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Lumifer comments on Stupid Questions (10/27/2014) - Less Wrong
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A question that has been asked before, and so may be stupid: What concrete examples are there of gains from CfAR training (or self-study based on LessWrong)? These would have to come in the form of very specific examples, preferably quantitative.
E.g. "I was $100,000 in debt and unemployed for 2 years, and now I have employment earning twice what I ever have before and am out of debt."
"I never had a relationship that lasted more than 2 months, but now am happily married."
"My grade point average went up from 2.2 to 3.8"
"After struggling to diet and exercise for years, I finally got on track and am now in the best shape of my life."
etc.
If you want marketing materials or want to estimate the upper bound, the question is useful. If you think you'll get some sort of a representative sample, um, sorry to disappoint you...
A story about how someone got a result usually contains more than just the result. It suggest what kind of techniques the person learned and makes responsible for the success. It can also tell you about the background of the person.
Case studies are useful to start thinking about a subject.
Quite right. There are always people who undergo spontaneous improvement, and if we cherry-pick success stories, we might just come up with those examples. I'd rather have a proper statistical study, and I think that CfAR is working on that. But until then, I'll make do with success stories.
I think the question is a useful one even if it fails to elicit useful answers.