asking: what if that view is that it’s not valid?
Apologies if this sounds like a slightly troll-ish objection, but if so, I remark that calls for epistemic modesty during object-level arguments often have the same sort of troll-ish feeling!
What if the general view of experts (specifically, experts in the field of epistemics) have the view that at least some people, and perhaps me personally, should not always practice strong epistemic modesty
Then you have a paradox...so long as they really are experts!
What if the general view of experts (specifically, experts in the field of epistemics) have the view that at least some people, and perhaps me personally, should not always practice strong epistemic modesty?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/svoD5KLKHyAKEdwPo/against-modest-epistemology
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/
https://mindingourway.com/confidence-all-the-way-up/
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work
Even if you believe that deferring to the specific people above as experts is pathological, suppose we show this post (or the original) to a wider and more diverse group of experts and get their consensus, weighted by our belief about each expert’s epistemic virtue. Suppose the (virtue-weighted) consensus view among a wider class of experts is that strong epistemic modesty is sometimes or generally a bad idea, or misguided in some way. Should we then (under epistemic modesty) be pretty skeptical of epistemic modesty itself?
Note, this is a distinct issue from deciding which experts to trust: I’m assuming there is widespread consensus on how to determine the “all things considered” outside view on the validity /usefulness of epistemic modesty, and then asking: what if that view is that it’s not valid?
Apologies if this sounds like a slightly troll-ish objection, but if so, I remark that calls for epistemic modesty during object-level arguments often have the same sort of troll-ish feeling!
Then you have a paradox...so long as they really are experts!