Looking back on that comment I agree it came across as too harsh.
I meant only that this site’s comparative advantage is not in teaching object-level information about how to succeed socially, pick up girls/boys, program computers, or lose weight—even if the post with the information is called “Losing Weight The Rationalist Way”.
I totally support more posts on the interaction between rationality and real-life problems, like if there is a specific cognitive bias that’s preventing people from losing weight, or if the problem of weight loss illuminates some wider issue about how people think and act. Just not “Hey guys, I just read about how if you only eat carrots for a week you can lose thirty pounds! This sounds really rational and high utility! Bayes!”
(I feel the same way about discussion of politics. I realize different people’s intuition about where to draw the line on weight-loss and politics posts are in different places, and I know I’ve gotten flak for crossing that line a few times, and I’m willing to live and let live on the issue up until it becomes really blatant.)
I would welcome an analysis of this claim, but I think it would be most suited to Less Wrong if the analysis focused on the process of analyzing scientific papers, rather than just being about the biology of cyanobacteria. I’d probably still read the cyanobacteria one, I just wouldn’t see why it’s on LW.
Looking back on that comment I agree it came across as too harsh.
I meant only that this site’s comparative advantage is not in teaching object-level information about how to succeed socially, pick up girls/boys, program computers, or lose weight—even if the post with the information is called “Losing Weight The Rationalist Way”.
I totally support more posts on the interaction between rationality and real-life problems, like if there is a specific cognitive bias that’s preventing people from losing weight, or if the problem of weight loss illuminates some wider issue about how people think and act. Just not “Hey guys, I just read about how if you only eat carrots for a week you can lose thirty pounds! This sounds really rational and high utility! Bayes!”
(I feel the same way about discussion of politics. I realize different people’s intuition about where to draw the line on weight-loss and politics posts are in different places, and I know I’ve gotten flak for crossing that line a few times, and I’m willing to live and let live on the issue up until it becomes really blatant.)
I would welcome an analysis of this claim, but I think it would be most suited to Less Wrong if the analysis focused on the process of analyzing scientific papers, rather than just being about the biology of cyanobacteria. I’d probably still read the cyanobacteria one, I just wouldn’t see why it’s on LW.