Nornagest comments on New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July) - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Julia_Galef 09 April 2013 02:58AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 15 April 2013 08:06:48PM *  3 points [-]

That might show that CFAR's audience, or some of its members, wouldn't be gulled by a placebo self-help program, but it wouldn't show that CFAR's program is effective -- it might consist of more sophisticated platitudes, or teach skills that're only useful in unrealistically simple situations, or be impractical in other ways. If you want to know about effectiveness, you at some point need to compare outcomes.

A cheaper test might involve collecting outcome information from a sample of CFAR students and then finding similar samples from other programs and following up with them, but that would be susceptible to a bunch of demographic confounders.

Comment author: private_messaging 17 April 2013 07:23:07AM 3 points [-]

Yes. You'd also need a fairly large sample size.

The issue isn't only that those who can't, teach. What if use of some math-inspired insights is actually very difficult? (Who'd offer 4 day classes in that then?) .