[extropy-chat] Inside Vs. Outside Forecasts

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Robin Hanson wrote:
> At 03:18 PM 10/25/2005, Hal Finney wrote:
> 
>> Further, these four pages said little to justify their arguments and
>> relied largely on a single anecdote.  The issues that were brought out in
>> the discussion here of the difficulty of choosing an appropriate outside
>> view were generally ignored in the authors' eagerness to disparage
>> people's supposed preferences for inside views.  ...
> 
> This seems a valid criticism to me.  Doesn't mean they are wrong of course.

It should be noted that the authors are speaking from within a long 
tradition and probably assume (consciously or unconsciously) that the 
readers are familiar with it.  Robyn Dawes's paper "The Robust Beauty of 
Improper Linear Models" or his book "Rational Choice in an Uncertain 
World" both convey some of the tradition.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence