mytyde comments on [Link] Offense 101 - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Alejandro1 24 October 2012 09:28PM

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Comment author: Yvain 25 October 2012 12:04:47AM *  25 points [-]

That would be an amazing class. Even dropping the "offensiveness" billing and just advertising it as a class that would expose you to as many new and unconventional ideas as possible would be pretty neat.

While we're asking for the impossible, I'd kind of like to scrap the entire current primary/secondary school curriculum and replace it entirely with rationality. You'd learn math on the way to being able to use Bayes' Theorem. You'd learn English while writing counter-attitudinal essays. You'd learn history because your assignment is to point out what cognitive biases led Napoleon to make the mistake of invading Russia, and how you would have done better in his shoes. And then you'll play a game of Diplomacy (or Civilization IV, or whatever) to prove it. All exams are calibration tests.

People will complain that it might not give people the same breadth of knowledge. But our current curriculum is entirely about signaling breadth of knowledge. I learned about Sargon of Akkad in sixth grade and I have >90% confidence I'm the only person in the class who remembers his name, and that entirely because I'm the sort of person who would read about people like Sargon anyway outside of class. Once the primary/secondary school system is producing a generation of scholars of Mesopotamian history - or even people who can still speak Spanish five years after their high school Spanish class is over - then they can complain about breadth of knowledge.

But if you optimized the entire school experience for learning how to evaluate information and make good choices, maybe some of that would stick.

Comment author: mytyde 25 October 2012 01:52:23AM *  6 points [-]

(Napoleon didn't invade Russia because of cognitive bias. He'd already defeated Russia several times and "invaded" in 1912 with the object of forcing Russia to keep out of Poland and remain in the Continental System. Logistics killed Le Grand Armee.... Napoleon was actually above average height for his time period... the rumor that Napoleon was short is due to a perhaps-intentional failure to convert French measurement height units into British units of the same name, and so there's no basis for a "Napoleon Complex".)

A more interesting question would be "What cognitive biases through history have led us to think of Napoleon as a short person?"

Comment author: [deleted] 25 October 2012 04:01:12AM 11 points [-]

I suspect Yvain didn't mean 'Napoleon Complex' when he said 'cognitive bias' -- Napoleon, short or not, was probably vulnerable to e.g. thinking too much on his past successes in predicting the outcome of an invasion dominated by logistics in an unfamiliar way.

Comment author: Emile 25 October 2012 09:37:40AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Yvain 28 October 2012 12:07:55AM *  1 point [-]

I was thinking more of overconfidence bias and planning fallacy: "I'll just waltz in here and conquer Moscow in a few months...99% chance it works fine."