Adam Elga

There could be this kind of bootstrapping confirmation that you're better than someone at stuff.

Because then look what happens over the course of many disagreements.

If you did that every time, you'd think,

Hey, well, I got that one right.

I got this one right.

I'm assuming that there's no independent confirmation.

So there's just a series of disagreements.

All you have to go on is what has happened so far.

You will then check off and think, oh, wow, I got all these right.

And I'll think, wow, I'm even really better than I previously thought.

That seems like things have gone off the rails.

Yes, exactly.

And by the way, I can't resist citing a paper that Andy Egan and I wrote a while back.

The title of the paper is I Can't Believe I'm Stupid.

And it's all about the limits on how much you can doubt your own opinions while still having them.

But can I circle back to one thing?

Because it was fortuitous that you asked about this topic.

There's one more view that we haven't mentioned.

I predict you will not like it, but I think we should put it on the table because it'll be useful to have around when we talk about Boltzmann brains.

It's called the level splitting view.