I have thought of this as well. A startup seems like a great test of rationality. Unfortunately, doing a successful startup is hard. It would be great to get rationality to the point of it empowering any old smart person to do a startup, but I think we will need smaller tests before then.
That said, I had not though of coming at it the other way like you did. Take potential startup people, teach rationality to half of them, and observe the outcome. What a great idea!
I think the best source of startup-caliber people who are about to start one is ycombinator. I wonder if we could convince paul graham to let us test some ideas on his founders. The information feedback time is very long tho. I don’t think you could get definitive results for at least half a year. Testing rationality ideas on startup people would be a great way to solidly verify the methods, but it’s not fast enough to develop them.
(Nothing against your idea of a study—perhaps a control group receiving some other variety of self-help training would be better than a control of nothing at all).
Against taking lessons from startups: the big winners probably overestimated their likelihood of success.
That said, of course freedom from bias and rational-thinking-avoidance should improve your outcomes given a commitment to a particular goal.
this is a great idea! more symmetry is always better. It would be good to test against no course as well tho.
the big winners probably overestimated their likely hood of success
It seems odd to bring this up.
And so what? They won. If they used irrational methods (which they probably did), we should study those methods, pull out the rational core and use it to go start some businesses.
JG likely meant “likelihood” in the LW/Bayesian sense, where the proper estimate is the one that is justified by the available evidence at the time of estimation, not the one that is subsequently justified by the way things turned out. It’s often useful to keep those concepts separate.
That’s a good point. I agree with it, and that’s how I try to use the term. Equivalent to your formulation: I was imagining the people who are just like the success stories you’re trying to emulate, who weren’t so lucky—how many of them are there, and what did they lose by trying and failing?
From what I’ve heard, if you fail at a startup, you come out of it with zero net worth and a lot of experience. So you don’t lost much, even if it is not optimally productive.
If they used irrational methods (which they probably did), we should study those methods, pull out the rational core and use it to go start some businesses.
A proposal worth trying. My point is that we should ideally be able to do the correct expected value + risk tolerance calculation in deciding whether to try a given venture, and that many of those who succeeded skipped that step or made an optimistic error. More generally, studying what properties are most frequent amongst the winners doesn’t tell you enough about the value of acquiring those properties. (I’m assuming you care what happens to you if you fail.)
I’m hopeful that if overconfidence is necessary in a method-acting or emotional-battery sense, someone who understands that they’re being overconfident can nonetheless knowingly push their affect in that direction (an open question).
Testing rationality ideas on startup people would be a great way to solidly verify the methods, but it’s not fast enough to develop them.
Right. I picture us developing tests of how well people have learned specific methods, like recognizing mysterious answers to mysterious questions, and using those to develop the training program. Then performing the start up experiment to see if the separate training techniques were synergizing into something useful IRL. Do you think I should have mentioned that in the main post? It seems relevant, but I didn’t want to obscure the main point with unnecessary detail.
I have thought of this as well. A startup seems like a great test of rationality. Unfortunately, doing a successful startup is hard. It would be great to get rationality to the point of it empowering any old smart person to do a startup, but I think we will need smaller tests before then.
That said, I had not though of coming at it the other way like you did. Take potential startup people, teach rationality to half of them, and observe the outcome. What a great idea!
I think the best source of startup-caliber people who are about to start one is ycombinator. I wonder if we could convince paul graham to let us test some ideas on his founders. The information feedback time is very long tho. I don’t think you could get definitive results for at least half a year. Testing rationality ideas on startup people would be a great way to solidly verify the methods, but it’s not fast enough to develop them.
(Nothing against your idea of a study—perhaps a control group receiving some other variety of self-help training would be better than a control of nothing at all).
Against taking lessons from startups: the big winners probably overestimated their likelihood of success.
That said, of course freedom from bias and rational-thinking-avoidance should improve your outcomes given a commitment to a particular goal.
this is a great idea! more symmetry is always better. It would be good to test against no course as well tho.
It seems odd to bring this up. And so what? They won. If they used irrational methods (which they probably did), we should study those methods, pull out the rational core and use it to go start some businesses.
JG likely meant “likelihood” in the LW/Bayesian sense, where the proper estimate is the one that is justified by the available evidence at the time of estimation, not the one that is subsequently justified by the way things turned out. It’s often useful to keep those concepts separate.
That’s a good point. I agree with it, and that’s how I try to use the term. Equivalent to your formulation: I was imagining the people who are just like the success stories you’re trying to emulate, who weren’t so lucky—how many of them are there, and what did they lose by trying and failing?
From what I’ve heard, if you fail at a startup, you come out of it with zero net worth and a lot of experience. So you don’t lost much, even if it is not optimally productive.
I agree, but I consider the opportunity cost (and stress/sleep/health toll) significant.
Oops. You are right they should be separate. Fixed.
A proposal worth trying. My point is that we should ideally be able to do the correct expected value + risk tolerance calculation in deciding whether to try a given venture, and that many of those who succeeded skipped that step or made an optimistic error. More generally, studying what properties are most frequent amongst the winners doesn’t tell you enough about the value of acquiring those properties. (I’m assuming you care what happens to you if you fail.)
I’m hopeful that if overconfidence is necessary in a method-acting or emotional-battery sense, someone who understands that they’re being overconfident can nonetheless knowingly push their affect in that direction (an open question).
Right. I picture us developing tests of how well people have learned specific methods, like recognizing mysterious answers to mysterious questions, and using those to develop the training program. Then performing the start up experiment to see if the separate training techniques were synergizing into something useful IRL. Do you think I should have mentioned that in the main post? It seems relevant, but I didn’t want to obscure the main point with unnecessary detail.