It’s an example of a situation where he did display overconfidence. His introductory presentation of QM is more or less correct, up to some technical details, but things start to fall apart when he moves to interpretations of QM.
Quantum mechanics is conterintuitive, and there are various epistemological interpretations of its fundamental concepts have been developed over the decades. The consensus among most physicists and philosophers of science is that none of them has proved to be clearly superior and in fact it’s not even clear whether the very issue of finding a correct intepretation of QM is even a proper scientific question. Yudkowsky, on the other hand, claimed that by using Bayesian inference, he settled the question, pretty much proving that the many-worlds intepretation is the only correct one. It should be noted that the many-world interpretation is indeed a plausible one and is quite popular among physicists, but most physicists wouldn’t consider it on par with a scientifically justified belief, while EY claimed that MWI is obviously true and everybody who disagrees doesn’t understand probability theory. Furthermore, he ignored or misrepresented the other intepretations, for instance conflating Copenhagen intepretation with the objective collapse intepretations. refref
There are other examples of EY overconfidence, though that is perhaps the most blatant one. Mind you, I’m not saying that the guy is an idiot and you should disregard everything that he wrote. But you should not automaticaly assume that his estimates of his own competence are well calibrated. By the way, this is a general phenomenon, known as Dunning–Kruger effect : people with little competence in a given field tend to overesitmate their own competence.
When someone independently converges with me on many seemingly unrelated topics for which most people do not converge on, I begin to trust their judgement. I begin to take their opinion as evidence that I would have the same opinion, were I presented with the same evidence that they have. When that same person introduces me to cool concepts I haven’t considered and plays a key role in founding a community of people who have all independently converged on my philosophical insights, putting even greater weight on their opinions is the natural and correct reaction.
It is a natural reaction, but in general it can be very much misleading. People naturally tend to exhibit In-group bias and deference to authority. When somebody you respect a lot says something and you are inclined to trust them even if you can’t properly evaluate the claim, you should know where this instinctive reaction comes from and you should be wary.
In addition to those things, I also consider a history of conversations or a reading of someone’s writing as evidence.
The problem is that if you are not a domain expert in a field, it’s difficult to evaluate whether somebody else is a domain expert just by talking to them or reading their writing. You can recognize whether somebody is less competent than you are, but recognizing higher competence is much more difficult without independent objective signals.
Moreover, general intelligence, or even actual expertise in a given field, don’t automatically translate to expertise in another field. For instance, Isaac Newton was a genius and a domain expert in physics. This doesn’t mean that his theological arguments hold any merit.
It’s an example of a situation where he did display overconfidence. His introductory presentation of QM is more or less correct, up to some technical details, but things start to fall apart when he moves to interpretations of QM.
Quantum mechanics is conterintuitive, and there are various epistemological interpretations of its fundamental concepts have been developed over the decades. The consensus among most physicists and philosophers of science is that none of them has proved to be clearly superior and in fact it’s not even clear whether the very issue of finding a correct intepretation of QM is even a proper scientific question.
Yudkowsky, on the other hand, claimed that by using Bayesian inference, he settled the question, pretty much proving that the many-worlds intepretation is the only correct one.
It should be noted that the many-world interpretation is indeed a plausible one and is quite popular among physicists, but most physicists wouldn’t consider it on par with a scientifically justified belief, while EY claimed that MWI is obviously true and everybody who disagrees doesn’t understand probability theory. Furthermore, he ignored or misrepresented the other intepretations, for instance conflating Copenhagen intepretation with the objective collapse intepretations. ref ref
There are other examples of EY overconfidence, though that is perhaps the most blatant one. Mind you, I’m not saying that the guy is an idiot and you should disregard everything that he wrote. But you should not automaticaly assume that his estimates of his own competence are well calibrated.
By the way, this is a general phenomenon, known as Dunning–Kruger effect : people with little competence in a given field tend to overesitmate their own competence.
It is a natural reaction, but in general it can be very much misleading. People naturally tend to exhibit In-group bias and deference to authority. When somebody you respect a lot says something and you are inclined to trust them even if you can’t properly evaluate the claim, you should know where this instinctive reaction comes from and you should be wary.
The problem is that if you are not a domain expert in a field, it’s difficult to evaluate whether somebody else is a domain expert just by talking to them or reading their writing. You can recognize whether somebody is less competent than you are, but recognizing higher competence is much more difficult without independent objective signals.
Moreover, general intelligence, or even actual expertise in a given field, don’t automatically translate to expertise in another field.
For instance, Isaac Newton was a genius and a domain expert in physics. This doesn’t mean that his theological arguments hold any merit.