An interesting question would be whether there are areas where we don’t know ourselves well as rationalists and whether we can use those tests in those areas.
The obvious thing would be to test negative associations with people who do not explicitly subscribe to LW style rationality. Or associations with low IQ people. I am certain that there will be quite some surprises to some people around here.
Guns and race are popular topics but we don’t profit much from understanding our own positions on those questions much better.
What would be some topics that could, in your opinion, be fruitful?
What would be some topics that could, in your opinion, be fruitful?
I added on via an edit to my last question before I saw an answer. But it’s not an easy question.
As far as I understand CFAR has some techniques that they teach on their bootcamps that are effective and change the minds of the person who goes to the bootcamp in a good way.
That change of mindset could be measured with an implicit-association test. Of course knowing what those changes happen to be means knowing the basics of rationality and when you followed what I wrote lately, I consider knowing the basics to be hard.
Suddenly having a data driven tool that tells good rationalists from bad rationalists also would make things uncomfortable for a bunch of people, because it’s deeper to their core than a test telling them whether the are implicit racists.
It a lot more fundamental than the basic LW consensus where we assume from each other that we are good rationalists. Data has power. Talking about the value of the scientific method as the only true frame for reality is noble. It makes it easy to signal to be a good rationalist. Identifying good rationalists from bad ones via data driven implicit reasoning tests would be walking the talk instead of just talking it.
I don’t think it’s my role to say what makes a good rationalist but I think we can agree that the stuff CFAR does makes someone a better rationalist. If someone has better suggestions that could be tested I’m also happy.
The obvious thing would be to test negative associations with people who do not explicitly subscribe to LW style rationality. Or associations with low IQ people. I am certain that there will be quite some surprises to some people around here.
What would be some topics that could, in your opinion, be fruitful?
I added on via an edit to my last question before I saw an answer. But it’s not an easy question.
As far as I understand CFAR has some techniques that they teach on their bootcamps that are effective and change the minds of the person who goes to the bootcamp in a good way.
That change of mindset could be measured with an implicit-association test. Of course knowing what those changes happen to be means knowing the basics of rationality and when you followed what I wrote lately, I consider knowing the basics to be hard.
Suddenly having a data driven tool that tells good rationalists from bad rationalists also would make things uncomfortable for a bunch of people, because it’s deeper to their core than a test telling them whether the are implicit racists.
It a lot more fundamental than the basic LW consensus where we assume from each other that we are good rationalists. Data has power. Talking about the value of the scientific method as the only true frame for reality is noble. It makes it easy to signal to be a good rationalist. Identifying good rationalists from bad ones via data driven implicit reasoning tests would be walking the talk instead of just talking it.
I don’t think it’s my role to say what makes a good rationalist but I think we can agree that the stuff CFAR does makes someone a better rationalist. If someone has better suggestions that could be tested I’m also happy.
The LW survey has a few rationalist testing questions.
In aggregate I think you can learn something from those questions but I don’t think they provide you a way to judge individual people well.
Answering those questions well also has a lot to do with whether you are exposed to them beforehand.