And the point of CFAR is to help people become better filtering good ideas from bad. It is plainly not to produce people who automatically believe the best verbal argument anyone presents to them without regard for what filters that argument has been through, or what incentives the Skilled Arguer might have to utter the Very Convincing Argument for X instead of the Very Very Convincing Argument for Y. And certainly not to have people ignore their instincts; e.g. CFAR constantly recommends Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman, and teaches exercises to extract more information from emotional and physical senses.
The point of the post is that post people, in most domains, should not trust that they are good at filtering good ideas from bad.
Or good courses from the bad courses. People should rely on empirical evidence more, that is to say, need more empiricism over rationalism. E.g. here, in rationalist community (quoting verbatim from article linked on About page): “Epistemic rationality is about forming true beliefs, about getting the map in your head to accurately reflect the territory of the world. We can measure epistemic rationality by comparing the rules of logic and probability theory to the way that a person actually updates their beliefs.”, whereas just about anyone else would measure that kind of thing by predicting something hidden, then checking for correctness, which is more empiricist than rationalist.
The point of the post is that most people, in most domains, should not trust that they are good at filtering good ideas from bad.
And the point of CFAR is to help people become better filtering good ideas from bad. It is plainly not to produce people who automatically believe the best verbal argument anyone presents to them without regard for what filters that argument has been through, or what incentives the Skilled Arguer might have to utter the Very Convincing Argument for X instead of the Very Very Convincing Argument for Y. And certainly not to have people ignore their instincts; e.g. CFAR constantly recommends Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman, and teaches exercises to extract more information from emotional and physical senses.
Or good courses from the bad courses. People should rely on empirical evidence more, that is to say, need more empiricism over rationalism. E.g. here, in rationalist community (quoting verbatim from article linked on About page): “Epistemic rationality is about forming true beliefs, about getting the map in your head to accurately reflect the territory of the world. We can measure epistemic rationality by comparing the rules of logic and probability theory to the way that a person actually updates their beliefs.”, whereas just about anyone else would measure that kind of thing by predicting something hidden, then checking for correctness, which is more empiricist than rationalist.