Instrumental rationality and productivity techniques and self-help are three different though overlapping things, though the exact difference is hard to pinpoint. In many cases it can be rational to learn to be more productive or more charismatic, but productivity and charisma don’t thereby become kinds of rationality. Your original post probably counts as instrumental rationality in that it’s about how to implement better general decision algorithms. In general, LW will probably have much more of an advantage relative to other sites in self-help that’s inspired by the basic logic/math of optimal behavior than in other kinds of self-help.
Re: 1, obviously one needs both of those things, but the question is which is more useful at the margin. The average LWer will go through life with some degree of productivity/success/etc even if such topics never get discussed again, and it seems a lot easier to get someone to allocate 2% rather than 1% of their effort to “what needs doing” than to double their general productivity.
I feel like noting that none of the ten most recent posts are about epistemic rationality; there’s nothing that I could use to get better at determining, just to name some random examples, whether nanotech will happen in the next 50 years, or whether egoism makes more philosophical sense than altruism.
On the other hand, I think a strong argument for having self-help content is that it draws people here.
Instrumental rationality and productivity techniques and self-help are three different though overlapping things, though the exact difference is hard to pinpoint. In many cases it can be rational to learn to be more productive or more charismatic, but productivity and charisma don’t thereby become kinds of rationality. Your original post probably counts as instrumental rationality in that it’s about how to implement better general decision algorithms. In general, LW will probably have much more of an advantage relative to other sites in self-help that’s inspired by the basic logic/math of optimal behavior than in other kinds of self-help.
Re: 1, obviously one needs both of those things, but the question is which is more useful at the margin. The average LWer will go through life with some degree of productivity/success/etc even if such topics never get discussed again, and it seems a lot easier to get someone to allocate 2% rather than 1% of their effort to “what needs doing” than to double their general productivity.
I feel like noting that none of the ten most recent posts are about epistemic rationality; there’s nothing that I could use to get better at determining, just to name some random examples, whether nanotech will happen in the next 50 years, or whether egoism makes more philosophical sense than altruism.
On the other hand, I think a strong argument for having self-help content is that it draws people here.