> Artificial intelligence is a very fast-moving frontier and what (and who) to believe about it is hard for a non-expert to decide. Crypto is another example of a big field that seems to contain conflicting experts. For the lay public it is very hard to know who to believe.
The "lay public" doesn't care in the first place. They don't have the time to read various studies and journals to compare conflicting points of view. What they do have time for is news media, and a whole lot of it
> But sometimes experts are wrong. And very often, there’ll be another expert who has a different, even contrary, professional opinion on the same subject. So non-experts are left having to decide which expert we want to believe.
The non-experts aren't concerned with who to believe, they're concerned about what should be done. Believing something is true != thinking something should be done (ref Hume's is-ought problem).
I'm convinced that the author of this isn't complaining that the public has read various conflicting scientific studies and is unable to make a decision, they're complaining because the public is split on what should be done, which is the real source of disagreement
What should be done is a moral question that's independent of the results of any single experiment. To propose that a group of experts "decide" what's moral for the rest of society would be analogous to establishing a public religion
Except that information-causality flows both ways. There are those who have a strong self-interested opinion on "what should be done" that would be imprudent for most everyone relative to the factual reality. To convince more people of their preferred action, they work to undermine everyone's belief in the factual reality. So talking about what the public believes, independent of any proposed course of action, ends up being quite relevant.
> There are those who have a strong self-interested opinion on "what should be done" that would be imprudent for most everyone relative to the factual reality. To convince more people of their preferred action, they work to undermine everyone's belief in the factual reality. So talking about what the public believes, independent of any proposed course of action, ends up being quite relevant.
You mention a "factual reality" in an area of disagreement but there is no such thing prior to the establishment of a consensus. The phrase "undermine everyone's belief in the factual reality" is misleading because it assumes that there is already some established consensus that is being undermined prior to its own establishment. But of course, one of the ways to establish a consensus is to talk about it as if it were already established and legitimate
> So talking about what the public believes, independent of any proposed course of action, ends up being quite relevant.
I think that talking about consensus can be useful, but I've yet to find an example of anyone discussing what the public "believes" in complete disinterest and without some implicit course of action
The "lay public" doesn't care in the first place. They don't have the time to read various studies and journals to compare conflicting points of view. What they do have time for is news media, and a whole lot of it
> But sometimes experts are wrong. And very often, there’ll be another expert who has a different, even contrary, professional opinion on the same subject. So non-experts are left having to decide which expert we want to believe.
The non-experts aren't concerned with who to believe, they're concerned about what should be done. Believing something is true != thinking something should be done (ref Hume's is-ought problem).
I'm convinced that the author of this isn't complaining that the public has read various conflicting scientific studies and is unable to make a decision, they're complaining because the public is split on what should be done, which is the real source of disagreement
What should be done is a moral question that's independent of the results of any single experiment. To propose that a group of experts "decide" what's moral for the rest of society would be analogous to establishing a public religion