I’ll be honest: I’m still a little shaken over how dismissive I was on the lab leak hypothesis last year.
I’m not sure what the lesson is here, other than, ‘always double check the expert consensus’, but then to what degree?
Conversation
Replying to
Maybe a variation is to flip our burden of proof bias - easy to have lower burden of proof for claims that agree with our in-group / intuitions, and so potentially larger danger of falling prey to blind spots?
1
2
Replying to
I guess my problem with that is that my intuition was “listen to the expert consensus”. Which is usually a good intuition/prior to have!
Replying to
Hmm I see. Don't have an easy answer.
What makes this hard to debug too is that usually we listen to the expert consensus when we lack the expertise to directly evaluate the facts of the matter (which is required to appropriately critique their consensus)!
1
2
It is sort of turtles all the way down in that respect. The role of competent leadership in any serious endeavor often reduces to evaluating & comparing contrasting expert opinions. You can't really *ever* truly outsource judgment if you have a stake in the outcome...
1
3
Show replies