Oddbean new post about | logout
 Well I'm actually being a touch unfair. I think Whitney is highly useful in the sense that she is good at looking at situations from a different perspective and loves to turn over or look under rocks. We need those people. What I think Whitney sometimes gets wrong is the 'connecting of dots'. Or at least she makes connections using severely incomplete data that really leaves her conclusions exposed. I think this happened most recently with Neuralink. 

The thing we all need to guard against is the tendency to dig only deep enough to make the data fit our narrative bias.

No one is perfect and I certainly can't expect perfection from Whitney when she is forced to operate in the dark with hands tied behind her back given the nature of the topics she tries to expose.

Having written this reply I think I've realised my frustration is perhaps more directed at those who interview her and are not more robust in their interrogation of her conclusions.