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rule_and_line comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - LessWrong
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-- Bill James, American baseball writer and statistician.
That strikes me as really ... odd.
To whom is the advice addressed? If something is actually untrue, and one has determined it to be untrue, then the task of being skeptical about it is finished.
I could probably find a loophole in the preceding statement, but it couldn't possibly be what Bill James was referring to.
As for directing skepticism at [claims depending upon] things that are difficult to measure, well that seems like one step away from directing skepticism at claims depending on little evidence. Which is surely what we want to do. Again, there's a loophole, but clearly not something Bill James was trying to point out.
Scepticism is directed not at things, but at claims. And claims about things difficult to measure should face increased scepticism.
Interesting position! I can't speak for James, but I want to engage with this. Let's pretend, for the scope of this thread, that I made the statement about the proper role of skepticism.
I'm happy to endorse your wording. I agree it's more precise to talk about "claims" than "things" in this context.
Quick communication check. When you say "increased" you're implying at least two distinct levels of skepticism. From your assertion, I gather that difficult-to-measure claims like "there exist good leaders, people who can improve the performance of the rest of their team" will face your higher level of skepticism.
Could you give me an example of a claim that faces your lower level of skepticism?
Well, I'm actually treating scepticism as a continuous variable, let's say defined on non-negative real numbers for simplicity, where 0 means "I Believe!" and some sufficiently high number means "You're lying".
"It's raining outside"
"This thing weights five pounds"
"Free-falling objects start to accelerate by about 9.8 m/s/s"