Why are you asking us? We aren’t exactly your core audience. Shouldn’t you ask people who’ve never heard of dual process theory, and hear what they say about it?
My main impression was that this is still too close to Wikipedia. Anyone likely to benefit from your post is also likely to benefit from the Wiki page on Dual process theory. I’m thinking you need a much clearer picture of who to adress—and not who you’d like to listen to you (everyone, obviously), but who is currently underserved by the Wiki, by “Thinking Fast and Slow” and all your other competitors. I don’t think you’ve done that nearly enough, and I believe this oversight puts you at great risk of investing a lot of effort ineffectively.
Lets take the Wiki as one example. It has much, much more readers than 99,99% of sites on the web. It has a huge credibility advantage over you. Some mobile ISPs don’t even charge for traffic for that site. And perhaps most crucially, it isn’t a “Copyright—all rights reserved” situation like on your site.
Let me digress here, because this is important. If you want to spread knowledge and raise the sanity waterline, you would obviously want people to copy and share your materials, use it in courses and seminars, create movies and infographics and podcasts with it. They don’t do that if they have to expect you’ll sue them. Why in the world would you reserve copyright? The cost to your potential impact is huge. Is there any benefit you’re expecting?
Anyway. You can certainly compete with Wikipedia in the same “reads long-ish explanations with complex grammar on a web site” segment of the potential audience. But your audience won’t benefit nearly as much as it could if you did something Wiki can’t.
Personally, I suspect the best audience to target would be kids. Kahnemann’s book is excellent and quite accessible, but probably beyond most 15-year-olds. If you could make materials fit for 10-year-olds, you’d have that market to yourself, and could do a ton of good. And since cognitive returns can be re-invested, those who get them early will benefit most!
Regarding the Wiki, I have the sense that the article on dual process theory there is quite a bit less engaging than our article, due to our focus on graphics, engaging narrative, and pragmatic orientation. Let me know your thoughts.
Good point about copyright, we’ll think about that. Thanks for pointing it out!
we are actually thinking about working with the Secular Student Alliance and Camp Quest to convey these ideas to younger audiences
Excellent! Good luck!
Regarding the Wiki, I have the sense that the article on dual process theory there is quite a bit less engaging than our article
I completely agree. Your article has strengths the Wiki one doesn’t, just like the Wiki one has strengths yours doesn’t.
You don’t want people to have to read both, right? So uniting the strengths of both should be a priority. But some of the major advantages of the Wiki article aren’t things you can copy: brand recognition, search engine rank. So wouldn’t the logical move be to… improve the Wiki article? Go the Good Article, peer review, Featured article candidate and finally Featured Article route?
However, my main point was that you need to get feedback from the kinds of people you want to benefit from your work—not LWers. Maybe do it evolution-style: create three or four variants, let a bunch of people vote which they like best, create another three or four variants off of that, let a (different) bunch of people vote on those, etc.
For the Wiki, I actually think the articles we have and the Wiki article serve different purposes. The Wiki article explains things in a complex and long-form way, and it should still be there, very much so. Our goal is to get people interested in Rationality in the first place, and then direct them to other helpful sources for more advanced stuff, including not only Wikipedia, but also Less Wrong, CFAR, etc. - we have a bunch listed on our resource page and will add more over time.
my main point was that you need to get feedback from the kinds of people you want to benefit from your work—not LWers. Maybe do it evolution-style: create three or four variants, let a bunch of people vote which they like best, create another three or four variants off of that, let a (different) bunch of people vote on those, etc.
Yup, good point! We plan to do something like that—start with an outreach to the secular audience, who we figure are most likely to be the lowest-hanging fruit for early adopters as audience members. Then, they can give us helpful feedback on how to appeal to their friends and family, and thus help provide outreach to a broader audience.
Of course your articles and the Wiki’s serve different purposes. But I’m not talking about purposes, I’m talking about effects. I think that at the end of the day, when people summarize what they got from either, the summaries of people who read one won’t be easily distinguished from the summaries of people who read the other.
More mundanely, I did an intro to rationality presentation yesterday, and much of it was dual process theory. I found what really helped people “get it” was very detailed real-life examples, not only of which system does what, but also of how they interact. I had diagrams, animations, the elephant and rider metaphor… but what really did it for people were short stories with many “this is a system 1 action”, “here’s where system 2 integrates pieces of information” and so on thrown in.
Hm, that’s actually a testable theory about the InIn article and the Wiki. That’s something we can actually do, and get some real-world results. Thanks for the idea!
