> First, science is what we call the best epistemological methodology. Of course it makes mistake, but what makes it unique is that it makes fewer mistakes than any other methodology.
Yes. But it is a tradeoff. When your first priority is an epistemological quality of generated knowledge, you lose agility that can be needed for practical purposes. I mentioned Judea Pearl before, he describes how epistemological methodology of Science prevented it for years, more than a decade, from stating clearly and unambiguously that smoking tobacco leads to a lung cancer. To be honest, I should mention that other social institution where no better than that, and they failed to ban or limit tobacco smoking before Science declared the causal link. So science is still better than that, the story supports your claim that science has the best epistemological methodology. But still I can't help but to wonder if it is possible to do better?
I believe you can do better at individual level. When it is all about your decisions as of individual, you could decide that smoking causes cancer and quit smoking long before science reached a consensus.
> I just wonder why people who claim to want to use their brain pick such a third-rate source to read. Using your brain should also lead you to conclude that no amount of processing of information would lead you onto the right path to the answer if you're not starting out with all the relevant information.
Our world generates insane amounts of relevant information and in a lot of cases it is still not enough to get as much as you need. You have to lean how to reason in uncertainty. You have to learn how to come to conclusions and make decisions when you have not enough information. Either because information you need is not available or because you have a limited time to make a decision.
It is one more deficiency of Science we could add to my list: it concerned about truth too much, and is not that useful when you need to make a decision right now, when you need it so bad as you are going to base your decision on guesses, not on a proven scientific truth.
Science has tools for that, but it leaves them to practitioners, and concentrates on generating truths of a solid scientific quality, not best guesses.
> When I read Alexander, I didn't think he's a total moron; I just thought that he's not at all interesting, insightful, or knowledgeable compared to what else is out there. I just wonder why people who claim to want to use their brain pick such a third-rate source to read.
Well... I can't answer this question. You see, I can't show you any charts as well I can't cite any reputable sources. My answer will be neither of Church of Charts nor of Church of Science. All I can is to give you a personal anecdote.
Scott Alexander writes not only on topics he is under-qualified in. There are two exceptions:
1. People minds. He is a psychiatrist, so he is qualified to write about human minds. I'm not sure that the quality of his writing is of a good scientific quality still: he cites some studies sometimes, but while the existence of references is a necessary condition for a quality scientific writing, it is not sufficient by itself. But still his writing on this topic goes to at least top 0.1% of all Internet writings about people minds. I have a bachelor degree in psychology, I can see it with my eyes closed: everyone believes themselves competent enough when talking about psychology, and the Internet and book stores are filled to a brim by psychological garbage. Substantial amount of peer reviewed scientific papers are crap. It is not really hard to go to top 10% or even to top 1%, but Scott Alexander is still better than that.
BTW, now AI is a hot topic, and while Scott Alexander is not an AI expert, it is useful to see at AI through eyes of a psychiatrist. You need to filter out a lot of he is saying on the topic, but still you can get some insights.
2. A bunch of topics that are more of a philosophical kind. You can't expect science to have any consensus on those topics. Science is just not good for these topics, till they migrate from a philosophy to a normal science.
One of directions of his blog... It is hard to verbalize, but I can explain through history: Scott Alexander started with Yudkowski. It is an idea of "rationality", or a magic tool that allow you to reach the best possible conclusions in any situation. Yudkowski was (and probably still is) insane, he created a Cult of Yudkowski's Rationality. I have learnt a lot from Yodkowski, especially from his posts on why what he created was not a cult. Scott Alexander is much more saner, he writes these long blog posts about crime level or whatever, but he enumerates his mistakes also. I didn't read the references you provided above, but I've read titles and some abstracts, I'd bet that the crime levels will be one of Scott Alexander mistakes of '26. It is very interesting how you can use your brain the best in practice, and Scott Alexander explores exactly this. He maybe not perfect at this, but who is? Can you find someone who is better at it? I'm very concerned how humanity can tackle the loss of authorities of truth (no more media or public figures you can trust), people are believing in stupidest things, but how I manage to do better? (Do I?) Can I teach others or maybe can we create something that will help others to navigate the ocean of lies to find islands of truth? Scott is not about this, but still close enough to keep me interested.
