That means, if you could make (a modified version of) LessWrong a part of curriculum, ten years down the line I would expect not multitudes of rationalists, but rather… people writing blogs and books using “Bayesian” arguments for Jesus, people using their “priors” to defend homeopathy against scientific research, and people claiming they can calculate Solomonoff Induction and that it proves whatever crazy idea they want to prove.
Okay, this argument is not completely absurd—I know a person who after reading a few LW articles produced a “theory” containing Tegmark multiverses, quantum mumbo jumbo, et cetera, to prove that evolution does not exist and the Catholic Church was right about everything; and insisted that as a rationalist I should agree with and accept his idea. Then he started promoting his version of “rationality” on Facebook among his religious friends, but luckily, the theory was too complicated for them to follow—however, the same argument could also be used against publishing LessWrong content online, where anyone can read it. And I wouldn’t argue against having LW online; but still having LW at schools feels wrong. How much rational is this?
One argument could be that LW selects for the kind of people who would voluntarily read LW despite having many other alternatives on the internet. Most people who would be hurt by LW choose to read some other website instead. If we bring LW to schools, we lose this filter. But that does not prove that having LW at schools would be a net loss. Maybe it is better to have 1000 people using LW correctly and 9000 people using LW incorrectly, than having 100 people using LW correctly and 50 people using LW incorrectly. Maybe the absolute number of rationalists is more important than the fraction of people exposed to LW material who get it right. There are already many kinds of fools, but we would benefit from having a larger rationalist community.
Maybe it’s using LW material at school that seems wrong. In addition to the influence of the materials themselves, you also have the influence of the teacher, and of the classmates. The teacher may happen to be the “clever arguer” who abuses LW material to support their stupid ideas; or the classmates may come with conclusions the teacher will not disprove. Imagine all kinds of political mindkilling that could use LW as a soldier, insisting that it’s only people who disagree with them who are mindkilled. -- But again, this seems like an argument against having schools in general.
Well, I don’t know… I guess we could try this once. Just don’t get your hopes high.
In addition to things mentioned in other comments, knowing about biases can hurt people. If you try to teach rationality to people who don’t care about rationality… well, most of them will just memorize your passwords and use them to impress people… and most of the remaining ones will twist the lessons to better defend their existing irrational views.
That means, if you could make (a modified version of) LessWrong a part of curriculum, ten years down the line I would expect not multitudes of rationalists, but rather… people writing blogs and books using “Bayesian” arguments for Jesus, people using their “priors” to defend homeopathy against scientific research, and people claiming they can calculate Solomonoff Induction and that it proves whatever crazy idea they want to prove.
Okay, this argument is not completely absurd—I know a person who after reading a few LW articles produced a “theory” containing Tegmark multiverses, quantum mumbo jumbo, et cetera, to prove that evolution does not exist and the Catholic Church was right about everything; and insisted that as a rationalist I should agree with and accept his idea. Then he started promoting his version of “rationality” on Facebook among his religious friends, but luckily, the theory was too complicated for them to follow—however, the same argument could also be used against publishing LessWrong content online, where anyone can read it. And I wouldn’t argue against having LW online; but still having LW at schools feels wrong. How much rational is this?
One argument could be that LW selects for the kind of people who would voluntarily read LW despite having many other alternatives on the internet. Most people who would be hurt by LW choose to read some other website instead. If we bring LW to schools, we lose this filter. But that does not prove that having LW at schools would be a net loss. Maybe it is better to have 1000 people using LW correctly and 9000 people using LW incorrectly, than having 100 people using LW correctly and 50 people using LW incorrectly. Maybe the absolute number of rationalists is more important than the fraction of people exposed to LW material who get it right. There are already many kinds of fools, but we would benefit from having a larger rationalist community.
Maybe it’s using LW material at school that seems wrong. In addition to the influence of the materials themselves, you also have the influence of the teacher, and of the classmates. The teacher may happen to be the “clever arguer” who abuses LW material to support their stupid ideas; or the classmates may come with conclusions the teacher will not disprove. Imagine all kinds of political mindkilling that could use LW as a soldier, insisting that it’s only people who disagree with them who are mindkilled. -- But again, this seems like an argument against having schools in general.
Well, I don’t know… I guess we could try this once. Just don’t get your hopes high.