Tem42 comments on Marketing Rationality - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Viliam 18 November 2015 01:43PM

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Comment author: query 19 November 2015 08:14:38PM *  19 points [-]

I have not a clue whether this sort of marketing is a good idea. Let me be clear what I mean: I think there's maybe a 30-40% chance that Gleb is having a net positive impact through these outreach efforts. I also think there's maybe a 10-20% chance that he's having a horrific long-term negative impact through these outreach efforts. Thus the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

So here's some of the concerns I see; I've gone to some effort to be fair to Gleb, and not assume anything about his thoughts or motivations:

  • By presenting these ideas in weakened forms (either by giving short or invalid argumentation, or putting it in venues or contexts with negative associations), he may be memetically immunizing people against the stronger forms of the ideas.
  • By teaching people using arguments from authority, he may be worsening the primary "sanity waterline" issues rather than improving them. The articles, materials, and comments I've seen make heavy use of language like "science-based", "research-based" and "expert". The people reading these articles in general have little or no skill at evaluating such claims, so that they effectively become arguments from authority. By rhetorically convincing them to adopt the techniques or thoughts, he's spreading quite possibly helpful ideas, but reinforcing bad habits around accepting ideas.
  • Gleb's writing style strikes me as very unauthentic feeling. Let me be clear I don't mean to accuse him of anything negative; but I intuitively feel a very negative reaction to his writing. It triggers emotional signals in me of attempted deception and rhetorical tricks (whether or not this is his intent!) His writing risks associating "rationality" with such signals (should other people share my reactions) and again causing immunization, or even catalyzing opposition.

An illustration of the nightmare scenario from such an outreach effort would be that, 3 years from now when I attempt to talk to someone about biases, they respond by saying "Oh god don't give me that '6 weird tips' bullshit about 'rational thinking', and spare me your godawful rhetoric, gtfo."

Like I said at the start, I don't know which way it swings, but those are my thoughts and concerns. I imagine they're not new concerns to Gleb. I still have these concerns after reading all of the mitigating argumentation he has offered so far, and I'm not sure of a good way to collect evidence about this besides running absurdly large long-term "consumer" studies.

I do imagine he plans to continue his efforts, and thus we'll find out eventually how this turns out.

Comment author: Tem42 22 November 2015 03:40:16AM 3 points [-]

I would argue that your first and third points are not very strong.

I think that it is not useful to protect an idea so that it is only presented in its 'cool' form. A lot of harm is done by people presenting good ideas badly, and we don't want to do any active harm, but at the same time, the more ways and the more times that an idea is adequately expressed, the more likely that idea will be remembered and understood.

People who are not used to thinking in strict terms are more likely to be receptive to intuition pumps and frequent reminders of the framework (evidence based everything). Getting people into the right mindset is half the battle.

I do however, agree with your second point, strongly. It is very hard to get people to actually care about evidence, and most people would not click through to formal studies; even fewer would read them. Those who would read them are probably motivated enough to Google for information themselves. But actually checking the evidence is so central to rationality that we should always remind new potential rationalists that claims are based on strong research. If clickbait sites are prone to edit out that sort of reference, we should link to articles that are more reader friendly but do cite (and if possible, link to) supporting studies. This sort of link is triple plus good: it means that the reader can see the idea in another writer's words; it introduces them to a new, less clickbaity site that is likely to be good for future reading; and, of course, it gives access to sources.

I think that one function that future articles of this sort should focus on as a central goal is to subtly introduce readers to more and better sites for more and better reading. However, the primary goal should remain as an intro level introduction to useful concepts, and intro level means, unfortunately, presenting these ideas in weakened forms.

Comment author: Gleb_Tsipursky 23 November 2015 06:59:27AM 4 points [-]

Agreed with presenting them to intro-level means, so that there is less of an inference gap.

Good idea on subtly introducing readers to more and better sites for further and better reading, updating on this to do so more often in my articles. Thanks!

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