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Independent impressions — EA Forum

forum.effectivealtruism.org · 296 words · saved by 1 readers

Your independent impression about something is essentially what you'd believe about that thing if you weren't updating your beliefs in light of peer disagreement - i.e., if you weren't taking into account your knowledge about what other people believe and how trustworthy their judgement seems on this topic. Your independent impression can take into account the reasons those people have for their beliefs (inasmuch as you know those reasons), but not the mere fact that they believe what they believe. Meanwhile, your all-things-considered belief can (and probably should!) also take into account peer disagreement. Armed with this concept, I try to stick to the following epistemic/discussion norms, and I think it's good for other people to do so as well: One rationale for that bundle of norms is to avoid information cascades. In contrast, when I actually make decisions, I try to always make them based on my all-things-considered beliefs. For example: My independent impression is that it's p

xccf 4y 39 2 0 And this all-things-considered belief is what guides my research and career decisions. A few arguments for letting your independent impression guide your research and career decisions instead: If everyone in EA follows the strategy of letting their independent impression guide their research and career decisions, our distribution of research and career decisions will look like the aggregate of everyone's independent impressions, which is a decent first approximation for what our all-things-considered belief should be as a community. By contrast, if everyone acts based on a simil

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