I want to be informed and to act because I have evaluated the evidence, not just go "with the herd." There's a stigma against simply taking the word of an authority, and rightly so; on the net, the world would be better if more people stopped to think for themselves (does anyone disagree?). But it is also the case that there are many fields in which I have to defer to experts because I simply am not equipped to deal with or consider the problems.
I wonder, is it even worth my doing research on charities, when there exist resources like givewell, which will almost certainly be able to do a more thorough and more accurate analysis than I would be able to do? Should I just defer to givewell when giving my effective charity?
I'll note that there is a difference between values and facts: I might decide for myself that I care more about some issues than others, due to variations in my personal moral calculus (for instance, I may value the well being of no-human mammals, relative to human mammals, more than others, and so chose to support animal rights groups, instead of poverty elimination), but might still defer to the experts with regards to how to most efficiently accomplish my stated goals.
Also, do I have good evidence to defer to the expertise of givewell? I like the idea, their analysis seems insightful, and people on this forum often speak highly of them. But these are all relativity superficial and don't seem like sufficient reason to allow them to dictate my giving (that's just lazily, submitting to the slick-looking authority). How do I evaluate the expertise of experts?
Yes, I disagree. Remember that if people "stop and think for themselves," they have to stop what they were doing otherwise. If their comparative advantage is doing, rather than thinking, this may well be a poor choice.
It seems to me that there are good reasons to think for yourself:
Versus equally good reasons to delegate thinking:
Therefore, most people will do a mixture of thinking for themselves and trusting experts. In particular, people should most think for themselves when agency problems are most severe, when good experts are hard to identify, and where their own thinking will get rapid and plentiful feedback (classic example - household finances). People should defer to experts most readily when agency problems are small, when good experts are easy to identify, and where there own thinking will get very little feedback (classic example - history).
Unfortunately, claiming to think for yourself is also a brag - it is a way of signalling that you are an expert, or nearly an expert, or that you are capable of understanding a domain. So for these signalling reasons, people think for themselves more than is genuinely wise, and as a result we see many autodidacts with obviously wrong beliefs. Even more widespread, we see people who think that they have "thought for themselves" about a subject, but in fact have just read a small selection of popular books on the subject - in reality, this is just deference to an expert, but because they do not consider it as such, they have wasted their time by this study; even worse, because they believe they are thinking for themselves, they do not consider the degree to which they are trusting an expert, and so frequently choose their sources unwisely, based on e.g. literary qualities rather than accuracy.
I have heard plenty of claims that people defer to authority too much, but never one that had any weight behind it. Mostly, they are mere assertion/mood affiliation.
That being the case, it sounds like the problem is the particular "experts" to which one defers. From my perspective, many people deferring to the pope (or their local preacher) causes more harm than good (e.g. opposition to issues of importance, and encouraging intolerance). I look at that and think the cached thought, "If only those people would think for themselves, they would see how ridiculous many of of the religious claims are."
If most people shouldn't actually think for themselves, what is the alternative? If we have a choice b... (read more)