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MugaSofer comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong
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It's worth noting that if the person successfully "found knowledge", they are in fact correct (unless it was irrelevant knowledge, I guess.)
Historical evidence suggests that people get to step 4 before correctly finding knowledge quite often. The Spanish Inquisition is a shining example. Or communism - in its original inception, it was supposed to be a utopian paradise where everyone does what work is necessary, and enjoys fair benefits therefrom.
I suspect that a common failure mode is that one fails to take into account that many people are doing that which they are doing because they are quite happy to do it. They've smoothed out any sharp corners in their lifestyle that they could manage to smooth out, and see little benefit in changing to a new lifestyle, with new and unexpected sharp corners that will need smoothing.
I would therefore recommend being very, very cautious about assuming that one has successfully found sufficient knowledge.
I agree there's a common failure mode here - I'd be inclined to say it's simple overconfidence, and maybe overestimating your rationality relative to everyone else.
Still, if they're successful...
Even then, I'd most likely object to their attempts to try to dictate the actions of others; because of the common failure mode, my heuristic is to assign a very strong prior to the hypothesis that they are unsuccessful. Also, trying force has some fairly substantial negative effects; any positive effects of their proposed behaviour change would have to be significant to overcome that.
However, if they are willing to try to change the actions of others through simple persuasion without resorting to force, then I would not object. And if their proposed course of action is significantly better, then I would expect persuasion to work in at least some cases; and then these cases can be used as evidence for the proposed course of action working.
To be fair, we may have different interventions in mind here. I would also expect someone who genuinely found knowledge to use "soft force", but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
However, if forcing people to do things really helps, I'm all for intervention. Addicts, for example.
I was thinking armies, secret police, so on and so forth, forcing an entire country to one's will.
Hmmm. I hadn't thought of addicts. You make a good point.
I think I might need to re-evaluate my heuristics on this point.
This can never be put into practice. A person can try to find knowledge, but there is nothing they can do to determine whether they have successfully found knowledge -- any such attempts collapse into part of trying to find knowledge. There is no way of getting to a meta-level from which you can judge whether your efforts bore fruit. The ladder has no rungs.
raises eyebrows
You're saying it's impossible for any evidence to change your estimate of whether something will help people?
No, just that while you can try harder to find knowledge, there isn't a separate metalevel at which seeing if you really have knowledge is a different activity.
If you can receive information that provides strong Bayesian evidence that you're belief is true, how is there "nothing they can do to determine whether they have successfully found knowledge"?