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All of Christian Nordtømme's Comments + Replies

The Dark Arts
Christian Nordtømme20

Thanks. That all makes sense.

I don’t really have any good ideas. As such it’s actually a bit comforting to hear I’m not alone in that. I’m not entirely pessimistic, however; it just means I can’t think of any quick fixes or short cuts. I think it’s going to take a lot of work to change the culture, and places like Lesswrong are good starting points for that.

For example, I agree that it’s probably best if we can make it okay for the public to trust experts and institutions again. However, some experts and institutions have made that really hard. And so diff... (read more)

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3Lyrongolem
Mhm, yes I think society has a long way to go before we reach workable consensus on important issues again.  That said, while I don't have an eye on solutions, I do believe I can elaborate a bit on what caused the problem, in ways I don't usually see discussed in public discourse. But that's a separate topic for a separate post, in my view. I'm completely open to continuing this conversation within private messages if you like though. 
The Dark Arts
Christian Nordtømme40

I’ve become increasingly aware of “ultra-BS” in a lot of public discourse. In relying on arguments that are constructed to be easy to make but hard to rebut, your ultra-BS is a specific example of the more general point that it is easier to spread s*** than to clean it up. It’s impossible to defend against someone who can pull new ad hoc “facts” and arguments out of their … eh, thin air… at will.

Consequently, I’ve become envious of the judicial practice of discovery and sharing with your opponents all the evidence your case will rely on, before the argumen... (read more)

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3Lyrongolem
Hello, and thank you for the comment!  So, regarding policy discussions and public discourse, I think you can roughly group the discussion pools into two categories. Public and expert level discussions. While the experts certainly aren't perfect, I'd contend in general you find much greater consensus on higher level issues. There may be, for example, disputes on when climate change become irreversible, to what extent humans would be impacted, or how to best go about solving the larger problem. But you will rarely (if ever) find a climate scientist claim climate change is a hoax engineered by the government. In this regard, I don't think evidence standards are the issue. Moreso communication to the general public, and being able to garner credibility. Public discourse, on the contrary, is basically just chaos. Partly because the 'thinkers' in public space (think media pundits, youtubers, twitter warriors) tend to be motivated reasoners selling sensationalist nonsense, and partly because public discourse doesn't sanction you for nonsense. (you can ban the trolls and the bots, but they still keep on coming, and of course there's no punishment for non experts making wild claims) In this regard I'm also feeling a bit helpless. I know it sounds rather bad, but in my personal opinion I think accepting the expert consensus tends to be the generally favorable strategy for the public. Implementing mechanisms like watchdogs, whistleblowers, and vetting mechanisms for the experts is good to have the public trust expert consensus, but I think by and large you can't really expect public discourse to reach better conclusions with consistency, not independently anyways.  There is no 'unified' public forum for argument. Rather, there's millions of private and semi-public spaces, forums and subreddits, varying echo chambers, etc. I'm still uncertain if I've ever found a truly genuine public space, as opposed to a larger subcommunity holding certain viewpoints. Trying to control