Possible answer: “Sure, it’s individually rational for you to devote your energy to Getting Out The Vote instead of donating to charity, but the group-level rational thing for people to do is to donate to charity, rather than playing tug-o’-war against each other.”
Ugh, yeah, maybe. I see the point of this sort of… double-think… but I’ve never been fully comfortable with it. It sounds like this argument is saying “Hey, you put yourself at a 60% probability of being right, but actually, Outside View, it should be much smaller, like 51%.” But, buddy, the 60% is already me trying to take the outside view! My inside view is that it’s more like 95%!
It sounds like down this path lies a discussion around how overconfident I should expect my brain to be (and therefore how hard I should correct for that). Which is important, sure, but also, ugh.
Possible answer: “Sure, it’s individually rational for you to devote your energy to Getting Out The Vote instead of donating to charity, but the group-level rational thing for people to do is to donate to charity, rather than playing tug-o’-war against each other.”
Ugh, yeah, maybe. I see the point of this sort of… double-think… but I’ve never been fully comfortable with it. It sounds like this argument is saying “Hey, you put yourself at a 60% probability of being right, but actually, Outside View, it should be much smaller, like 51%.” But, buddy, the 60% is already me trying to take the outside view! My inside view is that it’s more like 95%!
It sounds like down this path lies a discussion around how overconfident I should expect my brain to be (and therefore how hard I should correct for that). Which is important, sure, but also, ugh.