I rate fairly poorly by these metrics. That makes me suspect that people like me also do. I see that this comment has been poorly rated and hope that people haven’t rated it poorly for being unflattering. If you have done this, please rate it back up, OK.
I certainly don’t mean to refer to myself as a candidate for Rational Man, but I do like owning books. Especially textbooks, I would not want to go down to the library every time I wanted to go through my copy of Sakurai. But even old favorite novels, it’s good to have them on the shelf, ready to throw in a saddlebag at a moment’s notice before a long train ride.
I know of some other stupid tests for rationality, borrowed happily from Invader Zim.
Absorbency
Electrical Conductivity
Something involving a beaver and a toy taxi.
On a less stupid note:
Reputationally, I have an explicit agreement with one of my friends that we fact check each other. This was actually a one-way fact checking until fairly recently when he asked me why I didn’t call him on something he later realized was total bullcrap. Note, this works best if you actually have a good memory and aren’t pickling your brain with alcohol. It also seems to help check the mindkilling effects of disagreement.
A long time ago, I was reading about critical thinking, and was presented a relatively short list of questions to try and use to stimulate critical thought. Questions of this nature could be used in some form of standardized test; or could be used to build a portfolio of rationale behind opinions on all manner of things, which could be graded by peers or instructors (preferably ones who also aspire to rationality, and disagree). I suppose the portfolio would be more organizational than experimental, and almost as easy to game as cheating on essays. But those were my main thoughts before reading the cool ideas other people came up with.
In case you’re interested, this was the list as I transcribed it:
What do you mean by _ ?
How did you come to that conclusion?
What is the source of your information?
What is the source of their (opponents’) source of information?
What assumptions led you to that conclusion?
Suppose you are wrong. What implications are there?
Why did you make your inference? Is there another inference more consistent with the data?
Why is this issue significant?
How do I know what you say is true?
What is an alternate explanation for this phenomenon?
Oh, and after reading the Logic of Failure, maybe running simulations like they did with the Sim City-like vibe, or the optimizing bug population or the refrigeration tests could be instructive. Even after learning about them, (especially the city planning and the African tribe) they may be sufficiently complicated to be of experimental or organizational value. On the other hand, they may turn out to be just as useless as chess for testing rationality if success strategies are posted and shared. Maybe some of the sims could have randomly assigned (Kirk resistant) Kobayashi Maru modes, but then I don’t see how a predetermined loss would be very instructive unless the player didn’t know it was rigged—and even then, only to illustrate Eliezer’s point that even if you do everything right, you can still fail.
deleted
I rate fairly poorly by these metrics. That makes me suspect that people like me also do. I see that this comment has been poorly rated and hope that people haven’t rated it poorly for being unflattering. If you have done this, please rate it back up, OK.
I’m pretty sure Rational Man never buys a book he can borrow for free from the local library.
I certainly don’t mean to refer to myself as a candidate for Rational Man, but I do like owning books. Especially textbooks, I would not want to go down to the library every time I wanted to go through my copy of Sakurai. But even old favorite novels, it’s good to have them on the shelf, ready to throw in a saddlebag at a moment’s notice before a long train ride.
I know of some other stupid tests for rationality, borrowed happily from Invader Zim.
Absorbency
Electrical Conductivity
Something involving a beaver and a toy taxi.
On a less stupid note: Reputationally, I have an explicit agreement with one of my friends that we fact check each other. This was actually a one-way fact checking until fairly recently when he asked me why I didn’t call him on something he later realized was total bullcrap. Note, this works best if you actually have a good memory and aren’t pickling your brain with alcohol. It also seems to help check the mindkilling effects of disagreement.
A long time ago, I was reading about critical thinking, and was presented a relatively short list of questions to try and use to stimulate critical thought. Questions of this nature could be used in some form of standardized test; or could be used to build a portfolio of rationale behind opinions on all manner of things, which could be graded by peers or instructors (preferably ones who also aspire to rationality, and disagree). I suppose the portfolio would be more organizational than experimental, and almost as easy to game as cheating on essays. But those were my main thoughts before reading the cool ideas other people came up with.
In case you’re interested, this was the list as I transcribed it:
Oh, and after reading the Logic of Failure, maybe running simulations like they did with the Sim City-like vibe, or the optimizing bug population or the refrigeration tests could be instructive. Even after learning about them, (especially the city planning and the African tribe) they may be sufficiently complicated to be of experimental or organizational value. On the other hand, they may turn out to be just as useless as chess for testing rationality if success strategies are posted and shared. Maybe some of the sims could have randomly assigned (Kirk resistant) Kobayashi Maru modes, but then I don’t see how a predetermined loss would be very instructive unless the player didn’t know it was rigged—and even then, only to illustrate Eliezer’s point that even if you do everything right, you can still fail.