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Morendil comments on Prediction Sources - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: lukeprog 04 December 2012 05:48AM

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Comment author: Morendil 04 December 2012 06:22:14PM 1 point [-]

Most predictions in daily life

...aren't textbook level questions either; the first two paragraphs of your reply strike me as irrelevant to my question.

Textbooks are indeed used in education; that doesn't establish whether what educates most effectively, also happens to be what most effectively trains calibration. We have strong reason to doubt that: namely, that many well-educated people are also poorly calibrated.

On the other hand, I'm not aware of strong evidence to the effect that textbook questions are more effective in training calibration than any other type of question (including sports or world events or estimation quizzes, and so on).

Comment author: ChristianKl 04 December 2012 08:52:27PM 0 points [-]

[Most predictions in daily life]...aren't textbook level questions either

That depends. For a student who spends 8 hours per day with learning for university many questions boil down to textbook knowledge. For a scientist who does biology research it's also very important that the scientist has a firm grasp about various biology questions that are based on textbook knowledge.

Good rationality training is supposed to make a scientist who studies biology better at biology.

We have strong reason to doubt that: namely, that many well-educated people are also poorly calibrated.

I don't think that there are many people who are calibrated on their knowledge of textbook questions.

Let me give you an example: Question: Which enzymes catalyse RNA synthesis? A) RNA polymerases B) RNA telomerases

The person who answers the question has to say either A or B and predict how likely he's right.

During most university causes students aren't asked how likely they think they are right. As a result the students aren't well calibrated on being right.