First: check whether the issue is really important: With some exceptions (voting correctly, believing the correct afterlife and not getting sent to hell) If you aren’t in a position to interact with the evidence it’s probably not something you meaningfully have control over. (Most things for which it is important for you to personally understand have measurable consequences to you. Why do you need the right answer to the GMO question, what would you even do with the right answer?).
Then:
-Figure out exactly what the claims really are and try not to conflate different claims (GMOs will do what, exactly?)
-Consider the possibility that the entire premise is silly (“Is God one or trinity?” “Is she a witch?”) and the “consensus” is just wrong and the debate is insane. Generate some plausible third options.
-Check if the two hypotheses seem by your perception to be of roughly equal parsimony, internal logical consistency, and compliance with known evidence, and also check the third options you generated.
-Ask the basic “so, what evidence would you need to tell the difference” questions.
-all the things you mentioned (weigh expert opinions, eliminate bad arguments, eliminate experts who use bad arguments)
-look for concrete predictable things in that area, and adjacent to that area which differ according to the two hypotheses.
-If it’s a political issue, try to find out what people who might plausibly be expertish in the area yet don’t seem to be invested in debating the issue think about it.
-check what known superforcasters in the field think (people who have a track record of successful predictions in that area). Superforecasters need not actually be loudly engaging with the issue, just ask.
-check if people who have different types of knowledge tend to say different things (e.g. economists vs. sociologists)
-What sorts of knowledge would you need to have to answer the question vs. what sorts of knowledge do the experts in question actually have? (You might think medical doctors are qualified to talk about the effectiveness and safety of various treatments, for example, but they aren’t. You want a medical researcher for that. The only difference between a medical doctor and a witch doctor is that one was trained by a curriculum developed by medical researchers and the other wasn’t.)
-check for founder effects or cultural effects biasing beliefs (Again, economists vs sociologists. Also, if theologians believe in god at higher rate than biologists it might not be because of different knowledge)
What else? I mean it’s a big question, you’ve asked after a fairly big chunk of “rationality” there.
Point #2 is a big important point. The media does not select relevant issues, they chose issues that play well to the public. Sometimes these overlap, but often they do not. GMO is a good example, because it is reported as monolithically important, but each genetic modification has to be considered individually; considering GMOs as a unified group is not very useful. Likewise, if you are interested in health and nutrition, you should also look for vegetables that are grown to be nutritious, which includes many GMO but not others: many plants are modified to look better, not be healthier; but many plants are modified to be more nutritious, not look better; etc. Moreover, you can also get some benefit in nutrition by ignoring the GMO debate and looking at things like soil health (organic works as a vague proxy for this, but again, ‘organic’ is a media chosen label, and so is touted as Very Relevant In Every Way and also does not limit itself to soil health) or time-since-harvest (locally grown, proxy, media pollution, etc.)
Thanks, Ishaan. That was a lot of good directions to come at this from.
I especially found a few of them novel ways to eke out more confidence from an insulated problem:
If it’s a political issue, try to find out what people who might plausibly be expertish in the area yet don’t seem to be invested in debating the issue think about it.
check what known superforecasters in the field think (people who have a track record of successful predictions in that area). Superforecasters need not actually be loudly engaging with the issue, just ask.
check if people who have different types of knowledge tend to say different things (e.g. economists vs. sociologists)
I’ll try to remember those for questions like this in the future.
Furthermore, notion that you raise struck me:
Most things for which it is important for you to personally understand have measurable consequences to you. Why do you need the right answer to the GMO question, what would you even do with the right answer?
I suppose I’ve never really considered why I wanted the right answer to a question, I suppose I ascribe a relatively high weight to “understand things” in my utility function. That said, thinking about it from the angle of “What would I do with the right answer”: In this case, I would do is embrace/avoid GMO foods for my personal health and safety, vote to label/not-label/ban/regulate GMO, and argue for others to do the same.
Isn’t that the ideal of a democratic system: an informed populace vigorously contesting in the marketplace of ideas?
