You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

V_V comments on Google may be trying to take over the world - Less Wrong Discussion

22 [deleted] 27 January 2014 09:33AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (133)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: V_V 27 January 2014 11:50:29PM *  5 points [-]

I would assume that experts are likely to be concerned to an extent more appropriate to the severity of the risk than autodidacts are.

There can be exceptions, of course, but when non-experts make widely more extreme claims than experts do on some issue, especially a strongly emotively charged issue (e.g. the End of the World), unless they can present really compelling evidence and arguments, Dunning–Kruger effect seems to be the most likely explanation.

Comment author: fortyeridania 28 January 2014 12:24:13AM 0 points [-]

I would assume that experts are likely to be concerned to an extent more appropriate to the severity of the risk than autodidacts are.

That is exactly what I would assume too. Autodidacts' risk estimates should be worse than experts'. It does not follow that autodidacts' risk estimates should be milder than experts', though. The latter claim is what I meant to contest.