And, you see, you can have a discussion with smart people sometimes. Like this one for example. Such discussions force me to write down my thoughts and to think them through. They can help me to find my own blind spots. For example, I didn't thought really about data Scott Alexander relies to. I could do better earlier because I know, that you can't interpret data without understanding how it was generated. I know the theory behind it, I faced this issue on practice. But I never noticed Scott Alexander is interpreting data without understanding how it was generated and he does nothing about it. I mean, if you try to reach quick and dirty conclusion, you can just ignore some inconvenient question, but maybe you can do better without diving into the question for months? I have some ideas about this, but it is irrelevant to our discussion. What is relevant: discussions triggered by Scott Alexander are attracting people of a kind that can point to me to my blind spots and make me better.
> I mentioned Judea Pearl before, he describes how epistemological methodology of Science prevented it for years...
Yes, but you're making the same argument. Science is flawed, but it is the least flawed methodology. It means that other paths could lead to better results, but only by chance. This is good enough on a societal level, and it plays the role of mutations in natural selection. Most mutations aren't adaptive, but over many enough of them, some will be and selection is likely to eventually amplify those. Because science is "least incorrect imperfect methodology" most other approaches will do worse (probabilistically, they must), but a few will do better (again, probabilistically this needs to happen) and those will become part of the new methodology, i.e. part of science.
> I believe you can do better at individual level
Only by chance and only with low probability.
> You have to lean how to reason in uncertainty. You have to learn how to come to conclusions and make decisions when you have not enough information.
Yes, and the best methodology for that is called science. And when science doesn't know better than even chance, you must still make a choice, but there can be no methodology that could consistently lead to a better outcome, because if there were, it would be science.
> What is relevant: discussions triggered by Scott Alexander are attracting people of a kind that can point to me to my blind spots and make me better.
Good, but at some point it's better to raise the bar. Alexander and other Rationalisticists write like members of a top US high-school debate team. They're among the best - at the high school level.
> Yes, but you're making the same argument. Science is flawed, but it is the least flawed methodology.
I believe you are missing that science is not just a methodology, it is a social institution also. It can have the least flawed methodology (though comparing with what? science still relies on p-values, isn't it a flawed methodology? one can do better than that, there are widely known methods), but it can be very flawed as a social institution, just because it is social institution. p-hacking, paper mills -- they are all fruits of a social institution. Science can have the best possible methodology, but still get flawed papers.
You can do better sometimes just because you are not social institution.
> Only by chance and only with low probability.
Well... I'm not sure that I can agree. I'm confused by your use of a probability here.
If I try to come with a replacement to quantum mechanics I have zero chances to come with something better than a scientific consensus. But if I watched public debates about possible causal link between smoking and cancer at 1950s, maybe even in 1940s. I could do better with pretty high probability. Science couldn't figure it out because it lacked methods, it couldn't stage an experiment, it couldn't find physiological mechanism leading from smoking to cancer, it could rely on growing heap of correlational data. And a troll of a statistician (R.A.Fisher) kept dismantling all the arguments, noting that there are other possible explanations for correlations. Tobacco companies kept buying "research" proving that smoking is fine.
You can be much better than science in such a situation. You can end up with: "tobacco causes cancer" has 50% of probability to be true. (Maybe not 50%, but 80% or 30%, idk). Then you could weight pros and cons of smoking with probabilities and come to a conclusion that risk doesn't worth it. And you could come to this conclusion 10 years before science stated it with confidence close to 100% and politicians started to ban smoking ads.
How to measure the probability of such success?
Or how about predictions for Iran war outcomes? What science is saying? Can I learn its predictions now to write them down along with my predictions, so I could compare them later to see who was right?
