What is the evidence that empirical rationality is more likely to be helpful than harmful?
Well, we have reliable agriculture, reasonably effective transportation infrastructure, flight, telecommunication, powerful computers with lots of useful software because lots of people worked hard to believe things that are true, and used those true beliefs to figure out how to accomplish their goals.
Asking for evidence is not a fully general counterargument. It distinguishes arguments that have evidence in their favor from those which don’t.
And keep in mind, the social process of science, which you seem to think holds you to too high of a standard, is not merely interested in your ideas being right, but that you have effectively communicated them to the extent that other people can verify that they are right. You might discover the greatest anti-akrasia trick ever, but if you can’t explain it so that other people can use it and have it work even if you are not there to guide the process, then you have only helped yourself and your clients, and talking about it here is not helping. Of course, you could take the opportunity to figure out how to explain it better, though it would require you to “consider the possibility that you might be utterly, horribly wrong in your certainty about what things are true”.
And keep in mind, the social process of science, which you seem to think holds you to too high of a standard, is not merely interested in your ideas being right, but that you have effectively communicated them to the extent that other people can verify that they are right.
Two things I forgot in my other reply: first, testing on yourself is a higher standard than peer review, if your purpose is to find something that works for you.
Second, if this actually were about “my” ideas (and it isn’t), I’ve certainly effectively communicated many of them to the extent of verifiability, since many people have reported here and elsewhere about their experiments with them.
But very few of “my” ideas are new in any event—I have a few new approaches to presentation or learning, sure, maybe some new connections between fields (ev psych + priming + somatic markers + memory-prediction framework + memory reconsolidation, etc.), and a relatively-new emphasis on real-time, personal empirical testing. (I say relatively new because Bandler was advocating extreme testing of this sort 20+ years ago, but for some reason it never caught on in the field at large.)
And I’m not aware that any of these ideas is particularly controversial in the scientific community. Nobody ’s pushing for more individual empirical testing per se, but the “brief therapy” movement that resulted in things like CBT is certainly more focused that direction than before.
(The reason I stopped even bothering to write about any of that, though, is simply that I ended up in some sort of weird loop where people insist on references, and then ignore the ones I supply, even when they’re online papers or Wikipedia. Is it any wonder that I would then conclude they didn’t really want the references?)
Well, we have reliable agriculture, reasonably effective transportation infrastructure, flight, telecommunication, powerful computers with lots of useful software because lots of people worked hard to believe things that are true, and used those true beliefs to figure out how to accomplish their goals.
Those are the products of rationalism. I’m asking about evidence that the practice of (extreme) rationalism produces positive effects in the lives of the people who practice it, not the benefits that other people get from having a minority of humans practice it.
Asking for evidence is not a fully general counterargument. It distinguishes arguments that have evidence in their favor from those which don’t.
It is if you also apply the status quo bias to choose which evidence to count.
You might discover the greatest anti-akrasia trick ever, but if you can’t explain it so that other people can use it and have it work even if you are not there to guide the process, then you have only helped yourself and your clients, and talking about it here is not helping
I really wish people wouldn’t conflate the discussion of learning and attitude in general with the issue of specific techniques. There is plenty of evidence for how attitudes (of both student and teacher) affect learning, yet somehow the subject remains quite controversial here.
(Edited to say “extreme rationalism”, as suggested by Nick Tarleton.)
I’m asking about evidence that the practice of rationalism produces positive effects in the lives of the people who practice it, not the benefits that other people get from having a minority of humans practice it.
Well, we have reliable agriculture, reasonably effective transportation infrastructure, flight, telecommunication, powerful computers with lots of useful software because lots of people worked hard to believe things that are true, and used those true beliefs to figure out how to accomplish their goals.
Asking for evidence is not a fully general counterargument. It distinguishes arguments that have evidence in their favor from those which don’t.
And keep in mind, the social process of science, which you seem to think holds you to too high of a standard, is not merely interested in your ideas being right, but that you have effectively communicated them to the extent that other people can verify that they are right. You might discover the greatest anti-akrasia trick ever, but if you can’t explain it so that other people can use it and have it work even if you are not there to guide the process, then you have only helped yourself and your clients, and talking about it here is not helping. Of course, you could take the opportunity to figure out how to explain it better, though it would require you to “consider the possibility that you might be utterly, horribly wrong in your certainty about what things are true”.
Two things I forgot in my other reply: first, testing on yourself is a higher standard than peer review, if your purpose is to find something that works for you.
Second, if this actually were about “my” ideas (and it isn’t), I’ve certainly effectively communicated many of them to the extent of verifiability, since many people have reported here and elsewhere about their experiments with them.
But very few of “my” ideas are new in any event—I have a few new approaches to presentation or learning, sure, maybe some new connections between fields (ev psych + priming + somatic markers + memory-prediction framework + memory reconsolidation, etc.), and a relatively-new emphasis on real-time, personal empirical testing. (I say relatively new because Bandler was advocating extreme testing of this sort 20+ years ago, but for some reason it never caught on in the field at large.)
And I’m not aware that any of these ideas is particularly controversial in the scientific community. Nobody ’s pushing for more individual empirical testing per se, but the “brief therapy” movement that resulted in things like CBT is certainly more focused that direction than before.
(The reason I stopped even bothering to write about any of that, though, is simply that I ended up in some sort of weird loop where people insist on references, and then ignore the ones I supply, even when they’re online papers or Wikipedia. Is it any wonder that I would then conclude they didn’t really want the references?)
Those are the products of rationalism. I’m asking about evidence that the practice of (extreme) rationalism produces positive effects in the lives of the people who practice it, not the benefits that other people get from having a minority of humans practice it.
It is if you also apply the status quo bias to choose which evidence to count.
I really wish people wouldn’t conflate the discussion of learning and attitude in general with the issue of specific techniques. There is plenty of evidence for how attitudes (of both student and teacher) affect learning, yet somehow the subject remains quite controversial here.
(Edited to say “extreme rationalism”, as suggested by Nick Tarleton.)
You should probably be asking about extreme rationality.