Sean Carroll

I know that one of the papers that you've written is about how we should be rational in terms of talking to other people who have knowledge about things, people we might think of as experts in something or maybe people

peers who are equal to us.

It's very rare that we have an opinion, we meet someone who we think is just as smart as we are with a different opinion, and therefore we change our opinion.

But what is a perfectly rational person supposed to do here?

But people don't actually do that, do they?

So I'm a little confused as to why my past self is useful here.

If I tell my past self all the relevant new information I've gotten, isn't that just my present self?

Okay, good.

You're just asking them about their basic judgment ahead of time.

What is the likelihood that someone's going to be wrong?

Is it going to be me?

So am I correct in thinking that this strategy is meant to kind of be a semi-practical implementation of the idea that we should have our credences in different propositions changed by the right amount when we meet other equally smart people with different credences?

Okay.

I mean, I'm trying to imagine in my head examples, which certainly exist, where people who I think are smarter than me and are experts in some area have a belief close to that area, and yet I disagree with them.

I'm trying to justify why I think it's okay to disagree with them.

I mean, I guess I think that I can identify some blind spot that they have or something like that.

But is that likely to be me just fooling myself?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a problem.

I do find that in, again, ordinary human conversation among non-Mr. and Ms.