The key claim is that it’s perfectly feasible for a lay-person to confidently know a better monetary policy than the BoJ. This generalises such that
I assume you mean “the key claim” to apply to the second sentence as well. As in:
The key claim is that this generalises such that when you read someone making such a passing claim that BoJ’s monetary policy is insane, this is basically zero evidence regarding whether the speaker is overconfident or not, because given the world we live in they could totally be able to know that.
Later you say:
our civilization is so inadequate that some random decision theorist can make a better macroeconomic decision than the Bank of Japan.
Now I take you to be endorsing, not describing, the key claim. Which is it?
At the end you say:
This post doesn’t provide the evidence to persuade me of the view it holds, but it makes me think that modesty epistemology is much less an abstract claim than an empirical one.
Call M the view: “I don’t expect a layperson can make a better macroeconomic decision than the Bank of Japan. Until further evidence, I’ll call such claims overconfident”. Are you making the very weak** claim that M is an empirical statement? Or the much stronger claim that not-M?
[ ** In a way it’s trivially true that if you’re a bayesian, there are no epistemological questions left (modulo anthropics), only empirical ones.]
Now I take you to be endorsing, not describing, the key claim. Which is it?
I was intending to describe it.
Regarding M—I am making that ‘weak’ claim, but I’m trying to emphasise that I was surprised by that. Often when I talk about modesty epistemology, people come to me with arguments of the sort “You should model yourself as a black box outputting claims and others as the same, and average based on your weighting over expertise”, and I respond with questions about this theoretical claim. But I now want to say “But let’s talk about whether the BoJ is insane”. What I thought was a theoretical disagreement is in fact largely empirical.
Your comment is a little bit confusing.
I assume you mean “the key claim” to apply to the second sentence as well. As in:
Later you say:
Now I take you to be endorsing, not describing, the key claim. Which is it?
At the end you say:
Call M the view: “I don’t expect a layperson can make a better macroeconomic decision than the Bank of Japan. Until further evidence, I’ll call such claims overconfident”. Are you making the very weak** claim that M is an empirical statement? Or the much stronger claim that not-M?
[ ** In a way it’s trivially true that if you’re a bayesian, there are no epistemological questions left (modulo anthropics), only empirical ones.]
This seems correct, oops.
I was intending to describe it.
Regarding M—I am making that ‘weak’ claim, but I’m trying to emphasise that I was surprised by that. Often when I talk about modesty epistemology, people come to me with arguments of the sort “You should model yourself as a black box outputting claims and others as the same, and average based on your weighting over expertise”, and I respond with questions about this theoretical claim. But I now want to say “But let’s talk about whether the BoJ is insane”. What I thought was a theoretical disagreement is in fact largely empirical.