EA reading list: cluelessness and epistemic modesty
By richard_ngo @ 2020-08-03T09:23 (+27)
Start here:
- Simplifying cluelessness (Phil Trammell, 2019)
- In defence of epistemic modesty (Greg Lewis)
Further reading:
- Cluelessness (Hilary Greaves)
- Consequentialism and Cluelessness (James Lenman, 2005)
- What consequences? (Milan Griffes, 2017)
- Maximal cluelessness (Morgensen, 2019)
- Common sense as a prior (Nick Beckstead, 2013)
- Inadequate equilibria (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
- Some thoughts on deference and inside-view models (Buck Shlegeris)
- Peer disagreement (Thomas Blanchard and Alvin Goldman, 2015)
- Why don’t we like arguments from authority? (Tom Adamczewskir, 2017)
Pablo_Stafforini @ 2020-08-03T12:01 (+14)
On cluelessness, I would add
- Tomasik, Charity cost-effectiveness in an uncertain world
- Bostrom, Crucial Considerations and wise philanthropy
- Christiano, We can probably influence the far future
On epistemic modesty:
MichaelA @ 2020-08-04T12:01 (+6)
Thanks for this, and for your other reading lists! Several of these links are new to me, and I expect to gradually work through these lists over a few weeks.
I also previously made a collection of discussions of epistemic modesty, "rationalist/EA exceptionalism", and similar (but not cluelessness) on LessWrong. Here are the things from that list that aren't here or in Pablo's comment:
- Epistemic learned helplessness - Scott Alexander, 2019
- AI, global coordination, and epistemic humility - Jaan Tallinn, 2018
- From memory, I think a decent amount of Rationality: A-Z by Eliezer Yudkowsky is relevant
- Somewhat less relevant/substantial:
- This comment/question - me, 2020
- Naming Beliefs - Hal Finney, 2008
- Likely relevant, but I'm not yet sure how relevant as I haven't yet read it:
- Are Disagreements Honest? - Cowen & Hanson, 2004
- Uncommon Priors Require Origin Disputes - Robin Hanson, 2006
- Aumann's agreement theorem - Wikipedia
On cluelessness, I'd just note that I thought many of the comments on the EA Forum crosspost of Mogensen's paper were interesting too.
MichaelA @ 2020-09-02T14:00 (+5)
Also relevant: Phil Trammell's interesting, short post But have they engaged with the arguments?