The “holding off on proposing solutions” example made me imagine a scenario:
You’re going to a meeting to address some problem x, and you have enough authority so that you can say something at the start and have people listen to you. So you say “To start off, can we take a minute just to talk about problem x, and not about what to do about x? I just want to be sure that we’re all clear about what the problem is before we get caught up in a discussion of particular solutions to it.” Then hopefully the meeting goes well—the group holds off on proposing solutions and eventually comes to a good solution.
And that’s it, for the time. You’ve given people a taste of rationality that you can build on. They didn’t care about rationality, they cared about problem x, but you showed them that a certain way of thinking and doing things helped them deal with problem x.
You can build on that. For instance, maybe after the meeting you’re talking with someone who was there about the fact that the meeting went well, and you could give them a little more detail about what you did: “Once people start talking about possible solutions, they get locked into their first suggestions and they have trouble thinking about the problem creatively and coming up with other solutions.” Or maybe there will be another meeting where you suggest holding off on proposing solutions, and you could say a little something more about it then. After a couple more cases where one of your rationality tools has been useful, people may notice a pattern and comment on it, and you could say something more general about rationality, like “There’s actually a whole field of study that looks at people’s thinking, trying to figure out what people can do to come up with good ideas and avoid making mistakes. I’ve just read a little bit about what they’ve found and picked up a few tricks.” If you find someone who is interested and asks you questions, then you could go into more detail and give them a more thorough explanation of some rationality topic, or explain some of the fundamentals of rationality, or refer them to this blog.
The general principles from this example: Bring up rationality topics when they’re relevant. Be brief. Keep the focus mostly on the issue that people actually care about, not on the meta-level of rationality. Show that rationality works (helps people do things they care about). Don’t worry if your explanation is very limited or imperfect. You can build your message over time, through multiple conversations which incorporate bits of rationality. You can have a more in depth conversation about rationality if someone becomes interested enough.
On my robotics team I’ve pretty much done that (the “lets talk about the problem before the solutions”) approach. It worked pretty well, and everyone pretty much converged on the same ideas, which seem to be working.
The annoying part is that I’m not sure how well people internalized it.
I think this is very good. Use whatever techniques and modes of argument appear to work, allowing only a glimpse of the whole LW background. Then let them come to you.
On my robotics team I’ve pretty much done that (the “lets talk about the problem before the solutions”) approach. It worked pretty well, and everyone pretty much converged on the same ideas, which seem to be working so far.
The annoying part is that I’m not sure if other people particularly internalized it.
The “holding off on proposing solutions” example made me imagine a scenario:
You’re going to a meeting to address some problem x, and you have enough authority so that you can say something at the start and have people listen to you. So you say “To start off, can we take a minute just to talk about problem x, and not about what to do about x? I just want to be sure that we’re all clear about what the problem is before we get caught up in a discussion of particular solutions to it.” Then hopefully the meeting goes well—the group holds off on proposing solutions and eventually comes to a good solution.
And that’s it, for the time. You’ve given people a taste of rationality that you can build on. They didn’t care about rationality, they cared about problem x, but you showed them that a certain way of thinking and doing things helped them deal with problem x.
You can build on that. For instance, maybe after the meeting you’re talking with someone who was there about the fact that the meeting went well, and you could give them a little more detail about what you did: “Once people start talking about possible solutions, they get locked into their first suggestions and they have trouble thinking about the problem creatively and coming up with other solutions.” Or maybe there will be another meeting where you suggest holding off on proposing solutions, and you could say a little something more about it then. After a couple more cases where one of your rationality tools has been useful, people may notice a pattern and comment on it, and you could say something more general about rationality, like “There’s actually a whole field of study that looks at people’s thinking, trying to figure out what people can do to come up with good ideas and avoid making mistakes. I’ve just read a little bit about what they’ve found and picked up a few tricks.” If you find someone who is interested and asks you questions, then you could go into more detail and give them a more thorough explanation of some rationality topic, or explain some of the fundamentals of rationality, or refer them to this blog.
The general principles from this example: Bring up rationality topics when they’re relevant. Be brief. Keep the focus mostly on the issue that people actually care about, not on the meta-level of rationality. Show that rationality works (helps people do things they care about). Don’t worry if your explanation is very limited or imperfect. You can build your message over time, through multiple conversations which incorporate bits of rationality. You can have a more in depth conversation about rationality if someone becomes interested enough.
On my robotics team I’ve pretty much done that (the “lets talk about the problem before the solutions”) approach. It worked pretty well, and everyone pretty much converged on the same ideas, which seem to be working.
The annoying part is that I’m not sure how well people internalized it.
I think this is very good. Use whatever techniques and modes of argument appear to work, allowing only a glimpse of the whole LW background. Then let them come to you.
On my robotics team I’ve pretty much done that (the “lets talk about the problem before the solutions”) approach. It worked pretty well, and everyone pretty much converged on the same ideas, which seem to be working so far.
The annoying part is that I’m not sure if other people particularly internalized it.