In agreement with Vladimir Nesov, these particular ‘seeds’, though cheap, seem to be not viable at all. I’ve never seen anyone take one corrected comment and turn it into a tree of rationality. Repeated correction has some effect, but its still more closely analogous to a big pile of seeds on the ground than anything that is self perpetuating. Something like a textbook would probably do better, if you could get them to read it, but that is a fairly tough step for the expected effectiveness (at least if the textbook is geared towards how to do it and not an engineered mind virus).
I’ve had this idea rolling around in the back of my head to see what an optimized ‘rationality seed’ would look like, and to see if there are any reasonably effective conversation sized seeds. No magic yet, but here are some thoughts about what it should contain:
To get them to take interest in the idea, it needs to point out some low hanging and easily visible fruit. This is person dependent and non trivial, since you basically have to bust out something important and easily explained that they haven’t already heard or thought of. Alternatively, you could point at some easily seen fruit and have them trust you that its fairly easy to get to. This seems necessary to make them think its worthwhile.
“Dark Arts” should be employed. I have no problem being motivated by emotional arguments as long as the motivations point in the same direction as my conscious thought, and have no objections to using the Dark Arts for good. I strongly suspect that the mechanisms for motivation are the same anyway- by that I mean that the information needs to go from system 1 to system 2 at some point, and its easier if you facilitate this rather than hoping they do it on their own.
It needs to point in the direction of the full answer. “Don’t trust anything you haven’t seen tested” might be an improvement on the margin, but it does not wrap around and self modify. Off the top of my head, I can’t of a good short tag line, but “before disagreeing, make sure you know why the other person thinks what they think” should get you closer- if they encounter better reasoning, they should be more likely to understand and then accept it into their own methods of thinking.
It needs to be self reinforcing and self correcting. It seems like there’s a surprisingly high rate of ‘relapsing’ into old thinking habits. You can’t just hand someone a better method of thinking and expect it to stick if it doesn’t continue to detect and cut off beginnings of relapses before they get going.
In agreement with Vladimir Nesov, these particular ‘seeds’, though cheap, seem to be not viable at all. I’ve never seen anyone take one corrected comment and turn it into a tree of rationality. Repeated correction has some effect, but its still more closely analogous to a big pile of seeds on the ground than anything that is self perpetuating. Something like a textbook would probably do better, if you could get them to read it, but that is a fairly tough step for the expected effectiveness (at least if the textbook is geared towards how to do it and not an engineered mind virus).
I’ve had this idea rolling around in the back of my head to see what an optimized ‘rationality seed’ would look like, and to see if there are any reasonably effective conversation sized seeds. No magic yet, but here are some thoughts about what it should contain:
To get them to take interest in the idea, it needs to point out some low hanging and easily visible fruit. This is person dependent and non trivial, since you basically have to bust out something important and easily explained that they haven’t already heard or thought of. Alternatively, you could point at some easily seen fruit and have them trust you that its fairly easy to get to. This seems necessary to make them think its worthwhile.
“Dark Arts” should be employed. I have no problem being motivated by emotional arguments as long as the motivations point in the same direction as my conscious thought, and have no objections to using the Dark Arts for good. I strongly suspect that the mechanisms for motivation are the same anyway- by that I mean that the information needs to go from system 1 to system 2 at some point, and its easier if you facilitate this rather than hoping they do it on their own.
It needs to point in the direction of the full answer. “Don’t trust anything you haven’t seen tested” might be an improvement on the margin, but it does not wrap around and self modify. Off the top of my head, I can’t of a good short tag line, but “before disagreeing, make sure you know why the other person thinks what they think” should get you closer- if they encounter better reasoning, they should be more likely to understand and then accept it into their own methods of thinking.
It needs to be self reinforcing and self correcting. It seems like there’s a surprisingly high rate of ‘relapsing’ into old thinking habits. You can’t just hand someone a better method of thinking and expect it to stick if it doesn’t continue to detect and cut off beginnings of relapses before they get going.