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private_messaging comments on PSA: Learn to code - Less Wrong
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The standard model here is that biases are one of the major things that makes flawed thought flawed. You suggested that model is false; that it is an illusion resulting from the causality working the opposite direction.
I'd like to see evidence that the observed correlation between flawed thinking and biases is due to "flawed thinking is easily affected by biases" rather than "biases cause flawed thinking".
The mainstream model here in our technological civilization which we have to sustain using our ape brains, is that the correct thought methods have to be taught, and that the biases tend to substitute for solutions when one does not know how to answer the question, and are displaced by more accurate methods.
The mainstream model helps decrease people's mistake rate in programming, software engineering, and other disciplines.
Now, the standard model "here" on lesswrong, I am not sure what it really is, and I do not want to risk making a strawman.
For example, if you need to build a bridge, and you need to decide on the thickness of the steel beams, you need to learn how to calculate that and how to check your calculations, and you need training so that you stop making mistakes such as mixing up the equations. A very experienced architect can guess-estimate the required thickness rather accurately (but won't use that to build bridges).
Without that, if you want to guess-estimate required thickness, you will be influenced by cognitive biases such as framing effect, by time of the day, mood, colour of the steel beam, what you had for breakfast and the like, through zillions of emotions and biases. You might go ahead and blame all those influences for the invalidity of your estimate, but the cause is incompetence.
The technological civilization you are living in, all it's accomplishments, are the demonstration of success of the traditional approach.
I'm not familiar with this "mainstream model". Is there a resource that could explain this in more detail?
Go look how education works. Engineers sitting in classes learning how the colour of the beam or framing effect or other fallacies can influence guess estimate of required thickness, OR engineers sitting in classes learning how to actually find the damn thickness?
So am I to infer that your answer to my question is "no"?
What I am saying is that you have enough facts at your disposal and need to process them. So the answer is 'yes'. If you absolutely insist that I link a resource that I would expect wouldn't add any new information to the information you already didn't process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_education . Teaching how to do math. Not teaching 'how framing effect influences your calculations and how you must purify your mind of it'. (Same goes for any engineering courses, take your pick. Same goes for teaching the physicists or any other scientists).