edanm comments on Examples of Rationality Techniques adopted by the Masses - Less Wrong

12 Post author: edanm 07 June 2014 02:03PM

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Comment author: edanm 07 June 2014 08:02:01PM 0 points [-]

Perhaps, but I'm trying to convince intelligent people that there are real changes we can introduce that will be adopted by most people, so I'm not sure the lottery fits the bill.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 07 June 2014 08:50:47PM *  1 point [-]

I'm trying to convince intelligent people that there are real changes we can introduce that will be adopted by most people

Well you can start with trying to convince me then. If we can't get people to stop playing the lottery, what makes you think we can get them to understand and correctly apply Bayes' Rule? BTW, I hope you don't have the bottom line already written here.

Comment author: edanm 09 June 2014 07:37:45AM 1 point [-]

I believe there are meaningful things people believe/do nowadays that they didn't 300 years ago (e.g. using the scientific method).

Unfortunately, for all these things, they're either: a) adopted only by some people, not the majority. b) As DanArmak says, adopted only because of "peer pressure" or other social reasons.

Now, that's not to say CFAR's mission isn't still worthwhile - raising the sanity waterline of just certain segments of the population, e.g. the top X% in terms of intelligence, is still of great importance.

But if there really aren't general "rationality techniques" that have been adopted by most people, if the average person today is no more rational than a person 500 years ago, then I suppose you're right - my bottom line might need to change to "maybe we can't reach the general populace".