I’m trying to convince intelligent people that there are real changes we can introduce that will be adopted by most people
Well you can start with trying to convince me then. If we can’t get people to stop playing the lottery, what makes you think we can get them to understand and correctly apply Bayes’ Rule? BTW, I hope you don’t have the bottom line already written here.
I believe there are meaningful things people believe/do nowadays that they didn’t 300 years ago (e.g. using the scientific method).
Unfortunately, for all these things, they’re either:
a) adopted only by some people, not the majority.
b) As DanArmak says, adopted only because of “peer pressure” or other social reasons.
Now, that’s not to say CFAR’s mission isn’t still worthwhile—raising the sanity waterline of just certain segments of the population, e.g. the top X% in terms of intelligence, is still of great importance.
But if there really aren’t general “rationality techniques” that have been adopted by most people, if the average person today is no more rational than a person 500 years ago, then I suppose you’re right—my bottom line might need to change to “maybe we can’t reach the general populace”.
Well you can start with trying to convince me then. If we can’t get people to stop playing the lottery, what makes you think we can get them to understand and correctly apply Bayes’ Rule? BTW, I hope you don’t have the bottom line already written here.
I believe there are meaningful things people believe/do nowadays that they didn’t 300 years ago (e.g. using the scientific method).
Unfortunately, for all these things, they’re either: a) adopted only by some people, not the majority. b) As DanArmak says, adopted only because of “peer pressure” or other social reasons.
Now, that’s not to say CFAR’s mission isn’t still worthwhile—raising the sanity waterline of just certain segments of the population, e.g. the top X% in terms of intelligence, is still of great importance.
But if there really aren’t general “rationality techniques” that have been adopted by most people, if the average person today is no more rational than a person 500 years ago, then I suppose you’re right—my bottom line might need to change to “maybe we can’t reach the general populace”.