How about economics? I read different experts in economics, and they miss the mark all the time, and sometimes it just... You see, when Putin started the war, economists were all like "it will take half a year for Russian economics to collapse". After six months they were predicting a collapse in a year. Now their predictions are very weighted. Like "a tipping point", "trends are..." and so on. _I_ could do better than that. And why? Because I know limitations of economists, they are too much into their models tuned for normal states, so I know to rely on a bigger picture, not on economics data alone. Economists predict that China will face consequences of its stupid investment strategies for decade at least (maybe for longer, I just got a habit of reading economists' predictions ~10 years ago). And? It is the same issue: models have their limits, people forget about it often, even if they have PhD in economics.
> Good, but at some point it's better to raise the bar.
I'm working on it as well. For example, right now I'm into systems analysis. I missed the whole discipline somehow, I should have read the basics at least a decade ago or even earlier. It is obvious stuff mostly, but still it helps to organize knowledge, make it explicit.
> Alexander and other Rationalisticists write like members of a top US high-school debate team. They're among the best - at the high school level.
I don't know what my phrasing lack, so it is so hard to understand. But you see, Scott Alexander is not the worst I'm reading regularly. I like debates, I believe 2 things about them:
1. If you want to keep your thinking sharp, you need to become a guru of debates
2. You cannot be guru of debates if you hadn't mastered debates at all levels[1]
(I can elaborate on (1) if you want, but I'm not going to explain (2): it becomes obvious when you practice it, but too long to explain for non-enlightened people.)
I read debates in 4chan style, where trolls are trolling trolls. I kinda lost enthusiasm to take part in this, even when I could spend some time on it, but I keep reading it.
> science still relies on p-values, isn't it a flawed methodology? one can do better than that, there are widely known methods
Not generally, no. When there are better methods, of course they are used.
> You can do better sometimes just because you are not social institution.
I'm not sure what that means. Again, if something is probabilistically the best, by definition it's possbile to do better sometimes, but only by chance.
> But if I watched public debates about possible causal link between smoking and cancer at 1950s, maybe even in 1940s. I could do better with pretty high probability.
But you're selecting your experiment after the fact. If you're complaining about p-hacking, this is probably the crudest form of it.
> I read different experts in economics, and they miss the mark all the time
Yes, nonlinear systems are pretty much impossible to predict. Of course they miss the mark a lot. The question is, can you come up with a system that misses the mark less? If you could, that would be the new economics.
> I'm working on it as well. For example, right now I'm into systems analysis.
I would suggest studying some mathematics, because your point above about p values tells me you're unfamiliar with some basics. You might have heard some stuff, but you can't really understand it until you actually study the subject.
> If you want to keep your thinking sharp, you need to become a guru of debates
I just hope you understand the difference between debates that can move a field of knowledge forward - those are typically conducted in writing and over a long time, and all parties have already spent years becoming experts in the field - and the sort of debates we have at the Oxford Union, which are a sport. It's a fine hobby, and you can become better at it, but it's not really "the way" to sharpen your mind. It's a skill you can develop like in any sport.
There are no shortcuts. You have to put it in the years to really know a subject, and then you can learn from others who've studied other subjects.
Yes. But it is a tradeoff. When your first priority is an epistemological quality of generated knowledge, you lose agility that can be needed for practical purposes. I mentioned Judea Pearl before, he describes how epistemological methodology of Science prevented it for years, more than a decade, from stating clearly and unambiguously that smoking tobacco leads to a lung cancer. To be honest, I should mention that other social institution where no better than that, and they failed to ban or limit tobacco smoking before Science declared the causal link. So science is still better than that, the story supports your claim that science has the best epistemological methodology. But still I can't help but to wonder if it is possible to do better?
I believe you can do better at individual level. When it is all about your decisions as of individual, you could decide that smoking causes cancer and quit smoking long before science reached a consensus.
> I just wonder why people who claim to want to use their brain pick such a third-rate source to read. Using your brain should also lead you to conclude that no amount of processing of information would lead you onto the right path to the answer if you're not starting out with all the relevant information.
