> "Something I found very striking throughout this discourse was the inertial force of a certain kind of epistemic conservatism. Many people seemed outraged by my “confidence” that a policy of experimental vaccination + variolation from early in the pandemic would have had (very) high expected value—not because they thought a different point estimate would be better warranted, but just because (it seemed) they didn’t think it appropriate to form any judgment on the matter at all."
Great insight; I've encountered this phenomenon as well. I'm not recalling a specific example, but I know I've made claims about affecting the course of the future before (more than a couple decades out) and have encountered people who seem to claim that I can't know that an action has positive expected value on the future that far out. They don't seem to want to defend the view that the expected value is zero, but just seem to assert that it is unknowable without argument.
> "Something I found very striking throughout this discourse was the inertial force of a certain kind of epistemic conservatism. Many people seemed outraged by my “confidence” that a policy of experimental vaccination + variolation from early in the pandemic would have had (very) high expected value—not because they thought a different point estimate would be better warranted, but just because (it seemed) they didn’t think it appropriate to form any judgment on the matter at all."
Great insight; I've encountered this phenomenon as well. I'm not recalling a specific example, but I know I've made claims about affecting the course of the future before (more than a couple decades out) and have encountered people who seem to claim that I can't know that an action has positive expected value on the future that far out. They don't seem to want to defend the view that the expected value is zero, but just seem to assert that it is unknowable without argument.