Disclosure: the following point is tangential to Givewell, and is more about start-ups.
It strikes me as paradoxical that users of Less Wrong, and the rationalist community, endorse founding a start-up as great ‘rationality training’, and view very successful entrepreneurs as paragons of rationality in the practical world, yet Paul Graham notes in his essays that it may often be only in hindsight that entrepreneurs can assess the strategies they implemented as good, such that they ‘got lucky’ with their success. ‘Getting lucky’, that is, maybe[1] implying that the entrepreneurs in question might not be such paragons of practical rationality after all.
Mr. Graham’s partial solution to this problem is stating that if you’re the right sort of person, you’ll have the right sort of hunches. I believe what Mr. Graham is referring to here is what Luke Muehlhauser has identified as, and labeled, “tacit rationality”.
If you’re an entrepreneurial type looking to start a business, or even an effective altruist looking to start an especially effective non-profit organization, or research foundation, you probably want to know if you’re the “right sort of person who has the right sort of hunches”. Simply believing so, and betting on that, I believe, is prone to the sorts of biases which are common knowledge around here, so we shouldn’t expect the outcome in such a case to be very favorable. So, the options come down to one of the following:
*Figuring out if you already are tacitly rational, like Mark Zuckerburg, or Oprah Winfrey, apparently.
*Transforming yourself from a geek who knows about biases, but does nothing about them, to someone who achieves practical success at an increasing, and predictable, rate, due to their own efforts.
From the conclusion of his post on explicit, and tacit, rationality, here are Mr. Muehlhauser’s tips for performing the above tasks:
If someone is consistently winning, and not just because they have tons of wealth or fame, then maybe you should conclude they have pretty good tacit rationality even if their explicit rationality is terrible.
The positive effects of tight feedback loops might trump the effects of explicit rationality training.
Still, I suspect explicit rationality plus tight feedback loops could lead to the best results of all.
If you’re reading this post, you’re probably spending too much time reading Less Wrong, and too little time hacking your motivation system, learning social skills, and learning how to inject tight feedback loops into everything you can.
[1] Due diligence: the comment below points out well how my original use of language in this sentence was a universal claim, which isn’t justified. So, I’ve retroactively edited this sentence to make my claim only an existential one.
Minor: the sentences in Luke’s quote above are bullet-points in the original:
If someone is consistently winning, and not just because they have tons of wealth or fame, then maybe you should conclude they have pretty good tacit rationality even if their explicit rationality is terrible.
The positive effects of tight feedback loops might trump the effects of explicit rationality training.
Still, I suspect explicit rationality plus tight feedback loops could lead to the best results of all.
I really hope we can develop a real rationality dojo.
If you’re reading this post, you’re probably spending too much time reading Less Wrong, and too little time hacking your motivation system, learning social skills, and learning how to inject tight feedback loops into everything you can.
Disclosure: the following point is tangential to Givewell, and is more about start-ups.
It strikes me as paradoxical that users of Less Wrong, and the rationalist community, endorse founding a start-up as great ‘rationality training’, and view very successful entrepreneurs as paragons of rationality in the practical world, yet Paul Graham notes in his essays that it may often be only in hindsight that entrepreneurs can assess the strategies they implemented as good, such that they ‘got lucky’ with their success. ‘Getting lucky’, that is, maybe[1] implying that the entrepreneurs in question might not be such paragons of practical rationality after all.
Mr. Graham’s partial solution to this problem is stating that if you’re the right sort of person, you’ll have the right sort of hunches. I believe what Mr. Graham is referring to here is what Luke Muehlhauser has identified as, and labeled, “tacit rationality”.
If you’re an entrepreneurial type looking to start a business, or even an effective altruist looking to start an especially effective non-profit organization, or research foundation, you probably want to know if you’re the “right sort of person who has the right sort of hunches”. Simply believing so, and betting on that, I believe, is prone to the sorts of biases which are common knowledge around here, so we shouldn’t expect the outcome in such a case to be very favorable. So, the options come down to one of the following:
*Figuring out if you already are tacitly rational, like Mark Zuckerburg, or Oprah Winfrey, apparently.
*Transforming yourself from a geek who knows about biases, but does nothing about them, to someone who achieves practical success at an increasing, and predictable, rate, due to their own efforts.
From the conclusion of his post on explicit, and tacit, rationality, here are Mr. Muehlhauser’s tips for performing the above tasks:
[1] Due diligence: the comment below points out well how my original use of language in this sentence was a universal claim, which isn’t justified. So, I’ve retroactively edited this sentence to make my claim only an existential one.
Note: edited for formatting, nuance, and grammar.
You can do everything “right’ and still fail. On the other hand if you build a startup and make dumb decisions your startup will likely fail.
I agree with you, so I’ve edited my comment a bit to account for your nitpick. See above. Thanks for making the point.
Minor: the sentences in Luke’s quote above are bullet-points in the original: