Bryan seems to mistakenly conclude that one is more justified in relying on one’s own direct evaluation of arguments, relative to the evaluations of others, on topics where people tend to be more irrational.

But he doesn’t suggest this as a piece of general advice (i.e. he would say ‘I’ or ‘economists’ rather than ‘one’.)

If you (believe that you) have evidence that you’re more rational than the average person, his is excellent advice. I do, Caplan does, everyone here does if they’re honest. If you believe you’re below average rationality, do the opposite. Sounds fine to me.

Image via Wikipedia One of the most interesting and challenging logical phenomena discovered in the 20th century was the rigorous study of the relationship, for…

What does that matter to a rational person? No number of suicide rocks is sufficient to make me worry that I am one. Ditto creationists or astrology believers. In so far as I am rational, I “should” believe that I am rational as that belief will cause me to win. If I’m not rational I won’t do what I “should” in any event so the point is moot.

Those who fall into madness believe they’re finally becoming sane. Those who fall into sanity believe it’s possible that they may be sane, but fear and doubt their own sanity.

Then fearing and doubting sanity is (not entirely communicable) evidence for sanity.

I think people have imperfect access to their rationality and are often motivated not to pursue correct beliefs.

If Caplan has identified specific biases and compensated for all specific biases he knows, then he is justified in believing his beliefs to be above average. As for the possibility of remaining biases, he should adjust his probabilities in such a direction that he expects the discovery of remaining biases, like the discovery of remaining unknown unknowns, to shift his beliefs the same amount in either direction on average.

I’m also sympathetic to pleas not to lose sight of first-order object-level arguments in trying to adjust for just the right amount of modesty with respect to a crowd that one has just demonstrated to be individually and collectively insane in various specific ways. All judgments begin at the object level and its straight-out first-order verdict should never be neglected.

For some reason, I feel compelled to point out counterexamples; consider the history of medicine in Europe before, say, 1800. Doctors were more likely to hurt you than help you.

People have certain privileged knowledge about their own rationality that they don’t have about that of other people or of suicide rock.

No, we don’t. One of the first things rational people realize is that they cannot demonstrate their own rationality to themselves.

Those who fall into madness believe they’re finally becoming sane. Those who fall into sanity believe it’s possible that they may be sane, but fear and doubt their own sanity.

Imagine I make a testable prediction, and also wager a large sum of money that my prediction is correct. The fact that I have made this large wager might increase your confidence that my prediction is correct, and certainly should increase your estimation of my own confidence in my prediction. But I cannot increase my own confidence that my prediction was correct by betting on it.

The real problem with the objection is that no sensible person would feel that the author’s professed confidence that his ideas are correct is a good reason for the reader to believe that those ideas are correct in the first place. Before reading the book, it’s perfectly reasonable to suspect that the author has more confidence in his ideas than the facts merit. Most authors do. But it would be absurd to argue in a review of the book, “this book probably sucks, since most books do”.