The mass media often says things that should seem unlikely, at least to a well-informed common sense. And in such cases, the usual outcome is that common sense is proved right. This seems so obvious to me that I don’t see the point in arguing it. But to illustrate the point, let me mention the book
There's a lot of time between a decade and a few months.
And if you can't even be right in the short term, we can already eliminate you.
And even if we couldn't and had to wait decades, it still lowers cost of entry for good predictors and getting benefit from them.
Hard to believe the dialog around COVID would have been improved by only listening to the people who could accurately predict death or hospital capacity for a few months
How about this criteria for common sense aka rationality. Does this issue affect me materially and can I affect that issue? Is investing time in this particular issue justified relative to things I believe are important for my wellbeing? My answer is that the vast majority of claims in the media is irrelevant for me and so I would not spend time unless there was another attraction e.g. humor. I am an expert in one field only and that is the state of my wellbeing. I can also make good enough judgements/predictions about me viz viz the world without unsolicited advice.
It still intuitively feels to me like there's more going on on the supply side. I know that isn't a strong argument or anything, but maybe I can probe at it from a different direction: why do you personally not take on this common-sense-predictor role? (I assume - perhaps incorrectly - that you consider yourself in the eligible top 1/10000.) Is yours a reason that you think would not also apply to other eligible folks?
I don't think I act as if I am especially gifted in common sense. Instead I think I tend to write in the more uncommon decoupling style of nerds. My frequency of blogging is relatively low though.
I claim only something slightly less. But in practice that is almost as good. (How much extra value does the critic in the 99.99th percentile add over one at, say, the 95th percentile?)
Surely many, many authors use common sense to correct media errors; the bottleneck will be finding ones who prove their accuracy via track records. Many make a show of trumpeting the accuracy of their past remarks, but the casual reader suspects they are cherry-picking their citations. For most people the effort of checking up on their claims of accuracy will not be worthwhile, since they are claiming only to supply common sense. I can pretty well check media claims against common sense myself, without relying on others. What your 800 authors could do for me is point out discrepancies between media and common sense that I might have overlooked: once my attention is called to the alleged discrepancy, I can pretty well decide for myself whether it is real.
When I have detected such a discrepancy, what then? I cannot simply believe common sense, for, unfortunately, common sense is not always right.
By the way, a lot of errors in media articles take the form of background assumptions, not explicitly stated in the article. A challenging task for your 800 authors would be to articulate these assumptions and then point out their discrepancy with (the implications of) common sense.
I really like this idea! They would have to find a way to enforce a one-account-per-person policy, to prevent people from splitting into many-worlds predictors.
I agree that the extended rationality community has ad hoc mechanisms to amplify the signal of people worth hearing out. But this community also has its blindspots and signaling games. Worth hearing is Julia Galef's podcast with Matt Iglesias, in which they dissect why they both supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. All their "dumber" friends thought it would turn out badly!
But nobody announces "my blogposts are special due to my extreme 0.01% common sense!" Oops, scratch that. *Everybody* acts as though it's true of their blog.[edit: If the response is that they must first establish a decades-long track record of being right, that's a labor investment that would rightly deter the top people it would need. Maybe they judge with their extraordinary common sense that once their sterling record is established they will remain ignored - wrongly branded as old coots.]
My guess is the 80M are happy consuming slower media like books that have the corrections built in and consuming blogs/podcasts from sources they have assessed as accurate, perhaps over decades.
Firstly, isn't this what fact-checking websites are? Plenty of those in the world: https://reporterslab.org/fa...
Secondly, if common sense is something that only the top 1% of 1% have, then it is not common sense.
There's a lot of time between a decade and a few months.
And if you can't even be right in the short term, we can already eliminate you.
And even if we couldn't and had to wait decades, it still lowers cost of entry for good predictors and getting benefit from them.
Hard to believe the dialog around COVID would have been improved by only listening to the people who could accurately predict death or hospital capacity for a few months
How about this criteria for common sense aka rationality. Does this issue affect me materially and can I affect that issue? Is investing time in this particular issue justified relative to things I believe are important for my wellbeing? My answer is that the vast majority of claims in the media is irrelevant for me and so I would not spend time unless there was another attraction e.g. humor. I am an expert in one field only and that is the state of my wellbeing. I can also make good enough judgements/predictions about me viz viz the world without unsolicited advice.
It still intuitively feels to me like there's more going on on the supply side. I know that isn't a strong argument or anything, but maybe I can probe at it from a different direction: why do you personally not take on this common-sense-predictor role? (I assume - perhaps incorrectly - that you consider yourself in the eligible top 1/10000.) Is yours a reason that you think would not also apply to other eligible folks?
What about this?
If most pundits have atrocious track records, mere years of accuracy should make it clear you're not making the same errors.
I don't think I act as if I am especially gifted in common sense. Instead I think I tend to write in the more uncommon decoupling style of nerds. My frequency of blogging is relatively low though.
I claim only something slightly less. But in practice that is almost as good. (How much extra value does the critic in the 99.99th percentile add over one at, say, the 95th percentile?)
You seem to assume that you are just as good at applying common sense as is this best 1% of 1%.
Surely many, many authors use common sense to correct media errors; the bottleneck will be finding ones who prove their accuracy via track records. Many make a show of trumpeting the accuracy of their past remarks, but the casual reader suspects they are cherry-picking their citations. For most people the effort of checking up on their claims of accuracy will not be worthwhile, since they are claiming only to supply common sense. I can pretty well check media claims against common sense myself, without relying on others. What your 800 authors could do for me is point out discrepancies between media and common sense that I might have overlooked: once my attention is called to the alleged discrepancy, I can pretty well decide for myself whether it is real.
When I have detected such a discrepancy, what then? I cannot simply believe common sense, for, unfortunately, common sense is not always right.
By the way, a lot of errors in media articles take the form of background assumptions, not explicitly stated in the article. A challenging task for your 800 authors would be to articulate these assumptions and then point out their discrepancy with (the implications of) common sense.
Why is it important that this be their main brand?
Frequent predictions
I really like this idea! They would have to find a way to enforce a one-account-per-person policy, to prevent people from splitting into many-worlds predictors.
I agree that the extended rationality community has ad hoc mechanisms to amplify the signal of people worth hearing out. But this community also has its blindspots and signaling games. Worth hearing is Julia Galef's podcast with Matt Iglesias, in which they dissect why they both supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. All their "dumber" friends thought it would turn out badly!
But nobody announces "my blogposts are special due to my extreme 0.01% common sense!" Oops, scratch that. *Everybody* acts as though it's true of their blog.[edit: If the response is that they must first establish a decades-long track record of being right, that's a labor investment that would rightly deter the top people it would need. Maybe they judge with their extraordinary common sense that once their sterling record is established they will remain ignored - wrongly branded as old coots.]
My guess is the 80M are happy consuming slower media like books that have the corrections built in and consuming blogs/podcasts from sources they have assessed as accurate, perhaps over decades.