djcb comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: djcb 15 March 2010 06:48:34AM 18 points [-]

I think it's also important to mention that not having a (strong) opinion on something may be the best (rational) thing to do, when things are not so clear.

For many things (say, the AGW controversy) it's not so clear-cut as to where to find the 'truth' (I do happen to find it more likely that there is a thing called AGW and that it really could lead to great problems... but to what extent? Hard to say). Saying that you don't know may sometimes be the best answer.

Now all we need is a test to separate 'I don't know' from ignorance to 'I don't know' because your epistemic error margins are too big...

(btw, I found this an excellent article)