How do you then classify this as a counterexample rather than a “non-central (but still valid) manifestation of the theory”?
My only reply is “You know it when you see it.” And yeah, a crackpot would reason the same way, but non-modest epistemology says that if it’s obvious to you that you’re not a crackpot then you have to operate on the assumption that you’re not a crackpot. (In the alternative scenario, you won’t have much impact anyway.)
Specifically, the situation I mean is the following:
You have an epistemic track record like Eliezer or someone making lots of highly upvoted posts in our communities.
You find yourself having strong intuitions about how to apply powerful principles like “consequentialism” to new domains, and your intuitions are strong because it feels to you like you have a gears-level understanding that others lack. You trust your intuitions in cases like these.
My recommended policy in cases where this applies is “trust your intuitions and operate on the assumption that you’re not a crackpot.”
Maybe there’s a potential crux here about how much of scientific knowledge is dependent on successful predictions. In my view, the sequences have convincingly argued that locating the hypothesis in the first place is often done in the absence of already successful predictions, which goes to show that there’s a core of “good reasoning” that lets you jump to (tentative) conclusions, or at least good guesses, much faster than if you were to try lots of things at random.
My recommended policy in cases where this applies is “trust your intuitions and operate on the assumption that you’re not a crackpot.”
Oh, certainly Eliezer should trust his intuitions and believe that he’s not a crackpot. But I’m not arguing about what the person with the theory should believe, I’m arguing about what outside observers should believe, if they don’t have enough time to fully download and evaluate the relevant intuitions. Asking the person with the theory to give evidence that their intuitions track reality isn’t modest epistemology.
My only reply is “You know it when you see it.” And yeah, a crackpot would reason the same way, but non-modest epistemology says that if it’s obvious to you that you’re not a crackpot then you have to operate on the assumption that you’re not a crackpot. (In the alternative scenario, you won’t have much impact anyway.)
Specifically, the situation I mean is the following:
You have an epistemic track record like Eliezer or someone making lots of highly upvoted posts in our communities.
You find yourself having strong intuitions about how to apply powerful principles like “consequentialism” to new domains, and your intuitions are strong because it feels to you like you have a gears-level understanding that others lack. You trust your intuitions in cases like these.
My recommended policy in cases where this applies is “trust your intuitions and operate on the assumption that you’re not a crackpot.”
Maybe there’s a potential crux here about how much of scientific knowledge is dependent on successful predictions. In my view, the sequences have convincingly argued that locating the hypothesis in the first place is often done in the absence of already successful predictions, which goes to show that there’s a core of “good reasoning” that lets you jump to (tentative) conclusions, or at least good guesses, much faster than if you were to try lots of things at random.
Oh, certainly Eliezer should trust his intuitions and believe that he’s not a crackpot. But I’m not arguing about what the person with the theory should believe, I’m arguing about what outside observers should believe, if they don’t have enough time to fully download and evaluate the relevant intuitions. Asking the person with the theory to give evidence that their intuitions track reality isn’t modest epistemology.