Throwing books at someone is generally known as “courtier’s reply”.
The issue here also is Brandolini’s law:
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
The problem with the “courtier’s reply” is you could always appeal to it, even if Scott Aaronson is trying to explain something about quantum mechanics to you, and you need some background (found in references 1, 2, and 3) to understand what he is saying.
There is a type 1 / type 2 error tradeoff here. Ignoring legit expert advice is bad, but being cowed by an idiot throwing references at you is also bad.
As usual with tradeoffs like these, one has to decide on a policy that is willing to tolerate some of one type of error to keep the error you care about to some desired level.
I think a good heuristic for deciding who is an expert and who is an idiot with references is credentialism. But credentialism has a bad brand here, due to a “love affair with amateurism” LW has. One of the consequences of this love affair is a lot of folks here make the above trade off badly (in particular they ignore legit advice to read way too frequently).
Here’s a tricky example of judging authority (credentials). You say listen to SA about QM. Presumably also listen to David Deutsch (DD), who knows more about QM than SA does. But what about me? I have talked with DD about QM and other issues at great length and I have a very accurate understanding of what things I cay say about QM (and other matters) that are what DD would say, and when I don’t know something or disagree with DD. (I have done things like debate physics, with physicists, many times, while being advised by DD and him checking all my statements so I find out when I have his views right or not.) So my claims about QM are about as good as DD’s, when I make them – and are therefore even better than SA’s, even though I’m not a physicist. Sorta, not exactly. Credentials are complicated and such a bad way to judge ideas.
What I find most people do is decide what they want to believe or listen to first, and then find an expert who says it second. So if someone doesn’t want to listen, credentials won’t help, they’ll just find some credentials that go the other way. DD has had the same experience repeatedly – people aren’t persuaded due to his credentials. That’s one of the main reasons I’m here instead of DD – his credentials wouldn’t actually help with getting people here to listen/understand. And, as I’ve been demonstrating and DD and I already knew, arguments aren’t very effective here either (just like elsewhere).
And I, btw, didn’t take things on authority from DD – I asked questions and brought up doubts and counter-arguments. His credentials didn’t matter to me, but his arguments did. Which is why he liked talking with me!
you’re mean and disruptive. at least you’re demonstrating why credentials are a terrible way to address things, which is my point. you just assume the status of various credentials without being willing to think about them, let alone debate them (using more credentials (regress), or perhaps arguments? but if arguments, why not just use those in the first place?). so for you, like most people, using credentials = using bias.
you just assume the status of various credentials without being willing to think about them
Am I? Please demonstrate.
using credentials = using bias
What do you mean by bias? In statistics bias is one of those things you trade off against other things (like variance). Being unbiased is not always optimal.
Yeah, credentials are a poor way of judging things. But that first paragraph doesn’t show remotely what you think it does.
Some of David Deutsch’s credentials that establish him as a credible authority on quantum mechanics: He is a physics professor at a leading university, a Fellow of the Royal Society, is widely recognized as a founder of the field of quantum computation, and has won some big-name prizes awarded to eminent scientists.
Your credentials as a credible authority on quantum mechanics: You assure us that you’ve talked a lot with David Deutsch and learned a lot from him about quantum mechanics.
This is not how credentials work. Leaving aside what useful information (if any) they impart: when it comes to quantum mechanics, David Deutsch has credentials and you don’t.
It’s not clear to me what argument you’re actually making in that first paragraph. But it seems to begin with the claim that you have good credentials when it comes to quantum mechanics for the reasons you recite there, and that’s flatly untrue.
Yeah, credentials are a poor way of judging things.
They are not, though. It’s standard “what LW calls ‘Bayes’ and what I call ‘reasoning under uncertainty’”—you condition on things associated with the outcome, since those things carry information. Outcome (O) -- having a clue, thing (C) -- credential. p(O | C) > p(O), so your credence in O should be computed after conditioning on C, on pain of irrationality. Specifically, the type of irrationality where you leave information on the table.
You might say “oh, I heard about how argument screens authority.” This is actually not true though, even by “LW Bayesian” lights, because you can never be certain you got the argument right (or the presumed authority got the argument right). It also assumes there are no other paths from C to O except through argument, which isn’t true.
It is a foundational thing you do when reasoning under uncertainty to condition on everything that carries information. The more informative the thing, the worse it is not to condition on it. This is not a novel crazy thing I am proposing, this is bog standard.
The way the treatment of credentialism seems to work in practice on LW is a reflexive rejection of “experts” writ large, except for an explicitly enumerated subset (perhaps ones EY or other “recognized community thought leaders” liked).
This is a part of community DNA, starting with EY’s stuff, and Luke’s “philosophy is a diseased discipline.”
Actually, I somewhat agree, but being an agreeable sort of chap I’m willing to concede things arguendo when there’s no compelling reason to do otherwise :-), which is why I said “Yeah, credentials are a poor way of judging things” rather than hedging more.
