I will list the only example that comes to my mind : better x-rationality techniques have actually helped me get my university diploma : not a few times getting out of a difficult situation, where I used what I knew of heuristics, biases, the limits and usual mistakes in normal rationality, how one can sound rational regardless of whether he really is … to give off that impressive aura of someone who knows what he’s doing at little cost. To sound rational when facing an audience.
To my defense, I actually faked the cues and tells of my rationality, skill etc. to adapt them to what I did estimate to be my real level of rationality and skill, but which I also decided wouldn’t be signaled correctly if I didn’t actively do the job.
Now, that’d be the only time I used that knowledge in real life. But I’m not really an x-rationalist either. Even the best of us is still but a student in x-rationality. Personally, I’d just consider myself as a normal rationalist with some x-rationality ideas, someone on the transition, getting there. I mean, I can’t even do the math, after all. It’s all very intuitive so far, to me, not really formalized. But what I have so far, intuitively, tells me that I should seek that conversion, so as to eventually be able to use the math, and formalize that rationality. I ain’t even saying that once (if ever) I’m there, I’ll only used formalized x-rationality. But I’ll have a new, powerful tool, maybe the most powerful, to help me wherever it may (should it be everywhere ? Perhaps not, for as long as we’re meatware human; it’ll still be easier to hit the ball when it feels right, rather than when you’ve solved its differential equations.)
And so in our present days, I wonder just how much of our art could be really be used formally, so far, as opposed to all that is still only present and usable on an intuitive level. And what part of it is really more a part of x-rationality, rather than something borrowed from someplace else.
Ok, giving it another go. Let’s say you had to perform a set of experiments. You didn’t know much about, nor studied a lot of, the background science. The results, and the data that can be extrapolated from those, are weak, and it’s in part your fault. How would you keep going, without failing either your overall experimental work (which should be the only important matter at hand), neither your co workers’ trust in your capabilities ?
The first most important thing would be to put things back into context. Being intellectually honest, with a genuine will towards truth, about just how much your work so far is worth, what you are capable of, how motivated you are, and what you can expect to achieve next. Putting confidence bounds on things like “this experiment set will be done by next week”, “I’ll falsify this hypothesis with this experiment”, “this theory seems to apply here”, “I’ll assume this explanation to be the right one”, etc. Planning your future work based on that.
Mostly in a bad case, it amounts to admitting “I don’t know”. Having admitted to that, you can start working towards better results, improving yourself at your own pace, and eventually accomplish your work.
Now I don’t usually trust people to accept that I’ll work at my own pace. In quite a few cases it seems like there’s a gap I can’t cross in explaining to them how working that way will be optimal (on a case by case basis, and for me). I especially don’t expect it when I am working well under what I know is my normal work output, or even below what is the average, expected work output for anyone who’d be in my shoes.
The next step—which was quite automatic most of the time—would be where I’d for instance explain my work or present results—the powerpoint presentations given to the team, or informal meeting with the lab director—where I’d include the meta information about how I rationally evaluated my work, and planned the next steps. But only selectively so. In order to show that I was intellectually honest, but not so much as to shoot my own foot in the process. Casually throwing here and there information which while correct would still draw on affect heuristics, halo effects, anchoring, and probably others I don’t even remember, to make it sound even better than it would have otherwise. Is that similar to what is called “becoming a more sophisticated arguer” ?
Some of the comments I’d receive then were like “ok you need to work more on that, but you seem to understand the problem well” “your presentation was very good, very easy to understand, it put everything back in place” etc. when my own estimate told me that not only my work wasn’t all that good, but that what was being praised wasn’t the right thing, and missed the point. I didn’t ever mention those doubts though.
I can’t tell how much of my final “success” was deserved. I don’t know how much of my final marks were due to the value of the science done, how much for the intellectual honesty, and how much for how I played on those to help it seem better than it was. I personally think my work wasn’t worth that much, and I know I underperformed. That I had good reasons to underperform myself at that time, doesn’t change the fact that I was graded better than I would have expected, or graded myself, even with benefit from hindsight.
As a caveat, I maybe shouldn’t have said “x-rationality” in that first comment. A small part of what I used was x-rationality. Most of the rest was normal rationality. But I learned about both at the same time. About the latter, I could throw more examples in. For instance, I only understood what science, and the scientific method was really about, on my last year, not as a result of my courses, but as a result of reading from the sl4 mailing list as well as some of your other writings. This helped me succeed too, a lot.
