[SEQ RERUN] Argument Screens Off Authority
Today’s post, Argument Screens Off Authority was originally published on 14 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
There are many cases in which we should take the authority of experts into account, when we decide whether or not to believe their claims. But, if there are technical arguments that are available, these can screen off the authority of experts.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
This and the following one make an interesting counterpoint to Hansonian “outside view” majoritarianism, the thrust of which seems to be “who are you, to think your mere evidence outweighs everyone else’s opinions?”
How fitting that one of the posts I refer to most often happens to have been published on my birthday.
In all seriousness, this is basic Bayesianism, but it is tremendously important. I would like to see more of this type of post here, i.e. the probability-theoretic foundation of the basic rules of logic (and corresponding fallacies) laid out explicitly. My own Inherited Improbabilities falls into this category.