So, as I see it, the best case is when the skill degrades gracefully (provides the benefits even if other people are unaware of it or doing it wrong); and the second best case is if it has tests, so you know when you can safely use it, and when you need to switch to some plan B.
In case of rationality, I think there is “individual rationality” and “group rationality”. Some things you can do alone, for example keep a diary of your predictions. You can get more benefit from talking to other rational people, but there is also the risk that they turn out to be not that rational and their advice actually harmful. (And I am not just talking about LW-style rationality here, but generally when you should take advice from people around you.) So you should check what the people around you are sane about, and only take that kind of advice from them; with everything else you are probably better using common sense / outside view.
I am also thinking about constructivist education, which works great when it does, but it does not degrade gracefully. (If you have a stupid teacher, it is better if he or she just follows a good textbook, rather than trying to guide the pupils’ cognitive processes.) How can we derive the benefits where we can, but also avoid the degradation? Probably some kind of certification. But this requires an ability to admit things like “this method cannot scale, because we do not have enough teachers who would pass the certification”.
Even if a skill isn’t as useful if you’re the only one to know it, if the skill is still somewhat useful that can work. I like literacy as an example; crazy good if most people have it, still useful if only you have it, usually obvious pretty quickly if other people don’t have it.
Individual and group rationality are pretty relevant here. In a sense, one thing I’m pointing at is a way to bootstrap (some) rationality skills from the easier individual domain in to the harder group domain; focus on places where the same skill is relevant in both arenas. It’s also a small argument in favour of following a textbook; mandatory education is one of society’s big shots on putting skills in everyone’s heads and it might not be worth (making numbers up) a 50% boost to this one classroom overall if it means they happen to miss a particular skill that the rest of society is going to expect everyone to have. Still, that side of things is more tentative.
(One of my favourite questions to ask rationalists is “if you could pick one rationalist skill and make it as common as literacy, what do you pick?”)
So, as I see it, the best case is when the skill degrades gracefully (provides the benefits even if other people are unaware of it or doing it wrong); and the second best case is if it has tests, so you know when you can safely use it, and when you need to switch to some plan B.
In case of rationality, I think there is “individual rationality” and “group rationality”. Some things you can do alone, for example keep a diary of your predictions. You can get more benefit from talking to other rational people, but there is also the risk that they turn out to be not that rational and their advice actually harmful. (And I am not just talking about LW-style rationality here, but generally when you should take advice from people around you.) So you should check what the people around you are sane about, and only take that kind of advice from them; with everything else you are probably better using common sense / outside view.
I am also thinking about constructivist education, which works great when it does, but it does not degrade gracefully. (If you have a stupid teacher, it is better if he or she just follows a good textbook, rather than trying to guide the pupils’ cognitive processes.) How can we derive the benefits where we can, but also avoid the degradation? Probably some kind of certification. But this requires an ability to admit things like “this method cannot scale, because we do not have enough teachers who would pass the certification”.
Even if a skill isn’t as useful if you’re the only one to know it, if the skill is still somewhat useful that can work. I like literacy as an example; crazy good if most people have it, still useful if only you have it, usually obvious pretty quickly if other people don’t have it.
Individual and group rationality are pretty relevant here. In a sense, one thing I’m pointing at is a way to bootstrap (some) rationality skills from the easier individual domain in to the harder group domain; focus on places where the same skill is relevant in both arenas. It’s also a small argument in favour of following a textbook; mandatory education is one of society’s big shots on putting skills in everyone’s heads and it might not be worth (making numbers up) a 50% boost to this one classroom overall if it means they happen to miss a particular skill that the rest of society is going to expect everyone to have. Still, that side of things is more tentative.
(One of my favourite questions to ask rationalists is “if you could pick one rationalist skill and make it as common as literacy, what do you pick?”)