John_Maxwell_IV comments on POSITION: Design and Write Rationality Curriculum - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 January 2012 06:50AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 19 January 2012 06:31:04PM *  15 points [-]

creating exercises does not make our present lack of robust measures worse than it already is (...) they seemed interested, and started noticing sunk cost fallacy examples in their lives

Martial arts masters and psychotherapy gurus could say the same. Instead of sunk costs you could teach newbies to notice post-colonial alienation or intelligent design, and sure enough they'd get better at noticing that thing in their lives. I hear scientologists do lots of exercises too. Maybe creating exercises before measures is a positive expected value decision, but I wouldn't bet on that.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 22 January 2012 05:22:44AM -1 points [-]

To the extent that irrationality is a result of compartmentalization, this may be the same thing as creating a way to measure how effectively you are accomplishing your goals, which is going to vary between people depending on what their goals are.

For most interesting goals I can think of, creating a rigorous quantitative measure is next to impossible. However, there are a few goals, like running a mile in under four minutes, that lend themselves well to this approach. Perhaps SI could find a group of individuals engaged in such a goal and offer their services as rationality consultants?

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