“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.
“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.