Yes, that is the ideal, and it’s true that the three consequences you mention are positive consequences (Assuming more effort makes you more likely to arrive at correct answers, which it usually does although I imagine there are diminishing returns past a certain point—you might notice a lot of very smart people putting a lot of effort into politics and still disagreeing.)
The thing is you must weigh information-gathering and evaluation concerning GMOs against every other possible action you could take with those resources.
Let’s focus on the goal which most plausibly requires understanding GMO
for my personal health and safety
Well, let me tell you how i went about researching my personal health and safety:
I researched which foods to eat in general (My conclusions—eat mostly vegetables, meat (try for organ meats and fish), fruits with an overall high fat, low carbohydrate macro-nutrient ratio, avoid vegetable/seed oil, grains. So, in one word, paleolithic. These conclusions are very controversial and I suspect I put in way more effort into researching it than was rationally justified.)
I researched the best way to exercise and learned the techniques (Conclusions: You need to run occasionally and you need to fain flexibility and technique for basic barbell exercises: squat, row, bench, overhead press, etc. I am pretty happy about the time I invested into researching these.)
I’ve put moderate effort into researching basic pesticide avoidance (there are lists of highest pesticide foods you can avoid buying), ethical meat sourcing, and ecologically sustainable fish sourcing. Ultimately I’ve put very little effort into this relative to the first two.)
I’ve skimmed examine.com for potentially helpful supplements (Conclusions: Fish oil, Vit D, Vit K2magnesium (ZMA, don’t use MgO it’s not bioavailable. I probably spent too much time on this.)
GMOs are pretty far down on this list of things which I think are probably important. I haven’t really gotten to them yet.
Do you see where the prioritization issue comes in here? And that’s when your personal health is the main goal. The chance that GMO is high on the priority list in the genre of public dietary health, is in my mind, pretty minuscule. If you narrow your specialization to “regulatory mechanisms concerning food”, then it’ll be worth studying GMOs as one of the branches in your knowledge tree, but probably not before you’ve studied broad stuff about regulatory mechanisms first. (as I understand it, GMOs are not a monolithic thing so it’s more interesting to study start with general stuff about how innovations in food are handled, etc).
You don’t necessarily need to agree with me about prioritization, but you should spend some time thinking about prioritization.
I suppose I ascribe a relatively high weight to “understand things” in my utility function
Of course, we all do. But there is a whole world of things, so, which things, and why? Information due to purely Intrinsic interest is malleable
First: check whether the issue is really important: With some exceptions (voting correctly, believing the correct afterlife and not getting sent to hell) If you aren’t in a position to interact with the evidence it’s probably not something you meaningfully have control over. (Most things for which it is important for you to personally understand have measurable consequences to you. Why do you need the right answer to the GMO question, what would you even do with the right answer?).
Then:
-Figure out exactly what the claims really are and try not to conflate different claims (GMOs will do what, exactly?)
-Consider the possibility that the entire premise is silly (“Is God one or trinity?” “Is she a witch?”) and the “consensus” is just wrong and the debate is insane. Generate some plausible third options.
-Check if the two hypotheses seem by your perception to be of roughly equal parsimony, internal logical consistency, and compliance with known evidence, and also check the third options you generated.
-Ask the basic “so, what evidence would you need to tell the difference” questions.
-all the things you mentioned (weigh expert opinions, eliminate bad arguments, eliminate experts who use bad arguments)
-look for concrete predictable things in that area, and adjacent to that area which differ according to the two hypotheses.
-If it’s a political issue, try to find out what people who might plausibly be expertish in the area yet don’t seem to be invested in debating the issue think about it.
-check what known superforcasters in the field think (people who have a track record of successful predictions in that area). Superforecasters need not actually be loudly engaging with the issue, just ask.
-check if people who have different types of knowledge tend to say different things (e.g. economists vs. sociologists)
-What sorts of knowledge would you need to have to answer the question vs. what sorts of knowledge do the experts in question actually have? (You might think medical doctors are qualified to talk about the effectiveness and safety of various treatments, for example, but they aren’t. You want a medical researcher for that. The only difference between a medical doctor and a witch doctor is that one was trained by a curriculum developed by medical researchers and the other wasn’t.)
