This is a different claim to that contained in the former two quotes. I do not disagree with this claim, but it does not support your earlier claims, which are the claims that I was criticising.
You are mistaken. It is exactly the same claim, rephrased to match the circumstances at most -- containing exactly the same assertion: "Authorities on a given topic can be mistaken; and as such no appeal to an authority can be, absent any other actual supporting materials, treated as a rational motive for belief. In all such cases, it is those supporting materials which comprise the nature of the argument." In the specific case you are taking as supporting evidence your justified belief that the individual had in fact directly observed the event, and the justified belief that the individual would relate it to you honestly. Those, together, comprise justification for the belief.
That is called a figure of speech my friend.
An insufficient retraction.
It is not cultish to praise someone highly.
What you did wasn't praise.
But as has already been pointed out to you, an assertion and a link could be regarded as encouragement for you to seek out the arguments behind that assertion
See, THIS is why I called you cultish. Do you understand that the quote that was cited to me wasn't even relevant contextually in the first place? I had already differentiated between proper rationality and instrumental rationality.
The quote of Eliezer's was discussing instrumental rationality.
I even pointed this out.
But I hope you understand the point about updating on other people’s beliefs a little more clearly now.
No, I do not. But that's because I wasn't remotely confused about the topic to begin with, and have throughout these threads demonstrated a better capacity to differentiate between various modes and justifications of belief with a finer standard of differentiating between what justifications and what modes of thought are being engaged than anyone who's as yet argued the topic in these threads with me, yourself included.
This conversation has officially reached my limit of investment, so feel free to get your last word in, but don't be surprised if I never read it.
Evidence itself can be mistaken. If your theory says an event is rare, and it happens, then that is evidence against the theory. If the theory is correct, it should be overwhelmed by evidence for the theory. If the statements of experts statistically correlate with reality, then you should update on the statements of experts until they are screened off by evidence/arguments you have looked at more directly or the statements of other experts.
LessWrongers as a group are often accused of talking about rationality without putting it into practice (for an elaborated discussion of this see Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality). This behavior is particularly insidious because it is self-reinforcing: it will attract more armchair rationalists to LessWrong who will in turn reinforce the trend in an affective death spiral until LessWrong is a community of utilitarian apologists akin to the internet communities of anorexics who congratulate each other on their weight loss. It will be a community where instead of discussing practical ways to "overcome bias" (the original intent of the sequences) we discuss arcane decision theories, who gets to be in our CEV, and the most rational birthday presents (sound familiar?).
A recent attempt to counter this trend or at least make us feel better about it was a series of discussions on "leveling up": accomplishing a set of practical well-defined goals to increment your rationalist "level". It's hard to see how these goals fit into a long-term plan to achieve anything besides self-improvement for its own sake. Indeed, the article begins by priming us with a renaissance-man inspired quote and stands in stark contrast to articles emphasizing practical altruism such as "efficient charity"
So what's the solution? I don't know. However I can tell you a few things about the solution, whatever it may be:
Whatever you may decide to do, be sure it follows these principles. If none of your plans align with these guidelines then construct a new one, on the spot, immediately. Just do something: every moment you sit hundreds of thousands are dying and billions are suffering. Under your judgement your plan can self-modify in the future to overcome its flaws. Become an optimization process; shut up and calculate.
I declare Crocker's rules on the writing style of this post.