I’m not talking about the low-hanging fruit. As you say, those are covered. My reasoning is this:
If rationality is systematized winning, every rationality technique can be described as a method for winning. Preferably with a group of examples from wildly unrelated contexts, to emphasize the universality of the method.
Every win can be reformulated as an avoidance of loss, which makes it gain subjective importance due to loss aversion.
Effort is loss.
So I think any aspect of rationality should seem more valuable if reframed in this way, which would help people who do not have that “quasi-aesthetic judgment that being correct is valuable unto itself” 9eB1 mentioned appreciate rational methods.
If you disagree, give me three elements of rationality that you don’t think can be reframed as methods to avoid wasting effort, and I’ll try to do just that.
I’m not sure what that you are responding to. In the context of this article, I meant only that some huge chunk of the population will likely never experience increased wealth, happiness, etc. by reading deeply into LW or other intensive rationality training because they don’t have big IQs. Simple heuristics and common biases are useful to know… beyond that, I see limited value.
For example, there is a rational way to dunk a basketball—avoiding wasting effort & optimizing to a successful outcome—but it isn’t particularily useful to 99.X% of the population.
I’m not talking about the low-hanging fruit. As you say, those are covered. My reasoning is this:
If rationality is systematized winning, every rationality technique can be described as a method for winning. Preferably with a group of examples from wildly unrelated contexts, to emphasize the universality of the method.
Every win can be reformulated as an avoidance of loss, which makes it gain subjective importance due to loss aversion.
Effort is loss.
So I think any aspect of rationality should seem more valuable if reframed in this way, which would help people who do not have that “quasi-aesthetic judgment that being correct is valuable unto itself” 9eB1 mentioned appreciate rational methods.
If you disagree, give me three elements of rationality that you don’t think can be reframed as methods to avoid wasting effort, and I’ll try to do just that.
This is not my idea. Rolf Dobelli did something very similar to that, and wrote an international bestseller this way.
I’m not sure what that you are responding to. In the context of this article, I meant only that some huge chunk of the population will likely never experience increased wealth, happiness, etc. by reading deeply into LW or other intensive rationality training because they don’t have big IQs. Simple heuristics and common biases are useful to know… beyond that, I see limited value.
For example, there is a rational way to dunk a basketball—avoiding wasting effort & optimizing to a successful outcome—but it isn’t particularily useful to 99.X% of the population.
The problem is a lot of irrationality can also be reformulated as avoiding wasted effort.