You are the one who introduced correctness into the argument. Alicorn said:
Do you expect anyone to benefit from your expertise if you can’t convince them you have it?
Feel free to read this as ‘convince them your expertise is “useful” ’ rather than your assumed ‘convince them your expertise is “correct” ’.
The underlying point is that there is a very large amount of apparently useless advice out there, and many self-help techniques seem initially useful but then stop being useful. (as you are well aware since your theory claims to explain why it happens)
The problem is to convince someone to try your advice, you have to convince them that the (probability of it being useful claimed benefit probability of claim being correct) is greater than the opportunity cost of the expected effort to try it. Due to others in the self-help market, the prior for it being useful is very low, and the prior for the claimed benefits equaling the actual benefits is low.
You also are running into the prior that if someone is trying to sell you something, they are probably exaggerating its claims to make a sale. Dishonest salespeople spoil the sales possibilities for all the honest ones.
If you can convince someone with a higher standing in the community than you to test your advice and comment on the results of their test, you can raise individual’s probability expectations about the usefulness (or correctness) of your advice, and hence help more people than you otherwise would have.
P.S. I did go to your site and get added to your mailing list. However, even if your techniques turn out positively for me, I don’t think I have any higher standing in this community than you do, so I doubt my results will hold much weight with this group.
You also are running into the prior that if someone is trying to sell you something, they are probably exaggerating its claims to make a sale.
Actually, I’m also running into a bias that merely because I have things to sell, I’m therefore trying to sell something in all places at all times… or that I’m always trying to “convince” people of something.
Indeed, the fact that you (and others) seem to think I need or even want to “convince” people of things is a symptom of this. Nobody goes around insisting that say, Yvain needs to get some high-status people to validate his ideas and “convince” the “community” to accept them!
If I had it all to do over again, I think I would have joined under a pseudonym and never let on I even had a business.
You are the one who introduced correctness into the argument. Alicorn said:
Feel free to read this as ‘convince them your expertise is “useful” ’ rather than your assumed ‘convince them your expertise is “correct” ’.
The underlying point is that there is a very large amount of apparently useless advice out there, and many self-help techniques seem initially useful but then stop being useful. (as you are well aware since your theory claims to explain why it happens)
The problem is to convince someone to try your advice, you have to convince them that the (probability of it being useful claimed benefit probability of claim being correct) is greater than the opportunity cost of the expected effort to try it. Due to others in the self-help market, the prior for it being useful is very low, and the prior for the claimed benefits equaling the actual benefits is low.
You also are running into the prior that if someone is trying to sell you something, they are probably exaggerating its claims to make a sale. Dishonest salespeople spoil the sales possibilities for all the honest ones.
If you can convince someone with a higher standing in the community than you to test your advice and comment on the results of their test, you can raise individual’s probability expectations about the usefulness (or correctness) of your advice, and hence help more people than you otherwise would have.
P.S. I did go to your site and get added to your mailing list. However, even if your techniques turn out positively for me, I don’t think I have any higher standing in this community than you do, so I doubt my results will hold much weight with this group.
Actually, I’m also running into a bias that merely because I have things to sell, I’m therefore trying to sell something in all places at all times… or that I’m always trying to “convince” people of something.
Indeed, the fact that you (and others) seem to think I need or even want to “convince” people of things is a symptom of this. Nobody goes around insisting that say, Yvain needs to get some high-status people to validate his ideas and “convince” the “community” to accept them!
If I had it all to do over again, I think I would have joined under a pseudonym and never let on I even had a business.