Well, before you can proclaim greater success, you got to have some results that you can measure without being biased. I see a counter example to the teachings actually working, in the very statement that they are working, w/o the solid evidence.
Hmmmm, you're right, actually. I was using the evidence of "this has helped me, and a few of my friends" - I have decent anecdotal evidence that it's useful, but I was definitely over-playing it's value simply because it happens to land in the "sweet spot" of my social circle. A book like Freakonomics is aimed at a less intelligent audience, and I'm sure there's plenty of resources aimed at a more intelligent audience. The Sequences just happen to be (thus far) ideal for my own social circle.
Thank you for taking the time to respond - I was caught up exploring a idea and hadn't taken the time to step back and realize that it was a stupid one.
I do still feel the Sequences are evidence of intelligence - a stupid person could not have written these! But it's not any particular evidence of an extraordinary level of intelligence. It's like a post-graduate degree; you have to be smart to get one, but there's a lot of similarly smart people out there.
Well, that would depend to how you define intelligence. What did set us aside from other animals, is that we could invent stone axe (the one with the stone actually attached to the stick, that's hard to do). If I see someone who invented something, I know they are intelligent in this sense. But writings without significant innovation do not let me conclude much. Since the IQ tests, we started mixing up different dimensions to intelligence. The IQ tests have very little loading for the data-heavy or choices-heavy (with very many possible actions) processing, some types of work, too.
I've spent so much time in the cogsci literature that I know the LW approach to rationality is basically the mainstream cogsci approach to rationality (plus some extra stuff about, e.g., language), but... do other people not know this? Do people one step removed from LessWrong — say, in the 'atheist' and 'skeptic' communities — not know this? If this is causing credibility problems in our broader community, it'd be relatively easy to show people that Less Wrong is not, in fact, a "fringe" approach to rationality.
For example, here's Oaksford & Chater in the second chapter to the (excellent) new Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, the one on normative systems of rationality:
Is it meaningful to attempt to develop a general theory of rationality at all? We might tentatively suggest that it is a prima facie sign of irrationality to believe in alien abduction, or to will a sports team to win in order to increase their chance of victory. But these views or actions might be entirely rational, given suitably nonstandard background beliefs about other alien activity and the general efficacy of psychic powers. Irrationality may, though, be ascribed if there is a clash between a particular belief or behavior and such background assumptions. Thus, a thorough-going physicalist may, perhaps, be accused of irrationality if she simultaneously believes in psychic powers. A theory of rationality cannot, therefore, be viewed as clarifying either what people should believe or how people should act—but it can determine whether beliefs and behaviors are compatible. Similarly, a theory of rational choice cannot determine whether it is rational to smoke or to exercise daily; but it might clarify whether a particular choice is compatible with other beliefs and choices.
From this viewpoint, normative theories can be viewed as clarifying conditions of consistency… Logic can be viewed as studying the notion of consistency over beliefs. Probability… studies consistency over degrees of belief. Rational choice theory studies the consistency of beliefs and values with choices.
They go on to clarify that by probability they mean Bayesian probability theory, and by rational choice theory they mean Bayesian decision theory. You'll get the same account in the textbooks on the cogsci of rationality, e.g. Thinking and Deciding or Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.