wedrifid comments on How To Be More Confident... That You're Wrong - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Wei_Dai 22 May 2011 11:30PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 23 May 2011 03:15:19AM *  4 points [-]

The argument made by taw is mostly correct, even if he somewhat overstates his case

If my memory serves me the constant misuse of (and borderline ranting about) 'outside view' by taw in particular did far more to discourage the appeal of 'outside view' references than anything Eliezer may have said. A preface of 'outside view' does not transform an analogy into a bulletproof argument.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 23 May 2011 04:28:16AM *  2 points [-]

It's sad and true. For instance automatically thinking of reference classes for beliefs and strategies can be useful but I don't see it applied often enough. When it comes to something like (strategies about / popularizing interest in) predictability of the Singularity, for example, people bring up objections like "you'll never be able to convince anyone that something big and potentially dangerous might happen based off of extrapolations of current trends", but the outside view response "then explain global warming" actually narrows the discussion and points out features of the problem that might not have been obvious.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 May 2011 11:35:56AM 2 points [-]

You can use outside view arguments, just not connotations of "outside view".