I only tried the triplet pitch once, and they got the answer, but didn’t feel like “oh, I had a bias,” they just felt like it was a trick question. Then I generalized from one example and stopped using it.
I’ve stopped pitching ‘Rationality’ per se, but when people ask and seem plausibly interested, I say “Rationality is basically the study of making good decisions.” If they inquire further, I think the new intro to Less Wrong is approximately right, although doesn’t quite translate into conversational speech.
they got the answer, but didn’t feel like “oh, I had a bias,” they just felt like it was a trick question.
I haven’t tried the triplet game on anyone yet, but this is the reaction I generally get in response to similar problems. In my (entirely anecdotal) experience, people are unable or unwilling to view rationality as a generally applicable principle. Instead, they treat it as a one-off tool that was designed to apply to a narrow set of specific problems.
“For example”—people would say—“you could use rationality to get a better price on your mortgage, or to demonstrate that Wiccans can’t really affect reality through spells. But you couldn’t use it to determine whether your homeopathic remedy really works, or whether your aunt Helga really does have prophetic dreams, or whether Christians can affect reality through prayer. These questions are altogether different from mortgage/Wicca/whatever questions, as everyone knows”.
I don’t think this kind of cognitive bias can be defeated by a 30-second pitch. In fact, I doubt it can be defeated at all.
I only tried the triplet pitch once, and they got the answer, but didn’t feel like “oh, I had a bias,” they just felt like it was a trick question. Then I generalized from one example and stopped using it.
I put a poll on my blog isomorphic to the Allais Paradox, and I ought to have seen it ahead of time, but it’s alarming the extent to which some people will go to rationalise their decisions. With one respondent I whittled the scenario down to the point where he obstinately claimed his choice between A or B would change given identical odds but a different method of randomisation.
This was one of a few efforts that basically put me off trying to recruit for rationality.
I only tried the triplet pitch once, and they got the answer, but didn’t feel like “oh, I had a bias,” they just felt like it was a trick question. Then I generalized from one example and stopped using it.
I’ve stopped pitching ‘Rationality’ per se, but when people ask and seem plausibly interested, I say “Rationality is basically the study of making good decisions.” If they inquire further, I think the new intro to Less Wrong is approximately right, although doesn’t quite translate into conversational speech.
I haven’t tried the triplet game on anyone yet, but this is the reaction I generally get in response to similar problems. In my (entirely anecdotal) experience, people are unable or unwilling to view rationality as a generally applicable principle. Instead, they treat it as a one-off tool that was designed to apply to a narrow set of specific problems.
“For example”—people would say—“you could use rationality to get a better price on your mortgage, or to demonstrate that Wiccans can’t really affect reality through spells. But you couldn’t use it to determine whether your homeopathic remedy really works, or whether your aunt Helga really does have prophetic dreams, or whether Christians can affect reality through prayer. These questions are altogether different from mortgage/Wicca/whatever questions, as everyone knows”.
I don’t think this kind of cognitive bias can be defeated by a 30-second pitch. In fact, I doubt it can be defeated at all.
I put a poll on my blog isomorphic to the Allais Paradox, and I ought to have seen it ahead of time, but it’s alarming the extent to which some people will go to rationalise their decisions. With one respondent I whittled the scenario down to the point where he obstinately claimed his choice between A or B would change given identical odds but a different method of randomisation.
This was one of a few efforts that basically put me off trying to recruit for rationality.