For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we’re pretty sure they work
Why’s that? Please remember the value of information here! Bright lights cost very little either upfront (maybe like <$100?) or on an ongoing basis (higher electrical bill), while an experiment may be very costly (or so I infer from the near-absence of anyone but me doing randomized self-experiments), and the benefits cumulatively large over the X years a bright light will last before breaking or burning out; hence, the best course may be simply to try it out.
Agreed in particular, disagree in general: several of the plausible suggestions here could have significant downside risks. In particular, I’m not going to switch to Soylent or create a tulpa until I’ve seen good evidence that it doesn’t wreck any significant fraction of people’s lives.
I interpret that as referring to one’s justification for making claims of more-than-base-rate-likelihood-for-weird-off-the-wall-suggestions—especially if you’re going to take up a lot of people’s time based on anecdotes, you should at least be presenting decent anecdotes.
If you dismissed or didn’t bring up anecdotes, I imagine there’d also be a positive response. For example, if one argued for using bright lights like thus, I imagine it’d go over well: ‘I found studies X Y and Z where bright lights increased alertness over a day; applying the usual meta-analytical considerations, I guesstimate there’s a 20% chance it’ll work on ordinary people for a payoff of $Z; and on Amazon these lights cost $A and to run for a year uses $B in eletricity; and turns out, 0.20 * Z > $A+$B. Also I have a rubbishy personal anecdote: after doing this calculation, I tried out the lights and it seems to be working.’
(My own opinion is that lights are stupid easy to test so there’s no excuse for not doing a self-experiment. Flip a coin each morning to turn the light on or keep it off, and write down which & how much you think you got done at the end of the day! But if you can’t do that, at least trying to get past the honeymoon period is a start.)
Why’s that? Please remember the value of information here! Bright lights cost very little either upfront (maybe like <$100?) or on an ongoing basis (higher electrical bill), while an experiment may be very costly (or so I infer from the near-absence of anyone but me doing randomized self-experiments), and the benefits cumulatively large over the X years a bright light will last before breaking or burning out; hence, the best course may be simply to try it out.
Agreed in particular, disagree in general: several of the plausible suggestions here could have significant downside risks. In particular, I’m not going to switch to Soylent or create a tulpa until I’ve seen good evidence that it doesn’t wreck any significant fraction of people’s lives.
I agree completely, but the voting patterns here made me think LW thought differently.
I interpret that as referring to one’s justification for making claims of more-than-base-rate-likelihood-for-weird-off-the-wall-suggestions—especially if you’re going to take up a lot of people’s time based on anecdotes, you should at least be presenting decent anecdotes.
If you dismissed or didn’t bring up anecdotes, I imagine there’d also be a positive response. For example, if one argued for using bright lights like thus, I imagine it’d go over well: ‘I found studies X Y and Z where bright lights increased alertness over a day; applying the usual meta-analytical considerations, I guesstimate there’s a 20% chance it’ll work on ordinary people for a payoff of $Z; and on Amazon these lights cost $A and to run for a year uses $B in eletricity; and turns out, 0.20 * Z > $A+$B. Also I have a rubbishy personal anecdote: after doing this calculation, I tried out the lights and it seems to be working.’
(My own opinion is that lights are stupid easy to test so there’s no excuse for not doing a self-experiment. Flip a coin each morning to turn the light on or keep it off, and write down which & how much you think you got done at the end of the day! But if you can’t do that, at least trying to get past the honeymoon period is a start.)