I just caught myself mid sentence making an error because of cognitive bias in a situation that might make for a good question. We had a family member that was suppose to come at 6:00 tonight to visit. The person is often (but not always) late so earlier in the evening I said my estimate for them arriving was 6:30. About 6:15 we were sitting waiting for them to come and I looked up at the clock and said, “We’ll they’re 15 minutes late so far but I’ll—” I was going to finish with “stand by estimate of 6:30″ but realized that would likely not be optimal any more (or my original estimate of 6:30 wasn’t optimal). Given the new information I had, I should update my belief and estimate that they’ll arrive later than 6:30. So you could phrase the question:
You have invited guest over for the evening at 6:00pm. They are the type of people who are usually late (sometimes right on time, and sometimes even an hour or more late) and when making your planning you figure that their expected arrival time is 6:30pm. You continue your prep and later look up at the clock and see it is 6:15pm. Should you revise your estimate of what time they will arrive?
P.S. it is now 6:32 and they’re still not here.
I had a friend who did family scripture study every day and he (and his 5 or 6 siblings) were among the best readers in school, because they’d sat there and practiced it every single day since they were born. So there are definitively benefits to the scripture reading.
Also, many Mormons do appear to benefit from going on a mission. (To my surprise, many will say it was the “best two years” of their life—do I need to update my model?) Many 20 somethings turn into aimless “kidults” and Mormon Missions do a lot to prevent this by giving a very clear path to move forward with life (High School --> Mission --> College --> Marriage -- > Job).
However, there is a big problem with the conformity. Everyone has a different opportunity cost for scripture study or a mission. For many people, 2 1⁄2 hours a week of esoteric reading is probably better then the tube; but for those who would otherwise be reading the sequences…
And with missions, they say EVERY young man should serve a mission. It doesn’t matter how bad of a fit you are for it (with some health exceptions) or what you would be doing with your time otherwise, you are expected to go. That’s a huge conformity cost for kids who are turning down scholarships and delaying important endeavors (Newton and Einstein were both in there 20s when they developed their most important ideas; would they have been able to do so if they went on a Mormon mission at that important time in their life?).
So what a rationalist community could learn from that is not to expect/encourage everyone to derive the same benefits from the same actions.
You haven’t read the Sequences?!? seems to have a similar cultural connotation for LessWrongers as You haven’t been on a mission?!? does for Mormons. Having other culturally acceptable ways for rational progression seems like a good lesson to learn. For example,
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality seems to be a great partial alternative. If someone has read that but not the sequences does the community look down on them?
How many of the sequence ideas could be converted to a RSAnimate type video?
Even having the most important 100,000 words of the sequences in a (printed) book form would be a great help. I feel like I could give a friend a 100k word LessWrong book, but telling someone they should read a million words of blog posts seems odd.