Well, a ban is a hindrance to the extent that a rationalist community could develop more rigorous and testable theories,
You must be new here. ;-)
All kidding aside, this community could develop plenty of rigorous and testable theories. It’s just incredibly doubtful that any of them would actually work in practice, for almost any definition of “work”, unless they were developed by people who already had practical experience.
In particular, this community is inflicted with massive “should” bias—i.e. confusing “ought” and “is”, while vehemently insisting that things that do work, shouldn’t, don’t work, should, and coming up with ludicrous explanations for both sets of falsehoods.
See, for example, the recent complaints about “marketing”; e.g. deriding breaking cryonics cost down to $1/day. There’s a reason marketers do that… and it’s because marketers have forgotten more than most people posting on this site have ever known about overcoming akrasia.
Because, if a marketer can’t overcome somebody’s akrasia enough to get them to shell out actual money, the marketer doesn’t get paid.
That’s why I group PUA and marketing under the same heading, of Arts That Work. When they’re too far wrong, the marketers don’t get paid and the PUAs don’t get laid, so there’s an inherent control over how far they can stray from the truth. This control does not apply so well to general works of self-help, or to armchair ev-psych theorizing. I actually learned far more about akrasia and motivation from marketers and PUAs than I ever did from self-help books or science papers.
(Btw, the scientific principle behind using per diem breakdown is incredibly relevant to any sort of personal change project, and it involves a statistical rule discovered by Prochaska, Norcross et al regarding the precise number of standard deviations in a person’s change of evaluation regarding the pros and cons of a decision that will make them shift from “contemplating” to “acting”… a rule that holds constant across a dozen different kinds of changes, such as quitting smoking, starting an exercise program, etc. Per diem breakdowns are just one of several tools that the adept marketer uses to prompt an individual to make this evaluation shift, though I don’t know of any marketers who’ve made the connection between this statistical rule and the relevant practices. They do know, however, that persuasion must occur in the same sequence that the Prochaska rule says it does.)
You must be new here. ;-)
All kidding aside, this community could develop plenty of rigorous and testable theories. It’s just incredibly doubtful that any of them would actually work in practice, for almost any definition of “work”, unless they were developed by people who already had practical experience.
In particular, this community is inflicted with massive “should” bias—i.e. confusing “ought” and “is”, while vehemently insisting that things that do work, shouldn’t, don’t work, should, and coming up with ludicrous explanations for both sets of falsehoods.
See, for example, the recent complaints about “marketing”; e.g. deriding breaking cryonics cost down to $1/day. There’s a reason marketers do that… and it’s because marketers have forgotten more than most people posting on this site have ever known about overcoming akrasia.
Because, if a marketer can’t overcome somebody’s akrasia enough to get them to shell out actual money, the marketer doesn’t get paid.
That’s why I group PUA and marketing under the same heading, of Arts That Work. When they’re too far wrong, the marketers don’t get paid and the PUAs don’t get laid, so there’s an inherent control over how far they can stray from the truth. This control does not apply so well to general works of self-help, or to armchair ev-psych theorizing. I actually learned far more about akrasia and motivation from marketers and PUAs than I ever did from self-help books or science papers.
(Btw, the scientific principle behind using per diem breakdown is incredibly relevant to any sort of personal change project, and it involves a statistical rule discovered by Prochaska, Norcross et al regarding the precise number of standard deviations in a person’s change of evaluation regarding the pros and cons of a decision that will make them shift from “contemplating” to “acting”… a rule that holds constant across a dozen different kinds of changes, such as quitting smoking, starting an exercise program, etc. Per diem breakdowns are just one of several tools that the adept marketer uses to prompt an individual to make this evaluation shift, though I don’t know of any marketers who’ve made the connection between this statistical rule and the relevant practices. They do know, however, that persuasion must occur in the same sequence that the Prochaska rule says it does.)