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Michael Huemer's avatar

Thanks for your thoughts, David. I think you are not receiving my email messages, but I'll just post a couple of initial reactions here.

One is that I don't think we have a large substantive disagreement, since I think you are giving advice for especially smart and knowledgeable people similar to yourself. I agree that it's better for you, David Friedman, to think issues through for yourself, in about the way you currently are. I just think there are very few David Friedmans in the world, and that the great majority of people (even the great majority who are interested in these kinds of controversial issues) will mess it up.

When I mentioned climate change, I was mostly thinking about the questions of (i) whether global warming is happening, and (ii) what is causing it. I think we agree that those questions are best addressed by consulting expert climate scientist opinion. I also agree with you that climate scientists are not experts on the human impacts of climate change (which depend on how humans will respond).

About the Krugman case: Your comments on that seem persuasive, but notice that you didn't try to present the economic arguments directly. You alluded to the fact that the great majority of economists ("the rest of us") think minimum wage reduces employment, you mentioned that even the earlier Krugman agreed with that view, then suggested a reason why his current position might be biased. To me, this sounds closer to my advice in the "critical thinking" post than yours.

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अक्षर - Akshar's avatar

I have figured out that expert advice is generally better than you doing your own research when certain conditions are met :

1. When experts have some real skin in the game for being right.

For example I trust my car mechanic lot more than Bill Nye. My car mechanic will go out of business if his expert opinion is wrong consistently.

It is easier to trust an expert talking about gravitational field of Moon rather than climate impact of human fats because person is unlikely to be emotionally/financially dependent on what that opinion is when it comes to former.

However, as we move into esoteric topics, it is generally harder to understand the incentive structure either. For example saying certain things about moon's gravity might have some perverse incentives to start next project and receive more funding for that researcher.

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