So is it OK to spend time and resources to develop a rationality curicullum aiming to raise the sanity waterline… but it would be a waste of time and resources to spread it and use it? Then what’s the point—signalling that we care?
Of course it depends on the organization, whether cooperation with them would be fruitful or just a waste of time, but I think it’s worth exploring and trying. Using someone’s existing infrastructure is better than reinventing the wheel. For example, if it would be possible to put rationality videos on Khan Academy website, it would be better to put them there and hyperlink them from LW and SIAI sites, than to build an alternative website. If there are teachers worldwide possibly willing to include rationality lessons in their classes, it would be better to prepare useful tools for them, than only teach it at LW meetups.
(Cooperating with other people and leading them is a very useful skill; perfecting it is probably the nearest human-level equivalent to FOOMing. Unfortunately, many smart people have a strong bias against it, based on hasty generalizations of real experience.)
So is it OK to spend time and resources to develop a rationality curicullum aiming to raise the sanity waterline… but it would be a waste of time and resources to spread it and use it?
Are you saying Khan Academy and Udacity aren’t spreading knowledge? I simply questioned the idea of lobbying existing or even forming independent international organizations for such causes. It is a very large expenditure, not to mention a saturated marked with lots of different organizations trying to do some UNish humanitarian-y thing, be it trying to educate people about hygiene in rural India or promoting feminism in Kenya.
This is the sort of effort you expend when you have millions of people at LW levels of rationality.
For example, if it would be possible to put rationality videos on Khan Academy website, it would be better to put them there and hyperlink them from LW and SIAI sites, than to build an alternative website.
Of course. Considering we actually have people who work on Khan Academy on this site, why haven’t we set up a group to prepare a curriculum and lobby Khan for this? It wouldn’t take more than a dozen people involved with perhaps just two or three people putting intense effort and others just checking it.
I guess it is not as sexy as pipe dreams of giving schoolchildren in Uganda books about cognitive biases. Or trying to lawyer rationality into a human rights issues and hoping people and organizations will be moved by this. Most LW material makes no sense below high school level btw—ideas about trying to do it for people without numeracy or literacy are just plain silly—you do more for rationality at those levels by directly attacking superstitions and I don’t know, teach them to read (how boring).
Quality online material, while not as sexy, will (and I put extremely high confidence in this) give us much more bang for our bucks. For the kind of lobbying described in the article to have any effect, perhaps even a tangible program, one would need millions of dollars and thousands of man hours.
Imagine we had those sorts of resources to spend on online promotion? What would our pay-off be?
I agree with the part that teaching LW stuff to illiterate children in a superstitious culture is impossible. There should be some more basic rationality lessons; probably something that most of us would consider obvious. And probably someone else could do it; problem is how many people recognize the need of teaching rationality explicitly.
For some biases it is. Since awareness of some biases improves performance.I did however explicitly mention testing and exercises. There are ways to train people to be rational.
And I bet textbooks and regular teachers wouldn’t do any better at the task.
Yes I should have said the AI class that preceded it. Thought if we are being technical two of its classes have already started, so it is doing something. ;)
It is a really great class, and the homework has been pushed back for 24 hours. It has the best introduction to Bayes I’ve seen so far, so if anyone is reading this and can do a thing or two with a string or write a while loop in Python they should sign up for the class.
So is it OK to spend time and resources to develop a rationality curicullum aiming to raise the sanity waterline… but it would be a waste of time and resources to spread it and use it? Then what’s the point—signalling that we care?
Of course it depends on the organization, whether cooperation with them would be fruitful or just a waste of time, but I think it’s worth exploring and trying. Using someone’s existing infrastructure is better than reinventing the wheel. For example, if it would be possible to put rationality videos on Khan Academy website, it would be better to put them there and hyperlink them from LW and SIAI sites, than to build an alternative website. If there are teachers worldwide possibly willing to include rationality lessons in their classes, it would be better to prepare useful tools for them, than only teach it at LW meetups.
(Cooperating with other people and leading them is a very useful skill; perfecting it is probably the nearest human-level equivalent to FOOMing. Unfortunately, many smart people have a strong bias against it, based on hasty generalizations of real experience.)
Are you saying Khan Academy and Udacity aren’t spreading knowledge? I simply questioned the idea of lobbying existing or even forming independent international organizations for such causes. It is a very large expenditure, not to mention a saturated marked with lots of different organizations trying to do some UNish humanitarian-y thing, be it trying to educate people about hygiene in rural India or promoting feminism in Kenya.
This is the sort of effort you expend when you have millions of people at LW levels of rationality.
Of course. Considering we actually have people who work on Khan Academy on this site, why haven’t we set up a group to prepare a curriculum and lobby Khan for this? It wouldn’t take more than a dozen people involved with perhaps just two or three people putting intense effort and others just checking it.
I guess it is not as sexy as pipe dreams of giving schoolchildren in Uganda books about cognitive biases. Or trying to lawyer rationality into a human rights issues and hoping people and organizations will be moved by this. Most LW material makes no sense below high school level btw—ideas about trying to do it for people without numeracy or literacy are just plain silly—you do more for rationality at those levels by directly attacking superstitions and I don’t know, teach them to read (how boring).
Quality online material, while not as sexy, will (and I put extremely high confidence in this) give us much more bang for our bucks. For the kind of lobbying described in the article to have any effect, perhaps even a tangible program, one would need millions of dollars and thousands of man hours.
Imagine we had those sorts of resources to spend on online promotion? What would our pay-off be?
Spreading knowledge isn’t necessarily spreading rationality.
I agree with the part that teaching LW stuff to illiterate children in a superstitious culture is impossible. There should be some more basic rationality lessons; probably something that most of us would consider obvious. And probably someone else could do it; problem is how many people recognize the need of teaching rationality explicitly.
For some biases it is. Since awareness of some biases improves performance.I did however explicitly mention testing and exercises. There are ways to train people to be rational.
And I bet textbooks and regular teachers wouldn’t do any better at the task.
This is amusing because Udacity hasn’t done anything yet.
Yes I should have said the AI class that preceded it. Thought if we are being technical two of its classes have already started, so it is doing something. ;)
Thanks for the reminder that I was late for class
It is a really great class, and the homework has been pushed back for 24 hours. It has the best introduction to Bayes I’ve seen so far, so if anyone is reading this and can do a thing or two with a string or write a while loop in Python they should sign up for the class.
I agree, though it’s hard to tell how good it actually is as an introduction without comparing how many people used it to gain an understanding.
And anyone who doesn’t fit that is encouraged to sign up for cs101 (I think today is the last day for registration).