Whenever I read sources of rationalist authority, I just take it as a given that the community has vetted that knowledge as the standard to which I should align my beliefs.
It’s hard to give an example, since rationalists examples get very abstract, but here is a different example: today I wanted to look up the state of research on the economics of psychiatric interventions. I found a WHO document (http://www.who.int/mental_health/economic_aspects_of_mental_health.pdf) which I scanned through and thought okay cool, and skipped my attention to anything actionable.
This caught my eye: ‘Specifically, there is a need for evidence showing that mental health care strategies can be cost-effective’
Arguably, the most obvious example of policy-based evidence making I had ever seen. I expected better, but I guess that kind of thinking is inevitable for any institution which is governed top-down by non-researchers.
Whenever I read sources of rationalist authority, I just take it as a given that the community has vetted that knowledge as the standard to which I should align my beliefs.
It’s hard to give an example, since rationalists examples get very abstract, but here is a different example: today I wanted to look up the state of research on the economics of psychiatric interventions. I found a WHO document (http://www.who.int/mental_health/economic_aspects_of_mental_health.pdf) which I scanned through and thought okay cool, and skipped my attention to anything actionable.
This caught my eye: ‘Specifically, there is a need for evidence showing that mental health care strategies can be cost-effective’
Arguably, the most obvious example of policy-based evidence making I had ever seen. I expected better, but I guess that kind of thinking is inevitable for any institution which is governed top-down by non-researchers.