What’s next, a Rational (tm) Work Out sequence? A Rational (tm) Dating sequence? A Rational (tm) Build Your Own PC sequence?
There are plenty of important topics for which a reputed and sourced guide by a trusted authority with a community stamp of approval would be helpful, but the most efficient way to achieve that would be for regulars to seek out established and reputed guides online (since rational in this context translates simply to ‘good’/‘efficient’), then link to them in some “guide repository thread”.
That being said, when proven high quality content providers on LW choose to write about anything, people will want to read it. Do you count yourself among that reference class?
A non-rationality sequence about financial planning, tailored to US citizens (with topics such as “401K matching”) and a few paragraphs about “salary negotiation” and the like, written by a newcomer with unknown credentials in the field, labeled as “Rational”—the prior for “such a sequence is likely to increase the signal/noise ratio” goes lower and lower. Especially in the presence of easily accessible guides such as e.g. “Money 101” on CNNMoney.
There’s something worse than no information, which is unreliable information from uncertain sources. Knowing that you know nothing versus falsely believing that you know something, and all that.
Filtering through the bullshit when reading something written by someone with unknown epistemic hygiene is tedious. Stuff written by LWers is by no means perfect but usually significantly better.
I was about to comment that I definitely would be interested, because I am quite ignorant about this subject, and feel that I should fix this.
Then I read your comment and realized I had made little effort to actually do research on my own. So the main benefit of such a post would be to make it easy for me to read about it by putting it in a stream of stuff I actually read already, LessWrong. And since you linked to other good resources, this has already been done!
So in conclusion, thanks for the link and the reminder that outside scholarship is important.
What’s next, a Rational (tm) Work Out sequence? A Rational (tm) Dating sequence? A Rational (tm) Build Your Own PC sequence?
There are plenty of important topics for which a reputed and sourced guide by a trusted authority with a community stamp of approval would be helpful, but the most efficient way to achieve that would be for regulars to seek out established and reputed guides online (since rational in this context translates simply to ‘good’/‘efficient’), then link to them in some “guide repository thread”.
That being said, when proven high quality content providers on LW choose to write about anything, people will want to read it. Do you count yourself among that reference class?
A non-rationality sequence about financial planning, tailored to US citizens (with topics such as “401K matching”) and a few paragraphs about “salary negotiation” and the like, written by a newcomer with unknown credentials in the field, labeled as “Rational”—the prior for “such a sequence is likely to increase the signal/noise ratio” goes lower and lower. Especially in the presence of easily accessible guides such as e.g. “Money 101” on CNNMoney.
There’s something worse than no information, which is unreliable information from uncertain sources. Knowing that you know nothing versus falsely believing that you know something, and all that.
Those would both be very useful, especially the former one.
No. This kills the mind.
Liam Rosen’s FAQ, i.e. “the sticky” from /fit/, struck me as being an island of reasonableness in an ocean of bad advice and broscience.
Filtering through the bullshit when reading something written by someone with unknown epistemic hygiene is tedious. Stuff written by LWers is by no means perfect but usually significantly better.
I was about to comment that I definitely would be interested, because I am quite ignorant about this subject, and feel that I should fix this.
Then I read your comment and realized I had made little effort to actually do research on my own. So the main benefit of such a post would be to make it easy for me to read about it by putting it in a stream of stuff I actually read already, LessWrong. And since you linked to other good resources, this has already been done!
So in conclusion, thanks for the link and the reminder that outside scholarship is important.
Thanks for the link. Those lessons appear ripe for Ankification.