You can't argue 'every field I look at is not in decline'
I never said that. I said the evidence was mixed.
More generally, your median point applies to the self-assessments too: even if self-assessment is completely random and actual field performance is random too, you'd still expect a quarter to be - by sheer luck - above the median in actual performance and self-assessed performance. So if a full quarter are optimistic and outperforming, how did you miss them?
By "self-assessment" you mean forum posts and personal blogs? Well that was exactly the point I made originally. It seems the is bias that causes that vast majority of self-assessment to pessimistic, even when field performance is good.
Someone drowning has too much water, and someone dying of thirst in the desert has too little water; is it really so absurd to say that 'some people need more water, and some people need less water'?
If I tell you "Sarah will get more water next year.", it would be absurd to tell me that that is a good thing or a bad thing, unless you have information about how much water Sarah already has. You can't say that Korea's stricter laws will be a bad thing, unless you have information suggesting Korea's. You can't say that Australia's more lenient laws will be a bad thing, unless you have information suggesting Australia's laws were already optimal or too lenient.
Now maybe you have this information about Korea, but I doubt you have it about Australia. And I doubt the that backpackers have this information either, considering that they don't even seem to know about new deregulation.
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of August 20th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to everyone who contributes!
Last week's diary; archive of prior diaries.