How would this apply to social issues do you think? It seems that this is a poor way to be on the front of social change? If this strategy was widely applied, would we ever have seen the 15th and 19th amendments to the Constitution here in the US?
My impression is that the most trustworthy people are more likely to be at the front of good social movements than the general public, so that if people generally adopted the framework, many of the promising social movements would progress more quickly than they actually did. I am not sufficiently aware of the specific history of the 15th and 19th amendments to say more than that at this point.
There is a general question about how the framework is related to innovation. Aren’t innovators generally going against elite common sense? I think that innovators are often overconfident about the quality of their ideas, and have significantly more confidence in their ideas than they need for their projects to be worthwhile by the standards of elite common sense. E.g., I don’t think you need to have high confidence that Facebook is going to pan out for it to be worthwhile to try to make Facebook. Elite common sense may see most attempts at innovation as unlikely to succeed, but I think it would judge many as worthwhile in cases where we’ll get to find out whether the innovation was any good or not. This might point somewhat in the direction of less innovation.
However, I think that the most trustworthy people tend to innovate more, are more in favor of innovation than the general population, and are less risk-averse than the general population. These factors might point in favor of more innovation. It is unclear to me whether we would have more or less innovation if the framework were widely adopted, but I suspect we would have more.
On a more personal basis, I’m polyamorous, but if I followed your framework, I would have to reject polyamory as a viable relationship model. Yes, the elite don’t have a lot of data on polyamory, but although I have researched the good and the bad, and how it can work compared to monogamy, but I don’t think that I would be able to convince the elite of my opinions.
My impression is that elite common sense is not highly discriminating against polyamory as a relationship model. It would probably be skeptical of polyamory for the general person, but say that it might work for some people, and that it could make sense for certain interested people to try it out.
If your opinion is that polyamory should be the norm, I agree that you wouldn’t be able to convince elite common sense of this. My personal take is that it is far from clear that polyamory should be the norm. In any event, this doesn’t seem like a great test case for taking down the framework because the idea that polyamory should be the norm does not seem like a robustly supported claim.
My impression is that the most trustworthy people are more likely to be at the front of good social movements than the general public
That sounds reeeeaaally suspicious in terms of potentially post-facto assignments. (Though defeasibly so—I can totally imagine a case being made for, “Yes, this really was generally visible to the person on the street at the time without benefit of hindsight.”)
Can you use elite common sense to generate an near-term testable prediction that would sound bold relative to my probability assignments or LW generally? The last obvious point on which you could have thus been victorious would have been my skepticism of the now-confirmed Higgs boson, and Holden is apparently impressed by the retrospective applicability of this heuristic to predict that interventions much better than the Gates Foundation’s best interventions would not be found. But still, an advance prediction would be pretty cool.
That sounds reeeeaaally suspicious in terms of potentially post-facto assignments. (Though defeasibly so—I can totally imagine a case being made for, “Yes, this really was generally visible to the person on the street at the time without benefit of hindsight.”)
This isn’t something I’ve looked into closely, though from looking at it for a few minutes I think it is something I would like to look into more. Anyway, on the Wikipedia page on diffusion of innovation:
This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. More discrete in adoption choices than innovators. Realize judicious choice of adoption will help them maintain central communication position (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283).”
I think this supports my claim that elite common sense is quicker to join and support new good social movements, though as I said I haven’t looked at it closely at all.
Can you use elite common sense to generate an near-term testable prediction that would sound bold relative to my probability assignments or LW generally?
I can’t think of anything very good, but I’ll keep it in the back of my mind. Can you think of something that would sound bold relative to my perspective?
My impression is that the most trustworthy people are more likely to be at the front of good social movements than the general public, so that if people generally adopted the framework, many of the promising social movements would progress more quickly than they actually did. I am not sufficiently aware of the specific history of the 15th and 19th amendments to say more than that at this point.
There is a general question about how the framework is related to innovation. Aren’t innovators generally going against elite common sense? I think that innovators are often overconfident about the quality of their ideas, and have significantly more confidence in their ideas than they need for their projects to be worthwhile by the standards of elite common sense. E.g., I don’t think you need to have high confidence that Facebook is going to pan out for it to be worthwhile to try to make Facebook. Elite common sense may see most attempts at innovation as unlikely to succeed, but I think it would judge many as worthwhile in cases where we’ll get to find out whether the innovation was any good or not. This might point somewhat in the direction of less innovation.
However, I think that the most trustworthy people tend to innovate more, are more in favor of innovation than the general population, and are less risk-averse than the general population. These factors might point in favor of more innovation. It is unclear to me whether we would have more or less innovation if the framework were widely adopted, but I suspect we would have more.
My impression is that elite common sense is not highly discriminating against polyamory as a relationship model. It would probably be skeptical of polyamory for the general person, but say that it might work for some people, and that it could make sense for certain interested people to try it out.
If your opinion is that polyamory should be the norm, I agree that you wouldn’t be able to convince elite common sense of this. My personal take is that it is far from clear that polyamory should be the norm. In any event, this doesn’t seem like a great test case for taking down the framework because the idea that polyamory should be the norm does not seem like a robustly supported claim.
That sounds reeeeaaally suspicious in terms of potentially post-facto assignments. (Though defeasibly so—I can totally imagine a case being made for, “Yes, this really was generally visible to the person on the street at the time without benefit of hindsight.”)
Can you use elite common sense to generate an near-term testable prediction that would sound bold relative to my probability assignments or LW generally? The last obvious point on which you could have thus been victorious would have been my skepticism of the now-confirmed Higgs boson, and Holden is apparently impressed by the retrospective applicability of this heuristic to predict that interventions much better than the Gates Foundation’s best interventions would not be found. But still, an advance prediction would be pretty cool.
This isn’t something I’ve looked into closely, though from looking at it for a few minutes I think it is something I would like to look into more. Anyway, on the Wikipedia page on diffusion of innovation:
I think this supports my claim that elite common sense is quicker to join and support new good social movements, though as I said I haven’t looked at it closely at all.
I can’t think of anything very good, but I’ll keep it in the back of my mind. Can you think of something that would sound bold relative to my perspective?