Vaniver comments on GiveWell.org interviews SIAI - Less Wrong

28 Post author: ciphergoth 05 May 2011 04:29PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 06 May 2011 04:36:27AM *  3 points [-]

The problem, though, is that what the rationalists will probably conclude is "there's no solid evidence, and it seems likely that any advice works well for a subset of the population and hurts other subsets of the population. You should quantify yourself and experiment."

Which is advice that people are going to have a hard time taking. Giving up specialization of labor is rather hard and rarely worth it.

Now, they might find a few gems- like "you should figure out diaphragmatic breathing"- but it'll be hard to separate those from fads or overbroad advice ("this diet agrees with my evolutionary views, thus I suspect it's good for everyone").

Comment author: jsalvatier 06 May 2011 03:00:29PM 2 points [-]

I think even this would be pretty useful; it basically means 'we don't know anything of use; average person should ignore this field for at least 10 years'.