Good point about the short stories, that’s something to think about. Much appreciated!
Why are you asking us? We aren’t exactly your core audience. Shouldn’t you ask people who’ve never heard of dual process theory, and hear what they say about it?
My main impression was that this is still too close to Wikipedia. Anyone likely to benefit from your post is also likely to benefit from the Wiki page on Dual process theory. I’m thinking you need a much clearer picture of who to adress—and not who you’d like to listen to you (everyone, obviously), but who is currently underserved by the Wiki, by “Thinking Fast and Slow” and all your other competitors. I don’t think you’ve done that nearly enough, and I believe this oversight puts you at great risk of investing a lot of effort ineffectively.
Lets take the Wiki as one example. It has much, much more readers than 99,99% of sites on the web. It has a huge credibility advantage over you. Some mobile ISPs don’t even charge for traffic for that site. And perhaps most crucially, it isn’t a “Copyright—all rights reserved” situation like on your site.
Let me digress here, because this is important. If you want to spread knowledge and raise the sanity waterline, you would obviously want people to copy and share your materials, use it in courses and seminars, create movies and infographics and podcasts with it. They don’t do that if they have to expect you’ll sue them. Why in the world would you reserve copyright? The cost to your potential impact is huge. Is there any benefit you’re expecting?
Anyway. You can certainly compete with Wikipedia in the same “reads long-ish explanations with complex grammar on a web site” segment of the potential audience. But your audience won’t benefit nearly as much as it could if you did something Wiki can’t.
Personally, I suspect the best audience to target would be kids. Kahnemann’s book is excellent and quite accessible, but probably beyond most 15-year-olds. If you could make materials fit for 10-year-olds, you’d have that market to yourself, and could do a ton of good. And since cognitive returns can be re-invested, those who get them early will benefit most!
Good point about younger people, we are actually thinking about working with the Secular Student Alliance and Camp Quest to convey these ideas to younger audiences, especially since the heads of both organizations are on the Intentional Insights Advisory Board.
Regarding the Wiki, I have the sense that the article on dual process theory there is quite a bit less engaging than our article, due to our focus on graphics, engaging narrative, and pragmatic orientation. Let me know your thoughts.
Good point about copyright, we’ll think about that. Thanks for pointing it out!
Excellent! Good luck!
I completely agree. Your article has strengths the Wiki one doesn’t, just like the Wiki one has strengths yours doesn’t.
You don’t want people to have to read both, right? So uniting the strengths of both should be a priority. But some of the major advantages of the Wiki article aren’t things you can copy: brand recognition, search engine rank. So wouldn’t the logical move be to… improve the Wiki article? Go the Good Article, peer review, Featured article candidate and finally Featured Article route?
However, my main point was that you need to get feedback from the kinds of people you want to benefit from your work—not LWers. Maybe do it evolution-style: create three or four variants, let a bunch of people vote which they like best, create another three or four variants off of that, let a (different) bunch of people vote on those, etc.
For the Wiki, I actually think the articles we have and the Wiki article serve different purposes. The Wiki article explains things in a complex and long-form way, and it should still be there, very much so. Our goal is to get people interested in Rationality in the first place, and then direct them to other helpful sources for more advanced stuff, including not only Wikipedia, but also Less Wrong, CFAR, etc. - we have a bunch listed on our resource page and will add more over time.
Yup, good point! We plan to do something like that—start with an outreach to the secular audience, who we figure are most likely to be the lowest-hanging fruit for early adopters as audience members. Then, they can give us helpful feedback on how to appeal to their friends and family, and thus help provide outreach to a broader audience.
Of course your articles and the Wiki’s serve different purposes. But I’m not talking about purposes, I’m talking about effects. I think that at the end of the day, when people summarize what they got from either, the summaries of people who read one won’t be easily distinguished from the summaries of people who read the other.
More mundanely, I did an intro to rationality presentation yesterday, and much of it was dual process theory. I found what really helped people “get it” was very detailed real-life examples, not only of which system does what, but also of how they interact. I had diagrams, animations, the elephant and rider metaphor… but what really did it for people were short stories with many “this is a system 1 action”, “here’s where system 2 integrates pieces of information” and so on thrown in.
Hm, that’s actually a testable theory about the InIn article and the Wiki. That’s something we can actually do, and get some real-world results. Thanks for the idea!
Good point about the short stories, that’s something to think about. Much appreciated!