More precisely: I think credentials very much can give you useful information, and I agree with you that argument does not perfectly screen off authority. On the other hand, I agree with prevailing LW culture (perhaps with you too) that credentials typically give you very imperfect information and that argument does somewhat screen off authority. And I suggest that how much credentials tell you may vary a great deal by discipline and by type of credentials. Example: the Pope has, by definition, excellent credentials of a certain kind. But I don’t consider him an authority on whether any sort of gods exist because I think the process that gave him the credentials he has isn’t sufficiently responsive to that question. (On the other hand, that process is highly responsive to what Catholic doctrine is and I would consider the Pope a very good authority on that topic even if he didn’t have the ability for control that doctrine as well as reporting it.)
It seems to me that e.g. physics has norms that tie its credentials pretty well (though not perfectly) to actual understanding and knowledge; that philosophy doesn’t do this so well; that theology does it worse; that homeopathy does it worse still. (This isn’t just about the moral or cognitive excellence of the disciplines in question; it’s also that it’s harder to tell whether someone’s any good or not in some fields than in others.)
I guess the way I would slice disciplines is like this:
(a) Makes empirical claims (credences change with evidence, or falsifiable, or [however you want to define this]), or has universally agreed rules for telling good from bad (mathematics, theoretical parts of fields, etc.)
(b) Does not make empirical claims, and has no universally agreed rules for telling good from bad.
Some philosophy is in (a) and some in (b). Most statistics is in (a), for example.
Re: (a), most folks would need a lot of study to evaluate claims, typically at the graduate level. So the best thing to do is get the lay of the land by asking experts. Experts may disagree, of course, which is valuable information.
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
i think this is false, and is an indication of using the wrong methods to refute bullshit – the right methods reuse refutations of categories of bad ideas. do you have some comprehensive argument that it must be true?
i find it disturbing how much people here are in favor of judging ideas by sources instead of content – credentialism. that’s pretty pure irrationality. also debating which credentials are worth how much is a bad way to approach discussions, but it’s totally non-obvious and controversial which credentials are how good even for standard credentials like PhDs from different universities.
(in particular they ignore legit advice to read way too frequently)
The context matters. If you are trying to figure out how X actually works you probably should go read or at least scan the relevant books even if no one is throwing references at you. On the other hand, if you’re just procrastinating by engaging in a Yet Another Internet Argument with zero consequences for your life, going off to read the references is just a bigger waste of time.
The issue here also is Brandolini’s law:
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
The problem with the “courtier’s reply” is you could always appeal to it, even if Scott Aaronson is trying to explain something about quantum mechanics to you, and you need some background (found in references 1, 2, and 3) to understand what he is saying.
There is a type 1 / type 2 error tradeoff here. Ignoring legit expert advice is bad, but being cowed by an idiot throwing references at you is also bad.
As usual with tradeoffs like these, one has to decide on a policy that is willing to tolerate some of one type of error to keep the error you care about to some desired level.
I think a good heuristic for deciding who is an expert and who is an idiot with references is credentialism. But credentialism has a bad brand here, due to a “love affair with amateurism” LW has. One of the consequences of this love affair is a lot of folks here make the above trade off badly (in particular they ignore legit advice to read way too frequently).
Here’s a tricky example of judging authority (credentials). You say listen to SA about QM. Presumably also listen to David Deutsch (DD), who knows more about QM than SA does. But what about me? I have talked with DD about QM and other issues at great length and I have a very accurate understanding of what things I cay say about QM (and other matters) that are what DD would say, and when I don’t know something or disagree with DD. (I have done things like debate physics, with physicists, many times, while being advised by DD and him checking all my statements so I find out when I have his views right or not.) So my claims about QM are about as good as DD’s, when I make them – and are therefore even better than SA’s, even though I’m not a physicist. Sorta, not exactly. Credentials are complicated and such a bad way to judge ideas.
What I find most people do is decide what they want to believe or listen to first, and then find an expert who says it second. So if someone doesn’t want to listen, credentials won’t help, they’ll just find some credentials that go the other way. DD has had the same experience repeatedly – people aren’t persuaded due to his credentials. That’s one of the main reasons I’m here instead of DD – his credentials wouldn’t actually help with getting people here to listen/understand. And, as I’ve been demonstrating and DD and I already knew, arguments aren’t very effective here either (just like elsewhere).
And I, btw, didn’t take things on authority from DD – I asked questions and brought up doubts and counter-arguments. His credentials didn’t matter to me, but his arguments did. Which is why he liked talking with me!
ROFL
And here I was, completely at loss as to why David Deutsch doesn’t hang out at LW… But now we know.
you’re mean and disruptive. at least you’re demonstrating why credentials are a terrible way to address things, which is my point. you just assume the status of various credentials without being willing to think about them, let alone debate them (using more credentials (regress), or perhaps arguments? but if arguments, why not just use those in the first place?). so for you, like most people, using credentials = using bias.
