I think some LW surveys have collected data on the amount people have read LW and checked to see if that was predictive of e.g. being well-calibrated on things (IIRC it wasn’t.) You could search for “survey [year]” on LW to find that data, and you could analyze it yourself if you want. Of course, it’s hard to infer causality.
I think LW is one of the best online communities. But if reading a great online community is like reading a great book, even the best books are unlikely to produce consistent measurable changes in the life outcomes of most readers, I would guess.
Supposedly education research has shown that transfer learning isn’t really a thing, which could imply, for example, that reading about Bayesianism won’t make you better calibrated. Specifically practicing the skill of calibration could make you better calibrated, but we don’t spend a lot of time doing that.
I think Bryan Caplan discusses transfer learning in his book The Case Against Education, which also talks about the uselessness of education in general. LW could be better for your human capital than a university degree and still be pretty useless.
The usefulness of reading LW has long been a debate topic on LW. Here are some related posts:
Fair enough.
CFAR has some data about participants in their workshops: https://rationality.org/studies/2015-longitudinal-study BTW, I think the inventor of Cohen’s d said 0.2 is a “small” effect size.
I think some LW surveys have collected data on the amount people have read LW and checked to see if that was predictive of e.g. being well-calibrated on things (IIRC it wasn’t.) You could search for “survey [year]” on LW to find that data, and you could analyze it yourself if you want. Of course, it’s hard to infer causality.
I think LW is one of the best online communities. But if reading a great online community is like reading a great book, even the best books are unlikely to produce consistent measurable changes in the life outcomes of most readers, I would guess.
Supposedly education research has shown that transfer learning isn’t really a thing, which could imply, for example, that reading about Bayesianism won’t make you better calibrated. Specifically practicing the skill of calibration could make you better calibrated, but we don’t spend a lot of time doing that.
I think Bryan Caplan discusses transfer learning in his book The Case Against Education, which also talks about the uselessness of education in general. LW could be better for your human capital than a university degree and still be pretty useless.
The usefulness of reading LW has long been a debate topic on LW. Here are some related posts:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LgavAYtzFQZKg95WC/extreme-rationality-it-s-not-that-great
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7dRGYDqA2z6Zt7Q4h/goals-for-which-less-wrong-does-and-doesn-t-help
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qGEqpy7J78bZh3awf/what-i-ve-learned-from-less-wrong
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PBRWb2Em5SNeWYwwB/humans-are-not-automatically-strategic
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/06/the-smart-are-more-biased-to-think-they-are-less-biased.html
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AdYdLP2sRqPMoe8fb/knowing-about-biases-can-hurt-people
You can also do keyword searches for replies people have made, e.g.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/B3b29FJboqnANJRDz/extreme-rationality-it-could-be-great