That’s not CFAR theory of action. CFAR’s strategy rests on the idea that researching into new thinking habits is very important.
Regardless, CFAR isn’t trying to raise the sanity waterline, and it isn’t likely to do so by accident.
I don’t think “proven to work” should be the metric anybody should use for picking medical treatments. The likely effects of the treament given it’s costs and risks is a much better guide.
EY is not irrational because he tried the Shangri La diet. On for building his own high powered lamp array to treat an illness.
There are arguments for and against most of these metrics. For example, in a more sane world, the powers that be allocate resources toward either proving or disproving the efficacy of the Shangri La diet. Thus, people would be able to find out by reading the literature whether it was a good diet, one way or the other. We live in an insane world where nutrition science is stuck in an epistemically toxic equilibrium, so individual experimentation is not a crazy thing to do.
That depends a lot on how you define awareness. Many 9/11 truthers do better at quizes about world events than the average person. That doesn’t stop them for believing in bad conspiracy theories.
I suspect that, all things being equal, more accurate world-knowledge is better for global sanity.
Consider the converse proposition. It would be much harder to defend the notion that “less knowledge about the world and current events is a predictor/indicator of greater rationality.” It would also be relatively hard to justify a zero-correlation between world awareness and rationality.
All this goes toward proving that we need a variety of indicators. As with the 9/11 truthers, you can have a lot of world knowledge but still be lacking in the “complete basic rationality package” that Eliezer outlines and I try to summarize, and thus you still make horrible choices. A little rationality can hurt you, after all. Thus, the goal should be to track more metrics, and to make sure we’re not trading them off against one another.
When it comes to metrics, good Briers score (or an similar metric) show sanity of the person who’s measured.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t think this is a metric that is being widely collected, but maybe it should be.
“Proven to work” means that you have peer reviewed studies that show that in a controlled trial the group that get’s the treatment does better.
On the other hand the phrase doesn’t say anything about the size of the benefit of the treatment. The antidepressents that are proven to work produced a 1.8 point improvement on a 50 point scale in the Kirsch (2008) meta review. The size of the positive effect is important for rational decisions about which treatment to pursue.
Lastly cost of treatment matters. You can argue that the FDA approved fish oil pills are more “proven to work” than non-FDA approved fish oil pills. I don’t think that it’s rational to pay pick the FDA approved fish oil pills for a person who wants to take fish oil pills and has to pay them themselves.
Consider the converse proposition. It would be much harder to defend the notion that “less knowledge about the world and current events is a predictor/indicator of greater rationality.” It would also be relatively hard to justify a zero-correlation between world awareness and rationality.
The key question is what you mean with “world awareness”. You could call European journalists a class of well-informed people with world awareness. At the same time they don’t beat the chimps at Hans Rosling’s quiz about African development.
You have to be careful that you measure what you want to measure. Newspapers have a strong ability to let people believe in narratives that are wrong.
Regardless, CFAR isn’t trying to raise the sanity waterline, and it isn’t likely to do so by accident.
There are arguments for and against most of these metrics. For example, in a more sane world, the powers that be allocate resources toward either proving or disproving the efficacy of the Shangri La diet. Thus, people would be able to find out by reading the literature whether it was a good diet, one way or the other. We live in an insane world where nutrition science is stuck in an epistemically toxic equilibrium, so individual experimentation is not a crazy thing to do.
I suspect that, all things being equal, more accurate world-knowledge is better for global sanity.
Consider the converse proposition. It would be much harder to defend the notion that “less knowledge about the world and current events is a predictor/indicator of greater rationality.” It would also be relatively hard to justify a zero-correlation between world awareness and rationality.
All this goes toward proving that we need a variety of indicators. As with the 9/11 truthers, you can have a lot of world knowledge but still be lacking in the “complete basic rationality package” that Eliezer outlines and I try to summarize, and thus you still make horrible choices. A little rationality can hurt you, after all. Thus, the goal should be to track more metrics, and to make sure we’re not trading them off against one another.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t think this is a metric that is being widely collected, but maybe it should be.
“Proven to work” means that you have peer reviewed studies that show that in a controlled trial the group that get’s the treatment does better.
On the other hand the phrase doesn’t say anything about the size of the benefit of the treatment. The antidepressents that are proven to work produced a 1.8 point improvement on a 50 point scale in the Kirsch (2008) meta review. The size of the positive effect is important for rational decisions about which treatment to pursue.
Lastly cost of treatment matters. You can argue that the FDA approved fish oil pills are more “proven to work” than non-FDA approved fish oil pills. I don’t think that it’s rational to pay pick the FDA approved fish oil pills for a person who wants to take fish oil pills and has to pay them themselves.
The key question is what you mean with “world awareness”. You could call European journalists a class of well-informed people with world awareness. At the same time they don’t beat the chimps at Hans Rosling’s quiz about African development.
You have to be careful that you measure what you want to measure. Newspapers have a strong ability to let people believe in narratives that are wrong.