So how can we avoid LW becoming rationalist-porn for daydreamers, and leverage the site to actually improve our rationality?
So far LW has been more about discussing the “theory” side of rationality—what constitutes rationality, and what can be done to become more rational. My suggestion is for most posts on the “application” side.
Specifically, posts that outline real-world examples of failures of rationality (or any other cognitive failures) that their author has found.
To illustrate, this morning I saw an article about the serious problem of drug-resistant bacteria in India. Villagers, in particular, tend to stop their courses of antibiotics as soon as their symptoms dissapear. The article didn’t consider that there might be underlying cognitive factors behind their actions.
I could write a post about that article explaining why I think heuristics and biases are a significant factor behind the villager’s actions. Perhaps I could also apply my understanding of heuristics and biases to suggest what I think might be the best strategies for getting the villagers to avoid this dangerous behavior. If anyone disagreed with me and didn’t think heuristics and biases play much of a role in this problem, they could outline their views in the comments and hopefully we could all learn something.
There’s heaps of fodder on the web for this kind of analysis: articles, blog posts, news stories, advertisement copy, etc. There’s cases where we can point out that heuristics and biases are underlying causes of particular problems - where the original article is likely to have overlooked this possibility. We could also be pointing out cases where out where people are exploiting heuristics and biases in order to manipulate people.
Writing such posts would give people practice at trying to spot, and trying to analyse, failures of rationality. I think that’d useful for developing people’s capabilities. And I think it’d be a good way for new-comers to be initiated into the subject matter and start developing their skills.
Such posts would also be ‘putting our money where our mouth is’. We could be demonstrating that heuristics and biases are actually in important issue for socity, by showing that they’re an underlying factor in important and topical issues.
So how can we avoid LW becoming rationalist-porn for daydreamers, and leverage the site to actually improve our rationality?
So far LW has been more about discussing the “theory” side of rationality—what constitutes rationality, and what can be done to become more rational. My suggestion is for most posts on the “application” side.
Specifically, posts that outline real-world examples of failures of rationality (or any other cognitive failures) that their author has found.
To illustrate, this morning I saw an article about the serious problem of drug-resistant bacteria in India. Villagers, in particular, tend to stop their courses of antibiotics as soon as their symptoms dissapear. The article didn’t consider that there might be underlying cognitive factors behind their actions.
I could write a post about that article explaining why I think heuristics and biases are a significant factor behind the villager’s actions. Perhaps I could also apply my understanding of heuristics and biases to suggest what I think might be the best strategies for getting the villagers to avoid this dangerous behavior. If anyone disagreed with me and didn’t think heuristics and biases play much of a role in this problem, they could outline their views in the comments and hopefully we could all learn something.
There’s heaps of fodder on the web for this kind of analysis: articles, blog posts, news stories, advertisement copy, etc. There’s cases where we can point out that heuristics and biases are underlying causes of particular problems - where the original article is likely to have overlooked this possibility. We could also be pointing out cases where out where people are exploiting heuristics and biases in order to manipulate people.
Writing such posts would give people practice at trying to spot, and trying to analyse, failures of rationality. I think that’d useful for developing people’s capabilities. And I think it’d be a good way for new-comers to be initiated into the subject matter and start developing their skills.
Such posts would also be ‘putting our money where our mouth is’. We could be demonstrating that heuristics and biases are actually in important issue for socity, by showing that they’re an underlying factor in important and topical issues.