Our world generates insane amounts of relevant information and in a lot of cases it is still not enough to get as much as you need. You have to lean how to reason in uncertainty. You have to learn how to come to conclusions and make decisions when you have not enough information. Either because information you need is not available or because you have a limited time to make a decision.
It is one more deficiency of Science we could add to my list: it concerned about truth too much, and is not that useful when you need to make a decision right now, when you need it so bad as you are going to base your decision on guesses, not on a proven scientific truth.
Science has tools for that, but it leaves them to practitioners, and concentrates on generating truths of a solid scientific quality, not best guesses.
> When I read Alexander, I didn't think he's a total moron; I just thought that he's not at all interesting, insightful, or knowledgeable compared to what else is out there. I just wonder why people who claim to want to use their brain pick such a third-rate source to read.
Well... I can't answer this question. You see, I can't show you any charts as well I can't cite any reputable sources. My answer will be neither of Church of Charts nor of Church of Science. All I can is to give you a personal anecdote.
Scott Alexander writes not only on topics he is under-qualified in. There are two exceptions:
1. People minds. He is a psychiatrist, so he is qualified to write about human minds. I'm not sure that the quality of his writing is of a good scientific quality still: he cites some studies sometimes, but while the existence of references is a necessary condition for a quality scientific writing, it is not sufficient by itself. But still his writing on this topic goes to at least top 0.1% of all Internet writings about people minds. I have a bachelor degree in psychology, I can see it with my eyes closed: everyone believes themselves competent enough when talking about psychology, and the Internet and book stores are filled to a brim by psychological garbage. Substantial amount of peer reviewed scientific papers are crap. It is not really hard to go to top 10% or even to top 1%, but Scott Alexander is still better than that.
BTW, now AI is a hot topic, and while Scott Alexander is not an AI expert, it is useful to see at AI through eyes of a psychiatrist. You need to filter out a lot of he is saying on the topic, but still you can get some insights.
2. A bunch of topics that are more of a philosophical kind. You can't expect science to have any consensus on those topics. Science is just not good for these topics, till they migrate from a philosophy to a normal science.
One of directions of his blog... It is hard to verbalize, but I can explain through history: Scott Alexander started with Yudkowski. It is an idea of "rationality", or a magic tool that allow you to reach the best possible conclusions in any situation. Yudkowski was (and probably still is) insane, he created a Cult of Yudkowski's Rationality. I have learnt a lot from Yodkowski, especially from his posts on why what he created was not a cult. Scott Alexander is much more saner, he writes these long blog posts about crime level or whatever, but he enumerates his mistakes also. I didn't read the references you provided above, but I've read titles and some abstracts, I'd bet that the crime levels will be one of Scott Alexander mistakes of '26. It is very interesting how you can use your brain the best in practice, and Scott Alexander explores exactly this. He maybe not perfect at this, but who is? Can you find someone who is better at it? I'm very concerned how humanity can tackle the loss of authorities of truth (no more media or public figures you can trust), people are believing in stupidest things, but how I manage to do better? (Do I?) Can I teach others or maybe can we create something that will help others to navigate the ocean of lies to find islands of truth? Scott is not about this, but still close enough to keep me interested.
And, you see, you can have a discussion with smart people sometimes. Like this one for example. Such discussions force me to write down my thoughts and to think them through. They can help me to find my own blind spots. For example, I didn't thought really about data Scott Alexander relies to. I could do better earlier because I know, that you can't interpret data without understanding how it was generated. I know the theory behind it, I faced this issue on practice. But I never noticed Scott Alexander is interpreting data without understanding how it was generated and he does nothing about it. I mean, if you try to reach quick and dirty conclusion, you can just ignore some inconvenient question, but maybe you can do better without diving into the question for months? I have some ideas about this, but it is irrelevant to our discussion. What is relevant: discussions triggered by Scott Alexander are attracting people of a kind that can point to me to my blind spots and make me better.