Louie comments on What Curiosity Looks Like - Less Wrong

31 Post author: lukeprog 06 January 2012 09:28PM

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Comment author: MinibearRex 08 January 2012 06:44:55AM 20 points [-]

I tried typing those queries (and related ones) into google, to see if someone could easily find some sort of starting point for rationality. "How to think better" yields many lists of tips that are mediocre at best (things like: exercise, become more curious, etc). About halfway down the page, interestingly, is a post on CSA, but it's not a great one. It seems to mostly say that to get better at thinking you first have to realize that you are not naturally a fantastic thinker. This is true, but it's not something that points the way forward towards bayesian rationality. (by the way, "how to figure out what's true" provides essentially nothing of value, at least on the first page).

In order for someone to go down the path you've identified on their own, as a curious individual, they would have to have a substantial amount of luck to get started. Either they would have to have somehow stumbled upon enough of an explanation of heuristics and biases that they realized the importance of them (which is a combination of two fairly unlikely events), or they would have to be studying those subjects for some reason other than their instrumental value. Someone who started off curiously studying AI would have a much better chance at finding this path, for this reason. AI researchers in this instance, have a tremendous advantage when it comes to rationality over researchers in the hard sciences, engineers, etc.

Comment author: Louie 09 January 2012 11:56:12PM 12 points [-]

Thanks MinibearRex.

I've added ads on Google AdWords that will start coming up for this in a couple days when the new ads get approved so that anyone searching for something even vaguely like "How to think better" or "How to figure out what's true" will get pointed at Less Wrong. Not as good as owning the top 3 spots in the organic results, but some folks click on ads, especially when it's in the top spot. And we do need to make landing on the path towards rationality less of a stroke of luck and more a matter of certainty for those who are looking.

Comment author: dbaupp 21 January 2012 12:31:35PM 2 points [-]

Do you have any data from this campaign?

Comment author: taryneast 26 March 2012 09:54:08AM 1 point [-]

It's been almost three months. How's the data on this campaign going?

Comment author: MinibearRex 10 January 2012 04:22:55AM 0 points [-]

That sounds great. Thanks for taking the time to do that.