Putting zero weight on the estimates of people or institutions with a track record of misrepresentations seems obvious but also really hard to do, so it’s interesting to see what sort of person can do it anyway, despite substantial social momentum on the other side. Overall, this seems like an extension of the recent Slate Star Codex post about lying on the internet. If lying is cheap and effective, then this level of caution is entirely appropriate.
To give a decision-relevant example, I think this sort of attitude would have long since given up on something like EA as mostly worthless. Is that excessively skeptical?
Putting zero weight on the estimates of people or institutions with a track record of misrepresentations seems obvious
I don’t know about that. How are you going to deal with information coming out of the political establishment, for example? There is an abundant track record of misrepresentations, but if you just discard all of it, you are left with very little.
Or take such an institution as Internet X-D
Plus the OP quite explicitly decided that reversed stupidity is intelligence: “This was how I decided that it was worth staking a bit of credibility on the strong claim that absolutely no material WMD capacity would be found”.
Just out of curiosity, how much work would you expect to complete to look for evidence of WMD (or lack thereof)? I’m sure it’d take more than just a couple of quick phone calls to the CIA, or even a trip to the region itself...
I wouldn’t know, I don’t know the space of evidence in the first place. I guess in hindsight, that question is a little silly, since you can’t know until you know.
What I really wanted to capture was the idea that looking for such evidence seems highly impractical for the average person writing a simple blog. The logistics of going out and finding such evidence doesn’t seem trivial. Unless I’m not particularly creative, I’d at least start by integrating into the military operation there, which can range anywhere from active service to doing some civilian work contract there. Even then, I’d have to know the right people with the right informants, evidence of WMD would likely be sensitive information and even more like be kept under wraps for this reason.
looking for such evidence seems highly impractical for the average person writing a simple blog
Right. Which implies that the average person shouldn’t have a strong opinion on the topic.
Unless she can analyze the publicly-available contradictory information and come to a conclusion (which still shouldn’t be particularly strong because it’s all based on hearsay, essentially).
Putting zero weight on the estimates of people or institutions with a track record of misrepresentations seems obvious but also really hard to do, so it’s interesting to see what sort of person can do it anyway, despite substantial social momentum on the other side. Overall, this seems like an extension of the recent Slate Star Codex post about lying on the internet. If lying is cheap and effective, then this level of caution is entirely appropriate.
To give a decision-relevant example, I think this sort of attitude would have long since given up on something like EA as mostly worthless. Is that excessively skeptical?
I don’t know about that. How are you going to deal with information coming out of the political establishment, for example? There is an abundant track record of misrepresentations, but if you just discard all of it, you are left with very little.
Or take such an institution as Internet X-D
Plus the OP quite explicitly decided that reversed stupidity is intelligence: “This was how I decided that it was worth staking a bit of credibility on the strong claim that absolutely no material WMD capacity would be found”.
Just out of curiosity, how much work would you expect to complete to look for evidence of WMD (or lack thereof)? I’m sure it’d take more than just a couple of quick phone calls to the CIA, or even a trip to the region itself...
How much work for whom to achieve what degree of confidence?
I wouldn’t know, I don’t know the space of evidence in the first place. I guess in hindsight, that question is a little silly, since you can’t know until you know.
What I really wanted to capture was the idea that looking for such evidence seems highly impractical for the average person writing a simple blog. The logistics of going out and finding such evidence doesn’t seem trivial. Unless I’m not particularly creative, I’d at least start by integrating into the military operation there, which can range anywhere from active service to doing some civilian work contract there. Even then, I’d have to know the right people with the right informants, evidence of WMD would likely be sensitive information and even more like be kept under wraps for this reason.
Right. Which implies that the average person shouldn’t have a strong opinion on the topic.
Unless she can analyze the publicly-available contradictory information and come to a conclusion (which still shouldn’t be particularly strong because it’s all based on hearsay, essentially).