I will list the only example that comes to my mind : better x-rationality techniques have actually helped me get my university diploma : not a few times getting out of a difficult situation, where I used what I knew of heuristics, biases, the limits and usual mistakes in normal rationality, how one can sound rational regardless of whether he really is … to give off that impressive aura of someone who knows what he’s doing at little cost. To sound rational when facing an audience.
To my defense, I actually faked the cues and tells of my rationality, skill etc. to adapt them to what I did estimate to be my real level of rationality and skill, but which I also decided wouldn’t be signaled correctly if I didn’t actively do the job.
Now, that’d be the only time I used that knowledge in real life. But I’m not really an x-rationalist either. Even the best of us is still but a student in x-rationality. Personally, I’d just consider myself as a normal rationalist with some x-rationality ideas, someone on the transition, getting there. I mean, I can’t even do the math, after all. It’s all very intuitive so far, to me, not really formalized. But what I have so far, intuitively, tells me that I should seek that conversion, so as to eventually be able to use the math, and formalize that rationality. I ain’t even saying that once (if ever) I’m there, I’ll only used formalized x-rationality. But I’ll have a new, powerful tool, maybe the most powerful, to help me wherever it may (should it be everywhere ? Perhaps not, for as long as we’re meatware human; it’ll still be easier to hit the ball when it feels right, rather than when you’ve solved its differential equations.)
And so in our present days, I wonder just how much of our art could be really be used formally, so far, as opposed to all that is still only present and usable on an intuitive level. And what part of it is really more a part of x-rationality, rather than something borrowed from someplace else.
I didn’t quite understand your description of what happened here, but it sounds interesting and possibly ominous. Please rephrase?
Ok, giving it another go. Let’s say you had to perform a set of experiments. You didn’t know much about, nor studied a lot of, the background science. The results, and the data that can be extrapolated from those, are weak, and it’s in part your fault. How would you keep going, without failing either your overall experimental work (which should be the only important matter at hand), neither your co workers’ trust in your capabilities ?
The first most important thing would be to put things back into context. Being intellectually honest, with a genuine will towards truth, about just how much your work so far is worth, what you are capable of, how motivated you are, and what you can expect to achieve next. Putting confidence bounds on things like “this experiment set will be done by next week”, “I’ll falsify this hypothesis with this experiment”, “this theory seems to apply here”, “I’ll assume this explanation to be the right one”, etc. Planning your future work based on that.
Mostly in a bad case, it amounts to admitting “I don’t know”. Having admitted to that, you can start working towards better results, improving yourself at your own pace, and eventually accomplish your work.
Now I don’t usually trust people to accept that I’ll work at my own pace. In quite a few cases it seems like there’s a gap I can’t cross in explaining to them how working that way will be optimal (on a case by case basis, and for me). I especially don’t expect it when I am working well under what I know is my normal work output, or even below what is the average, expected work output for anyone who’d be in my shoes.
The next step—which was quite automatic most of the time—would be where I’d for instance explain my work or present results—the powerpoint presentations given to the team, or informal meeting with the lab director—where I’d include the meta information about how I rationally evaluated my work, and planned the next steps. But only selectively so. In order to show that I was intellectually honest, but not so much as to shoot my own foot in the process. Casually throwing here and there information which while correct would still draw on affect heuristics, halo effects, anchoring, and probably others I don’t even remember, to make it sound even better than it would have otherwise. Is that similar to what is called “becoming a more sophisticated arguer” ?
Some of the comments I’d receive then were like “ok you need to work more on that, but you seem to understand the problem well” “your presentation was very good, very easy to understand, it put everything back in place” etc. when my own estimate told me that not only my work wasn’t all that good, but that what was being praised wasn’t the right thing, and missed the point. I didn’t ever mention those doubts though.
I can’t tell how much of my final “success” was deserved. I don’t know how much of my final marks were due to the value of the science done, how much for the intellectual honesty, and how much for how I played on those to help it seem better than it was. I personally think my work wasn’t worth that much, and I know I underperformed. That I had good reasons to underperform myself at that time, doesn’t change the fact that I was graded better than I would have expected, or graded myself, even with benefit from hindsight.
As a caveat, I maybe shouldn’t have said “x-rationality” in that first comment. A small part of what I used was x-rationality. Most of the rest was normal rationality. But I learned about both at the same time. About the latter, I could throw more examples in. For instance, I only understood what science, and the scientific method was really about, on my last year, not as a result of my courses, but as a result of reading from the sl4 mailing list as well as some of your other writings. This helped me succeed too, a lot.