GiveWell.org interviews SIAI

Paul Crowley

Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell.org interviewed Jasen Murray of SIAI and published his notes (Edit: PDF, thanks lukeprog!), with updates from later conversations. Lots of stuff to take an interest in there - thanks to jsalvatier for drawing our attention to it. One new bit of information stands out in particular:

Michael Vassar is working on an idea he calls the "Persistent Problems Group" or PPG. The idea is to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of recognizable experts to make sense of the academic literature on very applicable, popular, but poorly understood topics such as diet/nutrition. This would have obvious benefits for helping people understand what the literature has and hasn't established on important topics; it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

Michael Vassar is working on an idea he calls the "Persistent Problems Group" or PPG. The idea is to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of recognizable experts to make sense of the academic literature on very applicable, popular, but poorly understood topics such as diet/nutrition. This would have obvious benefits for helping people understand what the literature has and hasn't established on important topics; it would also be a demonstration that there is such a thing as "skill at making sense of the world."

How will people be able to tell that you've done the job well?

My feeling is that there is generally very impressive rationality on the market in fields of endeavour where you will quickly get a clear answer on whether you were right, and so it's hard for rationalists to show off their skills there. But when you start to compete outside of those fields, no-one can tell that you're doing better.

Excellent point.

Is that a fixable problem? Maybe, though I agree it seems hard. One way to show you're more right than others (at least to other rationalists) might be to explicitly describe contradicting evidence and ways in which you could be wrong.

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