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hg00 comments on Common sense as a prior - LessWrong
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It seems likely to me that both "the world is insane" and "the world is sane" are incorrect, and the truth is "the world is right about some things and wrong about other things". I like Nick's idea of treating the opinions of people who society regards as experts as a prior and carefully updating from that as evidence warrants. I dislike treating mainstream human civilization as a faction to either align with or break from, and I dislike even more the way some people in the LW community show off by casually disregarding mainstream opinion. This seems like something that both probably looks cultish to outsiders and is legitimately cultish in a way that is bad and worth fighting.
You probably have a good point, but I found it briefly amusing to imagine it going like this:
ELIEZER: Elite scientists are usually elite for good reason, but sometimes they're wrong. People shouldn't blindly trust an elite's position on a subject when they have compelling reasons to believe that that position is wrong.
STRAWMAN: I agree that there are problems with blindly trusting them. But let's not jump straight to the opposite extreme of not blindly trusting them.
As soon as you start saying things like people need "to break their trust in a sane world, before which nothing can begin", you know you have a problem.
I take it you grew up in an atheist or liberal-Christian community?
For example, you may be talking to a child whose parents are still lying to him.
Deciding the world is completely untrustworthy after learning that Santa Claus is a lie seems like the wrong update to make. The right update to make seems to be "adults sometimes lie to kids to entertain themselves and the kids". In fact, arguably society tells you more incorrect info as a kid than as an adult, so you should become more and more trusting of what society tells you the older you grow. (Well, I guess you also get smarter as you grow, so it's a bit more complicated than that.)
It would be even better to update in the direction of understanding the interaction between social status, belief, affiliation and dominance.
The parenthetical is correct. The 'arguable' part is true only in as much as it is technically possible to argue for most things that are stupid.
You should become more trusting in the sense that what adults tell you constitutes stronger Bayesian evidence, but your own thoughts will also constitute stronger Bayesian evidence.
Adults also have more incentive to lie and deceive you when your decisions have enough power to influence their outcomes.
You must be strawmanning “the world is insane” if you think it's not compatible with “the world is right about some things and wrong about other things”. EY knows pretty well that the world isn't wrong about everything.