Vladimir_Nesov comments on The Popularization Bias - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Wei_Dai 17 July 2009 03:43PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 17 July 2009 08:22:43PM *  4 points [-]

One must select what's important, there is too much science to tell about it all. "Correcting" popularization bias must consist in steering the selection effect according to some specific criteria different from sum-total of popularization in the world. Since what's important to specific people heavily depends on their interests, it's unlikely for there to be a magic bullet that more or less universally improves on available popularized material.

The valid way out of this debacle seem to be to acquire general knowledge, to learn to see what science knows and understand it for yourself, given enough effort. Popularizing this skill instead of popularizing specific content may be a better strategy.