The issue that hamburglar seemed to have is that he was relying too heavily on social proof. Something like "My ideas are the best out of the people I know so I should bet heavily on them" does not work well when your friends to do not cover most if not all of the relevent solution space with well thought out arguments.
That's why I said that hamburglar might not have a basis for being confident in an absolute sense, but definitely had grounds for being more confident than people who can't even spot a flaw in the argument.
(And FWIW, "trusting social proof", as the term is used, would mean deferring to the group beliefs; I think you mean to say s/he was overestimating the peer group's representativeness. But even then, I think the group was representative of the population at large: very few people possess the kind of understanding to do that, nor hold themselves to the standard that would make them seek it.)
> And FWIW, "trusting social proof", as the term is used, would mean deferring to the group beliefs;
I did not know the phrase had commonly held definition. I meant more along the lines hamburglar's heuristic for deciding when they were more likely to be correct was overly dependent on not just the people who he happened to be around but other people in general.
> But even then, I think the group was representative of the population at large: very few people possess the kind of understanding to do that, nor hold themselves to the standard that would make them seek it.
My comment was not about a group representing the population, but rather representative of the possible solutions weighted by relevance or similar metric.
> I think the problem is that you never encountered anyone who actually understood the best reasons for the policies you opposed,
hamburglar should have/be use heuristics that do not depend on encountering the right people to gather and judge evidence when possible.
>I did not know the phrase had commonly held definition.
"Social proof" refers to the general phenomenon of people forming opinions in alignment with what they observe others believing. I understand what you meant, but it's confusing to frame that as a social proof issue, given its common usage.
>My comment was not about a group representing the population, but rather representative of the possible solutions weighted by relevance or similar metric.
I know, but that's it's wrong: the group was representative of the typical arguments and reasoning offered regarding how to model government policy. Most people lack the understanding to articulate what's wrong with unfamiliar or "absurd" proposals; casting his net wider wouldn't have helped much, even in the internet age.
>hamburglar should have/be use heuristics that do not depend on encountering the right people to gather and judge evidence when possible.
Then what should they depend on? Again, you can't update on evidence that even interested adversaries can't find! At most, it means you should lower your confidences all around, but even then, the people he argued with should have lowered them even further, for the very same reasons.
