But be careful of taking the first one at face value. The outsider might be optimizing for being right. He might also be optimizing for looking good in his social circle, confirming some self-image in his own mind, establishing himself as a prudent person who holds sensible beliefs, or establishing himself as a daring person who holds antiestablishment beliefs. The process that brought him to your attention, might also have selected him for noteworthiness by all sorts of criteria, only one of which is being right; that counts as an optimization process in and of itself.
Which doesn't mean the outsider isn't right. Maybe he is. But be careful of just assuming it.
Exactly. The Rational movement is well optimized for signaling their intelligence. Everything from the fanfiction to the explicit partitioning of people into rational and non-rational groups is meant to signal how smart they are. Sometimes that means they encourage genuinely smart practices. Autodidactism is great. Learning math and computer science is great. But the game is fundamentally to appear smart, often via contrarian views. That doesn't always align with safe medical practices.
In the article, he was mentioning one specific outsider (Zvi Mowshowitz) that he trusts. I changed it to "[an outsider]" more generally since it didn't make sense without context.
But be careful of taking the first one at face value. The outsider might be optimizing for being right. He might also be optimizing for looking good in his social circle, confirming some self-image in his own mind, establishing himself as a prudent person who holds sensible beliefs, or establishing himself as a daring person who holds antiestablishment beliefs. The process that brought him to your attention, might also have selected him for noteworthiness by all sorts of criteria, only one of which is being right; that counts as an optimization process in and of itself.
Which doesn't mean the outsider isn't right. Maybe he is. But be careful of just assuming it.