Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Common sense as a prior - LessWrong

33 Post author: Nick_Beckstead 11 August 2013 06:18PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 August 2013 11:05:11PM 2 points [-]

My impression is that the most trustworthy people are more likely to be at the front of good social movements than the general public

That sounds reeeeaaally suspicious in terms of potentially post-facto assignments. (Though defeasibly so - I can totally imagine a case being made for, "Yes, this really was generally visible to the person on the street at the time without benefit of hindsight.")

Can you use elite common sense to generate an near-term testable prediction that would sound bold relative to my probability assignments or LW generally? The last obvious point on which you could have thus been victorious would have been my skepticism of the now-confirmed Higgs boson, and Holden is apparently impressed by the retrospective applicability of this heuristic to predict that interventions much better than the Gates Foundation's best interventions would not be found. But still, an advance prediction would be pretty cool.

Comment author: Nick_Beckstead 16 August 2013 12:01:56AM 0 points [-]

That sounds reeeeaaally suspicious in terms of potentially post-facto assignments. (Though defeasibly so - I can totally imagine a case being made for, "Yes, this really was generally visible to the person on the street at the time without benefit of hindsight.")

This isn't something I've looked into closely, though from looking at it for a few minutes I think it is something I would like to look into more. Anyway, on the Wikipedia page on diffusion of innovation:

This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. More discrete in adoption choices than innovators. Realize judicious choice of adoption will help them maintain central communication position (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283)."

I think this supports my claim that elite common sense is quicker to join and support new good social movements, though as I said I haven't looked at it closely at all.

Can you use elite common sense to generate an near-term testable prediction that would sound bold relative to my probability assignments or LW generally?

I can't think of anything very good, but I'll keep it in the back of my mind. Can you think of something that would sound bold relative to my perspective?

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