“More specifically, says my Inner Eliezer, it is less helpful to reason from or about one’s priors about really smart, careful-thinking people making or not making mistakes, and much more helpful to think directly about the object-level arguments, and whether they seem true.”
When you say it’s much more helpful, do you mean it’s helpful for (a) forming accurate credences about which side is in fact correct, or do you just mean it’s helpful for (b) getting a much deeper understanding of the issues? If (b) then I totally agree. If (a) though, why would I expect myself to achieve a more accurate credence about the true state of affairs than any of the people in this argument? If it’s because they’ve stated their arguments for all the world to see so now anybody can go assess those arguments—why should I think I can better assess those arguments than Eliezer and his interlocutors? They clearly still disagree with each other despite reading all the same things I’m reading (and much more, actually). And add to that the fact that Eliezer is essentially saying in these dialogues that he has private reasoning and arguments that he cannot properly express and nobody seems to understand, in which case we have no choice but to do a secondary assessment of how likely he is to have good arguments of that type, or else to form our credences while completely ignoring the possible existence of a very critical argument in one direction.
Sometimes assessments of the argument maker’s cognitive abilities and access to relevant knowledge / expertise is in fact the best way to get the most accurate credence you can, even if it’s not ideal.
(This is all just repeating standard arguments in favor of modest epistemology, but still.)
“More specifically, says my Inner Eliezer, it is less helpful to reason from or about one’s priors about really smart, careful-thinking people making or not making mistakes, and much more helpful to think directly about the object-level arguments, and whether they seem true.”
When you say it’s much more helpful, do you mean it’s helpful for (a) forming accurate credences about which side is in fact correct, or do you just mean it’s helpful for (b) getting a much deeper understanding of the issues? If (b) then I totally agree. If (a) though, why would I expect myself to achieve a more accurate credence about the true state of affairs than any of the people in this argument? If it’s because they’ve stated their arguments for all the world to see so now anybody can go assess those arguments—why should I think I can better assess those arguments than Eliezer and his interlocutors? They clearly still disagree with each other despite reading all the same things I’m reading (and much more, actually). And add to that the fact that Eliezer is essentially saying in these dialogues that he has private reasoning and arguments that he cannot properly express and nobody seems to understand, in which case we have no choice but to do a secondary assessment of how likely he is to have good arguments of that type, or else to form our credences while completely ignoring the possible existence of a very critical argument in one direction.
Sometimes assessments of the argument maker’s cognitive abilities and access to relevant knowledge / expertise is in fact the best way to get the most accurate credence you can, even if it’s not ideal.
(This is all just repeating standard arguments in favor of modest epistemology, but still.)