Nod. I’m not actually particularly attached to this point nor think $4000 is necessarily the right amount to get the filtering effect if you’re aiming for that. I do think this approach is insufficient for me because the people I most hope to intervene on with my own rationality training are college students, who don’t yet have enough income for this approach to work.
But, also, well, you do need some kind of filter.
Speaking for myself, not sure what Critch would say:
There seems like some kind of assumption here that “if we didn’t filter out people unnecessarily, we’d be able to help more people.” But, I think the throughput of people-who-can-be-helped here is quite small. I think it’s not possible to scale this sort of org to help thousands of people per year without compromising the org.
(In general in education, there is a problem where educational interventions work initially, because the educators are invested, and have a nuanced understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish. But, when they attempt to scale, they get worse teachers who are less invested and less deep understanding of the methodology, because conveying the knowledge is hard)
So, I think it’s more like “there is a smallish number of people this sort of process/org would be able to help. There are going to be thousands/millions of people who could be helped, but you don’t have time to help them all.” That’s sort of baked in.
So, it’s not necessarily “a problem” from my perspective if this filters out people who I’d have liked to have helped, so long as the program successfully outputs people who go on to be much more effective. (Past me would be more sad about that, but it’s something I’ve already grieved)
I do think it’s important (and plausible) that this creates some kinds of distortions in which people you’re selecting on, and if they (in aggregate) those distortions add up. But that’s a somewhat different argument from what you and sanyer presented.
But, still, ultimately the question is “okay, what sort of filtering mechanism do you have in mind, and how well does it work?”.
Nod. I’m not actually particularly attached to this point nor think $4000 is necessarily the right amount to get the filtering effect if you’re aiming for that. I do think this approach is insufficient for me because the people I most hope to intervene on with my own rationality training are college students, who don’t yet have enough income for this approach to work.
But, also, well, you do need some kind of filter.
Speaking for myself, not sure what Critch would say:
There seems like some kind of assumption here that “if we didn’t filter out people unnecessarily, we’d be able to help more people.” But, I think the throughput of people-who-can-be-helped here is quite small. I think it’s not possible to scale this sort of org to help thousands of people per year without compromising the org.
(In general in education, there is a problem where educational interventions work initially, because the educators are invested, and have a nuanced understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish. But, when they attempt to scale, they get worse teachers who are less invested and less deep understanding of the methodology, because conveying the knowledge is hard)
So, I think it’s more like “there is a smallish number of people this sort of process/org would be able to help. There are going to be thousands/millions of people who could be helped, but you don’t have time to help them all.” That’s sort of baked in.
So, it’s not necessarily “a problem” from my perspective if this filters out people who I’d have liked to have helped, so long as the program successfully outputs people who go on to be much more effective. (Past me would be more sad about that, but it’s something I’ve already grieved)
I do think it’s important (and plausible) that this creates some kinds of distortions in which people you’re selecting on, and if they (in aggregate) those distortions add up. But that’s a somewhat different argument from what you and sanyer presented.
But, still, ultimately the question is “okay, what sort of filtering mechanism do you have in mind, and how well does it work?”.