But after seeing many examples of the power of empirical evidence (and more specifically, the power of advance predictions), why wouldn’t they update towards empirical evidence being a powerful way to identify the truth, without enshrining it as the only way to identify the truth?
There is one non-empirical of identifying truth that reliably works: formal proof. Mathematics is built on this, and it is similarly impressive to empirical sciences.
Why do we need the iron rule to create a dramatic contest, rather than just competing to find any type of compelling evidence? (...) In other words, Strevens’ proposal of science-as-competition works almost as well without the iron rule, as long as scientists reward progress towards truth in an unbiased way.
If we’re basing a competition on this, then asking scientists to “reward progress towards truth in an unbiased way” is a really big ask, because everyone who’s working in a field is going to have interests that will make them biased (regardless of whether this takes the shape of machiavellian reasoning or self-serving cognitive biases).
So here’s one take on this: Most sources of evidence are so fuzzy and intuition-based that you can’t trust people to apply them fairly. If someone rewards/punishes a certain fuzzy evidential move, you can’t tell if they’re doing it for truth-seeking or self-serving purposes. But advanced prediction and formal proofs are so clear and unambiguous that you can enforce community norms around applying them pretty fairly.
Contrasting this with your explanation: The issue isn’t that people overestimate the value of non-empirical evidence. It’s that evaluation of non-empirical (and unformalized) evidence is so ambiguous that you can’t hope to rely on them in a community setting with many non-epistemic interests. (Or so goes the hypothesis.)
There is one non-empirical of identifying truth that reliably works: formal proof. Mathematics is built on this, and it is similarly impressive to empirical sciences.
If we’re basing a competition on this, then asking scientists to “reward progress towards truth in an unbiased way” is a really big ask, because everyone who’s working in a field is going to have interests that will make them biased (regardless of whether this takes the shape of machiavellian reasoning or self-serving cognitive biases).
So here’s one take on this: Most sources of evidence are so fuzzy and intuition-based that you can’t trust people to apply them fairly. If someone rewards/punishes a certain fuzzy evidential move, you can’t tell if they’re doing it for truth-seeking or self-serving purposes. But advanced prediction and formal proofs are so clear and unambiguous that you can enforce community norms around applying them pretty fairly.
Contrasting this with your explanation: The issue isn’t that people overestimate the value of non-empirical evidence. It’s that evaluation of non-empirical (and unformalized) evidence is so ambiguous that you can’t hope to rely on them in a community setting with many non-epistemic interests. (Or so goes the hypothesis.)