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Cyan comments on Controlling your inner control circuits - Less Wrong
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I'm afraid you have Popper all turned around. According to Popper, one should make claims that are testable, and then it's the job of (usually other) scientists to perform experiments to try to tear them apart.
If you're a Popperian and you disagree, go ahead and perform the experiment. If your position is that the relevant claim isn't testable, that's a different complaint entirely.
You're supposed to try to tear apart your own claims, first. Making random but testable assertions for no particular reason is not part of the methodology.
Yes, I'm a Popperian. Yes, people should make testable claims and other people should test them. That's how everything is supposed to work. All right so far.
As to the nature of my complaint... Here's a non-trivial question: how do we rigorously test Kaj and Eby's assertions about akrasia? I took Vassar's words very seriously and have been trying to think up an experiment that would (at least) properly control for the belief effect, but came up empty so far. If I manage to solve this problem, I'll make a toplevel post about that.
Why is it so difficult? Even a head to head test between PJ's magic and an arbitrarily selected alternative would provide valuable information. Given the claims made for, as you pointed out, first percentile utility, it seems that just a couple of tests against arbitrary alternatives should be expected to show drastic differences and at least tell us whether it is worth thinking harder.