Indeed. What’s particularly important if you’re after results, rather than theories, is that just because those other 50% didn’t go from low to high, doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some different form, approach, environment, or method of training that wouldn’t have produced the same result!
Um… PJ, this is just what psychoanalysts said… and kept on saying after around a thousand studies showed that psychoanalysis had no effect statistically distinguishable from just talking to a random intelligent caring listener.
You need to read more basic rationality material, along the lines of Robyn Dawes’s “Rational Choice in an Uncertain World”. There you will find the records of many who engaged in this classic error mode and embarrassed themselves accordingly. You do not get to just flush controlled experiments down the toilet by hoping, without actually pointing to any countering studies, that someone could have done something differently that would have produced the effect you want the study to produce but that it didn’t produce.
You know how there are a lot of self-indulgent bad habits you train your clients to get rid of? This is the sort of thing that master rationalists like Robyn Dawes train people to stop doing. And you are missing a lot of the basic training here, which is why, as I keep saying, it is such a tragedy that you only began to study rationality after already forming your theories of akrasia. So either you’ll read more books on rationality and learn those basics and rethink those theories, or you’ll stay stuck.
Um… PJ, this is just what psychoanalysts said… and kept on saying after around a thousand studies showed that psychoanalysis had no effect statistically distinguishable from just talking to a random intelligent caring listener.
Rounding to the nearest cliche. I didn’t say my methods would help those other people, or that some ONE method would. I said that given a person Y there would be SOME method X. This is not at all the same thing as what you’re talking about.
You do not get to just flush controlled experiments down the toilet by hoping, without actually pointing to any countering studies, that someone could have done something differently that would have produced the effect you want the study to produce but that it didn’t produce.
What I’ve said is that if you have a standard training method that moves 50% of people from low to high on some criterion, there is an extremely high probability that the other 50% needed something different in their training. I’m puzzled how that is even remotely a controversial statement.
What I’ve said is that if you have a standard training method that moves 50% of people from low to high on some criterion, there is an extremely high probability that the other 50% needed something different in their training. I’m puzzled how that is even remotely a controversial statement.
You ever heard of something called the Pygmalion effect? Did the study control for it?
By which I mean, did they control for the beliefs of the teachers who were training these subjects, in reference to:
the trainability and potential of the subjects themselves, and
the teachability of the subject matter itself?
For example, did they tell the teacher they had a bunch of students with superb hypnotic potential who just needed some encouragement to get going, or did they tell them they were conducting a test, to see who was trainable, or if it was possible to train hypnotic ability at all?
These things make a HUGE difference to whether people actually learn.
Um… PJ, this is just what psychoanalysts said… and kept on saying after around a thousand studies showed that psychoanalysis had no effect statistically distinguishable from just talking to a random intelligent caring listener.
You need to read more basic rationality material, along the lines of Robyn Dawes’s “Rational Choice in an Uncertain World”. There you will find the records of many who engaged in this classic error mode and embarrassed themselves accordingly. You do not get to just flush controlled experiments down the toilet by hoping, without actually pointing to any countering studies, that someone could have done something differently that would have produced the effect you want the study to produce but that it didn’t produce.
You know how there are a lot of self-indulgent bad habits you train your clients to get rid of? This is the sort of thing that master rationalists like Robyn Dawes train people to stop doing. And you are missing a lot of the basic training here, which is why, as I keep saying, it is such a tragedy that you only began to study rationality after already forming your theories of akrasia. So either you’ll read more books on rationality and learn those basics and rethink those theories, or you’ll stay stuck.
Rounding to the nearest cliche. I didn’t say my methods would help those other people, or that some ONE method would. I said that given a person Y there would be SOME method X. This is not at all the same thing as what you’re talking about.
What I’ve said is that if you have a standard training method that moves 50% of people from low to high on some criterion, there is an extremely high probability that the other 50% needed something different in their training. I’m puzzled how that is even remotely a controversial statement.
It is a conclusion that just doesn’t follow.
You ever heard of something called the Pygmalion effect? Did the study control for it?
By which I mean, did they control for the beliefs of the teachers who were training these subjects, in reference to:
the trainability and potential of the subjects themselves, and
the teachability of the subject matter itself?
For example, did they tell the teacher they had a bunch of students with superb hypnotic potential who just needed some encouragement to get going, or did they tell them they were conducting a test, to see who was trainable, or if it was possible to train hypnotic ability at all?
These things make a HUGE difference to whether people actually learn.