The paper I’m thinking of is more about the differences in knowledge on the order of: (a) there’s a single, cheap, known fix for your problem, so you should just do x (because we know (almost) exactly what the problem is and know how to solve it, ‘mechanically’; versus (b) here’s a guideline (because we don’t really know what the problem is, in detail, or specifically).
I checked the comments on that post and no one seems to have linked to the paper I’m remembering. I wouldn’t be surprised that it’s linked in comments on another post on SSC tho as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen links to it on this site (or maybe Overcoming Bias, before Eliezer stopped blogging there, long ago).
There’s a post on SSC that sounds a little like that:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/12/recommendations-vs-guidelines/
Thanks for the link!
The paper I’m thinking of is more about the differences in knowledge on the order of: (a) there’s a single, cheap, known fix for your problem, so you should just do x (because we know (almost) exactly what the problem is and know how to solve it, ‘mechanically’; versus (b) here’s a guideline (because we don’t really know what the problem is, in detail, or specifically).
I checked the comments on that post and no one seems to have linked to the paper I’m remembering. I wouldn’t be surprised that it’s linked in comments on another post on SSC tho as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen links to it on this site (or maybe Overcoming Bias, before Eliezer stopped blogging there, long ago).