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Daniel_Burfoot comments on What is missing from rationality? - Less Wrong
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Spending lots of time thinking about concepts like cryonics, the Great Filter, the self-indication assumption, omega, etc. does not lead directly to traditionally desirable life outcomes.
If we wanted to be more traditionally successful, we would have more posts on what could be termed "quotidian" rationality, topics like investing, career planning, fitness, fashion, relationships and so on. But there are many other sites/magazines/books about that stuff; it's unclear how the rationalist viewpoint could help figure out a better (for example) diet system. Those topics also tend to degenerate into boring intangible regurgitations of common sense ("wear clothes that fit!" "try to see things from your partner's viewpoint!").
I tentatively disagree. I'm actually working on a post about this very issue, with examples of the type you cite.
Well, it's a bit clearer if you remember that people are crazy and the world is mad. If everyone else is basing their diets on, say, the flow of moon spirits through their chakras, then I think rationality has something to offer.
Imagine a nutritionist. Now imagine they know how to form accurate beliefs, unlike most people. See the improvement?
Sure, but nutrition claims to be a science, and they don't break obvious rules of rationality. It's not like they're developing diets based on the motions of the planets. Now, I don't have any confidence in any of their conclusions, but to do better would require more than mere philosophical sophistication; one would have to go out and gather actual data.
For nutrition in particular, I actually think epistemic techniques would be useful. The whole diet/exercise/weight loss cluster is a bit Wild West. I've read commercial gurus (who tend to be unscientific) and peer-reviewed studies (which tend to show a lack of practical knowledge, typically in that the "test" diet or exercise is often nowhere near as intense as what actual fitness buffs do.) Being aware of cognitive biases and having some crackpot-detecting mechanisms would actually be useful.
Incidentally, since I realized that it can be hard to find suitable non-political examples for use here, nutrition might be a good substitute for climate change in examining how to look at "scientific consensus."
There's nothing wrong with basing your rationality on actual data, and I'd say it's a useful practice.
As LW gets larger, we may want a split between general theory of rationality, longterm speculation, and practical application, just to give people more tools for finding what they're interested in.
I don't agree with your assessment. That is to say, I accept the 'science' part but not the 'rationality' part. Nutrition is based on politics, with the rational-rule breaking that politics entails.
There is quite a lot of evidence that they have been rather bad at updating based on the data that has been collected.
(Pointless nit-picking: "Dietitian" is the protected term internationally - "nutritionist" isn't, in the U.S. or the U.K. Anyone can call themself a nutritionist.)