jyasskin comments on 3 Levels of Rationality Verification - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 March 2009 05:19PM

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Comment author: jyasskin 29 December 2010 06:15:59PM *  4 points [-]

I don't see what I thought were the obvious answers, so here they are. The foundations are elsewhere on the site, but they seemed missing from this list.

Reputational: Expect Bayesian masters to participate in other scientific fields. People who make more discoveries in other fields get more street cred among rationalists, especially when they can explain how rationalism helped them make the discoveries. Obviously, this is a long-term process that doesn't lend itself to improving the art quickly.

Experimental: This one's a two-step process. First, ask a large collection of university professors to insert one lie into each of their lectures a'la http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/02/my-favorite-lia.html (mentioned in another comment). Have them note which students discover each lie, but don't have that count for any sort of grade (to prevent gaming). Second, sort students randomly into the experimental rationality classes, and/or have the classes "fill up" (with a lottery for seats) to provide a control. Look for whether there's a difference in lie-detection rates between the differently-taught groups.

Experimental #2, much longer term: Track the career outcomes of the students who took each different rationality class. See whether there's a difference in winning between the groups.

Comment author: Romashka 18 April 2015 07:22:41PM -1 points [-]

Note that for some of them, leaving the career track altogether might be the rational choice.