The problem, though, is that what the rationalists will probably conclude is “there’s no solid evidence, and it seems likely that any advice works well for a subset of the population and hurts other subsets of the population. You should quantify yourself and experiment.”
Which is advice that people are going to have a hard time taking. Giving up specialization of labor is rather hard and rarely worth it.
Now, they might find a few gems- like “you should figure out diaphragmatic breathing”- but it’ll be hard to separate those from fads or overbroad advice (“this diet agrees with my evolutionary views, thus I suspect it’s good for everyone”).
I think even this would be pretty useful; it basically means ‘we don’t know anything of use; average person should ignore this field for at least 10 years’.
The problem, though, is that what the rationalists will probably conclude is “there’s no solid evidence, and it seems likely that any advice works well for a subset of the population and hurts other subsets of the population. You should quantify yourself and experiment.”
Which is advice that people are going to have a hard time taking. Giving up specialization of labor is rather hard and rarely worth it.
Now, they might find a few gems- like “you should figure out diaphragmatic breathing”- but it’ll be hard to separate those from fads or overbroad advice (“this diet agrees with my evolutionary views, thus I suspect it’s good for everyone”).
I think even this would be pretty useful; it basically means ‘we don’t know anything of use; average person should ignore this field for at least 10 years’.