mattnewport comments on Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great - Less Wrong

140 Post author: Yvain 09 April 2009 02:44AM

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Comment author: mattnewport 10 April 2009 06:49:49AM 5 points [-]

I've also learned some useful things from my more limited familiarity with the community. I'd tend to agree with your criticisms but I think the emphasis on rigorous 'field testing' and on 'doing what works' in much of the community shows some common ground with general efforts at rationality. As you say, this is an area (like many areas of day to day life) that is not easily amenable to controlled scientific experiment for a number of reasons but one of the lessons of Bayesian thinking/'x-rationality' that I've found useful is the emphasis on being comfortable with uncertainty, fuzzy evidence and making the best decisions given limited information.

It's treacherous terrain for anyone seeking truth since, like investment or financial advice or healthcare, there is a lot of noise along with the signal. It's certainly an interesting area with many cross-currents to those interested in applying rationality though.