Woo, kindergarten flashbacks!
Am I? Please demonstrate.
What do you mean by bias? In statistics bias is one of those things you trade off against other things (like variance). Being unbiased is not always optimal.
Yeah, credentials are a poor way of judging things. But that first paragraph doesn’t show remotely what you think it does.
Some of David Deutsch’s credentials that establish him as a credible authority on quantum mechanics: He is a physics professor at a leading university, a Fellow of the Royal Society, is widely recognized as a founder of the field of quantum computation, and has won some big-name prizes awarded to eminent scientists.
Your credentials as a credible authority on quantum mechanics: You assure us that you’ve talked a lot with David Deutsch and learned a lot from him about quantum mechanics.
This is not how credentials work. Leaving aside what useful information (if any) they impart: when it comes to quantum mechanics, David Deutsch has credentials and you don’t.
It’s not clear to me what argument you’re actually making in that first paragraph. But it seems to begin with the claim that you have good credentials when it comes to quantum mechanics for the reasons you recite there, and that’s flatly untrue.
They are not, though. It’s standard “what LW calls ‘Bayes’ and what I call ‘reasoning under uncertainty’”—you condition on things associated with the outcome, since those things carry information. Outcome (O) -- having a clue, thing (C) -- credential. p(O | C) > p(O), so your credence in O should be computed after conditioning on C, on pain of irrationality. Specifically, the type of irrationality where you leave information on the table.
You might say “oh, I heard about how argument screens authority.” This is actually not true though, even by “LW Bayesian” lights, because you can never be certain you got the argument right (or the presumed authority got the argument right). It also assumes there are no other paths from C to O except through argument, which isn’t true.
It is a foundational thing you do when reasoning under uncertainty to condition on everything that carries information. The more informative the thing, the worse it is not to condition on it. This is not a novel crazy thing I am proposing, this is bog standard.
The way the treatment of credentialism seems to work in practice on LW is a reflexive rejection of “experts” writ large, except for an explicitly enumerated subset (perhaps ones EY or other “recognized community thought leaders” liked).
This is a part of community DNA, starting with EY’s stuff, and Luke’s “philosophy is a diseased discipline.”
That is crazy.
Actually, I somewhat agree, but being an agreeable sort of chap I’m willing to concede things arguendo when there’s no compelling reason to do otherwise :-), which is why I said “Yeah, credentials are a poor way of judging things” rather than hedging more.
More precisely: I think credentials very much can give you useful information, and I agree with you that argument does not perfectly screen off authority. On the other hand, I agree with prevailing LW culture (perhaps with you too) that credentials typically give you very imperfect information and that argument does somewhat screen off authority. And I suggest that how much credentials tell you may vary a great deal by discipline and by type of credentials. Example: the Pope has, by definition, excellent credentials of a certain kind. But I don’t consider him an authority on whether any sort of gods exist because I think the process that gave him the credentials he has isn’t sufficiently responsive to that question. (On the other hand, that process is highly responsive to what Catholic doctrine is and I would consider the Pope a very good authority on that topic even if he didn’t have the ability for control that doctrine as well as reporting it.)
It seems to me that e.g. physics has norms that tie its credentials pretty well (though not perfectly) to actual understanding and knowledge; that philosophy doesn’t do this so well; that theology does it worse; that homeopathy does it worse still. (This isn’t just about the moral or cognitive excellence of the disciplines in question; it’s also that it’s harder to tell whether someone’s any good or not in some fields than in others.)
I guess the way I would slice disciplines is like this:
(a) Makes empirical claims (credences change with evidence, or falsifiable, or [however you want to define this]), or has universally agreed rules for telling good from bad (mathematics, theoretical parts of fields, etc.)
(b) Does not make empirical claims, and has no universally agreed rules for telling good from bad.
Some philosophy is in (a) and some in (b). Most statistics is in (a), for example.
Re: (a), most folks would need a lot of study to evaluate claims, typically at the graduate level. So the best thing to do is get the lay of the land by asking experts. Experts may disagree, of course, which is valuable information.
Re: (b), why are we talking about (b) at all?
i think this is false, and is an indication of using the wrong methods to refute bullshit – the right methods reuse refutations of categories of bad ideas. do you have some comprehensive argument that it must be true?
i find it disturbing how much people here are in favor of judging ideas by sources instead of content – credentialism. that’s pretty pure irrationality. also debating which credentials are worth how much is a bad way to approach discussions, but it’s totally non-obvious and controversial which credentials are how good even for standard credentials like PhDs from different universities.
Is English your first language?
The context matters. If you are trying to figure out how X actually works you probably should go read or at least scan the relevant books even if no one is throwing references at you. On the other hand, if you’re just procrastinating by engaging in a Yet Another Internet Argument with zero consequences for your life, going off to read the references is just a bigger waste of time.