It’s true that just reading posts won’t make you more rational very fast. But thankfully, that is not the extent of LW—it is also encouraging people to respond to arguments they see, in a social context that rewards improving skills very highly. We are sort of practicing “virtue rationality” here, if you will.
Once you have truly assimilated the core ideas of LW, to the point where they’re almost starting to feel like cliches, you simply cannot HELP but to apply them in everyday life.
For example, “notice when you’re confused” saved my bacon recently: I was working on a group engineering project (in university) which was more or less done, but there was some niggling detail of interfacing that didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t know it was wrong; I just had a weird sensation of butterflies and fog every time I thought about that aspect. In the past I have responded to such situations with a shrug. This time, inspired by the above maxim, I decided to really investigate, at which point it became clear that our design had skipped a peripheral but essential component.
I can cite more personal examples if you like. The trouble with noticing such instances is that once a skill is truly digested, it doesn’t have a little label that says “that skill came from LessWrong.” It just feels like the obviously right thing to do.
It’s true that just reading posts won’t make you more rational very fast. But thankfully, that is not the extent of LW—it is also encouraging people to respond to arguments they see, in a social context that rewards improving skills very highly. We are sort of practicing “virtue rationality” here, if you will.
Once you have truly assimilated the core ideas of LW, to the point where they’re almost starting to feel like cliches, you simply cannot HELP but to apply them in everyday life.
For example, “notice when you’re confused” saved my bacon recently: I was working on a group engineering project (in university) which was more or less done, but there was some niggling detail of interfacing that didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t know it was wrong; I just had a weird sensation of butterflies and fog every time I thought about that aspect. In the past I have responded to such situations with a shrug. This time, inspired by the above maxim, I decided to really investigate, at which point it became clear that our design had skipped a peripheral but essential component.
I can cite more personal examples if you like. The trouble with noticing such instances is that once a skill is truly digested, it doesn’t have a little label that says “that skill came from LessWrong.” It just feels like the obviously right thing to do.