Well, I think we both agree on the dangers of a wide variety of cheap talk - or to put it more humbly, you taught me on the subject. Though even before then, I had developed the unfortunate personal habit of calling people's bluffs.

So while we can certainly interpret talk about modesty and immodesty in terms of rhetoric, isn't the main testable prediction at stake, the degree to which Wei Dai should often find, on further investigation, that people who disagree with him turn out to have surprisingly good reasons to do so?

Do you think - to jump all the way back to the original question - that if Dai went around asking people "Why aren't you working on decision theory and anthropics because you can't stand not knowing the answers?" that they would have some brilliantly decisive comeback that Dai never thought of which makes Dai realize that he shouldn't be spending time on the topic either? What odds would you bet at?