The question is whether this makes NOBODY justified in having an opinion, or whether some opinion-havers (or opinions themselves) are justified is the difficult part. Your post seems to imply that “experts” exist, but eveyone else is ignoring them.
I’m agnostic on the question of whether experts are justified in having confident opinions here. I don’t know enough to be able to tell. The (attempted) focus of our conversation was on whether non-experts are justified. Relevant excerpt:
Too complex for anyone to figure out? Or just for most people to? Who can figure it out?
I am not sure what to think about any of those questions. It feels analogous my opinions about Disputed Question in the field of zoology. I don’t know much about the field of zoology, and so I don’t really know how much expertise it takes to justifiably have a strong opinion.
Similarly, I don’t know much about fields like geopolitics and international relations to have a sense of how much expertise it’d take to justifiably have a strong opinion about the war in Gaza, or how rare it is to have the requisite amount of expertise.
I’m also unsure whether “justified” matters in a lot of these cases. Especially when it’s not clear how to justify nor to whom, on topics where there is no authority to determine which opinions are correct.
I mean “justified” in a Bayesian sense. Like, given what data you have, is it justifiable to update to the stated position (posteriors)?
Ok, I think I see. On some level, I even agree. I don’t have high confidence in any opinion on the topic, including my own. In a Bayesian sense, it wouldn’t take much evidence to move my opinion. But (and this is stronger than just conservation of expected evidence—it’s not about direction, but about strength) I don’t think anyone will GET strong evidence about what actions COULD be successful.
I agree with you that all of the casual debate (I know nothing of what military or State Department leaders are thinking; they’re pretty rational in being quiet rather than public) is fairly meaningless signaling and over-fitting of topics into their preferred conflict models. I disagree that there’s a good alternative, and I’m not sure if you think people should just shut up or if there are good opinions they should weigh more heavily. I get value from the (stupid and object-level useless) discussion and posting, in that it shows people’s priors and models more clearly than otherwise.
I don’t think anyone will GET strong evidence about what actions COULD be successful.
Seems plausible.
I disagree that there’s a good alternative, and I’m not sure if you think people should just shut up or if there are good opinions they should weigh more heavily. I get value from the (stupid and object-level useless) discussion and posting, in that it shows people’s priors and models more clearly than otherwise.
I think that it is definitely ok for people to talk about their models and opinions. I agree that getting a sense of peoples models and priors is often useful. And I think that some opinions are better than others and should be valued more heavily, even when none of them are particularly accurate.
I’m agnostic on the question of whether experts are justified in having confident opinions here. I don’t know enough to be able to tell. The (attempted) focus of our conversation was on whether non-experts are justified. Relevant excerpt:
I mean “justified” in a Bayesian sense. Like, given what data you have, is it justifiable to update to the stated position (posteriors)?
Ok, I think I see. On some level, I even agree. I don’t have high confidence in any opinion on the topic, including my own. In a Bayesian sense, it wouldn’t take much evidence to move my opinion. But (and this is stronger than just conservation of expected evidence—it’s not about direction, but about strength) I don’t think anyone will GET strong evidence about what actions COULD be successful.
I agree with you that all of the casual debate (I know nothing of what military or State Department leaders are thinking; they’re pretty rational in being quiet rather than public) is fairly meaningless signaling and over-fitting of topics into their preferred conflict models. I disagree that there’s a good alternative, and I’m not sure if you think people should just shut up or if there are good opinions they should weigh more heavily. I get value from the (stupid and object-level useless) discussion and posting, in that it shows people’s priors and models more clearly than otherwise.
Seems plausible.
I think that it is definitely ok for people to talk about their models and opinions. I agree that getting a sense of peoples models and priors is often useful. And I think that some opinions are better than others and should be valued more heavily, even when none of them are particularly accurate.