-check for founder effects or cultural effects biasing beliefs (Again, economists vs sociologists. Also, if theologians believe in god at higher rate than biologists it might not be because of different knowledge)
What else? I mean it’s a big question, you’ve asked after a fairly big chunk of “rationality” there.
Point #2 is a big important point. The media does not select relevant issues, they chose issues that play well to the public. Sometimes these overlap, but often they do not. GMO is a good example, because it is reported as monolithically important, but each genetic modification has to be considered individually; considering GMOs as a unified group is not very useful. Likewise, if you are interested in health and nutrition, you should also look for vegetables that are grown to be nutritious, which includes many GMO but not others: many plants are modified to look better, not be healthier; but many plants are modified to be more nutritious, not look better; etc. Moreover, you can also get some benefit in nutrition by ignoring the GMO debate and looking at things like soil health (organic works as a vague proxy for this, but again, ‘organic’ is a media chosen label, and so is touted as Very Relevant In Every Way and also does not limit itself to soil health) or time-since-harvest (locally grown, proxy, media pollution, etc.)
Thanks, Ishaan. That was a lot of good directions to come at this from.
I especially found a few of them novel ways to eke out more confidence from an insulated problem:
I’ll try to remember those for questions like this in the future.
Furthermore, notion that you raise struck me:
I suppose I’ve never really considered why I wanted the right answer to a question, I suppose I ascribe a relatively high weight to “understand things” in my utility function. That said, thinking about it from the angle of “What would I do with the right answer”: In this case, I would do is embrace/avoid GMO foods for my personal health and safety, vote to label/not-label/ban/regulate GMO, and argue for others to do the same.
Isn’t that the ideal of a democratic system: an informed populace vigorously contesting in the marketplace of ideas?
Yes, that is the ideal, and it’s true that the three consequences you mention are positive consequences (Assuming more effort makes you more likely to arrive at correct answers, which it usually does although I imagine there are diminishing returns past a certain point—you might notice a lot of very smart people putting a lot of effort into politics and still disagreeing.)
The thing is you must weigh information-gathering and evaluation concerning GMOs against every other possible action you could take with those resources.
Let’s focus on the goal which most plausibly requires understanding GMO
Well, let me tell you how i went about researching my personal health and safety:
I researched which foods to eat in general (My conclusions—eat mostly vegetables, meat (try for organ meats and fish), fruits with an overall high fat, low carbohydrate macro-nutrient ratio, avoid vegetable/seed oil, grains. So, in one word, paleolithic. These conclusions are very controversial and I suspect I put in way more effort into researching it than was rationally justified.)
I researched the best way to exercise and learned the techniques (Conclusions: You need to run occasionally and you need to fain flexibility and technique for basic barbell exercises: squat, row, bench, overhead press, etc. I am pretty happy about the time I invested into researching these.)
I’ve put moderate effort into researching basic pesticide avoidance (there are lists of highest pesticide foods you can avoid buying), ethical meat sourcing, and ecologically sustainable fish sourcing. Ultimately I’ve put very little effort into this relative to the first two.)
I’ve skimmed examine.com for potentially helpful supplements (Conclusions: Fish oil, Vit D, Vit K2magnesium (ZMA, don’t use MgO it’s not bioavailable. I probably spent too much time on this.)
GMOs are pretty far down on this list of things which I think are probably important. I haven’t really gotten to them yet.
Do you see where the prioritization issue comes in here? And that’s when your personal health is the main goal. The chance that GMO is high on the priority list in the genre of public dietary health, is in my mind, pretty minuscule. If you narrow your specialization to “regulatory mechanisms concerning food”, then it’ll be worth studying GMOs as one of the branches in your knowledge tree, but probably not before you’ve studied broad stuff about regulatory mechanisms first. (as I understand it, GMOs are not a monolithic thing so it’s more interesting to study start with general stuff about how innovations in food are handled, etc).
You don’t necessarily need to agree with me about prioritization, but you should spend some time thinking about prioritization.
Of course, we all do. But there is a whole world of things, so, which things, and why? Information due to purely Intrinsic interest is malleable