I agree that you can make arguments that appeal to people that have a particular intuition and don’t appeal to people that don’t have this intuition. Although it is also possible to point out explicitly that you are relying on this intuition and that convincing the rest would require digging deeper, so to speak. I’m not sure whether the essence of your claim is that people on LW take ill to that kind of arugments?
I admit that I haven’t read the entire “hero licensing” essay but my impression was that is hammering home the same thesis that already appears in “inadequate equilibria”, namely that “epistemic modesty” as often practiced is a product of status games rather than a principle of rationality. But I don’t really understand why you think it’s “a default outcome of the LW epistemic game”. Can you expand?
Yes, the “LW epistemic games” is not perfectly truth-seeking. Nothing that humans do is perfectly truth-seeking. Since (I think) virtually nobody thinks that it is perfectly truth seeking, it’s mostly worth pointing out only inasmuch as you also explain how it is not truth-seeking and in what direction it would have to change in order to become more so.
I agree that you can make arguments that appeal to people that have a particular intuition and don’t appeal to people that don’t have this intuition. Although it is also possible to point out explicitly that you are relying on this intuition and that convincing the rest would require digging deeper, so to speak. I’m not sure whether the essence of your claim is that people on LW take ill to that kind of arugments?
I admit that I haven’t read the entire “hero licensing” essay but my impression was that is hammering home the same thesis that already appears in “inadequate equilibria”, namely that “epistemic modesty” as often practiced is a product of status games rather than a principle of rationality. But I don’t really understand why you think it’s “a default outcome of the LW epistemic game”. Can you expand?
Yes, the “LW epistemic games” is not perfectly truth-seeking. Nothing that humans do is perfectly truth-seeking. Since (I think) virtually nobody thinks that it is perfectly truth seeking, it’s mostly worth pointing out only inasmuch as you also explain how it is not truth-seeking and in what direction it would have to change in order to become more so.