pointing out this mistake is rationality-enhancing
The way giving someone a fish is fishing skill-enhancing, I’d guess…
Well, not quite. This particular mistake has a general lesson of ‘what you know about what foods are healthy may be wrong’ and an even more general one ‘beware the affect heuristic’, but there probably are more effective ways to teach the latter.
But the quote isn’t attempting to teach a general lesson, it’s attempting to improve one particular part of peoples’ mental maps. If lots of people have an error in their map, and this error causes many of them to make a bad decision, then pointing out this error is rationality-enhancing.
If lots of people have an error in their map, and this error causes many of them to make a bad decision, then pointing out this error is rationality-enhancing.
No, that makes it a useful factoid. I don’t consider my personal rationality enhanced whenever I learn a new fact, even if it is useful, unless it will reliably improve my ability to distinguish true beliefs from false ones in the future.
The way giving someone a fish is fishing skill-enhancing, I’d guess…
Well, not quite. This particular mistake has a general lesson of ‘what you know about what foods are healthy may be wrong’ and an even more general one ‘beware the affect heuristic’, but there probably are more effective ways to teach the latter.
But the quote isn’t attempting to teach a general lesson, it’s attempting to improve one particular part of peoples’ mental maps. If lots of people have an error in their map, and this error causes many of them to make a bad decision, then pointing out this error is rationality-enhancing.
No, that makes it a useful factoid. I don’t consider my personal rationality enhanced whenever I learn a new fact, even if it is useful, unless it will reliably improve my ability to distinguish true beliefs from false ones in the future.